In Self-designing clinical trials, confidence intervals are derived for the difference and the ratio of normal means, where the results of the independent study stages are combined using the weighted inverse normal method. The confidence intervals always hold the predefined nominal confidence level. During the course of the Self-designing trial, the sample sizes as well as the number of study s...

PURPOSE A QT interval correction to standardized heart rate (QTc) is essential to compare drug effect or to mitigate cardiac risk in clinical practice. Numerous empirical formulas for QTc have been proposed. However, an effective and readily comprehensible method has been elusive. As QTc is dependent on demographics, concomitant drugs, health status, autonomic and diurnal variation, the applica...

In 1997, Darvasi and Soller presented empirical predictions of the confidence interval of quantitative trait loci (QTL) location for dense marker maps in experimental crosses. They showed from simulation results for backcross and F2 populations from inbred lines that the 95% confidence interval was a simple function of sample size and the effect of the QTL. In this study, we derive by theory si...

In this article, we consider distributed stochastic optimization over randomly switching networks, where agents collaboratively minimize the average of all agents’ local expectation-valued convex cost functions. Due to stochasticity in gradient observations, distributedness functions, and randomness communication topologies, algorithms with an exact convergence guarantee under fixed step-sizes ...

The widespread use of 'statistical significance' as a license for making a claim of a scientific finding leads to considerable distortion of the scientific process (according to the American Statistical Association). We review why degrading p-values into 'significant' and 'nonsignificant' contributes to making studies irreproducible, or to making them seem irreproducible. A major problem is tha...

Handling Editor: Holger Schielzeth Abstract 1. Meta-analyses conventionally weight study estimates on the inverse of their error variance, in order to maximize precision. Unbiased variability in the estimates of these study-level error variances increases with the inverse of study-level replication. Here, we demonstrate how this variability accumulates asymmetrically across studies in precision...

The experiments were conducted for monitoring crop area by spatial sampling methods in a winter wheat main production region with a size of 42Km×42Km in Hengshui City, Hebei Province in China to optimize designs of the frameworks and elements (sample size, sample-square dimension), based on Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques. 5 sample-square dimension level...