Response-adaptive trial designs with accelerated Thompson sampling

In a clinical trial, sometimes it is desirable to allocate as many patients as possible to the best treatment, in particular, when a trial for a rare disease may contain a considerable portion of the whole target population. The Gittins index rule is a powerful tool for sequentially allocating patients to the best treatment based on the responses of patients already treated. However, its application in clinical trials is limited due to technical complexity and lack of randomness. Thompson sampling is an appealing approach, since it makes a compromise between optimal treatment allocation and randomness with some desirable optimal properties in the machine learning context. However, in clinical trial settings, multiple simulation studies have shown disappointing results with Thompson samplers. We consider how to improve short-run performance of Thompson sampling and propose a novel acceleration approach. This approach can also be applied to situations when patients can only be allocated by batch and is very easy to implement without using complex algorithms. A simulation study showed that this approach could improve the performance of Thompson sampling in terms of average total response rate. An application to a redesign of a preference trial to maximize patient's satisfaction is also presented.     

Improved Transferability of Data‐Driven Damage Models Through Sample Selection Bias Correction

Damage models for natural hazards are used for decision making on reducing and transferring risk. The damage estimates from these models depend on many variables and their complex sometimes nonlinear relationships with the damage. In recent years, data‐driven modeling techniques have been used to capture those relationships. The available data to build such models are often limited. Therefore, in practice it is usually necessary to transfer models to a different context. In this article, we show that this implies the samples used to build the model are often not fully representative for the situation where they need to be applied on, which leads to a “sample selection bias.” In this article, we enhance data‐driven damage models by applying methods, not previously applied to damage modeling, to correct for this bias before the machine learning (ML) models are trained. We demonstrate this with case studies on flooding in Europe, and typhoon wind damage in the Philippines. Two sample selection bias correction methods from the ML literature are applied and one of these methods is also adjusted to our problem. These three methods are combined with stochastic generation of synthetic damage data. We demonstrate that for both case studies, the sample selection bias correction techniques reduce model errors, especially for the mean bias error this reduction can be larger than 30%. The novel combination with stochastic data generation seems to enhance these techniques. This shows that sample selection bias correction methods are beneficial for damage model transfer.     

机器学习视角下中国去产能产业的识别

随着中国环境压力的增加,政府提出了供给侧改革,去产能是改革的主要内容,但是由于产业特征的实时演变,需要对政策进行完善。文章运用模糊C均值算法和支持向量机算法分析现阶段需要进行去产能的产业,结果发现在现行去产能政策中大部分行业是需要去产能的,但煤炭开采和洗选业以及铁路、船舶、航空航天和其他运输设备制造业已不适合继续去产能,同时将化学原料和化学制品制造业加入去产能行列中。     

Machine Learning for Drug Overdose Surveillance

ABSTRACT

We describe two recently proposed machine learning approaches for discovering emerging trends in fatal accidental drug overdoses. The Gaussian Process Subset Scan (Herlands, McFowland, Wilson, & Neill, 2017 Neill, D. B. (2017). Multidimensional tensor scan for drug overdose surveillance. Journal of Public Health Informatics, 9(1), e20. doi:10.5210/ojphi.v9i1.7598[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) enables early detection of emerging patterns in spatio-temporal data, accounting for both the complex, correlated nature of the data and the fact that detecting subtle patterns requires integration of information across multiple spatial areas and multiple time steps. We apply this approach to 17 years of county-aggregated data for monthly opioid overdose deaths in the New York City metropolitan area, showing clear advantages in the utility of discovered patterns as compared to typical anomaly detection approaches. To detect and characterize emerging overdose patterns that differentially affect a subpopulation of the data, including geographic, demographic, and behavioral patterns (e.g., which combinations of drugs are involved), we apply the Multidimensional Tensor Scan (Neill, 2017 Neill, D. B. (2017). Multidimensional tensor scan for drug overdose surveillance. Journal of Public Health Informatics, 9(1), e20. doi:10.5210/ojphi.v9i1.7598[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) to 8 years of case-level overdose data from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. We discover previously unidentified overdose patterns which reveal unusual demographic clusters, show impacts of drug legislation, and demonstrate potential for early detection and targeted intervention. These approaches to early detection of overdose patterns can inform prevention and response efforts, as well as understanding the effects of policy changes.     

Binary discrimination methods for high-dimensional data with a geometric representation

Four binary discrimination methods are studied in the context of high-dimension, low sample size data with an asymptotic geometric representation, when the dimension increases while the sample sizes of the classes are fixed. We show that the methods support vector machine, mean difference, distance-weighted discrimination, and maximal data piling have the same asymptotic behavior as the dimension increases. We study the consistent, inconsistent, and strongly inconsistent cases in terms of angles between the normal vectors of the separating hyperplanes of the methods and the optimal direction for classification. A simulation study is done to assess the theoretical results.     

区块链背景下智能包装产业新模式

区块链具有数据防篡改、可溯源等特点,智能包装具有数据采集、信息互动等优势,区块链可以为智能包装的进一步发展与应用提供新技术,而智能包装则可以拓宽区块链的应用领域,两者的融合必将引发智能包装产业模式的新一轮变革。在深入解析区块链发展阶段、分类、特点,以及智能包装功能、作用、发展现状与问题之基础上,努力探索两者融合发展的融合点、融合路线以及融合模式,能够为智能包装产业发展提供切实的理论指导。     

中国造物艺术史研究中的核心问题 ——以包装艺术史的写作为例

造物艺术史研究之中只有赋予造物艺术史以某种新意义、新价值或者新答案的论著才称得上是具有启迪意义的论著。要做到这一点,既要求研究者必须具备良好的历史意识,更要求其在研究中把握好“源与流”“内容与形式”“历时性与共时性”“造物的因果律”等核心问题。这些问题不仅涉及能否准确把握人类物质文明发展的历史全貌,而且关乎人类历史发展动力和规律中复杂关系的揭示。造物艺术的历史,不只是物态的历史,还是一部与人有关的生产生活史。近年来,造物艺术史研究对这些问题和关系的探索,出现了两个引人瞩目的新变化：一是研究方式从描述转向阐释;二是研究视角从核心转移到了边缘。     

Toward Probabilistic Prediction of Flash Flood Human Impacts

This article focuses on conceptual and methodological developments allowing the integration of physical and social dynamics leading to model forecasts of circumstance‐specific human losses during a flash flood. To reach this objective, a random forest classifier is applied to assess the likelihood of fatality occurrence for a given circumstance as a function of representative indicators. Here, vehicle‐related circumstance is chosen as the literature indicates that most fatalities from flash flooding fall in this category. A database of flash flood events, with and without human losses from 2001 to 2011 in the United States, is supplemented with other variables describing the storm event, the spatial distribution of the sensitive characteristics of the exposed population, and built environment at the county level. The catastrophic flash floods of May 2015 in the states of Texas and Oklahoma are used as a case study to map the dynamics of the estimated probabilistic human risk on a daily scale. The results indicate the importance of time‐ and space‐dependent human vulnerability and risk assessment for short‐fuse flood events. The need for more systematic human impact data collection is also highlighted to advance impact‐based predictive models for flash flood casualties using machine‐learning approaches in the future.     

基于支持向量机的管理信息系统故障识别模型研究

管理信息系统故障影响着企业信息工程的开展。及时识别故障,能够为企业争取更多时间处理故障。因此,管理信息系统故障识别有着重要的研究意义和实践意义。基于支持向量机,构建管理信息系统故障识别模型,通过把样本应用于该模型,结果表明该模型具有较好的准确性,能有效识别管理信息系统故障。