796 research outputs found
Higher Accuracy for Bayesian and Frequentist Inference: Large Sample Theory for Small Sample Likelihood
Recent likelihood theory produces -values that have remarkable accuracy
and wide applicability. The calculations use familiar tools such as maximum
likelihood values (MLEs), observed information and parameter rescaling. The
usual evaluation of such -values is by simulations, and such simulations do
verify that the global distribution of the -values is uniform(0, 1), to high
accuracy in repeated sampling. The derivation of the -values, however,
asserts a stronger statement, that they have a uniform(0, 1) distribution
conditionally, given identified precision information provided by the data. We
take a simple regression example that involves exact precision information and
use large sample techniques to extract highly accurate information as to the
statistical position of the data point with respect to the parameter:
specifically, we examine various -values and Bayesian posterior survivor
-values for validity. With observed data we numerically evaluate the various
-values and -values, and we also record the related general formulas. We
then assess the numerical values for accuracy using Markov chain Monte Carlo
(McMC) methods. We also propose some third-order likelihood-based procedures
for obtaining means and variances of Bayesian posterior distributions, again
followed by McMC assessment. Finally we propose some adaptive McMC methods to
improve the simulation acceptance rates. All these methods are based on
asymptotic analysis that derives from the effect of additional data. And the
methods use simple calculations based on familiar maximizing values and related
informations. The example illustrates the general formulas and the ease of
calculations, while the McMC assessments demonstrate the numerical validity of
the -values as percentage position of a data point. The example, however, is
very simple and transparent, and thus gives little indication that in a wide
generality of models the formulas do accurately separate information for almost
any parameter of interest, and then do give accurate -value determinations
from that information. As illustration an enigmatic problem in the literature
is discussed and simulations are recorded; various examples in the literature
are cited.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-STS240 the Statistical
Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Profil psychosocial des femmes qui offrent des services sexuels au Bas-Saint-Laurent
Avant-propos:
La présente étude est issue de l’Entente sur l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes au Bas-Saint-Laurent 2011-2015, dont les partenaires sont le Ministère de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition féminine (MCCCF), le Ministère des Affaires municipales, des Régions et de l'Occupation du territoire (MAMROT), l’Agence de la santé et des services sociaux du Bas-Saint-Laurent (ASSS du BSL), la Conférence régionale des éluEs du Bas-Saint-Laurent (CRÉBSL), la Commission Jeunesse (CJ) et la Table de concertation des groupes de femmes du Bas-Saint-Laurent (TCGFBSL).
La présente étude s’inscrit dans les travaux de recherche de l’Étude sur le Développement et le Comportement Sexuel des personnes qui offrent des services sexuels et des personnes qui n’offrent pas de services sexuels (ÉDECS), menée à l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, en collaboration avec l’Université de Montréal. L’ÉDECS vise à évaluer le profil psychosocial, les besoins et les risques de victimisation de personnes travaillant dans les différentes catégories de services sexuels de même que les facteurs d’entrée et de maintien dans l’offre de services sexuels
Early Huntington's disease affects movements in transformed sensorimotor mappings
This study examined the effect of transformed visual feedback on movement control in Huntington’s disease (HD). Patients in the early stages of HD and controls performed aiming movements towards peripheral targets on a digitizing tablet using an indirect visual control of movement through a monitor and emphasizing precision. In a baseline condition, HD patients were slower but showed few precision problems in aiming. When visual feedback was inverted in both vertical and horizontal axes, patients showed problems in initial and terminal phases of movement where feedback is most critical. When visual feedback was inverted along a single axis as in a mirror-inversion, HD patients showed large deviations and over-corrections before adaptation. Adaptation was similar in both groups. These results suggest that HD impairs on-line error correction in novel movements
Model of Low-pass Filtering of Local Field Potentials in Brain Tissue
Local field potentials (LFPs) are routinely measured experimentally in brain
tissue, and exhibit strong low-pass frequency filtering properties, with high
frequencies (such as action potentials) being visible only at very short
distances (10~) from the recording electrode. Understanding
this filtering is crucial to relate LFP signals with neuronal activity, but not
much is known about the exact mechanisms underlying this low-pass filtering. In
this paper, we investigate a possible biophysical mechanism for the low-pass
filtering properties of LFPs. We investigate the propagation of electric fields
and its frequency dependence close to the current source, i.e. at length scales
in the order of average interneuronal distance. We take into account the
presence of a high density of cellular membranes around current sources, such
as glial cells. By considering them as passive cells, we show that under the
influence of the electric source field, they respond by polarisation, i.e.,
creation of an induced field. Because of the finite velocity of ionic charge
movement, this polarization will not be instantaneous. Consequently, the
induced electric field will be frequency-dependent, and much reduced for high
frequencies. Our model establishes that with respect to frequency attenuation
properties, this situation is analogous to an equivalent RC-circuit, or better
a system of coupled RC-circuits. We present a number of numerical simulations
of induced electric field for biologically realistic values of parameters, and
show this frequency filtering effect as well as the attenuation of
extracellular potentials with distance. We suggest that induced electric fields
in passive cells surrounding neurons is the physical origin of frequency
filtering properties of LFPs.Comment: 10 figs, revised tex file and revised fig
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A cross-sectional survey of supports for evidence-informed decision-making in healthcare organisations: a research protocol
Background: This protocol builds on the development of a) a framework that identified the various supports (i.e. positions, activities, interventions) that a healthcare organisation or health system can implement for evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) and b) a qualitative study that showed the current mix of supports that some Canadian healthcare organisations have in place and the ones that are perceived to facilitate the use of research evidence in decision-making. Based on these findings, we developed a web survey to collect cross-sectional data about the specific supports that regional health authorities and hospitals in two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec) have in place to facilitate EIDM. Methods/design This paper describes the methods for a cross-sectional web survey among 32 regional health authorities and 253 hospitals in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario (Canada) to collect data on the current mix of organisational supports that these organisations have in place to facilitate evidence-informed decision-making. The data will be obtained through a two-step survey design: a 10-min survey among CEOs to identify key units and individuals in regard to our objectives (step 1) and a 20-min survey among managers of the key units identified in step 1 to collect information about the activities performed by their unit regarding the acquisition, assessment, adaptation and/or dissemination of research evidence in decision-making (step 2). The study will target three types of informants: CEOs, library/documentation centre managers and all other key managers whose unit is involved in the acquisition, assessment, adaptation/packaging and/or dissemination of research evidence in decision-making. We developed an innovative data collection system to increase the likelihood that only the best-informed respondent available answers each survey question. The reporting of the results will be done using descriptive statistics of supports by organisation type and by province. Discussion This study will be the first to collect and report large-scale cross-sectional data on the current mix of supports health system organisations in the two most populous Canadian provinces have in place for evidence-informed decision-making. The study will also provide useful information to researchers on how to collect organisation-level data with reduced risk of self-reporting bias
Does the 1/f frequency-scaling of brain signals reflect self-organized critical states?
Many complex systems display self-organized critical states characterized by
1/f frequency scaling of power spectra. Global variables such as the
electroencephalogram, scale as 1/f, which could be the sign of self-organized
critical states in neuronal activity. By analyzing simultaneous recordings of
global and neuronal activities, we confirm the 1/f scaling of global variables
for selected frequency bands, but show that neuronal activity is not consistent
with critical states. We propose a model of 1/f scaling which does not rely on
critical states, and which is testable experimentally.Comment: 3 figures, 6 page
Diffusion of hydrogen in crystalline silicon
The coefficient of diffusion of hydrogen in crystalline silicon is calculated
using tight-binding molecular dynamics. Our results are in good quantitative
agreement with an earlier study by Panzarini and Colombo [Phys. Rev. Lett. 73,
1636 (1994)]. However, while our calculations indicate that long jumps dominate
over single hops at high temperatures, no abrupt change in the diffusion
coefficient can be observed with decreasing temperature. The (classical)
Arrhenius diffusion parameters, as a consequence, should extrapolate to low
temperatures.Comment: 4 pages, including 5 postscript figures; submitted to Phys. Rev. B
Brief Repor
A generalized theory for current-source density analysis in brain tissue
The current-source density (CSD) analysis is a widely used method in brain
electrophysiology, but this method rests on a series of assumptions, namely
that the surrounding extracellular medium is resistive and uniform, and in some
versions of the theory, that the current sources are exclusively made by
dipoles. Because of these assumptions, this standard model does not correctly
describe the contributions of monopolar sources or of non-resistive aspects of
the extracellular medium. We propose here a general framework to model electric
fields and potentials resulting from current source densities, without relying
on the above assumptions. We develop a mean-field formalism which is a
generalization of the standard model, and which can directly incorporate
non-resistive (non-ohmic) properties of the extracellular medium, such as ionic
diffusion effects. This formalism recovers the classic results of the standard
model such as the CSD analysis, but in addition, we provide expressions to
generalize the CSD approach to situations with non-resistive media and
arbitrarily complex multipolar configurations of current sources. We found that
the power spectrum of the signal contains the signature of the nature of
current sources and extracellular medium, which provides a direct way to
estimate those properties from experimental data, and in particular, estimate
the possible contribution of electric monopoles.Comment: Physical Review E, in press, 201
On the flexibility of the design of Multiple Try Metropolis schemes
The Multiple Try Metropolis (MTM) method is a generalization of the classical
Metropolis-Hastings algorithm in which the next state of the chain is chosen
among a set of samples, according to normalized weights. In the literature,
several extensions have been proposed. In this work, we show and remark upon
the flexibility of the design of MTM-type methods, fulfilling the detailed
balance condition. We discuss several possibilities and show different
numerical results
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