BACKGROUND National Strategic Plans (NSPs) for HIV have become foundational documents that frame responses to HIV. Both Global Fund and PEPFAR require coordination with NSPs as a component of their operations. Despite the role of NSPs in country planning, no rigorous assessment of NSP targets and performance outcomes exists. We performed a quantitative analysis of the quality of NSP indicators ...

Generalized estimating equation solvers in R only allow for a few pre-determined options for the link and variance functions. We provide a package, geeM, which is implemented entirely in R and allows for user specified link and variance functions. The sparse matrix representations provided in the Matrix package enable a fast implementation. To gain speed, we make use of analytic inverses of the...

This paper demonstrates that it is possible to relax the commitment to numeric degrees of belief while retaining the desirable features of the Bayesian approach for representing and changing states of belief. We first present an abstract representation of states of belief and an associated notion of conditionalization that subsume their Bayesian counterparts. Next, we provide some symbolic and ...

PURPOSE The purpose was to determine the number of semantic neighbors, namely, semantic set size, for 88 nonobjects (J. F. Kroll & M. C. Potter, 1984) and determine how semantic set size related to other measures and age. METHOD Data were collected from 82 adults and 92 preschool children in a discrete association task. The nonobjects were presented via computer, and participants reported the...

In the present article we observe the significations and the dimensions of interaction between instruments and performers in musical performance. This will lead us, firstly, to consider interaction as a phenomenon non-exclusively correlated with the use of numeric technologies. Then, still within the realm of interaction, we describe some of the transmutations introduced by digital music instru...

Non-linear dose response relationships pose statistical challenges for their discovery. Even when an initial linear approximation is followed by other approaches, the results may be misleading and, possibly, preclude altogether the discovery of the nonlinear relationship under investigation. We review a variety of straightforward statistical approaches for detecting nonlinear relationships and ...

Children's ability to place fractions on a number line strongly correlates with math achievement. But does the number line play a causal role in fraction learning or does it simply index more advanced fraction knowledge? The number line may be a particularly effective representation for fraction learning because its properties align with the desired mental representation and take advantage of p...

the zarankiewicz number z(b; s) is the maximum size of a subgraph of kb,b which does not contain ks,s as a subgraph. the two-color bipartite ramsey number b(s, t) is the smallest integer b such that any coloring of the edges of kb,b with two colors contains a ks,s in the rst color or a kt,t in the second color.in this work, we design and exploit a computational method for bounding and computin...