1,720,961 research outputs found

    Bayesian spatial joint and spatial-temporal disease modeling with application to HIV, HSV-2 and Malaria using case studies from Kenya and Angola respectively.

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    Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2017.In this thesis we develop and extend existing statistical models for spatial disease modeling and apply them to HIV, HSV-2 and malaria data. The availability of geo-referenced data and free software has seen many disease mapping models developed and applied in epidemiology, public health, agriculture and ecology among other areas. In chapter 1 we provide a background and developments in the field of disease mapping. We present in brief some limiting assumptions and how recent developments have tried to relax them. Chapter 2 introduces a model; the semi-parametric joint model to model HIV and HSV-2. The semi-parametric joint model performed better than the single models in terms of DIC. The limiting linearity assumption was relaxed by using the penalized regression splines for the continuous covariate age. The main focus of chapter 3 was to develop a model that relaxes the stationarity assumption. This was achieved by allowing the e ects of the covariates to vary spatially by using the conditional autoregressive model. This new model performed better than the stationary models. In chapter 4 we introduce a spatial temporal spatially varying covariate model. In this model, the covariates were allowed to vary both spatially and temporally. We fit this model to the Angolan malaria data. The fifth chapter presents a review of various assumptions in spatial disease modeling and improvements for some limiting assumptions such as the normality assumption on random effects and linearity assumption on the covariates. We use the non-parametric spatial model approach to relax the limiting normality assumption. The last part of chapter 5 involves developing a joint spatially varying model (an extension of the spatially varying coefficient model in chapter 3) and fitting it to the HIV and HSV-2 data. Chapter six of the study provides the overview of the thesis, the conclusion and presents areas of further studies

    Analysis of categorical data in presence of latent random effects using Structural Equation Modeling: an application

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    Paper presented at the 4th Strathmore International Mathematics Conference (SIMC 2017), 19 - 23 June 2017, Strathmore University, Nairobi, Kenya.In most medical research, of interest is to establish the causal relationships that exist between variables which may be direct or indirect. This research intends to use structural equation modeling technique to analyze the effect of categorical latent variable(s) when assumed to follow a normal random effect model. The statistical inference is carried out under the Mplus statistical software and the developed models validated using empirical data from Kenya Aids Indicator Survey (2007)

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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