Modeling count data from sexual behavioral outcomes involves many challenges, especially when the data exhibit a preponderance of zeros and overdispersion. In particular, the popular Poisson log-linear model is not appropriate for modeling such outcomes. Although alternatives exist for addressing both issues, they are not widely and effectively used in sex health research, especially in HIV pre...

A great deal of recent research has focused on the theory and application of computationally intensive statistical techniques such as bootstrapping kernel density estimation Gibbs samplers etc Many of these techniques are especially well suited for complex models yet are still very underutilized by scienti c researchers Our interest is in the application of such Bayesian inferential methodology...

Does the MOSES Study Provide Sufficient Evidence for Eprosartan Against Nitrendipine? To the Editor: We read the article by Dr Schrader et al1 with great interest. Their conclusion, “MOSES does reveal protective effects of Eprosartan over Nitrendipine,” hinges entirely on the analysis of the primary end point, which includes recurrent events (cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events, and all-c...

The number of fixed mutations accumulated in an evolving population often displays a variance that is significantly larger than the mean (the overdispersed molecular clock). By examining a generic evolutionary process on a neutral network of high-fitness genotypes, we establish a formalism for computing all cumulants of the full probability distribution of accumulated mutations in terms of grap...

Binomial data with unknown sizes often appear in biological and medical sciences and are usually overdispersed. All previous methods used parametric models and only considered overdispersion due to the variation of sizes. The proposed semiparametric model considers overdispersion due to the variation of sizes and that of probabilities. By doing this, it can include variations caused by observat...

BACKGROUND Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (HFMD) is a worldwide infectious disease. In China, many provinces have reported HFMD cases, especially the south and southwest provinces. Many studies have found a strong association between the incidence of HFMD and climatic factors such as temperature, rainfall, and relative humidity. However, few studies have analyzed cluster effects between various ...

Closely related species that occur together in communities and experience similar environmental conditions are likely to share phenotypic traits because of the process of environmental filtering. At the same time, species that are too similar are unlikely to co-occur because of competitive exclusion. In an effort to explain the coexistence of 17 oak species within forest communities in North Ce...

Very little is known about the structure of microbial communities, despite their abundance and importance to ecosystem processes. Recent work suggests that bacterial biodiversity might exhibit patterns similar to those of plants and animals. However, relative to our knowledge about the diversity of macro-organisms, we know little about patterns of relatedness in free-living bacterial communitie...

Simple stochastic models fit to time series of daily precipitation amount have a marked tendency to underestimate the observed (or interannual) variance of monthly (or seasonal) total precipitation. By considering extensions of one particular class of stochastic model known as a chain-dependent process, the extent to which this ‘‘overdispersion’’ phenomenon is attributable to an inadequate mode...