Digital Commons Network^™

Spatially Refined Time-Varying Reproduction Numbers Of Covid-19 By Health District In Georgia, Usa, March–December 2020, Chigozie A. Ogwara, Arshpreet Kaur Mallhi, Xinyi Hua, Kamalich Muniz-Rodriguez, Jessica S. Schwind, Xiaolu Zhou, Jeffery A. Jones, Joanne Chopak-Foss, Gerardo Chowell, Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Environmental Health Sciences: Faculty Publications

This study quantifies the transmission potential of SARS-CoV-2 across public health districts in Georgia, USA, and tests if per capita cumulative case count varies across counties. To estimate the time-varying reproduction number, Rt of SARS-CoV-2 in Georgia and its 18 public health districts, we apply the R package ‘EpiEstim’ to the time series of historical daily incidence of confirmed cases, 2 March–15 December 2020. The epidemic curve is shifted backward by nine days to account for the incubation period and delay to testing. Linear regression is performed between log10-transformed per capita cumulative case count and log10-transformed population size. We observe …

Compare And Contrast Maximum Likelihood Method And Inverse Probability Weighting Method In Missing Data Analysis, Scott Sun

Mathematical Sciences Technical Reports (MSTR)

Data can be lost for different reasons, but sometimes the missingness is a part of the data collection process. Unbiased and efficient estimation of the parameters governing the response mean model requires the missing data to be appropriately addressed. This paper compares and contrasts the Maximum Likelihood and Inverse Probability Weighting estimators in an Outcome-Dependendent Sampling design that deliberately generates incomplete observations. WE demonstrate the comparison through numerical simulations under varied conditions: different coefficient of determination, and whether or not the mean model is misspecified.

Why Does An Ex-Offender Reoffend?, Jacob Rybak

Symposium of Student Scholars

What leads an offender to go back to prison? This researcher has lived in the Georgia State prison system for 3.5 years. Using personal insights as well as analytics, this researcher analyzes Iowa state’s six-year data set tracking recidivism of released offenders and recommends changes to the prison system to address the analytical findings.

The Iowa recidivism data set includes the following information for all offenders: age group, type of release (parole vs different discharges), release year, original offense, and whether they recidivated. For the recidivating offenders, the data set includes the days to return to prison, the type of …

Applications Of Nonstandard Analysis In Probability And Measure Theory, Irfan Alam

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation broadly deals with two areas of probability theory and investigates how methods from nonstandard analysis may provide new perspectives in these topics. In particular, we use nonstandard analysis to prove new results in the topics of limiting spherical integrals and of exchangeability.

In the former area, our methods allow us to represent finite dimensional Gaussian measures in terms of marginals of measures on hyperfinite-dimensional spheres in a certain strong sense, thus generalizing some previously known results on Gaussian Radon transforms as limits of spherical integrals. This first area has roots in the kinetic theory of gases, which is …

Access To Higher Education: Do Schools “Grant” Success?, Nathaniel Jones

Symposium of Student Scholars

University education can lead to upward income mobility for low-income students. Being exposed to other student’s life experiences that are different from their own may highlight activities and actions that they may want to consider aiding their success. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly earnings in 2019 for all workers in the U.S. was $969. Of those, U.S. workers who held bachelor’s degrees earned $1,248. In 2016, the Brookings Institute found that Pell Grant recipients and first-generation student loan borrowers attended universities that had lower graduation rates and higher loan default rates in comparison to …

Reporting Of Eating Disorder Deaths, Katherine Mobley, Amy Hord

Symposium of Student Scholars

Those affected by eating disorders experience disturbances in eating behaviors which are often related to underlying psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (Parekh, 2017, Drieberg et al., 1998 p.53). The duplicitous nature of the disorder makes it difficult to diagnose, and the tole it takes on an individual’s physical health makes its mortality rate the second highest among psychiatric disorders (Guinhut et al., 2021 p.130). Even if the correct education and resources are accessible to certain individuals, negative stigmatization about the disorder can make sufferers unlikely to seek help (Becker et al., 2010). Findings from analysis of …

Theranostic Applications Of Sirna Bioconjugates In Cancer Detection And Treatment, Sunil S. Shah

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Abstract

The emerging field of RNA nanotechnology has led to rapid advances in the applications of RNA in chemical biology, medicinal chemistry, and biotechnology. At the forefront of its utility is the ability to self-assemble multiple siRNAs into nanostructure formulations capable of targeting selected oncogenes and potentiating the gene therapy of malignant tumors. Self-assembled siRNA integrates multiple siRNAs within a single molecular platform for silencing multiple oncogenic mRNA targets with high precision and efficacy to potentially induce cancer cell apoptosis through the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway. Furthermore, the conjugation of siRNA self-assemblies with bio-active probes results in multi-functional theranostic (therapy+diagnostic) …

Characterizing The Northern Hemisphere Circumpolar Vortex Through Space And Time, Nazla Bushra

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This hemispheric-scale, steering atmospheric circulation represented by the circumpolar vortices (CPVs) are the middle- and upper-tropospheric wind belts circumnavigating the poles. Variability in the CPV area, shape, and position are important topics in geoenvironmental sciences because of the many links to environmental features. However, a means of characterizing the CPV has remained elusive. The goal of this research is to (i) identify the Northern Hemisphere CPV (NHCPV) and its morphometric characteristics, (ii) understand the daily characteristics of NHCPV area and circularity over time, (iii) identify and analyze spatiotemporal variability in the NHCPV’s centroid, and (iv) analyze how CPV features relate …

Differences In ​The Proportion Of Children Meeting Behavior Guidelines ​Between Summer ​And School By Socioeconomic Status And Race, Ethan T. Hunt, Lauren Von Klinggraeff, Alexis Jones, Sarah Burkart, Roddrick Dugger, Bridget Armstrong Ph.D., Michael Beets Ph.D., Gabrielle Turner-Mcgrievy Ph.D., Rd, Marco Geraci, Robert Glenn Weaver Med, Phd

Faculty Publications

Objective

Children who fail to meet activity, sleep, and screen-time guidelines are at increased risk for obesity. Further, children who are Black are more likely to have obesity when compared to children who are White, and children from low-income households are at increased risk for obesity when compared to children from higher-income households. The objective of this study was to evaluate the proportion of days meeting obesogenic behavior guidelines during the school year compared to summer vacation by race and free/reduced priced lunch (FRPL) eligibility.

Methods

Mixed-effects linear and logistic regressions estimated the proportion of days participants met activity, sleep, …

Is Gallaudet Diverse? Creating An R Package To Measure Institutional Diversity, Emelia Beldon

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

One of the biggest trends in social science is the study of racial and ethnic diversity measures. Numerous scholarly articles and journals detail how important it is to encourage a racially and ethnically diverse community in higher education. However, the question remains: how do we accurately measure racial and ethnic diversity? Furthermore, how do we present the diversity in terms of statistics for best use? With this project, I answer these questions. I created an R software package, diversityGV, to measure institutional racial and ethnic diversity using the Generalized Variance mathematical approach. I then used diversityGV with a dataset from …

A Highly Predictive Microrna Panel For Determining Delayed Cerebral Vasospasm Risk Following Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage, Wang-Xia Wang, Joe E. Springer, Kevin Xie, David W. Fardo, Kevin W. Hatton

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

Approximately one-third of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) patients develop delayed cerebral vasospasm (DCV) 3–10 days after aneurysm rupture resulting in additional, permanent neurologic disability. Currently, no validated biomarker is available to determine the risk of DCV in aSAH patients. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been implicated in virtually all human diseases, including aSAH, and are found in extracellular biofluids including plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). We used a custom designed TaqMan Low Density Array miRNA panel to examine the levels of 47 selected brain and vasculature injury related miRNAs in CSF and plasma specimens collected from 31 patients with or without DCV …

Bayesian Methods In Operational Testing: Enhancing Testing Through Combining Information, Victoria R C Sieck

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

When developing a system, considering system performance from a user perspective can be done through operational testing|assessing the ability of representative users to accomplish tasks with the system in operationally representative environments. This critical process can be expensive and time-consuming. We show how to leverage an existing design of experiments (DOE) process to construct a Bayesian adaptive design. This method allows for interim analyses using predictive probabilities to stop testing early for success or futility. Furthermore, operational environments are directly used in product evaluation. Representative simulations demonstrate reductions in necessary test events. Next, priors are built using developmental testing data. …

Guidelines For Regression Analysis In Sas And R: A Case Study, Sarah Milligan

Honors Program Theses and Projects

When a player is a free agent, an individual who is able to sign to any team, one wonders what their best option is. Will signing with Team A or Team B provide them with the largest salary? What factors will affect their salary the most? Does last year’s statistics have a strong impact on next year’s salary? These questions can be answered by performing a regression analysis on previous years data. The primary focus of this project is to determine the most important variables related to an NBA salary. Likewise, the statistical programs SAS and R will be compared …

We’Re Here To Get You There: A Statistical Analysis Of Bridgewater State University’S Transit System, Abigail Adams

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Bridgewater State University first established its on-campus transportation service in January of 1984. While it began only running as an on-campus service for students throughout the day, the service grew to expand by offering an off-campus connection to the neighboring city of Brockton and absorbed the night service system from the campus safety team. As BSU Transit continues to grow, the organization is seeking ways to improve their overall service and better prepare their fleet and driver pool to accommodate this growth. The purpose of this research is to analyze trends among the data collected by BSU Transit and assist …

A Study On Differing Generational Values And Expectations In Corporate America, Abigail Grella

Honors Program Theses and Projects

This paper examines the most common factors that lead to voluntary employee turnover, and the implications employee turnover has on an organization. Additionally, this paper will consider the varying values and workplace expectations of different demographic groups such as Millennials, Generation X, Generation Y, and Baby Boomers and how such factors could influence voluntary turnover. A study is conducted from survey results gathered across a large span of generations that are currently employed. Using statistical analysis employing t-tests and a Mood’s Median test, the results show that different generations have differently weighing values for specific organizational offerings. The results show …

Differences In Effectiveness And Use Of Laparoscopic Surgery In Locally Advanced Colon Cancer Patients, M. Schootman, Matthew Mutch, T. Loux, Jan M. Eberth Ph.D., N. O. Davidson

Faculty Publications

Patients with locally advanced colon cancer have worse outcomes. Guidelines of various organizations are conflicting about the use of laparoscopic colectomy (LC) in locally advanced colon cancer. We determined whether patient outcomes of LC and open colectomy (OC) for locally advanced (T4) colon cancer are comparable in all colon cancer patients, T4a versus T4b patients, obese versus non-obese patients, and tumors located in the ascending, descending, and transverse colon. We used data from the 2013–2015 American College of Surgeons’ National Surgical Quality Improvement Program. Patients were diagnosed with nonmetastatic pT4 colon cancer, with or without obstruction, and underwent LC (n …

Neural Oscillatory Activity Serving Sensorimotor Control Is Regulated By The Mitochondrial Redox Environment In Health And Disease, Rachel Spooner

Theses & Dissertations

Despite effective regimens of combination antiretroviral therapy, individuals with HIV are still at higher risk for developing forms of cognitive impairment, with one of the most common behavioral abnormalities to manifest being motor dysfunction. This is an important consideration, as deficits in motor control likely contribute to higher-order cognitive impairments, which together, lead to functional dependencies in the ever-growing aging population of HIV-infected adults. While the neuroanatomical bases of motor dysfunction have recently been illuminated in people living with HIV (PLWH), there remains an open question regarding the molecular processes supporting the circuit-level neuronal dynamics that potentially serve these behavioral …

Time Series Forecasting Of Covid-19 Deaths In Massachusetts, Andrew Disher

Honors Program Theses and Projects

The aim of this study was to use data provided by the Department of Public Health in the state of Massachusetts on its online dashboard to produce a time series model to accurately forecast the number of new confirmed deaths that have resulted from the spread of CoViD-19. Multiple different time series models were created, which can be classified as either an Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model or a Regression Model with ARIMA Errors. Two ARIMA models were created to provide a baseline forecasting performance for comparison with the Regression Model with ARIMA Errors, which used the number of …

Markov Model Composition Of Balinese Reyong Norot Improvisations, Taylor Flanagan, Robert Rovetti

Honors Thesis

Markov models are mathematical structures that model the transition between possible states based on the probability of moving from one state to any other. Thus, given a distribution of starting points, the model produces a chain of states that are visited in sequence. Such models have been used extensively to generate music based on probabilities, as sequences of states can represent sequences of notes and rhythms. While music generation is a common application of Markov models, most existing work attempts to reconstruct the musical style of classical Western composers. In this thesis, we produce a series of Markov chains that …

Cardiovascular Complications Of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Impact Of Risk Factors And Therapeutic Efficacy--A Tertiary Centre Experience In An Appalachian State, Elise Danielle Mcveigh, Amna Batool, Arnold J. Stromberg, Ahmed K. Abdel-Latif, Nayef Mohammed Kazzaz

Statistics Faculty Publications

OBJECTIVES: Cardiovascular complications became a notable cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with lupus as therapeutic advancements became more efficient at managing other complications. The Appalachian community in Kentucky has a higher prevalence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors, predisposing them to cardiovascular events. Namely, the mean body mass index of the members of the Kentucky Appalachian community was reported at 33 kg/m² and 94.3% of male members of this community use tobacco. We sought to identify risk factors that predispose patients with lupus to cardiovascular morbidities and examine the effect of immunomodulatory drugs.

METHODS: We identified 20 UKHS …

Application Of Randomness In Finance, Jose Sanchez, Daanial Ahmad, Satyanand Singh

Publications and Research

Brownian Motion which is also considered to be a Wiener process and can be thought of as a random walk. In our project we had briefly discussed the fluctuations of financial indices and related it to Brownian Motion and the modeling of Stock prices.

Confidence Intervals Of Covid-19 Vaccine Efficacy Rates, Frank Wang

Numeracy

This tutorial uses publicly available data from drug makers and the Food and Drug Administration to guide learners to estimate the confidence intervals of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy rates with a Bayesian framework. Under the classical approach, there is no probability associated with a parameter, and the meaning of confidence intervals can be misconstrued by inexperienced students. With Bayesian statistics, one can find the posterior probability distribution of an unknown parameter, and state the probability of vaccine efficacy rate, which makes the communication of uncertainty more flexible. We use a hypothetical example and a real baseball example to guide readers to …

Species In Vernal Pools: Anova, Lisa Manne

Open Educational Resources

A one-way analysis of variance exercise using data on species diversities from vernal pools.Data are from vernal pools in Willowbrook Park (adjacent to College of Staten Island's campus) in spring.

The typical ANOVA gives a straightforward result (significant anova, easily-interpreted Tukey-Kramer analysis). This data set requires more nuanced interpretation, as the ANOVA is marginally significant, and Tukey-Kramer yields one significant pairwise comparison between groups. Relative lack of variation within groups explains this apparent enigma.

Improving Bayesian Graph Convolutional Networks Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo Graph Sampling, Aneesh Komanduri

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the modern age of social media and networks, graph representations of real-world phenomena have become incredibly crucial. Often, we are interested in understanding how entities in a graph are interconnected. Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have proven to be a very useful tool in a variety of graph learning tasks including node classification, link prediction, and edge classification. However, in most of these tasks, the graph data we are working with may be noisy and may contain spurious edges. That is, there is a lot of uncertainty associated with the underlying graph structure. Recent approaches to modeling uncertainty have been …

Applying Emotional Analysis For Automated Content Moderation, John Shelnutt

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this project is to explore the effectiveness of emotional analysis as a means to automatically moderate content or flag content for manual moderation in order to reduce the workload of human moderators in moderating toxic content online. In this context, toxic content is defined as content that features excessive negativity, rudeness, or malice. This often features offensive language or slurs. The work involved in this project included creating a simple website that imitates a social media or forum with a feed of user submitted text posts, implementing an emotional analysis algorithm from a word emotions dataset, designing …

Randomised Trials At The Level Of The Individual, Jay J H. Park, Nathan Ford, Denis Xavier, Per Ashorn, Rebecca F. Grais, Zulfiqar Ahmed Bhutta, Herman Goossens, Kristian Thorlund, Maria Eugenia Socias, Edward J. Mills

Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health

In global health research, short-term, small-scale clinical trials with fixed, two-arm trial designs that generally do not allow for major changes throughout the trial are the most common study design. Building on the introductory paper of this Series, this paper discusses data-driven approaches to clinical trial research across several adaptive trial designs, as well as the master protocol framework that can help to harmonise clinical trial research efforts in global health research. We provide a general framework for more efficient trial research, and we discuss the importance of considering different study designs in the planning stage with statistical simulations. We …

Retail Trading And Stock Volatility: The Case Of Robinhood, Cooper Jones

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

We examine the relation between Robinhood usership and stock market volatility. We show that daily fluctuations in Robinhood usership, which is used to proxy retail trading, significantly influence various measures of volatility. These results might suggest that Robinhood users contribute to noise trading as they are generally individuals trading on name recognition, media coverage, popularity, and familiarity of products, rather than on fundamental values. In our empirical approach, we find that the percentage increase in Robinhood usership Granger causes increases in daily stock volatility.

Robust Variable Selection In Multiple Linear Regression Via Penalized Least Trimmed Squares., Reagan Kesseku

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Variable selection has been studied using different approaches. Its growing importance lies in numerous applications to high-dimensional data from experiments and natural phenomena. Often, models are to be constructed from such data based on significant variables for estimation or prediction purposes. This demands not just any variable selectionmethod, but one that is robust, computationally efficient and with other desirable statistical properties. Besides the high-dimensionality of such data, the presence of outliers is common due to heterogeneous sources. Though outliers often contain useful information, they can unduly influence non-robust estimators to produce misleading results. This is the case for ordinary least …

Improving Access And Health Outcomes Through Carepartners And Medaccess Programs, Elora Way, Becky Wurwarg

Publications

Access to Care, a division of MaineHealth, works to ensure that Maine residents have access to comprehensive and affordable healthcare that improves community wellbeing. In 2020, as part of its ongoing commitment to evaluating the effectiveness of its programs, Access to Care partnered with the University of Southern Maine’s Data Innovation Project to conduct a multi-year retrospective evaluation of its two longest-running initiatives, CarePartners and MedAccess. Established in 2001, CarePartners coordinates donated healthcare services for low-income, uninsured residents across six Maine counties by connecting participants with case managers, primary care providers, and pharmacy benefits. Between 2016 and 2019, 4,426 individuals …

Cointegration And Statistical Arbitrage Of Precious Metals, Judge Van Horn

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

When talking about financial instruments correlation is often thrown around as a measure of the relation between two securities. An often more useful or tradeable measure is cointegration. Cointegration is the measure of two securities tendency to revert to an average price over time. In other words, cointegration ignores directionality and only cares about the distance between two securities. For a mean reversion strategy such as statistical arbitrage cointegration proves to be a far more reliable statistical measure of mean reversion, and while it is more reliable than correlation it still has its own problems. One thing to consider is …