Temporal-spatial diversities of long-range correlation for relative humidity over China

Long-range correlations of daily relative humidity anomaly records from 191 weather stations over China during 1951-2000 are analyzed by means of fluctuation analysis (FA) and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). The information about trends in the relative humidity records can be obtained by comparing the FA curve with DFA curves. The daily relative humidity fluctuations are found to be power-law correlated and their average scaling exponent is higher than that of the temperature fluctuations, indicating that the relative humidity fluctuations take different statistical behavior from other meteorological quantities and there exists a stronger persistence in the relative humidity fluctuations. Furthermore, it is also found that these power-law scaling properties vary from station to station and show both spatial and temporal diversities, which may be explained by a proposed mechanism.     

Preservation of long range temporal correlations under extreme random dilution

Many natural time series exhibit long range temporal correlations that may be characterized by power-law scaling exponents. However, in many cases, the time series have uneven time intervals due to, for example, missing data points, noisy data, and outliers. Here we study the effect of randomly missing data points on the power-law scaling exponents of time series that are long range temporally correlated. The Fourier transform and detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) techniques are used for scaling exponent estimation. We find that even under extreme dilution of more than 50%, the value of the scaling exponent remains almost unaffected. Random dilution is also applied on heart interbeat interval time series. It is found that dilution of 70%-80% of the data points leads to a reduction of only 8% in the scaling exponent; it is also found that it is possible to discriminate between healthy and heart failure subjects even under extreme dilution of more than 90%.     

Non-uniform scaling behavior in ultra-low-frequency (ULF) earthquake-related geomagnetic signals

Investigating highly non-stationary time series, which typically exhibit long-range correlations, is a classic problem in physics. Here, we analyze the scaling properties of the dynamics of ultra-low-frequency (ULF) geomagnetic data (in the frequency range between 1 mHz and 10 Hz) observed at Izu Peninsula in Japan. On the basis of the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), deviations from uniform power-law scaling were quantified. Our findings point out to a significant non-uniform scaling behavior in ULF geomagnetic data in relationship with the occurrence of intense seismic clusters.     

Detrended fluctuation analysis of heart intrabeat dynamics

We investigate scaling properties of electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings of healthy subjects and heart failure patients based on detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). While the vast majority of scaling analysis has focused on the characterization of the long-range correlations of interbeat (i.e., beat-to-beat) dynamics, in this work we consider instead the characterization of intrabeat dynamics. That is, here we use DFA to study correlations for time scales smaller than one heart beat period (about 0.75 s). Our results show that intrabeat dynamics of healthy subject are less correlated than for heart failure dynamics. As in the case of interbeat dynamics, the DFA scaling exponents can be used to discriminate healthy and pathological data. It is shown that 0.5 h recordings suffices to characterize the ECG correlation properties.     

Correlated and uncorrelated regions in heart-rate fluctuations during sleep

Healthy sleep consists of several stages: deep sleep, light sleep, and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Here we show that these sleep stages can be characterized and distinguished by correlations of heart rates separated by n beats. Using the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) up to fourth order we find that long-range correlations reminiscent to the wake phase are present only in the REM phase. In the non-REM phases, the heart rates are uncorrelated above the typical breathing cycle time, pointing to a random regulation of the heartbeat during non-REM sleep.     

Effects of quantization on detrended fluctuation analysis

Detrended fluctuation analysis(DFA) is a method foro estimating the long-range power-law correlation exponent in noisy signals.It has been used successfully in many different fields,especially in the research of physiological signals.As an inherent part of these studies,quantization of continuous signals is inevitable.In addition,coarse-graining,to transfer original signals into symbol series in symbolic dynamic analysis,can also be considered as a quantization-like operation.Therefore,it is worth considering whether the quantization of signal has any effect on the result of DFA and if so,how large the effect will be.In this paper we study how the quantized degrees for three types of noise series(anti-correlated,uncorrelated and long-range power-law correlated signals) affect the results of DFA and find that their effects are completely different.The conclusion has an essential value in choosing the resolution of data acquisition instrument and in the processing of coarse-graining of signals.     

Scaling characteristics of ocean wave height time series

Fluctuations in the significant wave height can be quantified by using scaling statistics. In this paper, the scaling properties of the significant wave height were explored by using a large data set of hourly series from 25 monitoring stations located off the west coast of the US. Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) was used to investigate the scaling properties of the series. DFA is a robust technique that can be used to detect long-range correlations in nonstationary time series. The significant wave height data was analyzed by using scales from hourly to monthly. It was found that a common scaling behavior can be observed for all stations. A breakpoint in the scaling region around 4-5 days was apparent. Spectral analysis confirms this result. This breakpoint divided the scaling region into two distinct parts. The first part was for finer scales (up to 4 days) which exhibited Brown noise characteristics, while the second one showed 1/f noise behavior at coarser scales (5 days to 1 month). The first order and the second order DFA (DFA1 and DFA2) were used to check the effect of seasonality. It was found that there were no differences between DFA1 and DFA2 results, indicating that there is no effect of trends in the wave height time series. The resulting scaling coefficients range from 0.696 to 0.890 indicating that the wave height exhibits long-term persistence. There were no coherent spatial variations in the scaling coefficients.     

Levels of complexity in turbulent time series for weakly and high Reynolds number

We use the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), the detrended cross correlation analysis (DCCA) and the magnitude and sign decomposition analysis to study the fluctuations in the turbulent time series and to probe long-term nonlinear levels of complexity in weakly and high turbulent flow. The DFA analysis indicate that there is a time scaling region in the fluctuation function, segregating regimes with different scaling exponents. We discuss that this time scaling region is related to inertial range in turbulent flows. The DCCA exponent implies the presence of power-law cross correlations. In addition, we conclude its multifractality for high Reynold’s number in inertial range. Further, we find that turbulent time series exhibit complex features by magnitude and sign scaling exponents.     

Different scaling behaviors in daily temperature records over China

Long-range correlations of five kinds of daily temperature records (i.e. daily average temperature records, daily maximum temperature records, daily minimum temperature records, diurnal temperature range and the sum of daily maximum and minimum temperature records) from 164 weather stations over China during 1951-2004 are analyzed by means of detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). These five kinds of fluctuation series are found to be power-law correlated with scaling exponents larger than 0.5. Local changes of scaling exponents are examined and the spatial distributions of these different kinds of temperature records are similar except the diurnal temperature range (DTR for short) records. Furthermore, the differences of the scaling behavior among diurnal temperature records and other kinds of temperature records are discussed.     

Quantification of scaling exponents and crossover phenomena in nonstationary heartbeat time series

The healthy heartbeat is traditionally thought to be regulated according to the classical principle of homeostasis whereby physiologic systems operate to reduce variability and achieve an equilibrium-like state [Physiol. Rev. 9, 399-431 (1929)]. However, recent studies [Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 1343-1346 (1993); Fractals in Biology and Medicine (Birkhauser-Verlag, Basel, 1994), pp. 55-65] reveal that under normal conditions, beat-to-beat fluctuations in heart rate display the kind of long-range correlations typically exhibited by dynamical systems far from equilibrium [Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 381-384 (1987)]. In contrast, heart rate time series from patients with severe congestive heart failure show a breakdown of this long-range correlation behavior. We describe a new method--detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA)--for quantifying this correlation property in non-stationary physiological time series. Application of this technique shows evidence for a crossover phenomenon associated with a change in short and long-range scaling exponents. This method may be of use in distinguishing healthy from pathologic data sets based on differences in these scaling properties.     

Comparison of detrending methods for fluctuation analysis

We examine several recently suggested methods for the detection of long-range correlations in data series based on similar ideas as the well-established Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA). In particular, we present a detailed comparison between the regular DFA and two recently suggested methods: the Centered Moving Average (CMA) Method and a Modified Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MDFA). We find that CMA performs the same as DFA in long data with weak trends and is slightly superior to DFA in short data with weak trends. When comparing standard DFA to MDFA we observe that DFA performs slightly better in almost all examples we studied. We also discuss how several types of trends affect different types of DFA. For weak trends in the data, the new methods are comparable with DFA in these respects. However, if the functional form of the trend in data is not a-priori known, DFA remains the method of choice. Only a comparison of DFA results, using different detrending polynomials, yields full recognition of the trends. A comparison with independent methods is recommended for proving long-range correlations.     

脑电信号的标度分析及其在睡眠状态区分中的应用

脑电信号具有长程幂律相关性及多重分形的标度特性,并随生理病理状态改变.本文首次针对睡眠脑电信号应用单重分形去趋势波动分析(detrended fluctuation analysis,简记为DFA)方法与多重分形奇异谱对睡眠脑电信号的标度特征进行系统的对比研究.发现DFA标度指数α对于不同导联和样本组间的差异较为敏感,随睡眠状态的变化不规律;而多重分形奇异强度区间Δα随睡眠状态的变化更为规律,睡眠Ⅰ期至Ⅳ期不断增大,并且导联间差异和样本组间差异均较小.多重分形Δα参数更适合作为判定睡眠状态的定量参数.     

Power law and multiscaling properties of the Chinese stock market

We investigate the cumulative probability density function (PDF) and the multiscaling properties of the returns in the Chinese stock market. By using returns data adjusted for thin trading, we find that the distribution has power-law tails at shorter microscopic timescales or lags. However, the distribution follows an exponential law for longer timescales. Furthermore, we investigate the long-range correlation and multifractality of the returns in the Chinese stock market by the DFA and MFDFA methods. We find that all the scaling exponents are between 0.5 and 1 by DFA method, which exhibits the long-range power-law correlations in the Chinese stock market. Moreover, we find, by MFDFA method, that the generalized Hurst exponents h(q) are not constants, which shows the multifractality in the Chinese stock market. We also find that the correlation of Shenzhen stock market is stronger than that of Shanghai stock market.     

Detecting dynamical nonstationarity in time series data

Nonlinear time series analysis is becoming an ever more powerful tool to explore complex phenomena and uncover underlying patterns from irregular data recorded from experiments. However, the existence of dynamical nonstationarity in time series data causes many results of such analysis to be questionable and inconclusive. It is increasingly recognized that detecting dynamical nonstationarity is a crucial precursor to data analysis. In this paper, we present a test procedure to detect dynamical nonstationarity by directly inspecting the dependence of nonlinear statistical distributions on absolute time along a trajectory in phase space. We test this method using a broad range of data, chaotic, stochastic and power-law noise, both computer-generated and observed, and show that it provides a reliable test method in analyzing experimental data. (c) 1999 American Institute of Physics.     

Qualitative assessment of cDNA microarray gene expression data using detrended fluctuation analysis

A number of microarray studies assume gene expression data to be independent of one another. In this report, we provide evidence of correlation in cDNA microarray gene expression data using classical power spectral analysis and the sophisticated detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). Such correlations are shown to be an outcome of gene's position on the arrays and immune to pre-processing procedures such as normalization. The results presented encourage DFA as a tool for qualitative assessment of microarray gene expression data prior to inferring differential gene expression.     

Scaling instability in self-potential earthquake-related signals

Scaling behavior of the temporal variability in self-potential data recorded in the frequency range during 1995 at Acapulco station (Mexico) was identified and analyzed. In this period, a strong earthquake (Ms=7.4) struck the monitored area on September 14, 1995. Using the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), which is a powerful method to detect scaling in nonstationary time series, deviations from stable power-law scaling were quantified. Our findings point to an evident unstable scaling behavior in self-potential data before the occurrence of the seismic event. These first results could be useful in the framework of earthquake prediction studies.     

Qualitative assessment of gene expression in affymetrix genechip arrays

Affymetrix Genechip microarrays are used widely to determine the simultaneous expression of genes in a given biological paradigm. Probes on the Genechip array are atomic entities which by definition are randomly distributed across the array and in turn govern the gene expression. In the present study, we make several interesting observations. We show that there is considerable correlation between the probe intensities across the array which defy the independence assumption. While the mechanism behind such correlations is unclear, we show that scaling behavior and the profiles of perfect match (PM) as well as mismatch (MM) probes are similar and immune-to-background subtraction. We believe that the observed correlations are possibly an outcome of inherent non-stationarities or patchiness in the array devoid of biological significance. This is demonstrated by inspecting their scaling behavior and profiles of the PM and MM probe intensities obtained from publicly available Genechip arrays from three eukaryotic genomes, namely: Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly), Homo sapiens (humans) and Mus musculus (house mouse) across distinct biological paradigms and across laboratories, with and without background subtraction. The fluctuation functions were estimated using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) with fourth-order polynomial detrending. The results presented in this study provide new insights into correlation signatures of PM and MM probe intensities and suggests the choice of DFA as a tool for qualitative assessment of Affymetrix Genechip microarrays prior to their analysis. A more detailed investigation is necessary in order to understand the source of these correlations.     

Detecting long-range correlations in fire sequences with Detrended fluctuation analysis

The spatial-temporal power-law distributions are found in many natural systems, which have self-similarity and fractal behavior. By analyzing the time series of such systems, we could expect to explore and understand the underlying mechanisms. In this paper, the Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) is used to analyze the long-range correlations of forest and urban fires in Japan and China. It is found that the interevent time series of both forest and urban fires have the persistent long-range power-law correlations, and they all have two scaling exponents, α₁ and α₂, which are both bigger than 0.5 and smaller than 1.0, despite the different regions and countries. For forest fires, 0.61<α₁<0.73,0.87<α₂<0.98 and for urban fires, 0.52<α₁<0.61,0.59<α₂<0.88. The result suggests that fires have self-similarity characteristics. The occurrence of forest fires may have connection with the weather fluctuations, which have significant effects on the ignition and have the similar temporal correlations. It is shown that the interval sequences of urban fires closely resemble that of white noise in small timescale, and the correlations are weaker than that of forest fires. Human behavior and human density may affect the long-range correlation in some way. This seems to be helpful to understand the complexity of fire system in temporal aspect.     

From 1/f noise to multifractal cascades in heartbeat dynamics

We explore the degree to which concepts developed in statistical physics can be usefully applied to physiological signals. We illustrate the problems related to physiologic signal analysis with representative examples of human heartbeat dynamics under healthy and pathologic conditions. We first review recent progress based on two analysis methods, power spectrum and detrended fluctuation analysis, used to quantify long-range power-law correlations in noisy heartbeat fluctuations. The finding of power-law correlations indicates presence of scale-invariant, fractal structures in the human heartbeat. These fractal structures are represented by self-affine cascades of beat-to-beat fluctuations revealed by wavelet decomposition at different time scales. We then describe very recent work that quantifies multifractal features in these cascades, and the discovery that the multifractal structure of healthy dynamics is lost with congestive heart failure. The analytic tools we discuss may be used on a wide range of physiologic signals. (c) 2001 American Institute of Physics.     

Effect of coarse-graining on detrended fluctuation analysis

Several studies have investigated the scaling behavior in naturally occurring biological and physical processes using techniques such as detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). Data acquisition is an inherent part of these studies and maps the continuous process into digital data. The resulting digital data is discretized in amplitude and time, and shall be referred to as coarse-grained realization in the present study. Since coarse-graining precedes scaling exponent analysis, it is important to understand its effects on scaling exponent estimators such as DFA. In this brief communication, k-means clustering is used to generate coarse-grained realizations of data sets with different correlation properties, namely: anti-correlated noise, long-range correlated noise and uncorrelated noise. It is shown that the coarse-graining can significantly affect the scaling exponent estimates. It is also shown that scaling exponent can be reliably estimated even at low levels of coarse-graining and the number of the clusters required varies across the data sets with different correlation properties.