There exists a well known connection between penalized splines and mixed models. This connection makes it possible to exploit certain results derived for mixed models in the estimation of penalized splines. We have derived the Minimum Description Length (MDL) model selection criterion [1] for mixed models (see eg. [2]). In this paper we investigate the performance of the MDL criterion in fittin...

Coxian phase-type distributions are a special type of Markov model that can be used to represent survival times in terms of phases through which an individual may progress until they eventually leave the system completely. Previous research has considered the Coxian phase-type distribution to be ideal in representing patient survival in hospital. However, problems exist in fitting the distribut...

We explore real telecommunication data describing the spatial geometrical structure of an urban region and we propose a model fitting procedure, where a given choice of different non–iterated and iterated tessellation models is considered and fitted to real data. This model fitting procedure is based on a comparison of distances between characteristics of sample data sets and characteristics of...

Electrical properties of gap-junction connected cells (input voltage and length constant) are shown to depend strongly on fluctuations in membrane and contact conductances. This opens new possibilities and incorporates a further difficulty to the analysis of electrophysiological data, since four, instead of two, parameters (the average values and the magnitude of fluctuations of the two conduct...

Recently developed Monte Carlo methods of estimating the dominance ratio (DR) rely on autoregressive (AR) fittings of a computed time series. This time series is obtained by applying a projection vector to the fission source distribution of the problem. The AR fitting order necessary to accurately extract the mode corresponding to DR is dependent on the number of fission source bins used. This ...

We present a method for measuring the characteristic length of sea ice based on fitting to a the recentlyfound solution for the flexural response of a floating ice sheet subject to localized periodic loading. Unlike previous techniques, the method enables localized measurements at single frequencies of geophysical interest and, since the measurements may be synchronously demodulated, gives exce...

We compiled data from the literature and colleagues to examine the relationship between eye axial length and body weight for vertebrates as well as birds, mammals, reptiles, and fishes independently. After fitting the data to logarithmic and semi-logarithmic models, we found that axial length of vertebrate eyes does obey a conventional logarithmic relationship with body weight rather than a sem...

Lower-extremity amputations in the presence of soft tissue loss represent an unresolved conundrum because surgeons must consider sacrificing bone length to obtain adequate soft tissue coverage. Local flaps and microvascular soft tissue transfers are established strategies for maintaining residual limb length. However, the use of skin grafts remains controversial due to the presumed inferiority ...

By the use of the drug taxol, microtubules were assembled from tubulin that had GDP at its exchangeable nucleotide binding site. By means of dilution experiments and measurements of exchange of labeled subunits, it was determined that the rate of interchange of subunits between these microtubules and the solution is very slow: the upper limit of the dissociation rate constant was measured to be...

A method estimating the queue length in city street networks was proposed using the data of roll time occupancy. The key idea of this paper is that when the queue length in front of the queue detector becomes longer, the speeds of the following vehicles to pass through the detector will become smaller, resulting in higher occupancy with constant traffic intensity. Considering the relationship b...