Proper use of climatic forecast information in planning and implementing agricultural activities is critical for the improvement of the wellbeing of smallholder farmers whose livelihoods depend on rain-fed agriculture. This study employed a descriptive cross-sectional design involving 12 focus group discussions and 255 household interviews to determine the extent to which smallholder farmers in...

surat is a highly developed, thickly populated cosmopolitan character city with full of various activities going on day and night. any natural calamity which causes loss of lives to property and infrastructure along with effects on industrial processes going on has serious impact on economy of the state. therefore, it becomes highly necessary that flood events are studied and analyzed properly ...

background & aim: congenital hypothyroidism (ch) is one of the most common endocrine diseases and is a major cause of preventable mental retardation. early diagnosis of ch can help prevent future diseases. although time series techniques are often utilized to forecast future status, they are inadequate to deal with count data with overdispersion. the aim of this study was to apply poisson hidde...

Arctic sea ice drift forecasts of 6 h-9 days for the summer of 2014 are generated using the Marginal Ice Zone Modeling and Assimilation System (MIZMAS); the model is driven by 6 h atmospheric forecasts from the Climate Forecast System (CFSv2). Forecast ice drift speed is compared to drifting buoys and other observational platforms. Forecast positions are compared with actual positions 24 h-8 da...

INTRODUCTION Insomnia is a condition that affects nearly everyone at some point in life. Up to 40% of American adults have intermittent insomnia, and 10% to 15% have a chronic sleep problem.1 The main presentation of insomnia is difficulty with either falling asleep or maintaining sleep throughout the night. Complaints of insomnia tend to increase with age. Elderly people report trouble falling...

INTRODUCTION Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection affects approximately one million persons in the U.S. alone.1 Along with recent advances in HIV treatment options, especially over the past decade, dramatic reductions in HIV-associated morbidity and mortality have been observed.2 As a result of an increase in life expectancy, however, the severity of side effects from these treatment op...

We consider combinations of subjective survey forecasts and model-based forecasts from linear and non-linear univariate specifications as well as multivariate factor-augmented models. Empirical results suggest that a simple equal-weighted average of survey forecasts outperform the best model-based forecasts for a majority of macroeconomic variables and forecast horizons. Additional improvements...

Executive Summary 5 A method for solar forecasting using cloud motion vectors (CMV) from satellite imagery with the 6 ability to characterize forecast uncertainty has been developed. On average, the root mean square error 7 (RMSE) for CMV forecast increases with increasing forecast horizon and becomes larger than the North 8 American Model (NAM, a numerical weather prediction model) forecast er...

We propose new tests of forecast optimality that exploit information contained in multi-horizon forecasts. In addition to implying zero forecast bias and zero autocorrelation in forecast errors, we show that forecast optimality under squared error loss also implies testable restrictions on second moments of the data ordered at long and short forecast horizons. In particular, the variance of the...

Techniques for estimating cloud motion and stability for intra-hour forecasting using a ground-based sky imaging system are presented. A variational optical flow (VOF) technique was used to determine the sub-pixel accuracy of cloud motion for every pixel. Cloud locations up to 15 min ahead were forecasted by inverse mapping of the cloud map. A month of image data captured by a sky imager at UC ...