5,337 research outputs found
Robust priors for regularized regression
Induction benefits from useful priors. Penalized regression approaches, like ridge regression, shrink weights toward zero but zero association is usually not a sensible prior. Inspired by simple and robust decision heuristics humans use, we constructed non-zero priors for penalized regression models that provide robust and interpretable solutions across several tasks. Our approach enables estimates from a constrained model to serve as a prior for a more general model, yielding a principled way to interpolate between models of differing complexity. We successfully applied this approach to a number of decision and classification problems, as well as analyzing simulated brain imaging data. Models with robust priors had excellent worst-case performance. Solutions followed from the form of the heuristic that was used to derive the prior. These new algorithms can serve applications in data analysis and machine learning, as well as help in understanding how people transition from novice to expert performance
Aspirin inhibits the acute venodilator response to furosemide in patients with chronic heart failure
OBJECTIVES:
We sought to determine the effect of aspirin on the venodilator effect of furosemide in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF)
BACKGROUND:
Furosemide has an acute venodilator effect preceding its diuretic action, which is blocked by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. The ability of therapeutic doses of aspirin to block this effect of furosemide in patients with CHF has not been studied. For comparison, the venodilator response to nitroglycerin (NTG) was also studied.
METHODS:
Eleven patients with CHF were randomized to receive placebo, aspirin at 75 mg/day or aspirin at 300 mg/day for 14 days in a double-blind, crossover study. The effect of these pretreatments on the change in forearm venous capacitance (FVC) after 20 mg of intravenous furosemide was measured over 20 min by using venous occlusion plethysmography. In a second study, the effect of 400 μg of sublingual NTG on FVC was documented in 11 similar patients (nine participated in the first study).
RESULTS:
Mean arterial pressure, heart rate and forearm blood flow did not change in response to furosemide. After placebo pretreatment, furosemide caused an increase in FVC of 2.2% (95% confidence interval [CI] −0.9% to 5.2%; mean response over 20 min). By comparison, FVC fell by −1.1% (95% CI −4.2% to 1.9%) after pretreatment with aspirin at 75 mg/day, and by −3.7% (95% CI −6.8% to −0.7%) after aspirin at 300 mg/day (p = 0.020). In the second study, NTG increased FVC by 2.1% (95% CI −1.6% to 5.8%) (p = 0.95 vs. furosemide).
CONCLUSIONS:
In patients with CHF, venodilation occurs within minutes of the administration of intravenous dose of furosemide. Our observation that aspirin inhibits this effect further questions the use of aspirin in patients with CHF
Real-time extraction of the Madden-Julian oscillation using empirical mode decomposition and statistical forecasting with a VARMA model
A simple guide to the new technique of empirical mode decomposition (EMD) in a meteorological-climate forecasting context is presented. A single application of EMD to a time series essentially acts as a local high-pass filter. Hence, successive applications can be used to produce a bandpass filter that is highly efficient at extracting a broadband signal such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). The basic EMD method is adapted to minimize end effects, such that it is suitable for use in real time. The EMD process is then used to efficiently extract the MJO signal from gridded time series of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) data. A range of statistical models from the general class of vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) models was then tested for their suitability in forecasting the MJO signal, as isolated by the EMD. A VARMA (5, 1) model was selected and its parameters determined by a maximum likelihood method using 17 yr of OLR data from 1980 to 1996. Forecasts were then made on the remaining independent data from 1998 to 2004. These were made in real time, as only data up to the date the forecast was made were used. The median skill of forecasts was accurate (defined as an anomaly correlation above 0.6) at lead times up to 25 days
Studies of Excited States in 208-Pb by Inelastic Proton Scattering at 100 MeV
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF PHY 78-22774 A02 & A03 and by Indiana Universit
Dynamic buckling and fragmentation in brittle rods
We present experiments on the dynamic buckling and fragmentation of slender
rods axially impacted by a projectile. By combining the results of Saint-Venant
and elastic beam theory, we derive a preferred wavelength lambda for the
buckling instability, and experimentally verify the resulting scaling law for a
range of materials including teflon, dry pasta, glass, and steel. For brittle
materials, buckling leads to the fragmentation of the rod. Measured fragment
length distributions show two clear peaks near lambda/2 and lambda/4. The
non-monotonic nature of the distributions reflect the influence of the
deterministic buckling process on the more random fragmentation processes.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter
Studies of Excited States in 208-Pb by Inelastic Proton Scattering at 135 and 100 MeV
Supported by the National Science Foundation and Indiana Universit
Analyzing Power Measurements for the Excitation of States in 28-Si and 24-Mg by Inelastic Scattering of Polarized Protons
Supported by the National Science Foundation and Indiana Universit
Three-body dN interaction in the analysis of the 12C(pol_d,d') reaction at 270 MeV
We have measured the cross sections and analyzing powers Ay and Ayy for the
elastic and inelastic scattering of deuterons from the 0+(g.s.), 2+(4.44 MeV),
3-(9.64 MeV), 1+(12.71 MeV), and 2-(18.3 MeV) states in 12C at an incident
energy of 270 MeV. The data are compared with microscopic distorted-wave
impulse approximation calculations where the projectile-nucleon effective
interactionis taken from the three-nucleon t-matrix given by rigorous Faddeev
calculations presently available at intermediate energies. The agreement
between theory and data compares well with that for the (p,p') reactions at
comparable incident energies/nucleon.Comment: 17 pages, 3 Postscript figure
Loans, logins and lasting the course: Academic library use and student retention
Activities and services that improve student engagement and retention in the higher education sector are important not only to individual student’s success but also to university planning and funding. This paper reports on a quantitative study that was carried out to explore whether use of the library by new university students is associated with continued enrolment. Students’ socioeconomic background and age were also examined in relation to library use. Limited to commencing students in March 2010 at Curtin University, the study drew on demographic data from the University’s enrolment system and instances of library use from the Library’s management system. Results of the statistical analyses indicate that library use is associated with retention, and importantly, library use in the early weeks of a student’s first semester is associated with retention. ‘Mature aged’ (21 years and over) students displayed different library use patterns than their younger colleagues and there was some variation in library use between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Findings from this study suggest that academic libraries can contribute to the retention of students and that carefully targeted programs and services may improve library use by some groups of students
- …