Statistical inference for the optimal approximating model

In the setting of high-dimensional linear models with Gaussian noise, we investigate the possibility of confidence statements connected to model selection. Although there exist numerous procedures for adaptive (point) estimation, the construction of adaptive confidence regions is severely limited (cf. Li in Ann Stat 17:1001–1008, 1989). The present paper sheds new light on this gap. We develop exact and adaptive confidence regions for the best approximating model in terms of risk. One of our constructions is based on a multiscale procedure and a particular coupling argument. Utilizing exponential inequalities for noncentral χ2-distributions, we show that the risk and quadratic loss of all models within our confidence region are uniformly bounded by the minimal risk times a factor close to one.

How do indirect measures of evaluation work? Evaluating the inference of prejudice in the Implicit Association Test

There has been significant interest in indirect measures of attitudes like the Implicit Association Test (IAT), presumably because of the possibility of uncovering implicit prejudices. The authors derived a set of qualitative predictions for people's performance in the IAT on the basis of random walk models. These were supported in 3 experiments comparing clearly positive or negative categories to nonwords. They also provided evidence that participants shift their response criterion when doing the IAT. Because of these criterion shifts, a response pattern in the IAT can have multiple causes. Thus, it is not possible to infer a single cause (such as prejudice) from IAT results. A surprising additional result was that nonwords were treated as though they were evaluated more negatively than obviously negative items like insects, suggesting that low familiarity items may generate the pattern of data previously interpreted as evidence for implicit prejudice.

Unconscious relational inference recruits the hippocampus

Relational inference denotes the capacity to encode, flexibly retrieve, and integrate multiple memories to combine past experiences to update knowledge and improve decision-making in new situations. Although relational inference is thought to depend on the hippocampus and consciousness, we now show in young, healthy men that it may occur outside consciousness but still recruits the hippocampus. In temporally distinct and unique subliminal episodes, we presented word pairs that either overlapped (“winter–red”, “red–computer”) or not. Effects of unconscious relational inference emerged in reaction times recorded during unconscious encoding and in the outcome of decisions made 1 min later at test, when participants judged the semantic relatedness of two supraliminal words. These words were either episodically related through a common word (“winter–computer” related through “red”) or unrelated. Hippocampal activity increased during the unconscious encoding of overlapping versus nonoverlapping word pairs and during the unconscious retrieval of episodically related versus unrelated words. Furthermore, hippocampal activity during unconscious encoding predicted the outcome of decisions made at test. Hence, unconscious inference may influence decision-making in new situations.

Climate refugia: joint inference from fossil records, species distribution models and phylogeography

Climate refugia, locations where taxa survive periods of regionally adverse climate, are thought to be critical for maintaining biodiversity through the glacial–interglacial climate changes of the Quaternary. A critical research need is to better integrate and reconcile the three major lines of evidence used to infer the existence of past refugia – fossil records, species distribution models and phylogeographic surveys – in order to characterize the complex spatiotemporal trajectories of species and populations in and out of refugia. Here we review the complementary strengths, limitations and new advances for these three approaches. We provide case studies to illustrate their combined application, and point the way towards new opportunities for synthesizing these disparate lines of evidence. Case studies with European beech, Qinghai spruce and Douglas-fir illustrate how the combination of these three approaches successfully resolves complex species histories not attainable from any one approach. Promising new statistical techniques can capitalize on the strengths of each method and provide a robust quantitative reconstruction of species history. Studying past refugia can help identify contemporary refugia and clarify their conservation significance, in particular by elucidating the fine-scale processes and the particular geographic locations that buffer species against rapidly changing climate.

Three Shades of Embeddedness, State Capitalism as the Informal Economy, Emic Notions of the Anti-Market, and Counterfeit Garments in the Mauritian Export Processing Zone

Purpose This paper furthers the analysis of patterns regulating capitalist accumulation based on a historical anthropology of economic activities revolving around and within the Mauritian Export Processing Zone (EPZ). Design/methodology/approach This paper uses fieldwork in Mauritius to interrogate and critique two important concepts in contemporary social theory – “embeddedness” and “the informal economy.” These are viewed in the wider frame of social anthropology’s engagement with (neoliberal) capitalism. Findings A process-oriented revision of Polanyi’s work on embeddedness and the “double movement” is proposed to help us situate EPZs within ongoing power struggles found throughout the history of capitalism. This helps us to challenge the notion of economic informality as supplied by Hart and others. Social implications Scholars and policymakers have tended to see economic informality as a force from below, able to disrupt the legal-rational nature of capitalism as practiced from on high. Similarly, there is a view that a precapitalist embeddedness, a “human economy,” has many good things to offer. However, this paper shows that the practices of the state and multinational capitalism, in EPZs and elsewhere, exactly match the practices that are envisioned as the cure to the pitfalls of capitalism. Value of the paper Setting aside the formal-informal distinction in favor of a process-oriented analysis of embeddedness allows us better to understand the shifting struggles among the state, capital, and labor.

Inference of inhomogeneous clouds in an exoplaent atmosphere

We present new visible and infrared observations of the hot Jupiter Kepler-7b to determine its atmospheric properties. Our analysis allows us to (1) refine Kepler-7b's relatively large geometric albedo of Ag = 0.35 ± 0.02, (2) place upper limits on Kepler-7b thermal emission that remains undetected in both Spitzer bandpasses and (3) report a westward shift in the Kepler optical phase curve. We argue that Kepler-7b's visible flux cannot be due to thermal emission or Rayleigh scattering from H2 molecules. We therefore conclude that high altitude, optically reflective clouds located west from the substellar point are present in its atmosphere. We find that a silicate-based cloud composition is a possible candidate. Kepler-7b exhibits several properties that may make it particularly amenable to cloud formation in its upper atmosphere. These include a hot deep atmosphere that avoids a cloud cold trap, very low surface gravity to suppress cloud sedimentation, and a planetary equilibrium temperature in a range that allows for silicate clouds to potentially form in the visible atmosphere probed by Kepler. Our analysis does not only present evidence of optically thick clouds on Kepler-7b but also yields the first map of clouds in an exoplanet atmosphere.

Mining the Ecosystem to Improve Type Inference For Dynamically Typed Languages

Dynamically typed languages lack information about the types of variables in the source code. Developers care about this information as it supports program comprehension. Ba- sic type inference techniques are helpful, but may yield many false positives or negatives. We propose to mine information from the software ecosys- tem on how frequently given types are inferred unambigu- ously to improve the quality of type inference for a single system. This paper presents an approach to augment existing type inference techniques by supplementing the informa- tion available in the source code of a project with data from other projects written in the same language. For all available projects, we track how often messages are sent to instance variables throughout the source code. Predictions for the type of a variable are made based on the messages sent to it. The evaluation of a proof-of-concept prototype shows that this approach works well for types that are sufficiently popular, like those from the standard librarie, and tends to create false positives for unpopular or domain specific types. The false positives are, in most cases, fairly easily identifiable. Also, the evaluation data shows a substantial increase in the number of correctly inferred types when compared to the non-augmented type inference.

The influence of formal and informal sales controls on customer-directed selling behaviors and sales unit effectiveness

Adaptive selling (AS) and customer-oriented selling (COS) constitute two key customer-directed selling behaviors for the success of the modern sales force. However, knowledge regarding the organizational factors that can induce salespeople to engage in those behaviors is strikingly limited. Against this background, we develop a comprehensive model that delineates the influences of formal and informal sales controls on AS and COS and, through them, on sales unit effectiveness. Based on a sample of sales managers in a major European Union country, we present new evidence that (a) formal and informal sales controls exert differential impact on salespeople's AS and COS behaviors; (b) AS directly and positively influences sales unit effectiveness; (c) COS affects sales unit effectiveness only indirectly, i.e. by fostering AS; and (d) outcome and cultural controls directly improve sales unit effectiveness. We conclude with a discussion of our findings for academics and practitioners.

Inference of evolutionary forces acting on human biological pathways

Because natural selection is likely to act on multiple genes underlying a given phenotypic trait, we study here the potential effect of ongoing and past selection on the genetic diversity of human biological pathways. We first show that genes included in gene sets are generally under stronger selective constraints than other genes and that their evolutionary response is correlated. We then introduce a new procedure to detect selection at the pathway level based on a decomposition of the classical McDonald–Kreitman test extended to multiple genes. This new test, called 2DNS, detects outlier gene sets and takes into account past demographic effects and evolutionary constraints specific to gene sets. Selective forces acting on gene sets can be easily identified by a mere visual inspection of the position of the gene sets relative to their two-dimensional null distribution. We thus find several outlier gene sets that show signals of positive, balancing, or purifying selection but also others showing an ancient relaxation of selective constraints. The principle of the 2DNS test can also be applied to other genomic contrasts. For instance, the comparison of patterns of polymorphisms private to African and non-African populations reveals that most pathways show a higher proportion of nonsynonymous mutations in non-Africans than in Africans, potentially due to different demographic histories and selective pressures.