Product Description
This book examines advanced Bayesian computational methods. It presents methods for sampling from posterior distributions and discusses how to compute posterior quantities of interest using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samples. This book examines each of these issues in detail and heavily focuses on computing various posterior quantities of interest from a given MCMC sample. Several topics are addressed, including techniques for MCMC sampling, Monte Carlo methods for estimation of posterior quantities, improving simulation accuracy, marginal posterior density estimation, estimation of normalizing constants, constrained parameter problems, highest posterior density interval calculations, computation of posterior modes, and posterior computations for proportional hazards models and Dirichlet process models. The authors also discuss computions involving model comparisons, including both nested and non-nested models, marginal likelihood methods, ratios of normalizi!ng constants, Bayes factors, the Savage-Dickey density ratio, Stochastic Search Variable Selection, Bayesian Model Averaging, the reverse jump algorithm, and model adequacy using predictive and latent residual approaches. The book presents an equal mixture of theory and applications involving real data. The book is intended as a graduate textbook or a reference book for a one semester course at the advanced masters or Ph.D. level. It would also serve as a useful reference book for applied or theoretical researchers as well as practitioners. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

MCMC methods presente for efficient and realistic application of Bayesian methods
With advances in computing and the rediscovery of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods and their application to Bayesian methods, there have been a number of books written on this subject in recent years. What then distinguishes this text from the others?

Section 1.1 of the text "Aims" provides the objectives of the book and compares it to the other recent major works. Basically, the authors say that Tanner (1996), Gilks, Richardson and Spiegelhalter (1996), Gamerman (1997), Robert and Casella (1999) and Gelfand and Smith (2000) all offer developments in MCMC sampling. So this text only provides a brief but hopefully sufficient introduction to MCMC sampling.

The main objective of the book is to develop more advanced Monte Carlo methods that speed up the computational time for specialized Bayesian problems. Problems of interest to the authors include estimating posterior means, modes and standard deviations, Bayesian equivalent of p-values, marginal posterior densities, marginal likelihoods, Bayes factors, posterior model probabilities, Bayesian credible intervals (the Bayes analogue to frequentist confidence intervals) and highest posterior probability density intervals.

Chapter 1 sets the stage. It provides the objectives, an outline of the rest of the book and a list of motivating examples that will be used throughout the text.

Chapter 2 then provides the brief introduction to MCMC sampling. Some theory is provided, many useful references are cited and several ideas are well illustrated through examples and figures.

Chapter 3 is also introductory in nature showing how the methods of Chapter 2 can be applied to obtain various estimates based on the approximated posterior probability distribution.

The rest of the book deals with specialized topics and techniques important to Bayesian inference. The book contains a wealth of theory and a good mix of applications and challenging research problems. The authors are experienced contributors to this literature.

It is intended as an advanced graduate course for Ph.D. statistics student in their second or third year of graduate study. It also will serve statistical researchers with an excellent reference both for the practice and development of Bayesian inference. Applications in the area of biostatistics are emphasized but the methods apply to Bayesian statistical inference in all fields.

not a good starting point
You need to be clear what you are looking for. If you have vaguely heard that MCMC (Monte Carlo Markov Chain) methods are a neat way to apply Bayesian ideas to practical problems, and you want to use them, then this is *not* the book for you. Go to the splendid Gilks et al, Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Practice. Also check out BUGS, which is free software, originally written by Gilks and co and improved by many others.

If you want a more general introduction to Bayesian methods, then Gelman et al, Bayesian Data Analysis is excellent.

If you are unclear about the controversies and want to know why the Bayesian approach is correct, and the others are flat wrong, then read Ed Jaynes book.

So what is this book for. Well, I think you have to be a specialist, interested in further development of the techniques, and in the maths. As a previous reviewer has commented (correctly), in that case you probably have easy access to the journal literature and need to think carefully what extra benefits this book gives you.

Same writer reviewed book 4 times!
I depend upon the Amazon reviews to help determine whether to purchase a book as most others do.When a reviewer posts four 5 star reviews of the book (out of 7 total) it biases the rating and makes one wonder whether if the reviewer has an agenda or is related to the authors.This may be a great book, but I have no confidence from the rating given here.

extensive book on MCMC
This is truly an oustanding book on MCMC methods for Bayesian
computation. The authors present a nice balance between technical
developments and applications. It covers several topics not covered by other MCMC books, such as HPD regions, model selection, and density estimation. This book is world class.

two great books
This is an outstanding book on MCMC methods. The book presents
novel and sophisticated methods for carrying out posterior
computations and summarizing posterior quantities of interest using novel MCMC techniques. The authors present a lot of their
groundbreaking work as well as summarizing the work of many others. The book presents a number of complex models used in real and interesting applications in the biomedical sciences. Two of the authors also have wirtten another outstanding book titled Bayesian Survival Analysis (Ibrahim et al., 2001), which presents modern methods for Bayesian survival analysis and provides a comprehensive and thorough treatment of the subject. The authors are to be congratulated on writing two very fine books. Both books get 5 stars from me. ... Read more

Product Description
Introduction to Environmental Toxicology focuses on the impacts of chemicals upon ecological systems ranging from the molecular level to the dynamics of ecosystems. This unique book emphasizes the use of toxicity tests and provides important examples. It also details molecular, cellular, and physiological effects. Biodegradation, structure-activity relationships, atmospheric pollutants, and the effects of elemental pollutants on living systems are but a few of the important topics covered in this broad-based text/reference. Environmental toxicology is addressed at the ecosystem level. Significant attention is devoted to examining the difficulties of assessing impacts within ecosystems, reviewing the potential of biomarkers, and noting limits to prediction. Although intended as a text for upper division undergraduates and beginning graduate students, the book will be an excellent reference for anyone in environmental toxicology and chemistry, regulators, risk assessors, environmental consultants, ecologists, and students. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Environmental Toxicology
Used this book for a toxicology class. Seemed well written, very up to date and not overly technical. A good read.

Outstandingly written and very informative for scientists
Thisis perhaps one of the more intellectual stimulatingtoxicology booksputout for the general public.Landis, unlike many of his modern day contemporaries, literally gives the reader an indepthinsight into the discipline of toxicology as related to biology, chemistry, ecology, and general mathematics. Furthermore,the author significantly explains thebeneficial use of Risk Assessments and Risk Analysis as related to ecotoxicityand exposure in the environment.

From an environmental science standpoint, the authorcommunicates his ideas and theoretical/scientific idealmswell to the reader forhe or she to get a thorough understanding.Terms andscientific expressions as related to the field ofenvironmental toxicology are well explained throughout the text.

Thisbook is a must have for all those desiringa more detailed and thoroughscientific and informative background in thefield ofenvironmental toxicology as it relates to ecotoxicity and environmental fate and exposure of chemicals in the enviroment. ... Read more

Product Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Technologies for E-Services, TES 2001, held in Rome, Italy, in September 2001.
The 15 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Among the topics addressed are b2b protocols, inter-enterprise process execution, business logic, cooperative multiplatform environments, session-oriented telecommunication services, cross-organizational workflow environments, Internet-based workflow, composite e-services, transactional business processes, e-service security, distributed e-services, mobile commerce, e-commerce, pervasive services infrastructure, and mobile Internet agents. ... Read more

Product Description
Hsio-Fu Tuan is a Chinese mathematician who has madeimportant contributions to the theories of both finite groups and Liegroups. He has also had a great influence on the development ofalgebra, and particularly group theory in China. The present volumeconsists of a collection of essays on various aspects of group theorywritten by some of his former students and colleagues in honour of hiseightieth birthday. The papers contain the main general results, aswell as recent ones, on certain topics within this discipline. Thechief editor, Zhe-Xian Wan, is a leading algebraist in China. Audience: This volume will be of interest to mathematiciansspecialising in group theory, graph theory, algebraic K-theory and Liealgebras, and those wishing to gain insight in the development andprospects of group theory in China. ... Read more

Product Description
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Advanced Parallel Processing Technologies, APPT 2003, held in Xiamen, China in September 2003. The 57 revised full papers and 21 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 191 full paper submissions. All current aspects in parallel and distributed computing are addressed ranging from hardware and software issues to algorithmic aspects and advanced applications. The papers are organized in topical sections on architecture, software and theory, grid and network, and applied technologies. ... Read more

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, PAKDD 2002, held in Taipei, Taiwan, in May 2002. The 32 revised full papers and 20 short papers presented together with 4 invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 128 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on association rules; classification; interestingness; sequence mining; clustering; Web mining; semi-structure and concept mining; data warehouse and data cube; bio-data mining; temporal mining; and outliers, missing data, and causation. ... Read more

Product Description
Domains are mathematical structures for information andapproximation; they combine order-theoretic, logical, and topologicalideas and provide a natural framework for modelling and reasoningabout computation. The theory of domains has proved to be a usefultool for programming languages and other areas of computer science,and for applications in mathematics. Included in this proceedings volume are selected papers of originalresearch presented at the 2nd International Symposium on Domain Theoryin Chengdu, China. With authors from France, Germany, Great Britain,Ireland, Mexico, and China, the papers cover the latest research inthese sub-areas: domains and computation, topology and convergence,domains, lattices, and continuity, and representations of domains asevent and logical structures. Researchers and students in theoretical computer science should findthis a valuable source of reference. The survey papers at thebeginning should be of particular interest to those who wish to gainan understanding of some general ideas and techniques in this area. ... Read more

Product Description
With China's eminent entry into the World Trade Organization,past speculations of China becoming a world economic power in the 21stcentury is a reality with which few would disagree. We are witnessingthe awakening of many sleepy giants, such as the successful reformedstate-owned as well as township and village enterprises. We are alsowitnessing the birth and growth of a significant private sector, alongwith ever-increasing foreign investments. In this development process,there is a critical need to document and theorize about the managementprocess by firms in this changing and dynamic context.The Management of Enterprises in the People's Republic of Chinaaims to contribute to the knowledge base of management within theChinese context. The book begins with a mapping of research onmanagement in PRC, and offers theoretical insights for cross-context,institutional, and behavioral studies. It then reports the results offourteen empirical studies of management issues in the PRC firms. Theissues studied include SOE transformation, globalization, governance,employment relationships, managerial networks, corporate culture andleadership. Also included are studies on the knowledge managementprocess and management team characteristics of high technology firms.The methods of study include large-scale surveys, case studies, andinterviews. The contributors are international experts in Chinesemanagement research. Finally, we offer executive perspectives onseveral successful firms operating in China through interviews withtheir CEOs. ... Read more

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Mobile Data Management, MDM 2003, held in Melbourne, Australia, in January 2003.

The 21 revised full papers and 15 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 87 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on storage management, location tracking, information management, location-aware services, context-aware services, resource discovery, location management, storage management and query processing, and context-aware information services.

Product Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Advanced Parallel Processing Technologies, APPT 2005, held in Hong Kong, China in September 2005.

The 55 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from over 220 submissions. All current aspects in parallel and distributed computing are addressed ranging from hardware and software issues to algorithmic aspects and advanced applications. The papers are organized in topical sections on architecture, algorithm and theory, system and software, grid computing, networking, and applied technologies.

Product Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Asia Information Retrieval Symposium, AIRS 2004, held in Beijing, China, in October 2004.

The 28 revised full papers presented have passed through two rounds of reviewing and improvement and were selected from 106 papers submitted. All current issues in information retrieval are addressed, ranging from algorithmic and methodological issues to application in various fields. Particular emphasis is given to aspects of Asian languages; text retrieval and Web information retrieval are addressed in several papers.

Product Description

The book presents the latest research findings and prospects on soil mineral-organic matter-microorganism interactions. It includes topics covering mechanisms of transformations, dynamics and bioavailability of heavy metals, radionuclides, biomolecules and nutrients immobilized on soil minerals, humic substances, mineral-humic complexes and microorganisms and their impact on plant, animal and human health. The book contains six parts: 1) Transformation and dynamics of pollutants in soil environments, 2) Chemical, biological and biochemical processes in the rhizosphere, 3) Bioavailability of metals and xenobiotics immobilized on soil components, 4) Distribution and activity of biomolecules in terrestrial systems, 5) Interactions between soil microbial biomass and organic matter/nutrient transformations, and 6) Impact of interactions among soil mineral colloids, organic matter and biota on risk assessment and restoration of terrestrial ecosystems.

Product Description
This anthology is based on the First ACM Workshop on Applied Computational Geometry, WACG '96, held in Philadelphia, PA, USA, in May 1996, as part of the FCRC Conference. Today, CG is in transition and applied computational geometry has established itself as a fertile meeting ground for theorists from core computational geometry and practitioners from the potential application areas to exchange their ideas and identify issues of common interest. The book presents 11 invited contributions and state-of-the-art reports by leading experts together with 12 refereed full papers selected from 32 submissions. It points the way towards geometrical engineering and addresses researchers and professionals sharing an interest in geometric algorithms and techniques and their use in computational sciences and engineering. ... Read more

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This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, CSCWD 2005, held in Coventry, UK, in May 2005.

The 65 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions during at least two rounds of reviewing and improvement. They contain expanded versions of the papers presented at the conference and are organized in topical sections on CSCW techniques and methods, Grids and Web services, agents and multi-agent systems, ontology and knowledge management, collaborative design and manufacturing, enterprise collaboration, workflows, and other related approaches and applications.

Product Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed postproceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Technologies for E-Services, TES 2005, held in Trondheim, Norway, in September 2005 in conjunction with VLDB 2005.

The 9 revised full papers presented together with 1 keynote article were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions for inclusion in the book. Their common purpose is to identify the technical issues, models and infrastructures that enable enterprises to provide e-services to other businesses and individual customers. The papers are organized in topical sections on design, technology, and composite Web services.

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Despite numerous recent studies and exciting discoveries in the field, only limited treatment is available today for the victims of acute neurological injuries. Animal Models of Acute Neurological Injuries provides a standardized methodology manual designed to eliminate the inconsistent preparations and variability that currently jeopardizes advances in the field. Contributed by top experts and many original developers of the models, each chapter contains a step-by-step, proven procedure and visual aids covering the most commonly used animal models of neurological injury in order to highlight the practical applications of animal models rather than the theoretical issues. This intensive volume presents its readily reproducible protocols with great clarity and consistency to best aid neuroscientists and neurobiologists in laboratory testing and experimentation.

Product Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed postproceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Technologies for E-Services, TES 2004, held in Toronto, Canada in August 2004 in conjunction with VLDB 2004.

The 12 revised full papers presented went through two rounds of reviewing and selection. Among the topics addressed are current issues on various aspects of e-services, in particular of Web services, such as Web service composition, Web service selection, formal Web service development, e-service coordination, wireless ad-hoc networking, b26 information services, enterprise application integration, and m-commerce.

Product Description

Simply put, allelopathy refers to an ecological phenomenon of plant-plant interference through release of organic chemicals (allelochemicals) in the environment. These chemicals can be directly and continuously released by the donor plants in their immediate environment as volatiles in the air or root exudates in soil or they can be the microbial degradation products of plant residues. The chemicals may interfere with survival and growth of neighboring or succeeding plants. Black walnut, eucalyptus, sunflower, sorghum, sesame and alfalfa are common examples of plants with allelopathic property as well as some staple crops such as rice, wheat, barley and sorghum. Plants can emit chemicals that also discourage insects and pathogens. To maintain sustained productivity, knowledge of this form of plant interference on other plants and on disease causing organisms has been used in agriculture since prehistoric time by manipulating cropping pattern and sequence such as mixed cropping and crop rotation. However, use of numerous agrochemicals including a wide range of herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified high yielding crops has become the characteristic feature of modern industrial agriculture. Not only the sustainability of crop yield is called into question in this form of agriculture, the extensive long-term and often irreversible environmental degradation including ground water contamination and food safety associated with industrial agriculture are now of serious concern worldwide.

Product Description
This research monograph introduces some new aspects to the theory of harmonic functions and related topics. The authors study the analytic algebraic structures of the space of bounded harmonic functions on locally compact groups and its non-commutative analogue, the space of harmonic functionals on Fourier algebras. Both spaces are shown to be the range of a contractive projection on a von Neumann algebra and therefore admit Jordan algebraic structures. This provides a natural setting to apply recent results from non-associative analysis, semigroups and Fourier algebras. Topics discussed include Poisson representations, Poisson spaces, quotients of Fourier algebras and the Murray-von Neumann classification of harmonic functionals. ... Read more