Properties of the weighted log‐rank test in the design of confirmatory studies with delayed effects

Proportional hazards are a common assumption when designing confirmatory clinical trials in oncology. This assumption not only affects the analysis part but also the sample size calculation. The presence of delayed effects causes a change in the hazard ratio while the trial is ongoing since at the beginning we do not observe any difference between treatment arms, and after some unknown time point, the differences between treatment arms will start to appear. Hence, the proportional hazards assumption no longer holds, and both sample size calculation and analysis methods to be used should be reconsidered. The weighted log‐rank test allows a weighting for early, middle, and late differences through the Fleming and Harrington class of weights and is proven to be more efficient when the proportional hazards assumption does not hold. The Fleming and Harrington class of weights, along with the estimated delay, can be incorporated into the sample size calculation in order to maintain the desired power once the treatment arm differences start to appear. In this article, we explore the impact of delayed effects in group sequential and adaptive group sequential designs and make an empirical evaluation in terms of power and type‐I error rate of the of the weighted log‐rank test in a simulated scenario with fixed values of the Fleming and Harrington class of weights. We also give some practical recommendations regarding which methodology should be used in the presence of delayed effects depending on certain characteristics of the trial.     

Modifications of sequential designs in bioequivalence trials

Bioequivalence (BE) studies are designed to show that two formulations of one drug are equivalent and they play an important role in drug development. When in a design stage, it is possible that there is a high degree of uncertainty on variability of the formulations and the actual performance of the test versus reference formulation. Therefore, an interim look may be desirable to stop the study if there is no chance of claiming BE at the end (futility), or claim BE if evidence is sufficient (efficacy), or adjust the sample size. Sequential design approaches specially for BE studies have been proposed previously in publications. We applied modification to the existing methods focusing on simplified multiplicity adjustment and futility stopping. We name our method modified sequential design for BE studies (MSDBE). Simulation results demonstrate comparable performance between MSDBE and the original published methods while MSDBE offers more transparency and better applicability. The R package MSDBE is available at https://sites.google.com/site/modsdbe/ . Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于复杂适应系统的作战理论哲学反思

传统的作战理论与方法已经不能适应像现代信息化战争系统这类充满“活”的个体和变化因素的复杂系统，需要进行理论创新。而复杂适应系统理论是当代系统科学的一个新发展。有望成为创新作战理论的突破口。本文在分析比较作战系统的基础上，认为作战系统实质是复杂的适应系统，作战系统内的作战双方都力图以增强自身的适应性和复杂性，削弱对方的适应性和复杂性取得作战的胜利。     

DBF系统的通道校正技术

描述了影响DBF系统特性的主要因素,研究了阵元间互耦对自适应方向图旁瓣和零深的影响及校正方法,讨论了在DBF阵中校正接收通道幅、相误差和I/Q支路正交误差的技术途径。计算机模拟和测试证明,按照所述方法进行校正可以得到满意的结果。另外,为了减小I/Q支路产生正交误差,建议采用中频直接采样和数字化的接收机方案。     

Some remarks on the physical models concerning two different approaches to inference in statistical process control

Summary For technological applications it can be useful to identify some simple physical mechanisms, which, on the basis of the available knowledge of the production process, may suggest the most appropriate approach to statistical control of the random quantities of interest. For this purpose the notion of rupture point is introduced firstly. A rupture point is characterized bym randomly arising out of control states, assumed to be mutually exclusive and stochastically independent. Shewhart's control charts seem to represent the natural statistical tool for controlling a rupture point; however it is shown that they are fully justified only when the hazard rates attached to the causes of failure are constant. Otherwise, typically in the presence of time increasing hazard rates, Shewhart's control charts should be completed by a preventive intervention rule (preventive maintenance). In the second place, the notion of dynamic instability point is introduced, which is specifically characterized by assuming that the random quantity of interest is ruled by a stochastic differential equation with constant coefficients. By discretization, developed according to a possibly new approach, it is shown that the former model reduces to an equation error model, which is among the simplest used in adaptive control, and thus particularly easy to deal with in regard to parameter estimation and the definition of the optimum control rule.     

A general inverse sampling scheme and its application to adaptive cluster sampling

Not having a variance estimator is a seriously weak point of a sampling design from a practical perspective. This paper provides unbiased variance estimators for several sampling designs based on inverse sampling, both with and without an adaptive component. It proposes a new design, which is called the general inverse sampling design, that avoids sampling an infeasibly large number of units. The paper provide estimators for this design as well as its adaptive modification. A simple artificial example is used to demonstrate the computations. The adaptive and non‐adaptive designs are compared using simulations based on real data sets. The results indicate that, for appropriate populations, the adaptive version can have a substantial variance reduction compared with the non‐adaptive version. Also, adaptive general inverse sampling with a limitation on the initial sample size has a greater variance reduction than without the limitation.     

Improving Convergence of the HastingsMetropolis Algorithm with an Adaptive Proposal

The HastingsMetropolis algorithm is a general MCMC method for sampling from a density known up to a constant. Geometric convergence of this algorithm has been proved under conditions relative to the instrumental (or proposal) distribution. We present an inhomogeneous HastingsMetropolis algorithm for which the proposal density approximates the target density, as the number of iterations increases. The proposal density at the n th step is a non-parametric estimate of the density of the algorithm, and uses an increasing number of i.i.d. copies of the Markov chain. The resulting algorithm converges (in n ) geometrically faster than a HastingsMetropolis algorithm with any fixed proposal distribution. The case of a strictly positive density with compact support is presented first, then an extension to more general densities is given. We conclude by proposing a practical way of implementation for the algorithm, and illustrate it over simulated examples.     

两相交流伺服电机动态性能的研究

对于两相交流电机的速度伺服系统,分析在幅值控制时系统的机械特性与调节特性,提出了影响两相交流伺服电机动态性能的因素是系统的机械时间常数及增益系数的变化。为了防止因机械时间常数及增益系数的变化而引起的动态特性变差,采用一种简易跟随模型参考自适应控制方法,通过模型与自适应机构的调节作用,改善两相交流伺服电机系统的动态特性和控制精度。计算机仿真结果表明,电机的动态持性良好。     

CAS理论与高校德育

文章在简要介绍复杂适应系统 (CAS)理论的基础上 ,认为CAS理论对高校德育工作具有方法论意义 ;在CAS理论视野中 ,高校德育工作应该遵循如下五个基本原则 :主体原则、活力原则、整体涌现性原则、目的性原则和冲突化原则。     

A Comparison of Partially Adaptive and Reweighted Least Squares Estimation

The small sample performance of least median of squares, reweighted least squares, least squares, least absolute deviations, and three partially adaptive estimators are compared using Monte Carlo simulations. Two data problems are addressed in the paper: (1) data generated from non-normal error distributions and (2) contaminated data. Breakdown plots are used to investigate the sensitivity of partially adaptive estimators to data contamination relative to RLS. One partially adaptive estimator performs especially well when the errors are skewed, while another partially adaptive estimator and RLS perform particularly well when the errors are extremely leptokur-totic. In comparison with RLS, partially adaptive estimators are only moderately effective in resisting data contamination; however, they outperform least squares and least absolute deviation estimators.