James Taylor

Bio: James Taylor is an academic researcher from Newcastle University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Laser & Fiber laser. The author has an hindex of 95, co-authored 1161 publications receiving 39945 citations. Previous affiliations of James Taylor include Institut national de la recherche agronomique & European Spallation Source.

Behavioral Effects of MPTP Administration in the Vervet Monkey

Abstract: The neurotoxin l-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) produces parkinsonian neurochemical and functional deficits in primates, which may be useful for evaluating the effects of possible antiparkinsonian treatments. Sixty-six adult male vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus) were treated with MPTP (0.3–0.4 mg/kg., given 4–5 doses over a 5-day period, cumulative dose 1.6–2.0 mg), and 11 were saline-treated controls. Trained observers recorded spontaneous behaviors twice daily (5 min per observation, 5 × week) for varying periods after MPTP administration. Some behaviors were recorded if they occurred any time during a 5-sec period (e.g., climb, shift, chew) or lasted for a full 5-sec duration (e.g., freeze, immobility). Behaviors were also rated on a scale of 0–5 (e.g., poverty of movement, limb and head tremor) during spontaneous behavior and after “challenges” with food or threats. Individual behaviors were analyzed, and summary factors were calculated reflecting parkinsonian, intention tremor, anxiety, arousal, and healthy behaviors. MPTP administration resulted in behavior not observed in control subjects (i.e., tremor, freezing, immobility, eating problems, delayed and poverty of movement) and reduced healthy, arousal, and anxiety-related behavior. The parkinsonian score, based on factor analysis from the month after treatment, was used to determine and categorize the severity of MPTP deficits and was hypothesized to predict the outcome or stability of the deficit over time.

The Diagnostic Value of Capillary Refill Time for Detecting Serious Illness in Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Abstract: © 2015 Fleming 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 author and source are credited. Importance: Capillary refill time (CRT) is widely recommended as part of the routine assessment of unwell children. Objective: To determine the diagnostic value of capillary refill time for a range of serious outcomes in children. Methods: We searched Medline, Embase and CINAHL from inception to June 2014. We included studies that measured both capillary refill time and a relevant clinical outcome such as mortality, dehydration, meningitis, or other serious illnesses in children aged up to 18 years of age. We screened 1,265 references, of which 24 papers were included in this review. Where sufficient studies were available, we conducted meta-analysis and constructed hierarchical summary ROC curves. Results: Meta-analysis on the relationship between capillary refill time and mortality resulted in sensitivity of 34.6%(95% CI 23.9 to 47.1%), specificity 92.3% (88.6 to 94.8%), positive likelihood ratio 4.49 (3.06 to 6.57), and negative likelihood ratio 0.71 (0.60 to 0.84). Studies of children attending Emergency Departments with vomiting and diarrhea showed that capillary refill time had specificity of 89 to 94% for identifying 5% dehydration, but sensitivity ranged from 0 to 94%. This level of heterogeneity precluded formal meta-analysis of this outcome. Meta-analysis was not possible for other outcomes due to insufficient data, but we found consistently high specificity for a range of outcomes including meningitis, sepsis, admission to hospital, hypoxia, severity of illness and dengue. Conclusions: Our results show that capillary refill time is a specific sign, indicating that it can be used as a "red-flag": children with prolonged capillary refill time have a four-fold risk of dying compared to children with normal capillary refill time. The low sensitivity means that a normal capillary refill time should not reassure clinicians.

Density Forecasting of Intraday Call Center Arrivals Using Models Based on Exponential Smoothing

Abstract: A key input to the call center staffing process is a forecast for the number of calls arriving. Density forecasts of arrival rates are needed for analytical call center models, which assume Poisson arrivals with a stochastic arrival rate. Density forecasts of call volumes can be used in simulation models and are also important for the analysis of outsourcing contracts. A forecasting method, which has previously shown strong potential, is Holt--Winters exponential smoothing adapted for modeling the intraday and intraweek cycles in intraday data. To enable density forecasting of the arrival volume and rate, we develop a Poisson count model, with gamma distributed arrival rate, which captures the essential features of this exponential smoothing method. The apparent stationary level in our data leads us to develop versions of the new model for series with stationary levels. We evaluate forecast accuracy up to two weeks ahead using data from three organizations. We find that the stationary level models improve prediction beyond approximately two days ahead, and that these models perform well in comparison with sophisticated benchmarks. This is confirmed by the results of a call center simulation model, which demonstrates the use of arrival rate density forecasting to support staffing decisions. This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management.

High-precision timing of millisecond pulsars. II - Astrometry, orbital evolution, and eclipses of PSR 1957 + 20

Abstract: Pulse time-of-arrival measurements have been acquired for PSR 1957 + 20 on 61 days over a 2.7 yr interval, including the times of 44 eclipse disappearance or reappearance events. The timing data provide a reliable measurement of the pulsar's proper motion, 29 +/- 3 mas/yr, at position angle 216 +/- 6 deg; this direction is in excellent agreement with that suggested by the cometlike shape of a surrounding optical emission nebula. The rate of change of the orbital period has been measured: a surprisingly large (-3.9 +/- 0.9) x 10 exp -11, implying that significant orbital evolution must take place on a time scale of 30 Myr. Finally, the present observations extend the eclipse measurements to higher frequencies and provide better statistics for these highly variable phenomena. The eclipse data are used to compute a column-density profile of free electrons in the outer parts of the eclipsing region, and thereby provide an important glimpse into the material being ablated from the companion star.

Effectiveness of a parental educational intervention in reducing antibiotic use in children: a randomized controlled trial.

Abstract: Objective:To determine whether an educational intervention aimed at parents leads to fewer antibiotic prescriptions for their children.Design:Placebo-controlled, randomized controlled trial.Setting:Offices of primary care pediatricians who are members of a regional practice-based research network.Pa

I and i

Abstract: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality. Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

Using Multivariate Statistics

Abstract: Thank you for downloading using multivariate statistics. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their favorite novels like this using multivariate statistics, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some harmful bugs inside their laptop. using multivariate statistics is available in our digital library an online access to it is set as public so you can download it instantly. Our books collection saves in multiple locations, allowing you to get the most less latency time to download any of our books like this one. Merely said, the using multivariate statistics is universally compatible with any devices to read.

The Design and Analysis of Experiments

Abstract: THE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTS. By Oscar Kempthorne. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1952. 631 pp. $8.50. This book by a teacher of statistics (as well as a consultant for \"experimenters\") is a comprehensive study of the philosophical background for the statistical design of experiment. It is necessary to have some facility with algebraic notation and manipulation to be able to use the volume intelligently. The problems are presented from the theoretical point of view, without such practical examples as would be helpful for those not acquainted with mathematics. The mathematical justification for the techniques is given. As a somewhat advanced treatment of the design and analysis of experiments, this volume will be interesting and helpful for many who approach statistics theoretically as well as practically. With emphasis on the \"why,\" and with description given broadly, the author relates the subject matter to the general theory of statistics and to the general problem of experimental inference. MARGARET J. ROBERTSON

Machine learning

Abstract: Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Computers are applied to a wide range of tasks, and for most of these it is relatively easy for programmers to design and implement the necessary software. However, there are many tasks for which this is difficult or impossible. These can be divided into four general categories. First, there are problems for which there exist no human experts. For example, in modern automated manufacturing facilities, there is a need to predict machine failures before they occur by analyzing sensor readings. Because the machines are new, there are no human experts who can be interviewed by a programmer to provide the knowledge necessary to build a computer system. A machine learning system can study recorded data and subsequent machine failures and learn prediction rules. Second, there are problems where human experts exist, but where they are unable to explain their expertise. This is the case in many perceptual tasks, such as speech recognition, hand-writing recognition, and natural language understanding. Virtually all humans exhibit expert-level abilities on these tasks, but none of them can describe the detailed steps that they follow as they perform them. Fortunately, humans can provide machines with examples of the inputs and correct outputs for these tasks, so machine learning algorithms can learn to map the inputs to the outputs. Third, there are problems where phenomena are changing rapidly. In finance, for example, people would like to predict the future behavior of the stock market, of consumer purchases, or of exchange rates. These behaviors change frequently, so that even if a programmer could construct a good predictive computer program, it would need to be rewritten frequently. A learning program can relieve the programmer of this burden by constantly modifying and tuning a set of learned prediction rules. Fourth, there are applications that need to be customized for each computer user separately. Consider, for example, a program to filter unwanted electronic mail messages. Different users will need different filters. It is unreasonable to expect each user to program his or her own rules, and it is infeasible to provide every user with a software engineer to keep the rules up-to-date. A machine learning system can learn which mail messages the user rejects and maintain the filtering rules automatically. Machine learning addresses many of the same research questions as the fields of statistics, data mining, and psychology, but with differences of emphasis. Statistics focuses on understanding the phenomena that have generated the data, often with the goal of testing different hypotheses about those phenomena. Data mining seeks to find patterns in the data that are understandable by people. Psychological studies of human learning aspire to understand the mechanisms underlying the various learning behaviors exhibited by people (concept learning, skill acquisition, strategy change, etc.).

Linear Matrix Inequalities in System and Control Theory

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction Overview A Brief History of LMIs in Control Theory Notes on the Style of the Book Origin of the Book 2. Some Standard Problems Involving LMIs. Linear Matrix Inequalities Some Standard Problems Ellipsoid Algorithm Interior-Point Methods Strict and Nonstrict LMIs Miscellaneous Results on Matrix Inequalities Some LMI Problems with Analytic Solutions 3. Some Matrix Problems. Minimizing Condition Number by Scaling Minimizing Condition Number of a Positive-Definite Matrix Minimizing Norm by Scaling Rescaling a Matrix Positive-Definite Matrix Completion Problems Quadratic Approximation of a Polytopic Norm Ellipsoidal Approximation 4. Linear Differential Inclusions. Differential Inclusions Some Specific LDIs Nonlinear System Analysis via LDIs 5. Analysis of LDIs: State Properties. Quadratic Stability Invariant Ellipsoids 6. Analysis of LDIs: Input/Output Properties. Input-to-State Properties State-to-Output Properties Input-to-Output Properties 7. State-Feedback Synthesis for LDIs. Static State-Feedback Controllers State Properties Input-to-State Properties State-to-Output Properties Input-to-Output Properties Observer-Based Controllers for Nonlinear Systems 8. Lure and Multiplier Methods. Analysis of Lure Systems Integral Quadratic Constraints Multipliers for Systems with Unknown Parameters 9. Systems with Multiplicative Noise. Analysis of Systems with Multiplicative Noise State-Feedback Synthesis 10. Miscellaneous Problems. Optimization over an Affine Family of Linear Systems Analysis of Systems with LTI Perturbations Positive Orthant Stabilizability Linear Systems with Delays Interpolation Problems The Inverse Problem of Optimal Control System Realization Problems Multi-Criterion LQG Nonconvex Multi-Criterion Quadratic Problems Notation List of Acronyms Bibliography Index.