Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Relation Of Dietary Patterns To Future Survival, Health, And Cardiovascular Events In Older Adults, Paula Diehr

Paula Diehr

BACKGROUND: There have been few long-term follow-up studies of older adults who follow different dietary patterns. METHODS: We cluster-analyzed data on dietary fat, fiber, protein, carbohydrate, and calorie consumption from the U.S. Cardiovascular Health Study (mean age=73), and examined the relationship of the dietary clusters to outcomes 10 years later. RESULTS: The five clusters were named "Healthy diet" (relatively high in fiber and carbohydrate and low in fat), "Unhealthy diet" (relatively high in protein and fat, relatively low in carbohydrates and fiber); "High Calorie," "Low Calorie," and "Low 4," which was distinguished by higher alcohol consumption. The clusters were strongly …

Rejoinder To "“Wavelet-Based Nonparametric Modeling Of Hierarchical Functions In Colon Carcinogenesis.”, Jeffrey S. Morris, Marina Vannucci, Philip J. Brown, Raymond J. Carroll

Jeffrey S. Morris

No abstract provided.

Quality Control And Peak Finding For Proteomics Data Collected From Nipple Aspirate Fluid Using Surface Enhanced Laser Desorption And Ionization., Jeffrey S. Morris, Kevin R. Coombes, Herbert A. Fritsche, Charlotte Clarke, Jeng-Neng Chen, Keith A. Baggerly, Lian-Chun Xiao, Mien-Chie Hung, Henry M. Kuerer

Jeffrey S. Morris

Background: Recently, researchers have been using mass spectroscopy to study cancer. For use of proteomics spectra in a clinical setting, stringent quality-control procedures will be needed.

Methods: We pooled samples of nipple aspirate fluid from healthy breasts and breasts with cancer to prepare a control sample. Aliquots of the control sample were used on two spots on each of three IMAC ProteinChip® arrays (Ciphergen Biosystems, Inc.) on 4 successive days to generate 24 SELDI spectra. In 36 subsequent experiments, the control sample was applied to two spots of each ProteinChip array, and the resulting spectra were analyzed to determine how …

Imputation Of Missing Longitudinal Data: A Comparison Of Methods, Paula Diehr, Jean Mundahl Engels

Paula Diehr

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Missing information is inevitable in longitudinal studies, and can result in biased estimates and a loss of power. One approach to this problem is to impute the missing data to yield a more complete data set. Our goal was to compare the performance of 14 methods of imputing missing data on depression, weight, cognitive functioning, and self-rated health in a longitudinal cohort of older adults. METHODS: We identified situations where a person had a known value following one or more missing values, and treated the known value as a "missing value." This "missing value" was imputed using …

Nullificatory Juries, David A. Hoffman, Kaimipono D. Wenger

David A Hoffman

In this Article, we argue that current debates on the legitimacy of punitive damages would benefit from a comparison with jury nullification in criminal trials. We discuss critiques of punitive damages and of jury nullification, noting the surprising similarities in the arguments scholars use to attack these (superficially) distinct outcomes of the jury guarantee. Not only are the criticisms alike, the institutions of punitive damages and jury nullification also turn out to have many similarities: both are, we suggest, examples of what we call "nullificatory juries." We discuss the features of such juries, and consider recent behavioral data relating to …

Wavelet-Based Nonparametric Modeling Of Hierarchical Functions In Colon Carcinogenesis., Jeffrey S. Morris, Marina Vannucci, Philip J. Brown, Raymond J. Carroll

Jeffrey S. Morris

In this article we develop new methods for analyzing the data from an experiment using rodent models to investigate the effect of type of dietary fat on O6-methylguanine-DNA-methyltransferase (MGMT), an important biomarker in early colon carcinogenesis. The data consist of observed profiles over a spatial variable contained within a two-stage hierarchy, a structure that we dub hierarchical functional data. We present a new method providing a unified framework for modeling these data, simultaneously yielding estimates and posterior samples for mean, individual, and subsample-level profiles, as well as covariance parameters at the various hierarchical levels. Our method is nonparametric in that …

Trajectories Of Health For Older Adults Over Time: Accounting Fully For Death, Paula Diehr

Paula Diehr

The process of healthy aging can best be described by plotting the trajectory of health-related variables over time. Unfortunately, graphs including data only from survivors may be misleading because they may confuse patterns of mortality with patterns of change in health. Two approaches for creating graphs that account for death in such situations are 1) to incorporate a category or value for death into the longitudinal health variable and 2) to measure time in years before death or some other event. The first approach has been applied to self-rated health (excellent to poor) and the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36). …

A Comprehensive Approach To The Analysis Of Maldi-Tof Proteomics Spectra From Serum Samples., Keith A. Baggerly, Jeffrey S. Morris, Jing Wang, David Gold, Lian-Chun Xiao, Kevin R. Coombes

Jeffrey S. Morris

For our analysis of the data from the First Annual Proteomics Data Mining Conference, we attempted to discriminate between 24 disease spectra (group A) and 17 normal spectra (group B). First, we processed the raw spectra by (i) correcting for additive sinusoidal noise (periodic on the time scale) affecting most spectra, (ii) correcting for the overall baseline level, (iii) normalizing, (iv) recombining fractions, and (v) using variable- width windows for data reduction. Also, we identified a set of polymeric peaks (at multiples of 180.6 Da) that is present in several normal spectra (B1–B8). After data processing, we found the intensities …

Bayesian Shrinkage Estimation Of The Relative Abundance Of Mrna Transcripts Using Sage, Jeffrey S. Morris, Keith A. Baggerly, Kevin R. Coombes

Jeffrey S. Morris

Serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) is a technology for quantifying gene expression in biological tissue that yields count data that can be modeled by a multinomial distribution with two characteristics: skewness in the relative frequencies and small sample size relative to the dimension. As a result of these characteristics, a given SAGE sample may fail to capture a large number of expressed mRNA species present in the tissue. Empirical estimators of mRNA species’ relative abundance effectively ignore these missing species, and as a result tend to overestimate the abundance of the scarce observed species comprising a vast majority of …

The Press For Help Project Concept, Program And Working Paper Of Emmanuel Mario B Santos And His Marc Guerrero Communications Inc., Emmanuel Mario B. Santos Aka Marc Guerrero

Emmanuel Mario B Santos aka Marc Guerrero

FORETHOUGHT. DECLARATION OF IDEAOLOGY AND PRINCIPLES. VISION. MISSION. VALUES. GOALS. BASIC HELP project. EDUCATIONAL HELP project. MEDICAL HELP project. LEGAL HELP project. EMERGENCY HELP project. LIVELIHOOD HELP project. SPIRITUAL and CULTURAL HELP project. ENVIRONMENTAL HELP project. REENGINEERING HELP project. INTERNATIONAL HELP project. QUADRO CREDO Matthew 5.1-12, the Jerusalem Bible. The Universal Filipino Beatitudes. SALIN SA FILIPINO. DESIDERATA. AFTERTHOUGHT.

Oil And Product Price Dynamics In International Petroleum Markets, Alessandro Lanza, Matteo Manera, Massimo Giovannini

Matteo Manera

In this paper we investigate crude oil and products price dynamics. We present a comparison among ten price series of crude oils and fourteen price series of petroleum products, considering four distinct market areas (Mediterranean, North Western Europe, Latin America and North America) over the period 1994-2002. We provide first a complete analysis of crude oil and product price dynamics using cointegration and error correction models. Subsequently we use the error correction specification to predict crude oil prices over the horizon January 2002-June 2002.The main findings of the paper can be summarized as follows: a) differences in quality are crucial …

Star-Garch Models For Stock Market Interactions In The Pacific Basin Region, Japan And Us, Giorgio Busetti, Matteo Manera

Matteo Manera

We investigate the financial interactions between countries in the Pacific Basin region (Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan), Japan and US. The originality of the paper is the use of STAR-GARCH models, instead of standard correlationcointegration techniques. For each country in the Pacific Basin region, we find statistically adequate STAR-GARCH models for the series of stock market daily returns, using Nikkei225 and S&P500 as alternative threshold variables. We provide evidence for the leading role of Japan in the period 1988-1990 (pre-Japanese crisis years), whereas our results suggest that the Pacific Basin region countries are more closely linked with the …

Modelling The Load Curve Of Aggregate Electricity Consumption Using Principal Components, Matteo Manera, Angelo Marzullo

Matteo Manera

Since oil is a non-renewable resource with a high environmental impact, and its most common use is to produce combustibles for electricity, reliable methods for modelling electricity consumption can contribute to a more rational employment of this hydrocarbon fuel. In this paper we apply the Principal Components (PC) method to modelling the load curves of Italy, France and Greece on hourly data of aggregate electricity consumption. The empirical results obtained with the PC approach are compared with those produced by the Fourier and constrained smoothing spline estimators. The PC method represents a much simpler and attractive alternative to modelling electricity …