Search results for "Statistical methods"
showing 10 items of 194 documents
Sustainable and Conventional Banking in Europe
2020
At the end of the 20th century a new banking model, the so-called ethical banking, emerged becoming the maximum exponent of a socially responsible investment. The financial crisis in 2008 led to a distrust of the conventional financial system and consequently investors began to look with interest this new banking, which only invests in ethical activities and products, with social and environmental criteria, total transparency and a democratic management. The aim of this article is to analyze the economic structure of ethical banking, compared to that of conventional banking, by paying attention to its liquidity, coverage and solvency. Specifically, We compare the financial statements of Tri…
Factors influencing psychological well-being in patients with Parkinson's disease.
2017
Background Both motor and non-motor symptoms could contribute to significant deterioration of psychological well-being in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). However, its assessment has been only indirectly evaluated using tools based on health-related quality of life (HRQoL), such as the PDQ-39 scale. Objectives To evaluate psychological well-being in PD using a specific tool of assessment, the Psychological Well-being Scale (PWS), and its clinical correlates. Methods This article reports data of patients' perception of health state, as measured by means of the PWS, from an epidemiological, cross-sectional study conducted in Italian PD patients (FORTE Study). We tested possible relatio…
Factors associated with first- versus second-generation long-acting antipsychotics prescribed under ordinary clinical practice in Italy
2018
Background For many years, long-acting intramuscular (LAI) antipsychotics have been prescribed predominantly to chronic and severe patients, as a last resort when other treatments failed. Recently, a broader and earlier use of LAIs, particularly second-generation LAIs, has been emphasized. To date, few studies attempted to frame how this change in prescribing took place in real-world practice. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the clinical features of patients prescribed with LAIs, and to explore possible prescribing differences between first- and second-generations LAIs under ordinary clinical practice in Italy. Methods The STAR Network "Depot" Study is an observational, longitudinal…
Internal limiting membrane peeling versus no peeling during primary vitrectomy for rhegmatogenous retinal detachment: A systematic review and meta-an…
2018
Background Internal limiting membrane (ILM) peeling during primary vitrectomy for rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) prevents the formation of postoperative macular epiretinal membrane (ERM). However, studies that compared vitrectomy with and without ILM peeling for RRD, have reported controversial outcomes. Objective To assess the efficacy of ILM peeling versus non-ILM peeling during vitrectomy for RRD by a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies. Methods PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, Embase databases, and the Cochrane Library were searched up to April 2018 to identify studies that compared primary vitrectomy with and without ILM peeling for RRD with at least six m…
Intraseasonal rainfall variability over Madagascar
2016
International audience; Using daily rain-gauge records for Madagascar and nearby islands, this paper investigates rainfall intraseasonal variability at local and regional scales during the austral summer season (November–February), as well as the respective influences of recurrent convective regimes over the South-West Indian Ocean (SWIO) and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). Our results show a general consistency between local-scale rainfall variability in Madagascar and regional-scale features of climate variability. The influence of Tropical-Temperate Troughs in their mature phase and/or their easternmost locations is first underlined. The development of such systems over Southern Afr…
Lifestyles and risk factors associated with adherence to the Mediterranean diet: a baseline assessment of the PREDIMED trial
2013
Background: The traditional Mediterranean dietary pattern (MedDiet) is associated with longevity and low rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, there is little information on who is more likely to follow this food pattern. Aim: To evaluate how different factors are associated with lower MedDiet adherence in older Spanish subjects. Methods: We included 7305 participants (men aged 55-80 y, women 60-80 y) at high-risk of CVD recruited into the PREDIMED trial (ISRCTN35739639). Socioeconomic, anthropometric, lifestyle characteristics and CVD risk factors were recorded. A validated 14-item questionnaire was used to evaluate MedDiet adherence at baseline. Multivariate models were used to …
A 14-item Mediterranean diet assessment tool and obesity indexes among high-risk subjects: the PREDIMED trial
2012
Objective Independently of total caloric intake, a better quality of the diet (for example, conformity to the Mediterranean diet) is associated with lower obesity risk. It is unclear whether a brief dietary assessment tool, instead of full-length comprehensive methods, can also capture this association. In addition to reduced costs, a brief tool has the interesting advantage of allowing immediate feedback to participants in interventional studies. Another relevant question is which individual items of such a brief tool are responsible for this association. We examined these associations using a 14-item tool of adherence to the Mediterranean diet as exposure and body mass index, waist circum…
Evolutionary morphology in shape and size of haptoral anchors in 14 Ligophorus spp. (Monogenea: Dactylogyridae).
2017
The search for phylogenetic signal in morphological traits using geometric morphometrics represents a powerful approach to estimate the relative weights of convergence and shared evolutionary history in shaping organismal form. We assessed phylogenetic signal in the form of ventral and dorsal haptoral anchors of 14 species of Ligophorus occurring on grey mullets (Osteichthyes: Mugilidae) from the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The phylogenetic relationships among these species were mapped onto the morphospaces of shape and size of dorsal and ventral anchors and two different tests were applied to establish whether the spatial positions in the morphospace were dictated by …
PDF reweighting in the Hessian matrix approach
2014
We introduce the Hessian reweighting of parton distribution functions (PDFs). Similarly to the better-known Bayesian methods, its purpose is to address the compatibility of new data and the quantitative modifications they induce within an existing set of PDFs. By construction, the method discussed here applies to the PDF fits that carried out a Hessian error analysis using a non-zero tolerance $\Delta\chi^2$. The principle is validated by considering a simple, transparent example. We are also able to establish an agreement with the Bayesian technique provided that the tolerance criterion is appropriately accounted for and that a purely exponential Bayesian likelihood is assumed. As a practi…
Cancelling out systematic uncertainties
2011
We present a method to minimize, or even cancel out, the nuisance parameters affecting a measurement. Our approach is general and can be applied to any experiment or observation. We compare it with the bayesian technique used to deal with nuisance parameters: marginalization, and show how the method compares and improves by avoiding biases. We illustrate the method with several examples taken from the astrophysics and cosmology world: baryonic acoustic oscillations, cosmic clocks, Supernova Type Ia luminosity distance, neutrino oscillations and dark matter detection. By applying the method we recover some known results but also find some interesting new ones. For baryonic acoustic oscillati…