Shape restricted regression with random Bernstein polynomials

Shape restricted regressions, including isotonic regression and concave regression as special cases, are studied using priors on Bernstein polynomials and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. These priors have large supports, select only smooth functions, can easily incorporate geometric information into the prior, and can be generated without computational difficulty. Algorithms generating priors and posteriors are proposed, and simulation studies are conducted to illustrate the performance of this approach. Comparisons with the density-regression method of Dette et al. (2006) are included.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/074921707000000157 in the IMS Lecture Notes Monograph Series (http://www.imstat.org/publications/lecnotes.htm) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Bright 22 μ\mum Excess Candidates from WISE All-Sky Catalog and Hipparcos Main Catalog

In this paper we present a catalog which includes 141 bright candidates ($\leq10.27$ mag, V band) showing the infrared (IR) excess at 22 $\mu$m. Of which, 38 stars are known IR excess stars or disk, 23 stars are double or multiple stars and 4 are Be stars. While the remaining more than 70 stars are identified as the 22 $\mu$m excess candidates in our work. The criterion of selecting candidates is $K_s-[22]_{\mu m}$. All these candidates are selected from \emph{WISE} All-sky data cross-correlated with \emph{Hipparcos} Main Catalog and the likelihood-ratio technique is employed. Considering the effect of background, we introduce the \emph{IRAS} 100 $\mu$m level to exclude the high background. We also estimated the coincidence probability of these sources. In addition, we presented the optical to mid-infrared SEDs and optical images of all the candidates, and gave the observed optical spectra of 6 stars with NAOC's 2.16-m telescope. To measure for the dust amount around each star, the fractional luminosity is also provided. We also test whether our method of selecting IR excess stars can be used to search for extra-solar planets, we cross-matched our catalog with known IR-excess stars having planets but none is matched. Finally, we give the fraction of stars showing IR-excess for different spectral type of main-sequence stars.Comment: 45 pages, 16 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ

Profiling time course expression of virus genes---an illustration of Bayesian inference under shape restrictions

There have been several studies of the genome-wide temporal transcriptional program of viruses, based on microarray experiments, which are generally useful in the construction of gene regulation network. It seems that biological interpretations in these studies are directly based on the normalized data and some crude statistics, which provide rough estimates of limited features of the profile and may incur biases. This paper introduces a hierarchical Bayesian shape restricted regression method for making inference on the time course expression of virus genes. Estimates of many salient features of the expression profile like onset time, inflection point, maximum value, time to maximum value, area under curve, etc. can be obtained immediately by this method. Applying this method to a baculovirus microarray time course expression data set, we indicate that many biological questions can be formulated quantitatively and we are able to offer insights into the baculovirus biology.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOAS258 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Assess Calibration Consistency of MODIS and AVHRR Thermal Infrared Bands Using SNO Observations Corrected for Atmospheric Effects

Monitoring environmental changes from space requires extremely well-calibrated observations to achieve the necessary high accuracy and stability. The calibration differences between the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) thermal bands provide a valuable quality assessment of the instrument performance. This letter compares the calibration differences between the Aqua MODIS and NOAA-18 AVHRR bands at 11.0 and 12.0 /Lm using simultaneous nadir overpass observations obtained in nearly parallel orbits. Impacts due to the relative spectral-response differences between the two sensors are estimated by MODTRAN simulations with real-time atmospheric profiles of temperature, water vapor, atmospheric pressure and ozone, and surface skin temperatures. Results show that the temperature difference after the removal of atmospheric impacts is within 0.30 K (or 0.40% in radiance) across the effective calibration range (or the 1l.0 l'm band/channel. For the 12.0 pm band, the differences are OAO K (or 0.50%) at the typical radiance and up to 0.70 K (or 0.90%) close to the maximum radiance, indicating an excellent calibration consistency between MODIS and AVHRR for both bands

One-Loop Maximal Helicity Violating Amplitudes in N=4 Super Yang-Mills Theories

One-loop maximal helicity violating (MHV) amplitudes in N=4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) theories are analyzed, using the prescription of Cachazo, Svrcek, and Witten (CSW). The relations between leading N_c amplitudes A_{n;1} and sub-leading amplitudes A_{n;c} obtained by the CSW prescription are found to be identical to those obtained from conventional field theory calculations. Combining with existing results, this establishes the validity of the CSW prescription to one-loop in the calculation of MHV amplitudes in N=4 SYM theories of finite N_c.Comment: Minor changes and typos fixed. Published version in JHE

Response Function of the Fractional Quantized Hall State on a Sphere II: Exact Diagonalization

We study the excitation spectra and the dynamical structure factor of quantum Hall states in a finite size system through exact diagonalization. Comparison is made between the numerical results so obtained and the analytic results obtained from a modified RPA in the preceding companion paper. We find good agreement between the results at low energies.Comment: 22 pages (REVTeX 3.0). 10 figures available on request. Complete postscript file (including figures) for this paper are available on the World Wide Web at http://cmtw.harvard.edu/~simon/ ; Preprint number HU-CMT-94S0