DocumentCode
2238733
Title
Is there a relationship between sunspot numbers and psychiatric admissions?
Author
Cohen, Marc ; Wohlers, Anthony
Author_Institution
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Syst. Eng., Monash Univ., Clayton, Vic., Australia
fYear
1998
fDate
15-18 Feb 1998
Firstpage
149
Lastpage
150
Abstract
The authors examined the correlation between solar activity (sunspot numbers) and 96050 psychiatric admissions between July 1984 and December 1993, Victoria, Australia. Calculation of the Pearson correlation coefficient gave a value of 0.399 (P value; 0.0001). This value however, may be an artefact of autocorrelations within the two series rather than a relationship between them as the Pearson correlation does not account for the serial nature of the data. To overcome this problem the authors calculated the prewhitened cross-correlation between the series and tested whether they were uncorrelated. The test was significant (P value; 0.006), which gives strong evidence for a relationship between sunspot number and psychiatric admissions
Keywords
biological effects of radiation; medicine; sunspots; Australia; Pearson correlation; Pearson correlation coefficient; Victoria; autocorrelations artefact; prewhitened cross-correlation; psychiatric admissions; solar activity; sunspot numbers; Australia; Autocorrelation; Biomedical engineering; Biomedical informatics; Databases; Hospitals; Magnetic field measurement; Psychology; Systems engineering and theory; Testing;
fLanguage
English
Publisher
ieee
Conference_Titel
Bioelectromagnetism, 1998. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on
Conference_Location
Melbourne, Vic.
Print_ISBN
0-7803-3867-7
Type
conf
DOI
10.1109/ICBEM.1998.666439
Filename
666439
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