Meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging data using Bayesian nonparametric binary regression

In this work we perform a meta-analysis of neuroimaging data, consisting of locations of peak activations identified in 162 separate studies on emotion. Neuroimaging meta-analyses are typically performed using kernel-based methods. However, these methods require the width of the kernel to be set a priori and to be constant across the brain. To address these issues, we propose a fully Bayesian nonparametric binary regression method to perform neuroimaging meta-analyses. In our method, each location (or voxel) has a probability of being a peak activation, and the corresponding probability function is based on a spatially adaptive Gaussian Markov random field (GMRF). We also include parameters in the model to robustify the procedure against miscoding of the voxel response. Posterior inference is implemented using efficient MCMC algorithms extended from those introduced in Holmes and Held [Bayesian Anal. 1 (2006) 145--168]. Our method allows the probability function to be locally adaptive with respect to the covariates, that is, to be smooth in one region of the covariate space and wiggly or even discontinuous in another. Posterior miscoding probabilities for each of the identified voxels can also be obtained, identifying voxels that may have been falsely classified as being activated. Simulation studies and application to the emotion neuroimaging data indicate that our method is superior to standard kernel-based methods.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOAS523 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Anisotropic emission of thermal dielectrons from Au+Au collisions at sNN=200\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200~GeV with EPOS3

Dileptons, as an electromagnetic probe, are crucial to study the properties of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in heavy ion collisions. We calculated the invariant mass spectra and the anisotropic emission of thermal dielectrons from Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) energy $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$~GeV based on EPOS3. This approach provides a realistic (3+1)-dimensional event-by-event viscous hydrodynamic description of the expanding hot and dense matter with a very particular initial condition, and a large set of hadron data and direct photons (besides $v_{2}$ and $v_{3}$ !) can be successfully reproduced. Thermal dilepton emission from both the QGP phase and the hadronic gas are considered, with the emission rates based on Lattice QCD and a vector meson model, respectively. We find that the computed invariant mass spectra (thermal contribution + STAR cocktail) can reproduce the measured ones from STAR at different centralities. Different compared to other model predictions, the obtained elliptic flow of thermal dileptons is larger than the STAR measurement referring to all dileptons. We observe a clear centrality dependence of thermal dilepton not only for elliptic flow $v_{2}$ but also for higher orders. At a given centrality, $v_{n}$ of thermal dileptons decreases monotonically with $n$ for $2\leq n\leq5$.Comment: 10pages, 12fig

An analytical model of the large neutral regions during the late stage of reionization

In this paper we investigate the nature and distribution of large neutral regions during the late epoch of reionization. In the "bubble model" of reionization, the mass distribution of large ionized regions ("bubbles") during the early stage of reionization is obtained by using the excursion set model, where the ionization of a region corresponds to the first up-crossing of a barrier by random trajectories. We generalize this idea, and develop a method to predict the distribution of large scale neutral regions during the late stage of reionization, taking into account the ionizing background after the percolation of HII regions. The large scale neutral regions which we call "neutral islands" are not individual galaxies or minihalos, but larger regions where fewer galaxies formed and hence ionized later, and they are identified in the excursion set model with the first down-crossings of the island barrier. Assuming that the consumption rate of ionizing background photons is proportional to the surface area of the neutral islands, we obtained the size distribution of the neutral islands. We also take the "bubbles-in-island" effect into account by considering the conditional probability of up-crossing a bubble barrier after down-crossing the island barrier. We find that this effect is very important. An additional barrier is set to avoid islands being percolated through. We find that there is a characteristic scale for the neutral islands, while the small islands are rapidly swallowed up by the ionizing background, this characteristic scale does not change much as the reionization proceeds.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, accepted by The Astrophysical Journa