In Bayesian statistical inference and computationally intensive frequentist inference, one is interested in obtaining samples from a high dimensional, and possibly multi-modal target density. The challenge is to obtain samples from this target without any knowledge of the normalizing constant. Several approaches to this problem rely on Monte Carlo methods. One of the simplest such methods is th...

We present a Bayesian scheme for the approximate diagonalisation of several square matrices which are not necessarily symmetric. A Gibbs sampler is derived to simulate samples of the common eigenvectors and the eigenvalues for these matrices. Several synthetic examples are used to illustrate the performance of the proposed Gibbs sampler and we then provide comparisons to several other joint dia...

We explore the task of constructing a parallel Gibbs sampler, to both improve mixing and the exploration of high likelihood states. Recent work in parallel Gibbs sampling has focused on update schedules which do not guarantee convergence to the intended stationary distribution. In this work, we propose two methods to construct parallel Gibbs samplers guaranteed to draw from the targeted distrib...

The Gibbs Motif Sampler is a software package for locating common elements in collections of biopolymer sequences. In this paper we describe a new variation of the Gibbs Motif Sampler, the Gibbs Recursive Sampler, which has been developed specifically for locating multiple transcription factor binding sites for multiple transcription factors simultaneously in unaligned DNA sequences that may be...

The "capteur individuel de poussiere" CIP 10 personal dust sampler--developed by the Centre d'Etudes et Recherches de Charbonnages de France (CERCHAR) research organization--is a small, quiet, lightweight unit which samples at a flow rate of 10 L/min. It is a three-stage sampler, using two stages to remove nonrespirable dust particles and one stage to collect the respirable fraction. Airflow th...

Geochemical analysis of suspended sediment is a key requirement in nutrient and contaminant transfer studies, but the collection of fluvial suspended sediment samples is problematic due to the highly episodic nature of its transport. Traditional approaches involve the collection of instantaneous samples, but uncertainties regarding intraand inter-storm variations in sedi­ ment-associated nutrie...

We provide a complete proof of the convergence of a recently developed sampling algorithm called the equi-energy (EE) sampler (Kou, Zhou, and Wong, 2006) in the case that the state space is countable. We show that in a countable state space, each sampling chain in the EE sampler is strongly ergodic a.s. with the desired steady-state distribution. Furthermore, all chains satisfy the individual e...

This paper introduces a conjugate gradient sampler that is a simple extension of the method of conjugate gradients (CG) for solving linear systems. The CG sampler iteratively generates samples from a Gaussian probability density, using either a symmetric positive definite covariance or precision matrix, whichever is more convenient to model. Similar to how the Lanczos method solves an eigenvalu...

In this study, an all-aluminum sampler was reconfigured to a lighter weight by using plastic for structural components not contacted by aerosol. Because the sampler body was made of plastic, the aluminum size-selective cyclone inlet was redesigned into a separate, removable unit. The resulting personal and microenvironmental aerosol speciation sampler (PMASS*) is a small, compact sampler design...

Six inhalable aerosol samplers were evaluated experimentally as area samplers using monodisperse solid particles with aerodynamic diameters ranging from 5 to 68 mm. Sampler performance and inside particle loss at two test wind speeds (0.55 and 1.1 m/sec) and three wind orientations (0, 90, and 180 degrees) were investigated. The six inhalable aerosol samplers tested were a RESPICONTM sampler, a...