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Tinnitus is a phantom sound perception affecting both auditory and limbic structures. The mechanisms of tinnitus remain unclear and it is debatable whether tinnitus alters attention to sound and the ability to inhibit repetitive sounds, a phenomenon also known as auditory gating. Here we investigate if noise exposure interferes with auditory gating and whether natural extracts of cannabis or nicotine could improve auditory pre-attentional processing in noise-exposed mice. We used 22 male C57BL/6J mice divided into noise-exposed (exposed to a 9-11 kHz narrow band noise for 1 h) and sham (no sound during noise exposure) groups. Hearing thresholds were measured using auditory brainstem responses, and tinnitus-like behavior was assessed using Gap prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle. After noise exposure, mice were implanted with multi-electrodes in the dorsal hippocampus to assess auditory event-related potentials in response to paired clicks. The results showed that mice with tinnitus-like behavior displayed auditory gating of repetitive clicks, but with larger amplitudes and longer latencies of the N40 component of the aERP waveform. The combination of cannabis extract and nicotine improved the auditory gating ratio in noise-exposed mice without permanent hearing threshold shifts. Lastly, the longer latency of the N40 component appears due to an increased sensitivity to cannabis extract in noise-exposed mice compared to sham mice. The study suggests that the altered central plasticity in tinnitus is more sensitive to the combined actions on the cholinergic and the endocannabinoid systems. Overall, the findings contribute to a better understanding of pharmacological modulation of auditory sensory gating.

Over the last decades, the challenges in survival models have been changing considerably and full probabilistic modeling is crucial in many medical applications. Motivated from a new biological interpretation of cancer metastasis, we introduce a general method for obtaining more flexible cure rate models. The proposal model extended the promotion time cure rate model. Furthermore, it includes several well-known models as special cases and defines many new special models. We derive several properties of the hazard function for the proposed model and establish mathematical relationships with the promotion time cure rate model. We consider a frequentist approach to perform inferences, and the maximum likelihood method is employed to estimate the model parameters. Simulation studies are conducted to evaluate its performance with a discussion of the obtained results. A real dataset from population-based study of incident cases of melanoma diagnosed in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, is discussed in detail.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed people’s lives all over the world. While anxiety and stress decreased sleep quality for most people, an increase in total sleep time was also observed in certain cohorts. Dream recall frequency also increased, especially for nightmares. However, to date, there are no consistent reports focusing on pandemic-related changes in lucid dreaming, a state during which dreamers become conscious of being in a dream as it unfolds. Here we investigated lucid dreaming recall frequency and other sleep variables in 1,857 Brazilian subjects, using an online questionnaire. Firstly, we found that most participants (64.78%) maintained their lucid dream recall frequency during the pandemic, but a considerable fraction (22.62%) informed that lucid dreams became more frequent, whereas a smaller subset (12.60%) reported a decrease in these events during the pandemic. Secondly, the number of participants reporting lucid dreams at least once per week increased during the pandemic. Using a mixed logistic regression model, we confirmed that the pandemic significantly enhanced the recall frequency of lucid dreams (p = 0.002). Such increase in lucid dreaming during the pandemic was significantly associated with an enhancement in both dream and nightmare recall frequencies, as well as with sleep quality and symptoms of REM sleep behavior disorder. Pandemic-related increases in stress, anxiety, sleep fragmentation, and sleep extension, which enhance REM sleep awakening, may be associated with the increase in the occurrence of lucid dreams, dreams in general, and nightmares.

We consider the determination of optimal sample sizes to estimate the concentration of organisms in ballast water via a semiparametric Bayesian approach involving a Dirichlet process mixture based on a Poisson model. This semiparametric model provides greater flexibility to model the organism distribution than that allowed by competing parametric models and is robust against misspecification. To obtain the optimal sample size we use a total cost minimization criterion, based on the sum of a Bayes risk and a sampling cost function. Credible intervals obtained via the proposed model may be used to verify compliance of the water with international standards before deballasting.

A Teoria da Resposta ao Item (TRI) vem ganhando cada vez mais espaço em testes de larga escala no Brasil, uma vez que este método adota independência entre itens e indivíduos. Assim, o objetivo geral deste trabalho é mostrar a possibilidade de se estimar a proficiência dos 21.039 candidatos que realizaram o Exame de Seleção 2020 do IFRN por meio da TRI, verificando se é mais vantajoso adotar essa metodologia em vez da Teoria Clássica dos Testes (TCT). Os resultados evidenciaram que a classificação final do certame sofreu alteração em praticamente todas as posições e isso se deve ao fato de a TRI utilizar a coerência pedagógica ao estimar a proficiência dos respondentes. Este trabalho se mostra útil para que gestores possam visualizar as vantagens de se utilizar a TRI no acesso discente.

O objetivo do presente trabalho foi avaliar se há diferenças no rendimento dos estudantes ingressantes no IFRN Campus Natal - Zona Norte que cursaram as disciplinas de Matemática e Língua Portuguesa nos anos de 2016 até 2019. Uma amostra de tamanho 150 foi obtida via amostragem aleatória simples sem reposição a partir de uma população com 583 alunos. Inicialmente, uma análise descritiva dos dados foi realizada para observar possíveis diferenças no rendimento dos alunos pós-estratificados de acordo com a escola de origem (pública ou privada), sexo, curso e renda per capita. Para realizar inferências sobre a população, estimativas intervalares, com 95% de confiança, para as notas médias foram realizadas. Os resultados sugerem que há diferença estatisticamente significativa no rendimento dos alunos em Matemática, quando eles são pós-estratificados por escola de origem.

Estimation of microorganism concentration in ballast water tanks is important to evaluate and possibly to prevent the introduction of invasive species in stable ecosystems. For such purpose, the number of organisms in ballast water aliquots must be counted and used to estimate their concentration with some precision requirement. Poisson and negative binomial models have been employed to describe the organism distribution in the tank, but determination of sample sizes required to generate estimates with pre-specified precision is still not well established. A Bayesian approach is a flexible alternative to accommodate adequate models that account for the heterogeneous distribution of the organisms and may provide a sequential way of enhancing the estimation procedure by updating the prior distribution along the ballast water discharging process. We adopt such an approach to compute sample sizes required to construct credible intervals obtained via two optimality criteria that have not been employed in this context. Such intervals may be used in the decision with respect to compliance with the D-2 standard of the Ballast Water Management Convention. We also conduct a simulation study to verify whether the credible intervals obtained with the proposed sample sizes satisfy the precision criteria.

We construct credible intervals to estimate the mean organism (zooplankton and phytoplankton) concentration in ballast water via a decision-theoretic approach. To obtain the required optimal sample size, we use a total cost minimization criterion defined as the sum of the sampling cost and the Bayes risk either under a Poisson or a negative binomial model for organism counts, both with a gamma prior distribution. Such credible intervals may be employed to verify whether the ballast water discharged from a ship is in compliance with international standards. We also conduct a simulation study to evaluate the credible interval lengths associated with the proposed optimal sample sizes.

In this article, we introduce a long-term survival model in which the number of competing causes of the event of interest follows the zero-modified geometric (ZMG) distribution. Such distribution accommodates equidispersion, underdispersion, and overdispersion and captures deflation or inflation of zeros in the number of lesions or initiated cells after the treatment. The ZMG distribution is also an appropriate alternative for modeling clustered samples when the number of competing causes of the event of interest consists of two subpopulations, one containing only zeros (cure proportion), while in the other (noncure proportion) the number of competing causes of the event of interest follows a geometric distribution. The advantage of this assumption is that we can measure the cure proportion in the initiated cells. Furthermore, the proposed model can yield greater or lower cure proportion than that of the geometric distribution when modeling the number of competing causes. In this article, we present some statistical properties of the proposed model and use the maximum likelihood method to estimate the model parameters. We also conduct a Monte Carlo simulation study to evaluate the performance of the estimators. We present and discuss two applications using real-world medical data to assess the practical usefulness of the proposed model.

This work tests the null hypothesis that the coefficients of the total landings, landed values, mean catches and price per kg of migratory and resident species are constant over time following the installation of two large run- of-the-river hydroelectric dams in a large tropical river. To identify shifts in catches and economic returns due to river impoundment, we inspected daily landing data (25-year time series) and wholesale prices (19-year time series) for the Madeira River, the largest tributary of the Amazon River. Our results show that the period of decreasing catches and increasing prices observed for fisheries in the Madeira River matched the timings of the construction of the two dams. According to the results, both dams quickly changed catches and fish supply to market, which were immediately echoed in the price per kg of exploited fish species. Following the dam con- struction, prices rose for both fish that became scarce and fish that became abundant. Though catches declined 58% in 25 years, the price increased 49% over the same period, representing a high economic cost for the local population. Further, there was a clear decline in the catches of some species (e.g., the dourada and the curimatã), but increased catches of others (e.g., the sardine and the tucunaré). Moreover, some fluctuation patterns across years showed natural oscillations, or changes, in local habitats and even fishing efforts.