Record tests to detect non-stationarity in the tails with an application to climate change

The analysis of trends and other non-stationary behaviours at the extremes of a series is an important problem in global warming. This work proposes and compares several statistical tools to analyse that behaviour, using the properties of the occurrence of records in i.i.d. series. The main difficulty of this problem is the scarcity of information in the tails, so it is important to obtain all the possible evidence from the available data. First, different statistics based on upper records are proposed, and the most powerful is selected. Then, using that statistic, several approaches to join the information of four types of records, upper and lower records of forward and backward series, are suggested. It is found that these joint tests are clearly more powerful. The suggested tests are specifically useful in analysing the effect of global warming in the extremes, for example, of daily temperature. They have a high power to detect weak trends and can be widely applied since they are non-parametric. The proposed statistics join the information of M independent series, which is useful given the necessary split of the series to arrange the data. This arrangement solves the usual problems of climate series (seasonality and serial correlation) and provides more series to find evidence. These tools are used to analyse the effect of global warming on the extremes of daily temperature in Madrid.

Record Tests to Detect Non Stationarity in the Tails With an Application to Climate Change

The analysis of non stationary behaviours and trends in the extremes of a series is an important problem in global warming. This work develops statistical tools to analyse that behaviour, using the properties of the occurrence of records in i.i.d. series. The main difficulty of this problem is the scarcity of information in the tails, so that it is important to obtain all the possible evidences from the data available. To that end, first, different statistics based on upper records are proposed and the most powerful is selected. Then, using that statistic, several approaches to join the information of four types of records, upper and lower records of forward and backward series, are suggested. It is found than these joint tests are clearly more powerful. The suggested tests are specifically useful in the analysis of the effect of global warming in the extremes, for example of daily temperature. They have a high power to detect weak trends and they can be widely applied, since they are non parametric. The proposed statistics join the information of M independent series, what is useful given the necessary split of the series to arrange the data. This arrangement solves usual problems of climate series (seasonality and serial correlation) and provides more series to find evidences. These tools are used to analyse the effect of global warming in the extremes of daily temperature in Madrid.

The Legacy of German Romanticism in Russian Urban Fantasy

The philosophical views of German romantics, as well as images, motives, chronotopes characteristic of German romanticism, embodied in the domestic urban fantasy are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the techniques of the comparative method. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the almost complete absence of works devoted to the study of urban fantasy. It is noted that this fantasy subgenre has not been considered in detail in the context of the continuation of the traditions of romantic German literature. The theoretical basis of the research is presented by the works of M. M. Bakhtin, N. Ya. Berkovsky, V. M. Zhirmunsky, Yu. M. Lotman, S. S. Levochsky, etc. It was revealed that urban fantasy inherits the main images, themes, motives, symbols that dominated in German romanticism: the motive of a double, the image of a doll, an artist, etc. It was established that the authors of urban fantasy not only reproduce the image of a romantic artist-creator, but depict a character-demiurge. It has been proven that urban fantasy deepens and transforms the romantic “night beginning”: the images of the dead and vampires become plot-forming characters in independent series of works. It is concluded that the authors of urban fantasy, like German romantics, activate the readers’ attention to mythology and folklore, creating new fantastic worlds with their help.

The Parkinson's Disease DNA Variant Browser

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a genetically complex neurodegenerative disease with ~20 genes known to contain mutations that cause PD or atypical parkinsonism and 90 common genetic risk factors. Large-scale next-generation sequencing projects have revolutionized genomics research. Applying these data to PD, many genes have been reported to contain putative disease-causing mutations. In most instances, however, the results remain quite limited and rather preliminary, in large part because of an inability of any single group to validate findings in a large independent series of sequenced patients. We present here the Parkinson's Disease Sequencing Browser: a Shiny-based web application that presents comprehensive summary-level frequency data from multiple large-scale genotyping and sequencing projects. The data is aggregated and involves a total of 102,127 participants, including 30,103 PD cases (including 1,650 proxy cases) and 72,024 controls. Our aim is to assist researchers on their search for PD-risk genes and variant candidates with an easily accessible and open summary-level genomic data browser for the PD research community, https://pdgenetics.shinyapps.io/VariantBrowser/.

Tides in the southern area of the Kara Sea in the vicinity of the Belyi island

A number of promising hydrocarbon deposits are known in the south-western part of the Kara Sea. A safe development of these deposits requires hydrometeorological support, including sea-level observations. The paper deals with sea-level data of autonomous anchored buoy station. The period of observation is about 2 years, and the observation dataset is divided into 2 periods due to the displacement of the buoy station. The coordinates of the first position of the buoy station are known but they had been changed after the displacement (possibly due to the action of the ice ridge keels).Data from two time series of observations are studied by harmonic analysis, using the method of least squares by AARI version. According to the average monthly and mean annual values of the main tides it is found that the data includes two independent series. It is determined that the second series may be considered uniform. In order to locate of the anchored buoy station we calculated new coordinates using the empirical tidal charts of the M2 wave.As a result, the harmonic constants of the eight main tidal waves for the Belyi Island area are presented for the first time. The new data confirms the amphidromic system in tides O1 and Q1 , between the Zhelaniya Cape and the Belyi Island. According to the new data the maximum seasonal variation in the range of M2 tide was observed in June, and the minimum of the phase angle was observed in July. This unusual seasonal variation of the M2 tide corresponds to previous observations data from the Uedinenia Island.The authors have no competing interests.

Establishment of a pancreatic adenocarcinoma molecular gradient (PAMG) that predicts the clinical outcome of pancreatic cancer

BACKGROUNDA significant gap in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patient’s care is the lack of molecular parameters characterizing tumors and allowing a personalized treatment. The goal of this study was to examine whole PDAC transcriptomic profiles to define a signature that would predict aggressiveness and treatment responsiveness better than done until now.METHODS AND PATIENTSTumors were obtained from 76 consecutive resectable (n=40) or unresectable (n=36) tumors. PDAC were transplanted in mice to produce patient-drived xenografts (PDX). PDX were classified according to their histology into five groups, from highly undifferentiated to well differentiated. This classification resulted strongly associated with tumors aggressiveness. A PDAC molecular gradient (PAMG) was constructed from PDX transcriptomes recapitulating the five histological groups along a continuous gradient. The prognostic and predictive value for PMAG was evaluated in: i/ two independent series (n=598) of resected tumors; ii/ 60 advanced tumors obtained by diagnostic EUS-guided biopsy needle flushing and iii/ on 28 biopsies from mFOLFIRINOX treated metastatic tumors.RESULTSA unique transcriptomic signature (PAGM) was generated with significant and independent prognostic value. PAMG significantly improves the characterization of PDAC heterogeneity compared to non-overlapping classifications as validated in 4 independent series of tumors (e.g. 308 consecutive resected PDAC, HR=0.321 95% CI [0.207;0.5] and 60 locally-advanced or metastatic PDAC, HR=0.308 95% CI [0.113;0.836]). The PAMG signature is also associated with progression under mFOLFIRINOX treatment (Pearson correlation to tumor response: -0.67, p-value < 0.001).CONCLUSIONWe identified a transcriptomic signature (PAMG) that, unlike all other stratification schemas already proposed, classifies PDAC along a continuous gradient. It can be performed on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples and EUS-guided biopsies showing a strong prognostic value and predicting mFOLFIRINOX responsiveness. We think that PAMG could unify all PDAC preexisting classifications inducing a shift in the actual paradigm of binary classifications towards a better characterization in a gradient.Trial RegistrationThe PaCaOmics study is registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov with registration number NCT01692873. The validation BACAP study is registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov with registration number NCT02818829.

Long-Term Homogeneity, Trend, and Change-Point Analysis of Rainfall in the Arid District of Ananthapuramu, Andhra Pradesh State, India

The objective of this study is to evaluate the homogeneity, trend, and trend change points in the rainfall data. Daily rainfall data was collected for the arid district of Ananthapuramu, Andhra Pradesh state, India from 1981 to 2016 at the subdistrict level and aggregated to monthly, annual, seasonal rainfall totals, and the number of rainy days. After quality checks and homogeneity analysis, a total of 27 rain gauge locations were considered for trend analysis. A serial correlation test was applied to all the time series to identify serially independent series. NonParametric Mann–Kendall test and Spearman’s rank correlation tests were applied to serially independent series. The magnitude of the trend was calculated using Sen’s slope method. For the data influenced by serial correlation, various modified versions of Mann–Kendall tests (pre-whitening, trend-free pre-whitening, bias-corrected pre-whitening, and two variants of variance correction approaches) were applied. A significant increasing summer rainfall trend is observed in six out of 27 stations. Significant decreasing trends are observed at two stations during the southwest monsoon season and at two stations during the northeast monsoon season. To identify the trend change points in the time series, distribution−free cumulative sum test, and sequential Mann–Kendall tests were applied. Two open−source library packages were developed in R language namely, ”modifiedmk” and ”trendchange” to implement the statistical tests mentioned in this paper. The study results benefit water resource management, drought mitigation, socio−economic development, and sustainable agricultural planning in the region.