Search results for " Bias"
showing 10 items of 437 documents
Combining a data-driven approach with seasonal forecast data to predict reservoir water volume in the Mediterranean area
2023
Prolonged droughts and water scarcity have become more frequent in recent years, exacerbating the problem of the artificial reservoirs management in the Mediterranean area. This study proposes a methodology which combines a Nonlinear AutoRegressive network with eXogenous input (NARX) data-driven model with Seasonal Forecasts (SFs) data, with the aim to predict the water volume stored in reservoirs at a mid-term scale, as requested by the local authority. The methodology is applied to four Sicilian reservoirs that experienced water scarcity in the recent past. SFs produced at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting are used to force the NARX models. Also, the reservoirs are …
The long-term consequences of the global 1918 influenza pandemic: A systematic analysis of 117 IPUMS international census data sets
2017
Several country-level studies, including a prominent one for the United States, have identified long-term effects of in-utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic (also known as the Spanish Flu) on economic outcomes in adulthood. In-utero conditions are theoretically linked to adult health and socioeconomic status through the fetal origins or Barker hypothesis. Historical exposure to the Spanish Flu provides a natural experiment to test this hypothesis. Although the Spanish Flu was a global phenomenon, with around 500 million people infected worldwide, there exists no comprehensive global study on its long-term economic effects. We attempt to close this gap by systematically analyzing 11…
Pileup and underlying event mitigation with iterative constituent subtraction
2019
Abstract The hard-scatter processes in hadronic collisions are often largely contaminated with soft background coming from pileup in proton-proton collisions, or underlying event in heavy-ion collisions. This paper presents a new background subtraction method for jets and event observables (such as missing transverse energy) which is based on the previously published Constituent Subtraction algorithm. The new subtraction method, called Iterative Constituent Subtraction, applies event-wide implementation of Constituent Subtraction iteratively in order to fully equilibrate the background subtraction across the entire event. Besides documenting the new method, we provide guidelines for setting…
New results on kaon decays from NA48
2007
We report on recent results on rare and semileptonic kaon decays from NA48 and NA48/2. Using data from a minimum bias run in 1999 we present a new measurement of the CP violating decay K L → π + π − with over 40000 selected events. We measured the ratio Γ ( K L → π + π − ) / Γ ( K L → π ± e ∓ ν ) = ( 4.835 ± 0.038 ) × 10 −3 leading to the precise determination of the CP violation parameter | η + − | = ( 2.223 ± 0.013 ) × 10 −3 . From the same data we selected over 2 × 10 6 K L → π ± μ ∓ ν decays. Preliminary results from a dalitz plot fit yield the values for the form factors λ + = 0.0260 ± 0.0007 s t a t ± 0.0010 s y s t and λ 0 = 0.0120 ± 0.0008 s t a t ± 0.0015 s y s t . In one month of …
Search for heavy neutral lepton production in K+ decays
2018
A search for heavy neutral lepton production in $K^+$ decays using a data sample collected with a minimum bias trigger by the NA62 experiment at CERN in 2015 is reported. Upper limits at the $10^{-7}$ to $10^{-6}$ level are established on the elements of the extended neutrino mixing matrix $|U_{\ell 4}|^2$ ($\ell=e,\mu$) for heavy neutral lepton mass in the range $170-448~{\rm MeV}/c^2$. This improves on the results from previous production searches in $K^+$ decays, setting more stringent limits and extending the mass range.
Alcohol and early mortality (before 65 years) in the ‘Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra’ (SUN) cohort: does any level reduce mortality?
2021
AbstractThe aim of this study was to assess the association between alcohol intake and premature mortality (younger than 65 years) and to explore the effect of potential alcohol underreporting by heavy drinkers. We followed-up 20 272 university graduates. Four categories of alcohol intake were considered (abstainer, light, moderate and heavy consumption). Repeated measurements of alcohol intake and updated information on confounders were used in time-dependent Cox models. Potential underreporting of alcohol intake by some heavy drinkers (likely misclassified as light or moderate drinkers) was explicitly addressed in an attempt to correct potential underreporting by using indirect informatio…
Age differences in olfactory affective responses: evidence for a positivity effect and an emotional dedifferentiation
2021
International audience; Studies on aging and hedonic judgment of odors have never been addressed within the empirical frameworks of age-related changes in emotion which state that advancing age is associated with a reduced negativity bias and a less pronounced differentiation between hedonic valence and emotional intensity judgments. Our aim was to examine and extend these age-related effects into the field of odors. Thirty-eight younger adults and 40 older adults were asked to evaluate the hedonic valence, emotional intensity, and familiarity of 50 odors controlled for their pleasantness. Compared to younger adults, older adults rated unpleasant odorants as less unpleasant and showed an in…
Perceived Onset Time of Medical Conditions: The Interplay Between Subjective Fear and Risk in Four Lifestyle Domains
2022
Engaging in unhealthy behaviors (e.g., smoking, drinking) and not engaging in healthy ones (e.g., exercising, consuming fruit and vegetables) are both relatively prevalent among individuals despite the available information about their risks for health. People’s perception of an event’s time course can be used to gauge their risk perception for that event thus casting light on any possible misperception and suggesting directions for health-promoting interventions. This study investigates people’s perception of the time of onset of 5 noncommunicable diseases (e.g., “having high blood pressure”) associated with 4 health-related behaviors: Smoking, drinking, exercising, and eating fruit and v…
VII: Diagnosestudien: Einfache Maße für Validität und Reliabilität
2003
The evaluation of a new diagnostic or imaging device has to focus both on its diagnostic validity and reliability. Cohen's kappa coefficient can be used to assess the agreement of the new device's findings with those of an established diagnostic reference, it therefore presents a surrogate measure of validity. Additional measures of validity are sensitivity and specificity, which assess the order of agreement with the reference for positive and negative reference findings, respectively. The latter, however, can only be applied for binary reference findings. If discordant findings are observed, the McNemar test can be used to detect a diagnostic shift between diagnostic novum and reference. …
Respondent Uncertainty and Ordering Effect on Willingness to Pay for Salt Marsh Conservation in the Brest Roadstead (France)
2017
International audience; This paper explores the potential link between the sensitivity of willingness to pay (WTP) to the order of presenting bid amounts in contingent valuation questions (ordering effect) and respondent uncertainty. The resource being valued is a public project to protect salt marshes against the spread of an invasive aquatic plant in the Brest roadstead (France). Valuation uncertainty is captured through a variant of payment card format where respondents are given the opportunity to report their WTP as either a single value (Option A) or an interval of values (Option B). The ordering effect is tested using both parametric models that ignore and control for the potential s…