2,318 research outputs found
Bayesian Modeling of Time-varying Parameters Using Regression Trees
In light of widespread evidence of parameter instability in macroeconomic
models, many time-varying parameter (TVP) models have been proposed. This paper
proposes a nonparametric TVP-VAR model using Bayesian Additive Regression Trees
(BART). The novelty of this model arises from the law of motion driving the
parameters being treated nonparametrically. This leads to great flexibility in
the nature and extent of parameter change, both in the conditional mean and in
the conditional variance. In contrast to other nonparametric and machine
learning methods that are black box, inference using our model is
straightforward because, in treating the parameters rather than the variables
nonparametrically, the model remains conditionally linear in the mean.
Parsimony is achieved through adopting nonparametric factor structures and use
of shrinkage priors. In an application to US macroeconomic data, we illustrate
the use of our model in tracking both the evolving nature of the Phillips curve
and how the effects of business cycle shocks on inflationary measures vary
nonlinearly with movements in uncertainty.Comment: JEL: C11, C32, C51, E32; KEYWORDS: Bayesian vector autoregression,
time-varying parameters, nonparametric modeling, machine learning, regression
trees, Phillips curve, business cycle shock
Statistically Stable Estimates of Variance in Radioastronomical Observations as Tools for RFI Mitigation
A selection of statistically stable (robust) algorithms for data variance
calculating has been made. Their properties have been analyzed via computer
simulation. These algorithms would be useful if adopted in radio astronomy
observations in the presence of strong sporadic radio frequency interference
(RFI). Several observational results have been presented here to demonstrate
the effectiveness of these algorithms in RFI mitigation
Mobile, Game-Based Training for Myoelectric Prosthesis Control
Myoelectric prostheses provide upper limb amputees with hand and arm movement control using muscle activity of the residual limb, but require intensive training to effectively operate. The result is that many amputees abandon their prosthesis before mastering control of their device. In the present study, we examine a novel, mobile, game-based approach to myoelectric prosthesis training. Using the non-dominant limb in a group of able-bodied participants to model amputee pre-prosthetic training, a significant improvement in factors underlying successful myoelectric prosthesis use, including muscle control, sequencing, and isolation were observed. Participants also reported high levels of usability, and motivation with the game-based approach to training. Given fiscal or geographic constraints that limit pre-prosthetic amputee care, mobile myosite training, as described in the current study, has the potential to improve rehabilitation success rates by providing myosite training outside of the clinical environment. Future research should include longitudinal studies in amputee populations to evaluate the impact of pre-prosthetic training methods on prosthesis acceptance, wear time, abandonment, functional outcomes, quality of life, and return to work
Accuracy and quality of massively parallel DNA pyrosequencing
© 2007 Huse et al.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The definitive version was published in Genome Biology 8 (2007): R143, doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-7-r143.Additional data file 1 is a fasta file of the 43 known sequences used. Additional data file 2 is a gzip-compressed fasta file of the sequences output by the GS20. These sequences correspond to those included in Additional data files 3, 4, 5 but include only the final sequence information. Additional data files 3, 4, 5 are three compressed text files representing the text translations of the original GS20 binary output (sff) files for all of the sequencing used in the analysis, including sequence, flowgram and other run information. GS20 data are reported by region of the PicoTiterPlate™; we sequenced three plate regions.Massively parallel pyrosequencing systems have increased the efficiency of DNA sequencing, although the published per-base accuracy of a Roche GS20 is only 96%. In genome projects, highly redundant consensus assemblies can compensate for sequencing errors. In contrast, studies of microbial diversity that catalogue differences between PCR amplicons of ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) or other conserved gene families cannot take advantage of consensus assemblies to detect and minimize incorrect base calls.
We performed an empirical study of the per-base error rate for the Roche GS20 system using sequences of the V6 hypervariable region from cloned microbial ribosomal DNA (tag sequencing). We calculated a 99.5% accuracy rate in unassembled sequences, and identified several factors that can be used to remove a small percentage of low-quality reads, improving the accuracy to 99.75% or better.
By using objective criteria to eliminate low quality data, the quality of individual GS20 sequence reads in molecular ecological applications can surpass the accuracy of traditional capillary methods.This work was supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration Astrobiology Institute Cooperative Agreement NNA04CC04A (to MLS), subcontracts from the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation (NIH/NIEHS 1 P50 ES012742-01 and NSF/OCE 0430724-J Stegeman PI to HGM and MLS), grants from the WM Keck Foundation and the G Unger Vetlesen Foundation (to MLS), and a National Research Council Research Associateship Award (to JAH)
Hypothermia in Stroke Therapy: Systemic versus Local Application
Presently, there are no effective, widely applicable therapies for ischemic stroke. There is strong clinical evidence for the neuroprotective benefits of hypothermia, and surface-cooling methods have been utilized for decades in the treatment of cerebral ischemia during cardiac arrest, but complications with hypothermia induction have hindered its clinical acceptance in ischemic stroke therapy. Recently, the microcatheter-based local endovascular infusion (LEVI) of cold saline directly to the infarct site has been proposed as a solution to the drawbacks of surface cooling. The safety and efficacy of LEVI in rat models have been established, and implementation in larger animals has been similarly encouraging. A recent pilot study even established the safety of LEVI in humans. This review seeks to outline the major research on LEVI, discusses the mechanisms that mediate its superior neuroprotection over surface and systemic cooling, and identifies areas that warrant further investigation. While LEVI features improvements on surface cooling, its core mechanisms of neuroprotection are still largely shared with therapeutic hypothermia in general. As such, the mechanisms of hypothermia-based neuroprotection are discussed as well
Exploring microbial diversity and taxonomy using SSU rRNA hypervariable tag sequencing
© 2008 Huse et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS Genetics 4 (2008): e1000255, doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000255.Massively parallel pyrosequencing of hypervariable regions from small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU rRNA) genes can sample a microbial community two or three orders of magnitude more deeply per dollar and per hour than capillary sequencing of full-length SSU rRNA. As with full-length rRNA surveys, each sequence read is a tag surrogate for a single microbe. However, rather than assigning taxonomy by creating gene trees de novo that include all experimental sequences and certain reference taxa, we compare the hypervariable region tags to an extensive database of rRNA sequences and assign taxonomy based on the best match in a Global Alignment for Sequence Taxonomy (GAST) process. The resulting taxonomic census provides information on both composition and diversity of the microbial community. To determine the effectiveness of using only hypervariable region tags for assessing microbial community membership, we compared the taxonomy assigned to the V3 and V6 hypervariable regions with the taxonomy assigned to full-length SSU rRNA sequences isolated from both the human gut and a deep-sea hydrothermal vent. The hypervariable region tags and full-length rRNA sequences provided equivalent taxonomy and measures of relative abundance of microbial communities, even for tags up to 15% divergent from their nearest reference match. The greater sampling depth per dollar afforded by massively parallel pyrosequencing reveals many more members of the “rare biosphere” than does capillary sequencing of the full-length gene. In addition, tag sequencing eliminates cloning bias and the sequences are short enough to be completely sequenced in a single read, maximizing the number of organisms sampled in a run while minimizing chimera formation. This technique allows the cost-effective exploration of changes in microbial community structure, including the rare biosphere, over space and time and can be applied immediately to initiatives, such as the Human Microbiome Project.Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation (NIH/NIEHS 1 P50 ES012742-01 and NSF/OCE 0430724-J Stegeman PI to MLS). NIH Director's Pioneer Award and Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award to DAR
Electron Spin Resonance Above Tc In Layered Manganites
We have performed electron spin resonance (ESR) and dc magnetization measurements on single crystals of La2(1-x)Sr1+2xMn2O7 up to 800 K with special emphasis on the x = 0.4 composition. The ESR linewidth shows behavior similar to that observed in the three-dimensional perovskites and above ∼500 K can be described by a universal expression ΔHpp(T)=[C/Tχ(T)]ΔHpp (∞). The linewidth and the resonance field become anisotropic below ∼500 K. The anisotropy in the resonance field is proportional to the magnetization M, and we concluded that it is intrinsic to the system. We show that demagnetization effects can explain only part of the anisotropy. The remainder arises from short-range uniaxial terms in the Hamiltonian that are associated with the crystal field and Dzialozhinsky-Moriya interactions. The anisotropy in the linewidth is attributed to the easy-plane ferromagnetic ordering, which also arises from the short-range anisotropy.631717441311744136Ruddlesden, S.N., Popper, P., (1958) Acta Crystallogr., 11, p. 54Moritomo, Y., Asamitsu, A., Kuwahara, H., Tokura, Y., (1996) Nature (London), 380, p. 141Causa, M.T., Tovar, M., Caneiro, A., Prado, F., Ibanez, G., Ramos, C.A., Butera, A., Oseroff, S.B., (1998) Phys. Rev. B, 58, p. 3233Causa, M.T., Alejandro, G., Tovar, M., Pagliuso, P.G., Rettori, C., Oseroff, S.B., Subramanian, M.A., (1999) J. Appl. Phys., 85, p. 5408Huber, D.L., Alejandro, G., Caneiro, A., Causa, M.T., Prado, F., Tovar, M., Oseroff, S.B., (1999) Phys. Rev. B, 60, p. 12155Oseroff, S.B., Moreno, N.O., Pagliuso, P.G., Rettori, C., Huber, D.L., Gardner, J.S., Sarrao, J.L., Alascio, B.R., (2000) J. Appl. Phys., 87, p. 5810Seehra, M.S., Ibrahim, M.M., Babu, V.S., Srinivasan, G., (1996) J. Phys.: Condens. Matter, 8, p. 11283Dominguez, M., Lofland, S.E., Bhagat, S.M., Raychaudhuri, A.K., Ju, H.L., Venkates, T., Greene, R.L., (1996) Solid State Commun., 97, p. 193Lofland, S.E., Kim, P., Dahiroc, P., Bhagat, S.M., Tyagi, S.D., Karabashev, S.G., Shultyatev, D.A., Mukovskii, Y., (1997) Phys. Lett. A, 233, p. 476Kimura, T., Tomioka, Y., Kuwahara, H., Asamitsu, A., Tamura, M., Tokura, Y., (1996) Science, 274, p. 1698Perring, T.G., Aeppli, G., Moritomo, Y., Tokura, Y., (1997) Phys. Rev. Lett., 78, p. 3197Zhou, J.-S., Goodenough, J.B., Mitchell, J.F., (1998) Phys. Rev. B, 58, p. 579Zhou, J.-S., Goodenough, J.B., (1998) Phys. Rev. Lett., 80, p. 2665Kelley, T.M., Argyriou, D.N., Robinson, R.A., Nakotte, H., Mitchell, J.F., Osbron, R., Jorgensen, J.D., (1998) Physica B, 241-243, p. 439Heffner, R.H., MacLaughlin, D.E., Nieuwenhuys, G.J., Kimura, T., Luke, G.M., Tokura, Y., Uemura, Y.J., (1998) Phys. Rev. Lett., 81, p. 1706Potter, C.D., Swiatek, M., Bader, S.D., Argyriou, D.N., Mitchell, J.F., Miller, D.J., Hinks, D.G., Jorgensen, J.D., (1998) Phys. Rev. B, 57, p. 72Chauvet, O., Goglio, G., Molinie, P., Corraze, B., Brohan, L., (1998) Phys. Rev. Lett., 81, p. 1102Hirota, K., Moritomo, Y., Fujioka, H., Kubota, M., Yoshizawa, H., Endoh, Y., (1998) J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., 67, p. 3380Li, J.Q., Matsui, Y., Kimura, T., Tokura, Y., (1998) Phys. Rev. B, 57, pp. R3205Kimura, T., Kumai, R., Tokura, Y., Li, J.Q., Matsui, Y., (1998) Phys. Rev. B, 58, p. 11081Hayashi, T., Miura, N., Tokunaga, M., Kimura, T., Tokura, Y., (1998) J. Phys.: Condens. Matter, 10, p. 11525Suryanarayanan, R., Dhalenne, G., Revcolevschi, A., Prellier, W., Renard, J.P., Dupas, C., Caliebe, W., Chatterji, T., (2000) Solid State Commun., 113, p. 267Kubota, M., Fujioka, H., Ohoyama, K., Hirota, K., Moritomo, Y., Yoshizawa, H., Endoh, Y., (1999) J. Phys. Chem. Solids, 60, p. 116Bhagat, S.M., Lofland, S.E., Mitchell, J.F., (1999) Phys. Lett. A, 259, p. 326Kittel, C., (1997) Introduction to Solid State Physics, , Wiley, New YorkOkochi, M., (1970) J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., 28, p. 897Victoria, C., Barker, R.C., Yelon, A., (1967) Phys. Rev. Lett., 19, p. 792Nagata, K., (1976) J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., 40, p. 1209Nagata, K., Yamamoto, I., Takano, H., Yokozawa, Y., (1977) J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., 43, p. 857. , and references thereinHuber, D.L., Seehra, M.S., (1976) Phys. Status Solidi B, 74, p. 145Stanger, J.-L., Andre, J.-J., Turek, P., Hosokoshi, Y., Tamura, M., Kinoshita, M., Rey, P., Veciana, J., (1997) Phys. Rev. B, 55, p. 8398Van Vleck, J.H., (1950) Phys. Rev., 78, p. 266Kittel, C., (1948) Phys. Rev., 73, p. 15
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