Digital doctoring: how to tell the real from the fake

Seeing is no longer believing. The technology that allows digital media to be manipulated and distorted is developing at breakneck speed. How do we contend with the implications? Hany Farid describes the impact of digital tampering and the development of mathematical and computational algorithms to expose digital fakes.     

A latent variable regression model for asymmetric bivariate ordered categorical data

In many areas of medical research, especially in studies that involve paired organs, a bivariate ordered categorical response should be analyzed. Using a bivariate continuous distribution as the latent variable is an interesting strategy for analyzing these data sets. In this context, the bivariate standard normal distribution, which leads to the bivariate cumulative probit regression model, is the most common choice. In this paper, we introduce another latent variable regression model for modeling bivariate ordered categorical responses. This model may be an appropriate alternative for the bivariate cumulative probit regression model, when postulating a symmetric form for marginal or joint distribution of response data does not appear to be a valid assumption. We also develop the necessary numerical procedure to obtain the maximum likelihood estimates of the model parameters. To illustrate the proposed model, we analyze data from an epidemiologic study to identify some of the most important risk indicators of periodontal disease among students 15-19 years in Tehran, Iran.     

A bayesian signal detection procedure for scale‐space random fields

The authors consider the problem of searching for activation in brain images obtained from functional magnetic resonance imaging and the corresponding functional signal detection problem. They develop a Bayesian procedure to detect signals existing within noisy images when the image is modeled as a scale space random field. Their procedure is based on the Radon‐Nikodym derivative, which is used as the Bayes factor for assessing the point null hypothesis of no signal. They apply their method to data from the Montreal Neurological Institute.     

Deparochialising the Canon: The Case of Sociological Theory

Sociological theory is not irrelevant to the South but needs to be deparochialised. The parochiality of sociological theory as it exists today can clearly be seen from the canon. The canon would have us believe that sociological theory was the sole creation of a few white men who lived in the nineteenth century. The absence of non-European thinkers in accounts of the history of sociological theory is particularly glaring in cases where non-Europeans had not only contributed to systematic thinking about the nature of society in the modern period but also influenced the development of sociology in the West. Typically, a history of social thought or a course on social thought and theory would cover theorists such as Montesquieu, Vico, Comte, Spencer, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Toennies, Sombart, Mannheim, Pareto, Sumner, Ward, Small, and others. Generally, both non-Western thinkers as well as women founders are excluded. Although sociology is slow to take a decolonial turn, there are now efforts to critique and rethink the canon. This article is a contribution in the direction of critiquing and expanding the canon to render it less parochial.     

A doubly-inflated Poisson regression for correlated count data

Count data have emerged in many applied research areas. In recent years, there has been a considerable interest in models for count data. In modelling such data, it is common to face a large frequency of zeroes. The data are regarded as zero-inflated when the frequency of observed zeroes is larger than what is expected from a theoretical distribution such as Poisson distribution, as a standard model for analysing count data. Data analysis, using the simple Poisson model, may lead to over-dispersion. Several classes of different mixture models were proposed for handling zero-inflated data. But they do not apply to cases when inflated counts happen at some other points, in addition to zero. In these cases, a doubly-inflated Poisson model has been suggested which only be used for cross-sectional data and cannot consider correlations between observations. However, correlated count data have a large application, especially in the health and medical fields. The present study aims to introduce a Doubly-Inflated Poisson models with random effect for correlated doubly-inflated data. Then, the best performance of the proposed method is shown via different simulation scenarios. Finally, the proposed model is applied to a dental study.KEYWORDS: Count data, doubly-inflated, Poisson regression, zero-inflated, correlated data     

Teaching statistics to clinical research staff in a pharmaceutical company

Education of clinical research staff in understanding statistical concepts is an area of importance for pharmaceutical companies. This understanding is needed to help them communicate with statisticians using a common language, in designing clinical trials and interpretation of clinical trial results. Such staff has little time for a one-semester or even a one-week continuing education course in statistics. Faced with this reality, we developed a 3-module course,for a total of 1.5 days, which was taught over a period of one month that addresses the needs of this audience. We describe the format and content of the course and provide references that can serve as a resource for teaching such a course.     

Bayesian analysis of longitudinal ordered data with flexible random effects using McMC: application to diabetic macular Edema data

In the analysis of correlated ordered data, mixed-effect models are frequently used to control the subject heterogeneity effects. A common assumption in fitting these models is the normality of random effects. In many cases, this is unrealistic, making the estimation results unreliable. This paper considers several flexible models for random effects and investigates their properties in the model fitting. We adopt a proportional odds logistic regression model and incorporate the skewed version of the normal, Student's t and slash distributions for the effects. Stochastic representations for various flexible distributions are proposed afterwards based on the mixing strategy approach. This reduces the computational burden being performed by the McMC technique. Furthermore, this paper addresses the identifiability restrictions and suggests a procedure to handle this issue. We analyze a real data set taken from an ophthalmic clinical trial. Model selection is performed by suitable Bayesian model selection criteria.     

The Forced Resettlement of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, 1948–1953

This article investigates the underlying reasons and processes for the resettlement of Azerbaijanis from Armenia in 1948–1953—an undertaking sanctioned by Josef Stalin under the official mantle of strengthening the cotton-growing industry in the Kura-Araz lowland region of Azerbaijan. The decree, which the Soviet leader signed in 1947, also contained a clause on the necessity of vacating places in Armenia for foreign repatriates—a project launched by Moscow in pursuit of territorial claims on Turkey in 1946–1949. This resettlement project reignited the ethno-territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan during Soviet rule; however, in its immediate aftermath, the Soviet authorities were able to keep the situation under control.     

Austrian Muslims Protest Against Austria's Revised “Islam Act”

Austria legally recognized Islam in 1912 and has thus been characterized as a “liberal” country regarding the inclusion of Muslims. But when the law was revision in 2015, it was largely criticized as discriminatory, anti-constitutional, and authoritarian towards the Muslim minority. The paper asks how a number of different social movement organizations and networks have framed their political participation, protest, and activism. It asks what demands were expressed regarding justice, criminalization, alienation, discrimination, and other contested issues. The paper also ponders the implications of political inclusion versus distance from the system for Muslim agency, as the protest movement ranged very widely from state-affiliated institutions to state-independent individuals.