Abstract Item-response models from the psychometric literature have been proposed for estimation of researcher capacity. Canonical items that can be incorporated in such to reflect performance are count data (e.g., number publications, citations). Count modeled by Rasch’s Poisson counts model assumes equidispersion (i.e., mean and variance must coincide). However, larger as compared underdisper...

Time series of counts has a wide variety of applications in real life. Analyzing time series of counts requires accommodations for serial dependence, discreteness, and overdispersion of data. In this paper, we extend blockwise empirical likelihood (Kitamura, 1997) to the analysis of time series of counts under a regression setting. In particular, our contribution is the extension of Kitamura’s ...

Some host individuals tend to acquire parasites at a much faster rate than do others--a consequence of heterogeneities in susceptibility and/or exposure. This is termed 'overdispersion' and, as for many other statistical phenomena, the degree of overdispersion often conforms to a 20/80 rule, where 20% of the host population is responsible for approximately 80% of the parasite transmission. But ...

Phylogenies are increasingly applied to identify the mechanisms structuring ecological communities but progress has been hindered by a reliance on statistical null models that ignore the historical process of community assembly. Here, we address this, and develop a dynamic null model of assembly by allopatric speciation, colonisation and local extinction. Incorporating these processes fundament...

Abstract Smoking invariably has environmental, social, economic and health consequences in Ethiopia. Reducing quitting cigarette smoking improves individual increases available household funds for education, food better productivity. Therefore, this study aimed to apply the Bayesian negative binomial logit hurdle zero-inflated model determine associated factors of number smokers per day using i...

Introduction: Contact tracing has the potential to control outbreaks without need for stringent physical distancing policies, e.g. civil lockdowns. Unlike forward contact tracing, backward identifies source of newly detected cases. This approach is particularly valuable when there high individual-level variation in number secondary transmissions (overdispersion).</ns...

Modelling case occurrence and risk factors for clinical mastitis, as a key multifactorial disease in the dairy cow, requires statistical models. The type of model used depends on the choice of perception or the study level: herd, lactation, animal, udder and quarter. The validity of the tests that are performed through these models is especially ensured when hypotheses of independence between s...

Pyramidal cells in the rodent hippocampus often exhibit clear spatial tuning. Theories of hippocampal function suggest that these "place cells" implement multiple, independent neural representations of position (maps), based on different reference frames or environmental features. Consistent with the "multiple maps" theory, previous studies have shown that manipulating spatial factors related t...

Recent developments in Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies have opened doors for ultra high throughput sequencing mRNA (mRNA-seq) of the whole transcriptome. mRNA-seq has enabled researchers to comprehensively search for underlying biological determinants of diseases and ultimately discover novel preventive and therapeutic solutions. Unfortunately, given the complexity of mRNA-seq dat...