A observação de gradientes latitudinais em aspectos da história de vida de aves tem motivado o estudo da evolução e variabilidade das histórias de vida nestes organismos. Um exemplo bem documentado é a variação no tamanho da ninhada, onde aves de latitudes menores tendem a ter ninhadas menores do que os seus homólogos de latitudes altas. Uma hipótese que visa explicar esta variação propõe que a sobrevivência em latitudes tropicais é maior para compensar o tamanho da ninhada menor e evitar a extinção das populações. Esta explicação tem tido grande aceitação e apoio por parte de alguns estudos, mas tem sido questionada por outros que não encontraram taxas de sobrevivência mais elevadas em aves tropicais. De modo implícito, todos estes estudos basearam seus resultados na sobrevivência de indivíduos adultos. As populações com o tamanho da ninhada menor não poderiam crescer da mesma maneira que as populações com ninhadas maiores; portanto, se justifica acreditar que algo deve mudar com a latitude para manter o balanço em tamanho populacional. Na busca por explicações alternativas para a persistência das populações de aves tropicais com relativamente pequenos tamanhos de ninhada, surge outra hipótese que propõe que, se não houver diferenças na sobrevivência de indivíduos adultos entre latitudes, o aspecto fundamental que varia é a sobrevivência juvenil, com sobrevivência maior para os juvenis das zonas tropicais em comparação com os juvenis das zonas temperadas. No entanto, atualmente há pouca evidência que suporta esta conclusão. Os resultados contrastantes desses estudos sugerem a falta de um consenso geral sobre a hipótese de que as aves tropicais têm taxas de sobrevivência mais elevadas do que as aves de regiões temperadas, motivando a formulação de hipóteses alternativas e convidando novos testes de hipótese. Neste estudo, pretendemos a) avaliar o efeito da idade sobre a sobrevivência em aves tropicais, estimando as probabilidades anuais de sobrevivência aparentes idade-específicas para um conjunto de aves passeriformes de sub-bosque na Amazônia central brasileira; e b) contribuir para o debate sobre o gradiente latitudinal na sobrevivência de adultos, comparando nossas estimativas com estimativas de outras latitudes. Para estimar a sobrevivência idade-específica ajustamos aos nossos dados um modelo Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS) hierárquico para n espécies, que trata os parâmetros espécie-específicos como efeitos aleatórios, que são estimados e que descrevem todo o conjunto de espécies; para comparação de métodos, ajustamos uma versão de efeitos fixos do modelo. Para a determinação da idade das aves usamos o sistema WRP. Apresentamos uma nova variante do modelo CJS com um parâmetro de mistura para a sobrevivência de aves de idade incerta no momento da primeira captura. Encontramos efeito forte da idade na sobrevivência, com probabilidades de sobrevivência menor para os jovens do que para os adultos; evidência de efeito latitude sobre a sobrevivência, que suporta a hipótese amplamente aceita de variação na sobrevivência com a latitude; e discutimos diferenças metodológicas interessantes entre modelo de efeitos aleatórios e fixos relacionados com a precisão das estimativas e o âmbito de inferência, que nos levam a concluir que os modelos de efeitos aleatórios são os mais adequados para a nossa análise. Concluímos que não é necessário invocar uma hipótese alternativa de maior sobrevivência juvenil nos trópicos a fim de explicar o gradiente latitudinal no tamanho da ninhada. / The observation of latitudinal gradients in bird life history traits has motivated the study of avian life history evolution and variability. A well-documented example is the variation in clutch size, where lower latitude birds tend to have smaller clutches than their higher latitude counterparts. A hypothesis that explains this variation proposes that survival in tropical latitudes is higher to compensate for smaller clutch size and prevent population extinctions. This explanation has had a wide acceptance and support by some studies, but has been questioned by others who have not found such higher survival rates in tropical birds. In an implicit manner, all these studies have based their results on adult survival. Populations with smaller clutch size would not be able to grow as well as populations with larger clutches; therefore one is justified to believe that something else must change with latitude. In the search for alternative explanations to the persistence of tropical bird populations with relatively small clutch sizes it has also been proposed that, if there were no differences in adult survival among latitudes, the fundamental trait that varies is juvenile survival, with higher survival rates for tropical juveniles birds than for temperate ones. However, currently there is little evidence that supports this conclusion. The contrasting results of those studies suggest a lack of a general consensus about the hypothesis that tropical birds have higher survival rates than birds of temperate regions, motivating the formulation of alternative hypotheses, and inviting further tests of the hypothesis. In our study we aim to a) assess the effect of age on survival in a tropical bird community, estimating age-specific annual apparent survival probabilities for a set of passerine understory birds from the central Brazilian Amazon; and b) contribute to the debate about the latitudinal gradient in adult survival by comparing our adult survival estimates to estimates of temperate-zone adult survival probabilities. To estimate the age-specific survival we fit to our data a hierarchical multispecies Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS) model for n species, that treats species-specific parameters as random effects that are estimated and that describe the whole assemblage of species; for comparison of methods, we also fit a fixed-effects version of the model. To age birds we use the cycle-based WRP system. We introduce a novel variant of CJS model with a mixture component for the survival of birds of uncertain age at the time of banding. We found strong effect of age on survival, with juveniles surviving less than adults; evidence of latitude effect on survival, that supports the widely accepted hypothesis of variation on survival with latitude; and methodological differences between random and fixed effects model related to precision of estimates and scope of inference, that lead us to conclude that random-effects models are more appropriate for our analysis. We conclude that there is no reason for an alternative latitudinal trend in juvenile survival to account for the general trend in clutch size.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-10T19:23:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sergio_ Bazilio.pdf: 3134289 bytes, checksum: 8461a5a239e9c7674bb3db224824dc63 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-12 / Benthic macroinvertebrate community is very important to streams, since they make part of the energy flow and are also an important food source for adjacent and upper trophic levels. They form a very diversified fauna and their structure may be influenced by several environmental factors, which vary in time, space and in an analyzed scale. Samples were taken from benthic macroinvertebrates and environmental descriptors during winter, spring and summer of 2012 and autumn of 2013 in ten sampling points in Lontra river watershed (Paraná, Brazil). Thus, this study aimed at: a) characterizing the watershed morphometry in Lontra river with data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM); b) analyzing the structure of benthic macroinvertebrate community according to their taxonomic family level and functional groups; c) investigating seasonal variation (during the four seasons) and spatial variation of this community structure due to spatial differences in morphological and physiographic characteristics of the sampled sections; d) identifying the community variability of benthic macroinvertebrates at three spatial scales (river, river segment and mesohabitat) emphasizing spatial scales, which best explain the community structure in this watershed; e) investigating which measured environmental descriptors influence on the community structure and f) which variability percentage in organisms richness can be explained by the measured local environmental descriptors. / Os macroinvertebrados bentônicos constituem uma importante comunidade em riachos, pois participam do fluxo de energia, logo são um importante recurso alimentar para níveis tróficos adjacentes e superiores. Formam uma fauna bastante diversificada e a estrutura dessa comunidade pode ser influenciada por diversos fatores ambientais, os quais variam no tempo, no espaço e na escala analisada. Realizaram-se amostragens de macroinvertebrados bentônicos e descritores ambientais nos períodos de inverno, primavera e verão de 2012 e outono de 2013 em dez pontos amostrais na bacia do Rio Lontra (PR, Brasil). O presente estudo objetivou: a) caracterizar morfometricamente a microbacia do Rio Lontra com dados do projeto da Missão do Radar Transportado Espacial (SRTM). b) analisar a estrutura da comunidade de macroinvertebrados bentônicos em nível taxonômico de família e de grupos funcionais; c) investigar a variação sazonal (nas quatro estações do ano) e a variação espacial da estrutura da comunidade em função de diferenças espaciais nas características morfofisiográficas dos trechos amostrados; d) identificar a variabilidade da comunidade de macroinvertebrados bentônicos em três escalas espaciais (rio, segmento de rio e mesohabitat) com ênfase nas escalas espaciais que melhor explicam a estrutura da comunidade nesta bacia; e) investigar quais descritores ambientais mensurados influenciam a estrutura da comunidade e f) qual porcentagem da variabilidade na riqueza de organismos pode ser explicada pelos descritores ambientais locais mensurados.

Consideramos dois tópicos distintos relacionados a modelos clássicos da mecânica estatísticas de equilíbrio. O primeiro constitui-se na análise de equação parabólicas semi-lineares associadas à transformação de grupo de renormalização para o gás de Coulomb hierárquico bidimensional e o gás dipolos hierárquicos em dimensão d>1 após tomarmos um limite apropriado (limite L 1 do tamanho do bloco). O outro tópico estudado foi a construção de uma função majorante (, z) para a pressão termodinâmica de um gás formado por partículas interagentes com atividade z e temperatura -1, cuja interação entre dois corpos pode ser decomposta em escalas como um potencial estável. Somos capazes de demonstrar que o problema de valor inicial dado pela equação do gás de Coulomb está bem definido (existência, unicidade e dependência contínua das soluções) em um espaço funcional adequado e a solução converge assintoticamente para uma das infinitas contáveis soluções de equilíbrio. Quanto ao gás de dipolos, embora não tenhamos conseguido provar a existência e unicidade das soluções, garantimos que a única solução estacionária limitada inferiormente é a trivial nula, que é uma solução estável. Ao menos no caso dos modelos hierárquicos, os resultados obtidos permitem dar uma resposta definitiva à conjectura de Gallavotti e Nicolò sobre uma sequência infinita de transições de fase. A função majorante é construída como a solução de uma equação diferencial parcial quase-linear de primeira ordem. Através da do método das características relacionamos a solução (majorante) à função W de Lambert cuja expansão em série possui uma singularidade originada pelo corte que a função W possui no plano complexo. A descrição da função majorante como uma função W possui no plano complexo. A descrição da função majorante como uma função W permite uma melhora nas estimativas de raio de convergência para série de Mayer para pressão. / We have considered in this thesis two distinct topics related to classic models in equilibrium statistical mechanics. The first one is the analysis of semilinear parabolic partial differential equations given by a suitable limit (size of block L 1) in the renormalization group for the dipole gas in any dimension d>1. The other topic is the construction of a majorant function (, z) for the thermodynamic -1 whose potential admits a scale decomposition in terms of some stable potential. We are capable to demonstrate the well-posedness (existence, uniqueness and continuous dependence of solutions) for Coulomb gas equations and the global asymptotic convergence of the flow to one of its countably many equilibrium solutions. The dipole gas equations are technically more difficult and lack the results weve achieved in Coulomb gas but, despite its difficulties, we can establish the uniqueness of the trivial solution as a equilibrium ane and its stabilish. At least for hierarchical models, the established results give a definite answer to Gallovotti and Niclolòs conjecture of na infinite of phase transitions. The majorant function is constructed as the solution of a first order quase-linear partial differential equation. By means of the characteristics method we are able to relate its solution (the majorant) to Lamberts W-function whose series expansion possess a singularity given by W-function allows better estimates for Mayer series convergence.

Investigated in this thesis are the possibilities and effects of reducing CAN data collected from forklifts. The purpose of reducing the data was to create the possibility of exporting and managing data for multiple forklifts and a relatively long period of time. For doing that was an autoregressive filter implemented for filtering and decimating data. Connected to the decimation was also the aim of generating a data set that could be used for analyzing lift sequences and in particular the usage of fork adjustment functions during lift sequences. The findings in the report are that an AR (18) model works well for filtering and decimating the data. Information losses are unavoidable but kept at a relatively low level, and the size of data becomes manageable. Each row in the decimated data is labeled as belonging to a lift sequence or as not belonging to a lift sequence given a manually specified definition of the lift sequence event. From the lift sequences is information about the lift like number of usages of each fork adjustment function, load weight and fork height gathered. The analysis of the lift sequences gave that the lift/lower function on average is used 4.75 times per lift sequence and the reach function 3.23 times on average. For the side shift the mean is 0.35 per lift sequence and for the tilt the mean is 0.10. Moreover, it was also found that the struggling time on average is about 17 % of the total lift sequence time. The proportion of the lift that is struggling time was also shown to differ between drivers, with the lowest mean proportion being 7 % and the highest 30 %.

La toxicité et l’efficacité de plus de 30 agents anticancéreux présentent de très fortes variations en fonction du temps de dosage. Par conséquent, les biologistes qui étudient le rythme circadien ont besoin d’une méthode très précise pour estimer le vecteur de composantes périodiques (CP) de signaux chronobiologiques. En outre, dans les développements récents, non seulement la période dominante ou le vecteur de CP présentent un intérêt crucial, mais aussi leurs stabilités ou variabilités. Dans les expériences effectuées en traitement du cancer, les signaux enregistrés correspondant à différentes phases de traitement sont courts, de sept jours pour le segment de synchronisation jusqu’à deux ou trois jours pour le segment après traitement. Lorsqu’on étudie la stabilité de la période dominante nous devons considérer des signaux très court par rapport à la connaissance a priori de la période dominante, placée dans le domaine circadien. Les approches classiques fondées sur la transformée de Fourier (TF) sont inefficaces (i.e. manque de précision) compte tenu de la particularité des données (i.e. la courte longueur). Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une nouvelle méthode pour l’estimation du vecteur de CP des signaux biomédicaux, en utilisant les informations biologiques a priori et en considérant un modèle qui représente le bruit. Les signaux enregistrés dans le cadre d’expériences développées pour le traitement du cancer ont un nombre limité de périodes. Cette information a priori peut être traduite comme la parcimonie du vecteur de CP. La méthode proposée considère l’estimation de vecteur de CP comme un problème inverse enutilisant l’inférence bayésienne générale afin de déduire toutes les inconnues de notre modèle, à savoir le vecteur de CP mais aussi les hyperparamètres (i.e. les variances associées). / The toxicity and efficacy of more than 30 anticancer agents presents very high variations, depending on the dosing time. Therefore the biologists studying the circadian rhythm require a very precise method for estimating the Periodic Components (PC) vector of chronobiological signals. Moreover, in recent developments not only the dominant period or the PC vector present a crucial interest, but also their stability or variability. In cancer treatment experiments the recorded signals corresponding to different phases of treatment are short, from seven days for the synchronization segment to two or three days for the after treatment segment. When studying the stability of the dominant period we have to consider very short length signals relative to the prior knowledge of the dominant period, placed in the circadian domain. The classical approaches, based on Fourier Transform (FT) methods are inefficient (i.e. lack of precision) considering the particularities of the data (i.e. the short length). In this thesis we propose a new method for the estimation of the PC vector of biomedical signals, using the biological prior informations and considering a model that accounts for the noise. The experiments developed in the cancer treatment context are recording signals expressing a limited number of periods. This is a prior information that can be translated as the sparsity of the PC vector. The proposed method considers the PC vector estimation as an Inverse Problem (IP) using the general Bayesian inference in order to infer all the unknowns of our model, i.e. the PC vector but also the hyperparameters.

The main objective of my diploma thesis is to analyze and evaluate the Political Movement ANO positioning within the political parties system of the Czech Republic by using a methodological framework approach. The thesis provides an analysis of electorate shifting and selected political parties manifestos as well as their comparison with the Political Movement ANO. Timewise, my focus is on the period prior to the election to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic in 2017. As for analytical purposes, the Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling has been used. This statistical model helps to get the respective values and to show the electoral vote changes between the last two parliament elections (to Chamber of Deputies). The author uses quantitative and qualitative research for comparison and analysis of programmatical convergency as defined in the election manifestos of various political parties. For manifestos quantification a coding scheme by a Comparative manifesto project group has been applied. The reason for using the above mentioned scheme is that it provides a structured methodology to quantify the domains that the political parties do focus the most in their manifestos. The aim of the analytical part of the thesis is to define how and especially from where the Movement ANO...

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In the thesis "On Boundaries of Statistical Models" problems related to a description of probability distributions with zeros, lying in the boundary of a statistical model, are treated. The distributions considered are joint distributions of finite collections of finite discrete random variables. Owing to this restriction, statistical models are subsets of finite dimensional real vector spaces. The support set problem for exponential families, the main class of models considered in the thesis, is to characterize the possible supports of distributions in the boundaries of these statistical models. It is shown that this problem is equivalent to a characterization of the face lattice of a convex polytope, called the convex support. The main tool for treating questions related to the boundary are implicit representations. Exponential families are shown to be sets of solutions of binomial equations, connected to an underlying combinatorial structure, called oriented matroid. Under an additional assumption these equations are polynomial and one is placed in the setting of commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. In this case one recovers results from algebraic statistics. The combinatorial theory of exponential families using oriented matroids makes the established connection between an exponential family and its convex support completely natural: Both are derived from the same oriented matroid. The second part of the thesis deals with hierarchical models, which are a special class of exponential families constructed from simplicial complexes. The main technical tool for their treatment in this thesis are so called elementary circuits. After their introduction, they are used to derive properties of the implicit representations of hierarchical models. Each elementary circuit gives an equation holding on the hierarchical model, and these equations are shown to be the "simplest", in the sense that the smallest degree among the equations corresponding to elementary circuits gives a lower bound on the degree of all equations characterizing the model. Translating this result back to polyhedral geometry yields a neighborliness property of marginal polytopes, the convex supports of hierarchical models. Elementary circuits of small support are related to independence statements holding between the random variables whose joint distributions the hierarchical model describes. Models for which the complete set of circuits consists of elementary circuits are shown to be described by totally unimodular matrices. The thesis also contains an analysis of the case of binary random variables. In this special situation, marginal polytopes can be represented as the convex hulls of linear codes. Among the results here is a classification of full-dimensional linear code polytopes in terms of their subgroups. If represented by polynomial equations, exponential families are the varieties of binomial prime ideals. The third part of the thesis describes tools to treat models defined by not necessarily prime binomial ideals. It follows from Eisenbud and Sturmfels'' results on binomial ideals that these models are unions of exponential families, and apart from solving the support set problem for each of these, one is faced with finding the decomposition. The thesis discusses algorithms for specialized treatment of binomial ideals, exploiting their combinatorial nature. The provided software package Binomials.m2 is shown to be able to compute very large primary decompositions, yielding a counterexample to a recent conjecture in algebraic statistics.

<p>Postpartum depression has become a major public health concern for women within a specific time period after delivery. Depression is possibly associated with some risk factors such as socioeconomic status, social support, maternal mental and physical health, and history of anxiety. TOMIS III, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, is a prospective cohort to study the associations between delivery method and health and health resource utilization.</p> <p>Clinically, we investigated the associations between mode of delivery and outcome of postnatal depression, maternal and infant health, and we implied the risk predictors for outcomes by statistical methodology of marginal model with generalized estimating equations (GEE). Statistically, a variety of regression models, namely, generalized linear mixed effect model (GLMM), hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM) and Bayesian hierarchical model were applied for this analysis and results were compared with GEEs. Some imputation strategies, namely, mean imputation, last observation carrying forward (LOCF), hot-deck imputation and multiple imputation were employed for handling missing values in this study.</p> <p>Analysis results demonstrated that there was no statistically significant association between mode of delivery and postpartum depression [OR 0.99, 95% CI (0.73, 1.34)]. However, the development of postpartum depression was found to be associated with low income, low mental and physical health functioning, lack of social support, the low number of unmet learning needs in hospital, and English or French spoken at home. Results were consistent for all regression models but GEE provided the best fit and an excellent discriminative ability. GEE models were constructed on different datasets imputed by mean, LOCF, hot-deck and multiple imputation, and LOCF was recommended to handle the missing data in this longitudinal study.</p> <p>Analyses on the outcome of maternal health and infant health stated that method of delivery had a statistically significant influence on maternal health but no significant impact on infant health. Risks of maternal health problems were associated with cesarean delivery, good/fair/poor infant health, low maternal mental and physical health functioning, lack of care for maternal mental health, and good/fair/poor health before pregnancy. Risks of infant health problems were associated with good/fair/poor maternal health before pregnancy and after discharge, inadequate care or help for infant health, fair/poor community services after discharge, low maternal mental health functioning, non-English or non-French spoken at home, and mothers born outside of Canada.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

A variety of complex data has broadened in many research fields such as epidemiology, genomics, and analytical chemistry with the development of science, technologies, and design scheme over the past few decades. For example, in epidemiology, the matched case-crossover study design is used to investigate the association between the clustered binary outcomes of disease and a measurement error in covariate within a certain period by stratifying subjects' conditions. In genomics, high-correlated and high-dimensional(HCHD) data are required to identify important genes and their interaction effect over diseases. In analytical chemistry, multiple time series data are generated to recognize the complex patterns among multiple classes. Due to the great diversity, we encounter three problems in analyzing those complex data in this dissertation. We have then provided several contributions to semiparametric and nonparametric methods for dealing with the following problems: the first is to propose a method for testing the significance of a functional association under the matched study; the second is to develop a method to simultaneously identify important variables and build a network in HDHC data; the third is to propose a multi-class dynamic model for recognizing a pattern in the time-trend analysis. For the first topic, we propose a semiparametric omnibus test for testing the significance of a functional association between the clustered binary outcomes and covariates with measurement error by taking into account the effect modification of matching covariates. We develop a flexible omnibus test for testing purposes without a specific alternative form of a hypothesis. The advantages of our omnibus test are demonstrated through simulation studies and 1-4 bidirectional matched data analyses from an epidemiology study. For the second topic, we propose a joint semiparametric kernel machine network approach to provide a connection between variable selection and network estimation. Our approach is a unified and integrated method that can simultaneously identify important variables and build a network among them. We develop our approach under a semiparametric kernel machine regression framework, which can allow for the possibility that each variable might be nonlinear and is likely to interact with each other in a complicated way. We demonstrate our approach using simulation studies and real application on genetic pathway analysis. Lastly, for the third project, we propose a Bayesian focal-area detection method for a multi-class dynamic model under a Bayesian hierarchical framework. Two-step Bayesian sequential procedures are developed to estimate patterns and detect focal intervals, which can be used for gas chromatography. We demonstrate the performance of our proposed method using a simulation study and real application on gas chromatography on Fast Odor Chromatographic Sniffer (FOX) system. / Doctor of Philosophy / A variety of complex data has broadened in many research fields such as epidemiology, genomics, and analytical chemistry with the development of science, technologies, and design scheme over the past few decades. For example, in epidemiology, the matched case-crossover study design is used to investigate the association between the clustered binary outcomes of disease and a measurement error in covariate within a certain period by stratifying subjects' conditions. In genomics, high-correlated and high-dimensional(HCHD) data are required to identify important genes and their interaction effect over diseases. In analytical chemistry, multiple time series data are generated to recognize the complex patterns among multiple classes. Due to the great diversity, we encounter three problems in analyzing the following three types of data: (1) matched case-crossover data, (2) HCHD data, and (3) Time-series data. We contribute to the development of statistical methods to deal with such complex data. First, under the matched study, we discuss an idea about hypothesis testing to effectively determine the association between observed factors and risk of interested disease. Because, in practice, we do not know the specific form of the association, it might be challenging to set a specific alternative hypothesis. By reflecting the reality, we consider the possibility that some observations are measured with errors. By considering these measurement errors, we develop a testing procedure under the matched case-crossover framework. This testing procedure has the flexibility to make inferences on various hypothesis settings. Second, we consider the data where the number of variables is very large compared to the sample size, and the variables are correlated to each other. In this case, our goal is to identify important variables for outcome among a large amount of the variables and build their network. For example, identifying few genes among whole genomics associated with diabetes can be used to develop biomarkers. By our proposed approach in the second project, we can identify differentially expressed and important genes and their network structure with consideration for the outcome. Lastly, we consider the scenario of changing patterns of interest over time with application to gas chromatography. We propose an efficient detection method to effectively distinguish the patterns of multi-level subjects in time-trend analysis. We suggest that our proposed method can give precious information on efficient search for the distinguishable patterns so as to reduce the burden of examining all observations in the data.