Keilson (1979, Markov Chain Models -- Rarity and Exponentiality, Springer, New York) and Aldous (1989, Probability approximations via the Poisson Clumping Heuristic, Springer, New York) have given expressions for the asymptotics of the mean time until a rare event occurs. Here we extend these...

We consider a queueing system with N servers and two types of customers: Simple customers which require a service from one of the N servers and Locking customers which have to be served simultaneously by all N servers. Loyne's increasing schema is generalized to this type of queueing system....

A picture of patients' satisfaction with interpersonal aspects of hospital-based care (including out-patient and accident and emergency services) was obtained from a postal survey of the general population of Lothian Region in south-east Scotland. Results were broadly in agreement with other...