No abstract

Motivated by the analysis of the dependence of knee movement patterns during functional tasks on subject-specific covariates, we introduce a distribution-free procedure for testing a functional-on-scalar linear model with fixed effects. The procedure does not only test the global hypothesis on the entire domain but also selects the intervals where statistically significant effects are detected. We prove that the proposed tests are provided with an asymptotic control of the intervalwise error rate, that is, the probability of falsely rejecting any interval of true null hypotheses. The procedure is applied to one-leg hop data from a study on anterior cruciate ligament injury. We compare knee kinematics of three groups of individuals (two injured groups with different treatments and one group of healthy controls), taking individual-specific covariates into account.

In this paper we introduce a novel functional clustering method, the Bagging Voronoi K-Medoid Aligment (BVKMA) algorithm, which simultaneously clusters and aligns spatially dependent curves. It is a nonparametric statistical method that does not rely on distributional or dependency structure assumptions. The method is motivated by and applied to varved (annually laminated) sediment data from lake Kassjön in northern Sweden, aiming to infer on past environmental and climate changes. The resulting clusters and their time dynamics show great potential for seasonal climate interpretation, in particular for winter climate changes

Let a continuous random process X defined on [0, 1] be (m + β)-smooth, 0 ≤ m, 0 < β ≤ 1, in quadratic mean for all t > 0 and have an isolated singularity point at t = 0. In addition, let X be locally like a m-fold integrated β-fractional Brownian motion for all nonsingular points. We consider approximation of X by piecewise Hermite interpolation splines with n free knots (i.e., a sampling design, a mesh). The approximation performance is measured by mean errors (e.g., integrated or maximal quadratic mean errors). We construct a sequence of sampling designs with asymptotic approximation rate n −(m+β) for the whole interval.

16Plant species differ in the amounts of energy allocated to different reproductive tissues, driving 17 differences in their ecology and energy flows within ecosystems. While it is widely agreed that 18 energy allocation is key to reproductive outcomes, few studies have estimated how reproductive 19 effort (RE) is partitioned among different pools, for multiple species in a community. In plants, RE 20 can be partitioned in several meaningful ways: seed versus non-seed tissues; into flowers that form 21 seeds and those that fail to develop; into pre-versus post-pollination tissues, and into successful 22 versus aborted ovules. Evolutionary theory suggests several hypotheses about how these tissues 23 should be coordinated across species. To quantify variation in allocation to different reproductive 24 tissues, we collected detailed RE measurements for a year from 14 perennial species in a recurrent-25 fire coastal heath community in eastern Australia. Overall we found that total accessory costs -the 26 proportion of RE not directly invested in provisioning the seed -were very large, varying from 27 95.8% to 99.8% across the study species. These results suggest that studies using seed or fruit 28 production as measures of RE may underestimate it by 10-to 500-fold. We propose a suitable 29 alternative that well-approximates true RE. When comparing species, we found strong support for 30 three evolutionary trade-offs that are predicted to arise when a given energy pool is divided into 31 different tissue masses and counts across species: 1) between successful pollen-attraction costs and 32 mature ovule count, 2) between total reproductive costs and seed count, and 3) between seedset and 33 relative investment in pollen-attraction costs. As a result of these trade-offs, species were also 34 predicted to show coordinated shifts in the amounts invested in floral construction, in seedset and 35 seed size. These shifts in investment were indeed observed, with the amount allocated to discarded 36 tissues increasing with seed size and the amount allocated to pollen-attraction decreasing with seed 37 size. It is already well-established that the seed size axis aligns with the colonization-competition 38 life history spectrum; here we show that relative construction costs of pollen-attraction versus 39 provisioning tissues and seedset are also part of this trajectory, expanding our understanding of the 40 relatives sizes of floral and fruiting structures observed across angiosperms.