Spatial interpolation of high-frequency monitoring data

Climate modelers generally require meteorological information on regular grids, but monitoring stations are, in practice, sited irregularly. Thus, there is a need to produce public data records that interpolate available data to a high density grid, which can then be used to generate meteorological maps at a broad range of spatial and temporal scales. In addition to point predictions, quantifications of uncertainty are also needed. One way to accomplish this is to provide multiple simulations of the relevant meteorological quantities conditional on the observed data taking into account the various uncertainties in predicting a space-time process at locations with no monitoring data. Using a high-quality dataset of minute-by-minute measurements of atmospheric pressure in north-central Oklahoma, this work describes a statistical approach to carrying out these conditional simulations. Based on observations at 11 stations, conditional simulations were produced at two other sites with monitoring stations. The resulting point predictions are very accurate and the multiple simulations produce well-calibrated prediction uncertainties for temporal changes in atmospheric pressure but are substantially overconservative for the uncertainties in the predictions of (undifferenced) pressure.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-AOAS208 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

How Can We Move Clinical Genomics Beyond the Hype?

Examines the debate over increased use of genetic testing, due in part to lax regulation, and its consequences: wasteful spending, patient harm, and health system challenges. Makes recommendations for implementation of and data on promising technologies

The State Courts and Alaska Politics: Independence, Public Accountability, and Political Influence

From the chapter introduction: "How does the Alaska political and governmental process deal with the tension between the need for judicial independence, public accountability, and the court system’s role in politics and public policy making? The following two sections explore the influences that have shaped the Alaska court system and its organization. The next section explains the devices that work to promote independence and impartiality. Then we explore in more detail six aspects of the role of the courts in Alaska politics and policy making.Ye

Spatial variation of total column ozone on a global scale

The spatial dependence of total column ozone varies strongly with latitude, so that homogeneous models (invariant to all rotations) are clearly unsuitable. However, an assumption of axial symmetry, which means that the process model is invariant to rotations about the Earth's axis, is much more plausible and considerably simplifies the modeling. Using TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) measurements of total column ozone over a six-day period, this work investigates the modeling of axially symmetric processes on the sphere using expansions in spherical harmonics. It turns out that one can capture many of the large scale features of the spatial covariance structure using a relatively small number of terms in such an expansion, but the resulting fitted model provides a horrible fit to the data when evaluated via its likelihood because of its inability to describe accurately the process's local behavior. Thus, there remains the challenge of developing computationally tractable models that capture both the large and small scale structure of these data.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOAS106 in the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org