We compare several decision rules for allocating subjects to dosages that are based on sequential isotonic estimates of a monotone dose-toxicity curve. We conclude that the decision rule in which the next assignment is to the dose having probability of toxicity closest to target does not work well. The best rule in our comparison is given by the cumulative cohort design. According to this desig...

In biological neurons, the timing of a spike depends on the timing of synaptic currents, in a way that is classically described by the Phase Response Curve. This has implications for temporal coding: an action potential that arrives on a synapse has an implicit meaning, that depends on the position of the postsynaptic neuron on the firing cycle. Here we show that this implicit code can be used ...

Zero temperature Gibbs learning is considered for a connected committee machine with K hidden units. For large K, the scale of the learning curve strongly depends on the target rule. When learning a perceptron, the sample size P needed for optimal generalization scales so that N P KN, where N is the dimension of the input. This even holds for a noisy perceptron rule if a new input is classiied ...

BACKGROUND Many patients who have involuntary weight loss have cancer. The Hernandez prediction rule includes 5 variables (elevated levels of alkaline phosphatase and lactate dehydrogenase, low albumin, high white blood cell count, and age >80 years). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity of the prediction rule. METHODS We prospectively evaluated 290 consecutive inpatients an...

For many spin systems with constant isotropic antiferromagnetic nextneighbour Heisenberg coupling the minimal energies Emin(S) form a rotational band, i. e. depend approximately quadratically on the total spin quantum number S, a property which is also known as Landé interval rule. However, we find that for certain coupling topologies, including recently synthesised icosidodecahedral structures...

BACKGROUND COPD will become the third leading cause of death by 2020. There are many situations in which spirometry, the primary tool for diagnosis of COPD, cannot be performed, and thus, the staging and status of these patients cannot be determined. To date, there is no known biochemical marker used for diagnosing COPD. This study aimed to explore the utility of biomarkers for diagnosis of COP...

A formula is derived that links the coefficients of the monetary policy rule for the shortterm interest rate to the coefficients of the implied affine equations for long-term interest rates. The formula predicts that an increase in the coefficients in the monetary policy rule will lead to an increase in the coefficients in the affine equations. Empirical evidence for such a prediction is provid...

The Lorenz curve of a Zipf function describes, graphically, the relation between the fraction of the items and the fraction of the sources producing these items. Hence it generalizes the socalled 80/20-rule to general fractions. In this paper we examine the relation of such Lorenz curves with the size of the system (expressed by the total number of sources). We prove that the height of such a L...

The dermatoscopic ABCD rule has been suggested to improve diagnostic performance regarding cutaneous malignant melanoma. Using this rule, a total dermatoscopy score is calculated from the presence of various dermatoscopic elements. A total dermatoscopy score above 4.75 signifies possible and 5.45 probable melanoma. We compared the diagnostic accuracy of dermatoscopy with and without the use of ...

We propose a novel SAS macro to utilize PROC NLMIXED in SAS to estimate the standard error for AUC when the AUC estimator is based on the trapezoidal rule. Our method accounts for the trapezoidal region-by-region correlation structure. An example is provided for the standard error of the AUC under the ROC curve.