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Minerva 2004, The Honors College

Minerva

This issue of Minerva includes an article on HON 350: An Introduction to Functional Genomics; an article on the creation and inaugural year of HON 180: A Cultural Odyssey; a profile on Honors alumnus, Charles Stanhope and his 2004 Distinguished Honors Graduate Lecture; and interviews with Allison Kelly, Jessica Hudec, and Jennifer Merchant on their experiences as Honors student-athletes.

Cooperative Conservation - Interagency Volunteer Program Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending December 31, 2004, Margaret N. Rees

Get Outdoors Nevada

Collaboration with Interagency Team

During the third quarter, the interagency volunteer team and university representatives have held several meetings to continue progress on the Interagency Volunteer Program (IVP). At the beginning of October, candidates for the project manager position were interviewed by the university search committee, followed by interviews with the interagency team on October 6, 2004. After two finalists were identified, reference checks were made and the university and team recommended to the federal managers that Ms. Donna Grady be hired. Ms. Grady’s first day on the job was December 1, 2004. In the interim, Nancy Flagg, Public Lands …

Intranasal Vaccination With Streptococcal Fibronectin Binding Protein Sfb1 Fails To Prevent Growth And Dissemination Of Streptococcus Pyogenes In A Murine Skin Infection Model, Jason D. Mcarthur, E. Medina, J. Chin, B. J. Currie, K. S. Sriprakash, S. R. Talay, G. S. Chhatwal, Mark J. Walker

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

Fibronectin binding protein F1 (Sfb1) of Streptococcus pyogenes (group A streptococcus [GAS]) is a well-characterized adhesin that has been shown to induce protection in mice against a lethal intranasal GAS challenge after intranasal immunization with cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) as adjuvant. With a murine skin infection model, we have shown that Sfb1/CTB vaccination neither elicits opsonizing antibodies nor prevents systemic bacterial growth and dissemination to internal organs after a subcutaneous GAS challenge. These results indicate that an Sfb1-based vaccine should be complemented with additional protective antigens in order to be used in areas such as the tropical north of …

Divided Culture: Integrating And Conservation Biology Agriculture, John Banks

SIAS Faculty Publications

Production agriculture, with its implied ecosystem simplification, pesticide and fertilizer use, and emphasis on yield, often appears to be at odds with conservation biology. From a farmer's perspective, the weight conservation biology places on wildlife may seem overly idealistic and naive, detached from economic and sociopolitical reality. In fact, these endeavors are two sides of the same coin, with a shared heritage in decades of population and community ecological theory and experimentation. Better integration of the two disciplines requires acknowledging their various goals and working to produce mutually beneficial outcomes. The best examples of this type of integrated approach result …

The Other Side Of Silence: Rachel Carson’S Views Of Animals, Marc Bekoff, Jan Nystrom

Animal Welfare Collection

The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 is widely regarded as one of the major events that launched the modern environmental movement. Silent Spring is a compelling blend of stories, natural history, human values, and biological facts. In this essay we consider Carson’s attitude toward animals in Silent Spring and in other texts. Despite the facts that she was raised to love Nature and animals, little direct attention has been given to Carson’s views about our moral responsibilities to, and the moral standing of animals. Carson favored responsible stewardship, was more of an animal welfarist and environmentalist/conservation biologist …

Agenda: Introduction To The Legal Foundation Of Federal Land Management, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Introduction to the Legal Foundation of Federal Land Management (December 1-3)

Materials prepared for the course held at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado on December 1-3, 2004

Course instructors: Charles Wilkinson; Sarah Krakoff; Kathryn Mutz; Ann Morgan; Maggie Fox

Contents:

Introduction -- Agenda -- Summaries of laws -- Case studies. Travel management; Oil and gas development; Timber/fuels reduction -- How to influence agency decision makers -- Natural resource related legal and policy resources for the non-legal professional

Introduction To The Legal Foundation Of Federal Land Management, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Introduction to the Legal Foundation of Federal Land Management (December 1-3)

1 v. (various pagings) : ill., maps ; 28 cm

Materials prepared for the course held at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado on December 1-3, 2004

Course instructors: Charles Wilkinson; Sarah Krakoff; Kathryn Mutz; Ann Morgan; Maggie Fox

Contents:

Introduction -- Agenda -- Summaries of laws -- Case studies. Travel management; Oil and gas development; Timber/fuels reduction -- How to influence agency decision makers -- Natural resource related legal and policy resources for the non-legal professional

Estimating The Economic Recreational Value Of Paracas National Reserve In Ica Peru: A Fair Fee Implementation Approach, Jaqueline Garcia-Yi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Paracas National Reserve (PNR) is one of the fifty-seven protected areas that belong to the National System of Protected Areas (SINANPE) of Peru. Located in Ica Department, on the Pacific coast of Peru, it is the only coastal-marine ecosystem currently protected by the Peruvian government. PNR has been internationally recognized, principally as a wintering area for bird migrations. It has been designated as a Regional Shorebird Reserve by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (1991), a Ramsar site by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (1992), and a Particular Sensitive Sea Area by the …

Context-Specific Preference Learning Of One Dimensional Quantitative Geospatial Attributes Using A Neuro-Fuzzy Approach, Georgios Mountrakis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Change detection is a topic of great importance for modern geospatial information systems. Digital aerial imagery provides an excellent medium to capture geospatial information. Rapidly evolving environments, and the availability of increasing amounts of diverse, multiresolutional imagery bring forward the need for frequent updates of these datasets. Analysis and query of spatial data using potentially outdated data may yield results that are sometimes invalid. Due to measurement errors (systematic, random) and incomplete knowledge of information (uncertainty) it is ambiguous if a change in a spatial dataset has really occurred. Therefore we need to develop reliable, fast, and automated procedures that …

Weir River Estuary: Land Protection Plan, Chantal Lefebvre, Michelle Portman

Urban Harbors Institute Publications

If economic growth were the only measure of a community’s health and vitality, then the communities of Cohasset, Hingham, and Hull are fairing well. But this economic success is generally accompanied by changes in the physical landscape that can be unsettling for residents, especially when it means more development and expansion at the expense of culturally and socially important open space areas such as parks, woods, and marshes. The rapid pace and fragmented nature of such sprawling development gives communities little opportunity to come to terms with the long-term impacts, which in turn can lead to a sense of powerlessness …

Recommender Systems For Multimedia Libraries: An Evaluation Of Different Models For Datamining Usage Data, Raquel Oliveira Araujo

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Many recommender systems exist today to help users deal with the large growth in the amount of information available in the Internet. Most of these recommender systems use collaborative filtering or content-based techniques to present new material that would be of interest to a user. While these methods have proven to be effective, they have not been designed specifically for multimedia collections. In this study we present a new method to find recommendations that is not dependent on traditional Information Retrieval (IR) methods and compare it to algorithms that do rely on traditional IR methods. We evaluated these algorithms using …

An Exploratory Study That Examines Perceptions, By The Regulated Community, On The Effectiveness Of Air Quality Permitting For Clark County, By The Department Of Air Quality And Environmental Management, Scott Jelinek

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA) made the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) responsible for establishing and maintaining federal programs that control air quality. In turn, each state was delegated responsibility for air quality within its borders, although this responsibility may be shared with Native Americans or tribal lands. In many states, jurisdiction has been delegated to regional or local agencies that are then responsible for air quality in their respective air basins. Even though terrain or water bodies define the physical boundaries of air basins, they are usually designated by County boundaries for regulatory convenience (Wooley, David R., 1997).

Confidence Intervals On Subsets May Be Misleading, Juliet Popper Shaffer

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A combination of hypothesis testing and confidence interval construction is often used in social and behavioral science studies. Sometimes confidence intervals are computed or reported only if a null hypothesis is rejected, perhaps to see whether the range of values is of practical importance. Sometimes they are constructed or reported only if a null hypothesis is accepted, in order to assess the range of plausible nonnull values due to inadequate power to detect them. Even if always computed, they are interpreted differently, depending on whether the null value is or is not included. Furthermore, many studies in which the null …

Confidence Elicitation And Anchoring In The Respondent-Generated Intervals (Rgi) Protocol, Liping Chu, S. James Press, Judith M. Tanur

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The Respondent-Generated Intervals protocol (RGI) has been used to have respondents recall the answer to a factual question by giving not only a point estimate but also bounds within which they feel it is almost certain that the true value of the quantity being reported upon falls. The RGI protocol is elaborated in this article with the goal of improving the accuracy of the estimators by introducing cueing mechanisms to direct confident (and thus presumably accurate) respondents to give shorter intervals and less confident (and thus presumably less accurate) respondents to give longer ones.

Laboratory Routines Cause Animal Stress, Jonathan P. Balcombe, Neal D. Barnard, Chad Sandusky

Laboratory Experiments Collection

Eighty published studies were appraised to document the potential stress associated with three routine laboratory procedures commonly performed on animals: handling, blood collection, and orogastric gavage. We defined handling as any non-invasive manipulation occurring as part of routine husbandry, including lifting an animal and cleaning or moving an animal's cage. Significant changes in physiologic parameters correlated with stress (e.g., serum or plasma concentrations of corticosterone, glucose, growth hormone or prolactin, heart rate, blood pressure, and behavior) were associated with all three procedures in multiple species in the studies we examined. The results of these studies demonstrated that animals responded with …

Assessing Treatment Effects In Randomized Longitudinal Two-Group Designs With Missing Observations, James Algina, H. J. Keselman

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

SAS’s PROC MIXED can be problematic when analyzing data from randomized longitudinal two-group designs when observations are missing over time. Overall (1996, 1999) and colleagues found a number of procedures that are effective in controlling the number of false positives (Type I errors) and are yet sensitive (powerful) to detect treatment effects. Two favorable methods incorporate time in study and baseline scores to model the missing data mechanism; one method was a single-stage PROC MIXED ANCOVA solution and the other was a two-stage endpoint analysis using the change scores as dependent scores. Because the twostage approach can lack sensitivity to …

An Overview Of The Respondent-Generated Intervals (Rgi) Approach To Sample Surveys, S. James Press, Judith M. Tanur

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

This article brings together many years of research on the Respondent-Generated Intervals (RGI) approach to recall in factual sample surveys. Additionally presented is new research on the use of RGI in opinion surveys and the use of RGI with gamma-distributed data. The research combines Bayesian hierarchical modeling with various cognitive aspects of sample surveys.

Multivariate Contrasts For Repeated Measures Designs Under Assumption Violations, Lisa M. Lix, Aynslie M. Hinds

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Conventional and approximate degrees of freedom procedures for testing multivariate interaction contrasts in groups by trials repeated measures designs were compared under assumption violation conditions. Procedures were based on either least-squares or robust estimators. Power generally favored test procedures based on robust estimators for non-normal distributions, but was influenced by the degree of departure from non-normality, definition of power, and magnitude of the multivariate effect size.

Modeling Incomplete Longitudinal Data, Hakan Demirtas

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

This article presents a review of popular parametric, semiparametric and ad-hoc approaches for analyzing incomplete longitudinal data.

Variance Stabilizing Power Transformation For Time Series, Victor M. Guerrero, Rafael Perera

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A confidence interval was derived for the index of a power transformation that stabilizes the variance of a time-series. The process starts from a model-independent procedure that minimizes a coefficient of variation to yield a point estimate of the transformation index. The confidence coefficient of the interval is calibrated through a simulation.

Size And Power Of The Reset Test As Applied To Systems Of Equations: A Bootstrap Approach, Ghazi Shukur, Panagiotis Mantalos

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The size and power of various generalization of the RESET test for functional misspecification are investigated, using the “Bootsrap critical values”, in systems ranging from one to ten equations. The properties of 8 versions of the test are studied using Monte Carlo methods. The results are then compared with another study of Shukur and Edgerton (2002), in which they used the asymptotic critical values instead and found that in general only one version of the tests works well regarding size properties. In our study, when applying the bootstrap critical values, we find that all the tests exhibits correct size even …

Type I Error Rates For A One Factor Within-Subjects Design With Missing Values, Miguel A. Padilla, James Algina

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Missing data are a common problem in educational research. A promising technique, that can be implemented in SAS PROC MIXED and is therefore widely available, is to use maximum likelihood to estimate model parameters and base hypothesis tests on these estimates. However, it is not clear which test statistic in PROC MIXED performs better with missing data. The performance of the Hotelling- Lawley-McKeon and Kenward-Roger omnibus test statistics on the means for a single factor withinsubject ANOVA are compared. The results indicate that the Kenward-Roger statistic performed better in terms of keeping the Type I error close to the nominal …

Interval Estimation For The Scale Parameter Of Burr Type X Distribution Based On Grouped Data, Amjad D. Al-Nasser, Ayman Baklizi

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The application of some bootstrap type intervals for the scale parameter of the Burr type X distribution with grouped data is proposed. The general asymptotic confidence interval procedure (Chen & Mi, 2001) is studied. The performance of these intervals is investigated and compared. Some of the bootstrap intervals give better performance for situations of small sample size and heavy censoring.

Pseudo-Random Number Generation In R For Commonly Used Multivariate Distributions, Hakan Demirtas

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

An increasing number of practitioners and applied statisticians have started using the R programming system in recent years for their computing and data analysis needs. As far as pseudo-random number generation is concerned, the built-in generator in R does not contain multivariate distributions. In this article, R routines for widely used multivariate distributions are presented.

An Algorithm And Code For Computing Exact Critical Values For The Kruskal-Wallis Nonparametric One-Way Anova, Sikha Bagui, Subhash Bagui

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

In this article, an algorithm and code to compute exact critical values (or percentiles) for Kruskal-Wallis test on k independent treatment populations with equal or unequal sample sizes using Visual Basic (VB.NET) is provided. This program has the ability to calculate critical values for any k , sample sizes (n_i ) , and significance level (α ) . An exact critical value table for k = 4 is also developed. The table will be useful to practitioners since it is not available in standard nonparametric statistics texts. The program can also be used to compute any other …

Aligned Rank Tests As Robust Alternatives For Testing Interactions In Multiple Group Repeated Measures Designs With Heterogeneous Covariances, Xiaosheng Lei, Janet K. Holt, T. Mark Beasley

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Data simulation was used to investigate whether tests performed on aligned ranks (Beasley, 2002) could be used as robust alternatives to parametric methods for testing a split-plot interaction with non-normal data and heterogeneous covariance matrices. Results indicated the aligned rank method do not have any distinct advantage over parametric methods in this situation.

Multivariate And Multistrata Nonparametric Tests: The Nonparametric Combination Method, Livio Corain, Luigi Salmaso

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Researchers and practitioners in many scientific disciplines and industrial fields are often faced with complex problems when dealing with comparisons between two or more groups using classical parametric methods. The data arising from real problems rarely are in agreement with stringent parametric assumptions. The NonParametric Combination (NPC) methodology frees the researcher from stringent assumptions of parametric methods and allows a more flexible analysis, both in terms of specification of multivariate hypotheses and in terms of the nature of the variables involved in the analysis. An outline of NPC methodology is given, along with case studies.

Statistics And Technology: Reflections On 35 Years Of Change, James J. Higgins

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

From the days when statistical calculations were done on mechanical calculators to today, technology has transformed the discipline of statistics. More than just giving statisticians the power to crunch numbers, it has fundamentally changed the way we teach, do research, and consult. In this article, I give some examples of this from my 35 years as an academic statistician.

A Conversation With R. Clifford Blair On The Occasion Of His Retirement, Shlomo S. Sawilowsky

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

An interview was conducted on 23 November 2003 with R. Clifford Blair on the occasion on his retirement from the University of South Florida. This article is based on that interview. Biographical sketches and images of members of his academic genealogy are provided.

On Comparison Of Hypothesis Tests In The Bayesian Framework Without Loss Function, Vladimir Gercsik, Mark Kelbert

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The problem is how to compare the quality of different hypothesis tests in a Bayesian framework without introducing a loss function. Three different linear orders on the set of all possible hypothesis tests are studied. The most natural order estimates the Fisher information between indicators of event and decision.