Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Birth Order On Infant Injury, Heather L. Van Duker

Theses and Dissertations

Pediatric injury is both common and expensive. Finding ways to prevent pediatric injury is a major public health concern. Many studies have investigated various aspects of pediatric injury, and some suggest that birth order may be an important risk factor for pediatric injury. This study further examined the relationship of birth order with pediatric injury, specifically studying the association of birth order with emergency department-attended infant injury while adjusting for other important family and individual covariates. Data for analysis included Utah birth certificate, death certificate, and hospital emergency department datasets, which were probabilistically linked to obtain complete demographic and injury …

Professionalism In The Air Force: A Comparative Analysis Of Commissioned Officers With Non-Commissioned Officers, Edward K. Boyd

Theses and Dissertations

Decades ago, military sociologists predicted a rising trend among officers away from traditional institutional military values and toward more economically-based occupational values due to the effects of the transition from a conscription-based military to an all-volunteer force. Subsequent empirical research resulted in data that supports such predictions. More recent researchers have suggested that in addition to the all-volunteer force, an increase on technology may also accelerate the trend toward occupationalism and away from traditional institutional military values and the warrior ethos that typically define successful military organizations. The officer corps may be particularly vulnerable to occupationalism due to increased technical …

Semiparametric Bivariate Quantile-Quantile Regression For Analyzing Semi-Competing Risks Data, Daniel O. Scharfstein, James M. Robins, Mark Van Der Laan

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

In this paper, we consider estimation of the effect of a randomized treatment on time to disease progression and death, possibly adjusting for high-dimensional baseline prognostic factors. We assume that patients may or may not have a specific type of disease progression prior to death and those who have this endpoint are followed for their survival information. Progression and survival may also be censored due to loss to follow-up or study termination. We posit a semi-parametric bivariate quantile-quantile regression failure time model and show how to construct estimators of the regression parameters. The causal interpretation of the parameters depends on …

Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument (Ceai): Refinement And Validation Of A Survey Measure, Michael S. Cates

Theses and Dissertations

The study of corporate entrepreneurship has established itself as a valuable area of research for both public and private-sector organizations. The measurement instrument known as the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Index (CEAI) has been designed to tap the climate-related organizational factors that represent and potentially encourage corporate entrepreneurship. This study is an attempt to refine the CEAI. The core constructs of the CEAI are redefined, the items are tested for content validity, the factor structure is analyzed, and the CEAI is correlated to other known measures to validate the CEAI. Through this testing, the CEAI was refined and found to be …

Periodic Solutions Of Functional Dynamic Equations With Infinite Delay, Li Bi, Meng Fan, Martin Bohner

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, sufficient criteria are established for the existence of periodic solutions of some functional dynamic equations with infinite delays on time scales, which generalize and incorporate as special cases many known results for differential equations and for difference equations when the time scale is the set of the real numbers or the integers, respectively. The approach is mainly based on the Krasnosel'skilatin small letter i with breve fixed point theorem, which has been extensively applied in studying existence problems in differential equations and difference equations but rarely applied in studying dynamic equations on time scales. This study shows …

Statistical Evaluation Of Evidence For Clonal Allelic Alterations In Array-Cgh Experiments, Colin B. Begg, Kevin Eng, Adam Olshen, E S. Venkatraman

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Dept. of Epidemiology & Biostatistics Working Paper Series

In recent years numerous investigators have conducted genetic studies of pairs of tumor specimens from the same patient to determine whether the tumors share a clonal origin. These studies have the potential to be of considerable clinical significance, especially in clinical settings where the distinction of a new primary cancer and metastatic spread of a previous cancer would lead to radically different indications for treatment. Studies of clonality have typically involved comparison of the patterns of somatic mutations in the tumors at candidate genetic loci to see if the patterns are sufficiently similar to indicate a clonal origin. More recently, …

Generalized Mixture Models, Semi-Supervised Learning, And Unknown Class Inference, Samuel J. Frame, Sreenivasa Rao Jammalamadaka

Statistics

In this paper, we discuss generalized mixture models and related semi-supervised learning methods, and show how they can be used to provide explicit methods for unknown class inference. After a brief description of standard mixture modeling and current model-based semi-supervised learning methods, we provide the generalization and discuss its computational implementation using three-stage expectation–maximization algorithm.

Foreigners' Fate In America's Courts: Empirical Legal Research, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article revisits the controversy regarding how foreigners fare in U.S. courts. The available data, if taken in a sufficiently big sample from numerous case categories and a range of years, indicate that foreigners have fared better in the federal courts than their domestic counterparts have fared. Thus, the data offer no support for the existence of xenophobic bias in U.S. courts. Nor do they establish xenophilia, of course. What the data do show is that case selection drives the outcomes for foreigners. Foreigners’ aversion to U.S. forums can elevate the foreigners’ success rates, when measured as a percentage of …

The Association Between Lifestyle Factors And Inflammatory Markers, Kerry Ann Stonebrook

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States. While smoking, high blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol levels are established risk factors for CVD, inflammation is being evaluated as a potential independent risk factor. A key cytokine regulator of the inflammatory response, interleukin-1 (IL-1), has emerged as playing a particularly important role at the genetic level in determining the degree to which the inflammation pathway is turned on. How an individual’s genetic make-up affects inflammation, CVD risk, and response to lifestyle intervention is an area of research that is in …

Graphical And Bayesian Analysis Of Unbalanced Patient Management Data, Emily Stewart Righter

Theses and Dissertations

The International Normalizing Ratio (INR) measures the speed at which blood clots. Healthy people have an INR of about one. Some people are at greater risk of blood clots and their physician prescribes a target INR range, generally 2-3. The farther a patient is above or below their prescribed range, the more dangerous their situation. A variety of point-of-care (POC) devices has been developed to monitor patients. The purpose of this research was to develop innovative graphics to help describe a highly unbalanced dataset and to carry out Bayesian analyses to determine which of five devices best manages patients. An …

Predicting Argentine Jet Fuel Prices, Juan A. Salaverry

Theses and Dissertations

Oil distillates are considered important elements to accomplish the missions of the Argentine Air Force (AAF). Of all oil products consumed by the AAF, jet fuel is the resource with highest demand and at the end of the day the most expensive support item procured by the Argentine Air Force. Accurate predictions of Argentine jet fuel prices are necessary to improve AAF financial and logistics planning. This thesis presents a systematic, statistical regression approach to forecast Argentine jet fuel prices. The application of this methodology has allowed us to obtain a very useful model that utilizes information available on the …

An Evaluation Of Organizational And Experience Factors Affecting The Perceived Transfer Of U.S. Air Force Basic Combat Skills Training, Shirley D. Crow

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Air Force is in a state of transformation. Due to ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of Basic Military Training is shifting to basic combat skills, or the skills needed to survive and operate in a hostile environment. In this study, basic combat skills training was evaluated using a number of training factors that potentially affect trainees’ perception of training transfer, or their ability to apply the skills they learned in training on the job or in a hostile environment. The analysis used structural equation modeling to evaluate the paths between each of the factors …

A Meta-Analysis Of Questionaire Response Rates In Military Samples, Michael R. Parrish

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to examine if factors related to questionnaire response rate in the general public also affect response rate in military-only samples. Very little research pertaining to this specific group was located during the literature review. Four response rate factors taken from studies conducted in the general public were selected for this research topic: questionnaire length, questionnaire delivery mode (postal, e-mail, web-based, direct administration, and mixed mode), use of advance notices, and use of follow-up reminders. Data were gathered for a meta-analysis of 73 previously published studies which utilized a survey or questionnaire to collect data …

Improved Hyperspectral Image Testing Using Synthetic Imagery And Factorial Designed Experiments, Joseph P. Bellucci

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of any remote sensing system is to gather data about the geography it is imaging. In order to gain knowledge of the earth's landscape, post-processing algorithms are developed to extract information from the collected data. The algorithms can be intended to classify the various ground covers in a scene, identify specific targets of interest, or detect anomalies in an image. After the design of an algorithm comes the difficult task of testing and evaluating its performance. Traditionally, algorithms are tested using sets of extensively ground truthed test images. However, the lack of well characterized test data sets and …

The Time Invariance Principle, Ecological (Non)Chaos, And A Fundamental Pitfall Of Discrete Modeling, Bo Deng

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

This paper is to show that most discrete models used for population dynamics in ecology are inherently pathological that their predications cannot be independently verified by experiments because they violate a fundamental principle of physics. The result is used to tackle an on-going controversy regarding ecological chaos. Another implication of the result is that all continuous dynamical systems must be modeled by differential equations. As a result it suggests that researches based on discrete modeling must be closely scrutinized and the teaching of calculus and differential equations must be emphasized for students of biology.

Power Boosting In Genome-Wide Studies Via Methods For Multivariate Outcomes, Mary J. Emond

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Whole-genome studies are becoming a mainstay of biomedical research. Examples include expression array experiments, comparative genomic hybridization analyses and large case-control studies for detecting polymorphism/disease associations. The tactic of applying a regression model to every locus to obtain test statistics is useful in such studies. However, this approach ignores potential correlation structure in the data that could be used to gain power, particularly when a Bonferroni correction is applied to adjust for multiple testing. In this article, we propose using regression techniques for misspecified multivariate outcomes to increase statistical power over independence-based modeling at each locus. Even when the outcome …

Analysis Using Smoothing Via Penalized Splines As Implemented In Lme() In R, John R. Howell

Theses and Dissertations

Spline smoothers as implemented in common mixed model software provide a familiar framework for estimating semi-parametric and non-parametric models. Following a review of literature on splines and mixed models, details for implementing mixed model splines are presented. The examples use an experiment in the health sciences to demonstrate how to use mixed models to generate the smoothers. The first example takes a simple one-group case, while the second example fits an expanded model using three groups simultaneously. The second example also demonstrates how to fit confidence bands to the three-group model. The examples use mixed model software as implemented in …

A Survey Of The Likelihood Approach To Bioequivalence Trials, Leena Choi, Brian S. Caffo, Charles Rohde

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

Bioequivalence trials are abbreviated clinical trials whereby a generic drug or new formulation is evaluated to determine if it is "equivalent" to a corresponding previously approved brand-name drug or formulation. In this manuscript, we survey the process of testing bioequivalence and advocate the likelihood paradigm for representing the resulting data as evidence. We emphasize the unique conflicts between hypothesis testing and confidence intervals in this area - which we believe are indicative of the existence of the systemic defects in the frequentist approach - that the likelihood paradigm avoids. We suggest the direct use of profile likelihoods for evaluating bioequivalence …

Step-Up Simultaneous Tests For Identifying Active Effects In Orthogonal Saturated Designs, Samuel S. Wu, Weizhen Wang

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

A sequence of null hypotheses regarding the number of negligible effects (zero effects) in orthogonal saturated designs is formulated. Two step-up simultaneous testing procedures are proposed to identify active effects (nonzero effects) under the commonly used assumption of effect sparsity. It is shown that each procedure controls the experimentwise error rate at a given alpha level in the strong sense.

Selecting The Best Linear Mixed Model Using Predictive Approaches, Jun Wang

Theses and Dissertations

The linear mixed model is widely implemented in the analysis of longitudinal data. Inference techniques and information criteria are available and well-studied for goodness-of-fit within the linear mixed model setting. Predictive approaches such as R-squared, PRESS, and CCC are available for the linear mixed model but require more research (Edward, 2005). This project used simulation to investigate the performance of R-squared, PRESS, CCC, Pseudo F-test and information criterion for goodness-of-fit within the linear mixed model framework. Marginal and conditional approaches for these predictive statistics were studied under different variance-covariance structures. For compound symmetry structure, the success rates for all 17 …

Mortality In The Medicare Population And Chronic Exposure To Fine Particulate Air Pollution , Scott L. Zeger, Francesca Dominici, Aidan Mcdermott, Jonathan M. Samet

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

Prospective cohort studies have provided evidence on longer-term mortality risks of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), but due to their complexity and costs, only a few have been conducted.

By linking monitoring data to the U.S. Medicare system by county of residence, we developed a retrospective cohort study, the Medicare Air Pollution Cohort Study (MCAPS), comprising over 20 million enrollees in the 250 largest counties during 2000-2002. We estimated log-linear regression models having as outcome the age-specific mortality rate for each county and as the main predictor, the average level for the study period 2000. Area-level covariates were used to adjust …

Comparison Of Treatment Effects Between Animal Experiments And Clinical Trials: Systematic Review, Pablo Perel, Ian Roberts, Emily Sena, Philipa Wheble, Catherine Briscoe, Peter Sandercock, Malcolm Macleod, Luciano E. Mignini, Pradeep Jayaram, Khalid S. Khan

Validation of Animal Experimentation Collection

Objective To examine concordance between treatment effects in animal experiments and clinical trials.

Study design Systematic review.

Data sources Medline, Embase, SIGLE, NTIS, Science Citation Index, CAB, BIOSIS.

Study selection Animal studies for interventions with unambiguous evidence of a treatment effect (benefit or harm) in clinical trials: head injury, antifibrinolytics in haemorrhage, thrombolysis in acute ischaemic stroke, tirilazad in acute ischaemic stroke, antenatal corticosteroids to prevent neonatal respiratory distress syndrome, and bisphosphonates to treat osteoporosis.

Review methods Data were extracted on study design, allocation concealment, number of randomised animals, type of model, intervention, and outcome.

Results Corticosteroids did not show …

Convergent Numerical Scheme For Singular Stochastic Control With State Constraints In A Portfolio Selection Problem, Amarjit Budhiraja, Kevin Ross

Statistics

We consider a singular stochastic control problem with state constraints that arises in problems of optimal consumption and investment under transaction costs. Numerical approximations for the value function using the Markov chain approximation method of Kushner and Dupuis are studied. The main result of the paper shows that the value function of the Markov decision problem (MDP) corresponding to the approximating controlled Markov chain converges to that of the original stochastic control problem as various parameters in the approximation approach suitable limits. All our convergence arguments are probabilistic; the main assumption that we make is that the value function be …

Analysis Of Multi-Level Correlated Data In The Framework Of Generalized Estimating Equations Via Xtmultcorr Procedures In Stata And Qls Functions In Matlab, Justine Shults, Sarah J. Ratcliffe

UPenn Biostatistics Working Papers

No abstract provided.

A Bayesian Hierarchical Model For Constrained Distributed Lag Functions: Estimating The Time Course Of Hospitalization Associated With Air Pollution Exposure, Roger Peng, Francesca Dominici, Leah J. Welty

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

Numerous time series studies have provided strong evidence of an association between increased levels of ambient air pollution and increased levels of hospital admissions, typically at 0, 1, or 2 days after an air pollution episode. An important research aim is to extend existing statistical models so that a more detailed understanding of the time course of hospitalization after exposure to air pollution can be obtained. Information about this time course, combined with prior knowledge about biological mechanisms, could provide the basis for hypotheses concerning the mechanism by which air pollution causes disease. Previous studies have identified two important methodological …

The Convolution On Time Scales, Gusein Sh. Guseinov, Martin Bohner

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The main theme in this paper is an initial value problem containing a dynamic version of the transport equation. via this problem, the delay (or shift) of a function defined on a time scale is introduced, and the delay in turn is used to introduce the convolution of two functions defined on the time scale. In this paper, we give some elementary properties of the delay and of the convolution and we also prove the convolution theorem. Our investigation contains a study of the initial value problem under consideration as well as some results about power series on time scales. …

Trench's Perturbation Theorem For Dynamic Equations, Stevo Stevic, Martin Bohner

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We consider a nonoscillatory second-order linear dynamic equation on a time scale together with a linear perturbation of this equation and give conditions on the perturbation that guarantee that the perturbed equation is also nonoscillatory and has solutions that behave asymptotically like a recessive and dominant solutions of the unperturbed equation. As the theory of time scales unifies continuous and discrete analysis, our results contain as special cases results for corresponding differential and difference equations by William F. Trench.

Oscillation And Nonoscillation Of Forced Second Order Dynamic Equations, Christopher C. Tisdell, Martin Bohner

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Oscillation and nonoscillation properties of second order Sturm-Liouville dynamic equations on time scales — for example, second order self-adjoint differential equations and second order Sturm-Liouville difference equations — have attracted much interest. Here we consider a given homogeneous equation and a corresponding equation with forcing term. We give new conditions implying that the latter equation inherits the oscillatory behavior of the homogeneous equation. We also give new conditions that introduce oscillation of the inhomogeneous equation while the homogeneous equation is nonoscillatory. Finally, we explain a gap in a result given in the literature for the continuous and the discrete case. …

The Dynamics And Interaction Of Quantized Vortices In The Ginzburg-Landau-Schrödinger Equation, Yanzhi Zhang, Weizhu Bao, Qiang Du

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The dynamic laws of quantized vortex interactions in the Ginzburg-Landau-Schrödinger equation (GLSE) are analytically and numerically studied. A review of the reduced dynamic laws governing the motion of vortex centers in the GLSE is provided. The reduced dynamic laws are solved analytically for some special initial data. By directly simulating the GLSE with an efficient and accurate numerical method proposed recently in [Y. Zhang, W. Bao, and Q. Du, Numerical simulation of vortex dynamics in Ginzburg-Landau-Schrödinger equation, European J. Appl. Math., to appear], we can qualitatively and quantitatively compare quantized vortex interaction patterns of the GLSE with those from the …

On A Sub-Supersolution Method For The Prescribed Mean Curvature Problem, Vy Khoi Le

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

The paper is about a sub-supersolution method for the prescribed mean curvature problem. We formulate the problem as a variational inequality and propose appropriate concepts of sub- and supersolutions for such inequality. Existence and enclosure results for solutions and extremal solutions between sub- and supersolutions are established.