Identification And Management Of Pregnancy‐Related Low Back Pain

Back pain is a common complaint of women during pregnancy. It is frequently dismissed as trivial and inevitable. This article gives an overview of recent research on pregnancy‐related back pain that documents the impact of this pain on women's lives, during and beyond the childbearing year. It argues for a more active approach to the prevention and management of back pain during pregnancy. Two common back pain types, lumbar pain and posterior pelvic pain, are described and basic management techniques for the woman and her primary caregiver are suggested. Red flag findings that necessitate specialist referral are also highlighted, as are suggestions for further research.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90043/1/j.1542-2011.1998.tb03313.x.pd

Improper vs finitely additive distributions as limits of countably additive probabilities

In Bayesian statistics, improper distributions and finitely additive probabilities (FAPs) are the two main alternatives to proper distributions, i.e. countably additive probabilities. Both of them can be seen as limits of proper distribution sequences w.r.t. to some specific convergence modes. Therefore, some authors attempt to link these two notions by this means, partly using heuristic arguments. The aim of the paper is to compare these two kinds of limits. We show that improper distributions and FAPs represent two distinct characteristics of a sequence of proper distributions and therefore, surprisingly, cannot be connected by the mean of proper distribution sequences. More specifically, for a sequence of proper distribution which converge to both an improper distribution and a set of FAPs, we show that another sequence of proper distributions can be constructed having the same FAP limits and converging to any given improper distribution. This result can be mainly explained by the fact that improper distributions describe the behavior of the sequence inside the domain after rescaling, whereas FAP limits describe how the mass concentrates on the boundary of the domain. We illustrate our results with several examples and we show the difficulty to define properly a uniform FAP distribution on the natural numbers as an equivalent of the improper flat prior. MSC 2010 subject classifications: Primary 62F15; secondary 62E17,60B10

The orientation of Henry Wilson(1812-1856).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityHenry Wilson (Feb. 16, 1812 - Nov. 22, 1875). Sometime United States Senator and Vice-President. The first of eight children of Winthrop and Abigail (Witham) Colbath, he was born in Farmington, New Hampshire, and christened Jeremiah Jones Colbath. The family was so poor that at the age of ten and one half the boy was "bound out" to a nearby farmer, who agreed to provide room, board and one month of schooling per year in return for his labor. Upon receiving his freedom, in 1833, he had his name legally changed to Henry Wilson, hoping thus to escape the stigma of his father's alcoholism. Migrating to Natick, Massachusetts, he entered the shoemaker's trade. At the start of 1836, while visiting Washington during a trip to recover his health, he came in contact with slavery. The system disgusted him and its ultimate extinction by constitutional means became the main ambition of his life. Returning to Massachusetts, Wilson studied at various academies for a little more than a year, when the failure of a debtor left him penniless. Back in Natick, he taught school for one term and then became a factor in the "putting-out" system, delivering leather to shoemakers and selling the finished product. He continued intermittently in this business until 1847, when politics became his sole preoccupation. [TRUNCATED

Improper vs finitely additive distributions as limits of countably additive probabilities

In Bayesian statistics, improper distributions and finitely additive probabilities (FAPs) are the two main alternatives to proper distributions, i.e. countably additive probabilities. Both of them can be seen as limits of proper distribution sequences w.r.t. to some specific convergence modes. Therefore, some authors attempt to link these two notions by this means, partly using heuristic arguments. The aim of the paper is to compare these two kinds of limits. We show that improper distributions and FAPs represent two distinct characteristics of a sequence of proper distributions and therefore, surprisingly, cannot be connected by the mean of proper distribution sequences. More specifically, for a sequence of proper distribution which converge to both an improper distribution and a set of FAPs, we show that another sequence of proper distributions can be constructed having the same FAP limits and converging to any given improper distribution. This result can be mainly explained by the fact that improper distributions describe the behavior of the sequence inside the domain after rescaling, whereas FAP limits describe how the mass concentrates on the boundary of the domain. We illustrate our results with several examples and we show the difficulty to define properly a uniform FAP distribution on the natural numbers as an equivalent of the improper flat prior. MSC 2010 subject classifications: Primary 62F15; secondary 62E17,60B10

Inference procedures for the piecewise exponential model when the data are arbitrarily censored

Lifetime data are often subject to complicated censoring mechanisms. In particular, point inspection schedules result in observations for which the exact failure times are known only to fall in an interval. Furthermore, overlapping intervals occur when more than one inspection schedule is employed. While well-known parametric and nonparametric inference procedures exist, the piecewise exponential (PEX) model provides a flexible alternative. The PEX model is characterized by a piecewise-constant hazard function with specified jump points. The jump points may be determined as a function of the data, giving the model a nonparametric interpretation, or according to physical considerations related to the process but independent of the data. Assumptions concerning the shape of the hazard function can be incorporated into the model;The EM algorithm provides a useful method of estimation, particularly as the number of hazard jump points increases. Its convergence is guaranteed even when the MLE lies on the boundary of the parameter space. A version of the EM algorithm is used to construct approximate confidence intervals based on inverting the likelihood ratio test statistic. Asymptotic properties of the PEX estimator are given for certain censoring mechanisms. A Monte Carlo study was done to investigate the effect of a constrained hazard function and of the choice of jump points on the resulting estimate of the survival function. The performance of the likelihood ratio based confidence intervals is also evaluated

Rewriting the Game: Queer Trans Strategies of Survival, Resistance, and Relationality in Twine Games

This thesis explores how a selection of video games, created by transgender people using the free software Twine, create space for the survival and flourishing of queer and trans subjects through visions of transformative relationships. It deploys the lenses of queer theories of failure (Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure), disidentification (Muñoz, Disidentifications), and utopianism (Muñoz, Cruising Utopia) to perform close readings of the techniques of narrative and game mechanics used as strategies for survival, resistance, and relationality in anna anthropy’s Encyclopedia Fuckme and the Case of the Vanishing Entree and Queers in Love at the End of the World, Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s With Those We Love Alive, and ira prince’s Queer Trans Mentally Ill Power Fantasy. The analysis focuses on games produced in and around the moment of the “Twine revolution” (Harvey) that aimed in the early 2010s to radically re-envision video games as spaces for minoritized subjects to thrive. Even as the transformation of video games culture as a whole remains an unrealized ideal, this paper argues for the importance of revisiting the under-examined queer strategies these games depict and enact in order to imagine possibilities for “rewrit[ing] the game” (Halberstam in Halberstam and Juul), and through this for “rewrit[ing] the map of everyday life” (Muñoz, Cruising Utopia 25), possibilities which can allow for the flourishing of queer and trans modes of relationality within and against toxic and exclusive norms in game play and design

Stochastic Reaction-diffusion Equations Driven by Jump Processes

We establish the existence of weak martingale solutions to a class of second order parabolic stochastic partial differential equations. The equations are driven by multiplicative jump type noise, with a non-Lipschitz multiplicative functional. The drift in the equations contains a dissipative nonlinearity of polynomial growth.Comment: See journal reference for teh final published versio