• introduced new methods 'par.names' and 'posterior.samples' for class 'brmsfit' to extract parameter names and posterior samples for given parameters, respectively.
• introduced new method 'hypothesis' for class 'brmsfit' allowing to test non-linear hypotheses concerning fixed effects
• introduced new argument 'addition' in function brm to get a more flexible approach in specifying additional information on the response variable (e.g., standard errors for meta-analysis). Alternatively, this information can also be passed to the formula argument directly.
• introduced weighted and censored regressions through argument 'addition' of function brm
• introduced new argument 'cov.ranef' in function brm allowing for customized covariance structures of random effects
• introduced new argument 'autocor' in function brm allowing for autocorrelation of the response variable.
• introduced new functions 'cor.ar', 'cor.ma', and 'cor.arma', to be used with argument 'autocor' for modeling autoregressive, moving-average, and autoregressive-moving-average models.
• amended parametrization of random effects to increase efficiency of the sampling algorithms
• improved vectorization of sampling statements
• fixed a bug that could cause an error when fitting poisson models while predict = TRUE
• fixed a bug that caused an error when sampling only one chain while silent = TRUE