Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Effects Of Cost Sharing On Seeking Care For Serious And Minor Symptoms. Results Of A Randomized Controlled Trial, Martin Shapiro, John Ware, Cathy Sherbourne

Martin Shapiro

To estimate the effect of cost sharing on seeking care for serious and minor symptoms, we analyzed data for 3539 persons aged 17 to 61 from the Rand Health Insurance Experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to a free-care group or to insurance plans requiring them to pay part of the costs (cost-sharing group). Annual surveys were administered to determine if participants had serious and minor symptoms during the preceding month and whether they saw a physician. Serious symptoms were judged by a panel of physicians to warrant care in most instances; minor symptoms were judged neither to be severe nor …

The Fraud Detection Triangle: A New Framework For Selecting Variables In Fraud Detection Research, Adrian Gepp, Kuldeep Kumar, Sukanto Bhattacharya

Adrian Gepp

An Omnibus Nonparametric Test Of Equality In Distribution For Unknown Functions, Alexander Luedtke, Marco Carone, Mark Van Der Laan

Alex Luedtke

We present a novel family of nonparametric omnibus tests of the hypothesis that two unknown but estimable functions are equal in distribution when applied to the observed data structure. We developed these tests, which represent a generalization of the maximum mean discrepancy tests described in Gretton et al. [2006], using recent developments from the higher-order pathwise differentiability literature. Despite their complex derivation, the associated test statistics can be expressed rather simply as U-statistics. We study the asymptotic behavior of the proposed tests under the null hypothesis and under both fixed and local alternatives. We provide examples to which our tests …

On The Construction Of Restricted Minimum Aberration Designs, Chand Midha, Chung-Yi Suen, Ashish Das

Chand K Midha

Deriving a formula, we show that an optimal moment design has the property that each treatment combination appears as equally often as possible. Modifying the definition of minimum aberration to restricted minimum aberration, we show that the word length pattern of a design is proportional to that of its complement. Many restricted minimum aberration designs are constructed

Topical Rapamycin Systematically Suppresses The Early Stages Of Pulsed Dye Laser-Induced Angiogenesis Pathways, Lin Gao, Sydney Phan, Dawnica Nadora, Margarita Chernova, Victor Sun, Salena Preciado, Brittany Ballew, Zhenyu Jia, Wangcun Jia, Gang Wang, Martin Mihm, J. Nelson, Wenbin Tan

Zhenyu Jia

BACKGROUND: Administration of topical rapamycin (RPM) suppresses the regeneration and revascularization of photocoagulated blood vessels induced by pulsed dye laser (PDL). OBJECTIVE: To systematically elucidate the molecular pathophysiology of the inhibition of PDL-induced angiogenesis by topical RPM in a rodent model. METHODS: The mRNA expression profiles of 86 angiogenic genes and phosphorylation levels of ribosomal protein S6 kinase (P70S6K) in rodent skin were examined with or without topical RPM administration post-PDL exposure. RESULTS: The PDL-induced systematic increases in transcriptional levels of angiogenic genes showed a peak expression at days 3-7 post-PDL in rodent skin. Topical application of 1% RPM significantly …

Transcultural Self-Efficacy Perceptions Of Baccalaureate Nursing Students, Margaret Halter, Faye Grund, Mark Fridline, Sharon See, Lisa Young, Carol Reece

Mark Fridline PhD

Addressing the health care needs of a 21st-century nation that is experiencing increased diversity and disparity will require new models of educating future providers. The cultural competence and confidence model was the guiding framework in a study evaluating the influence of cultural educational offerings on the transcultural self-efficacy (TSE) perceptions in baccalaureate nursing students. The Transcultural Self-Efficacy Tool was used to measure perceived TSE in a pretest (N = 260), posttest (N = 236) study over an academic year. Significant changes were demonstrated in overall self-efficacy and on the cognitive, practical, and affective subscales. A classification and regression …

Rapid Door-To-Balloon Time (≤ 30 Minutes) In The Treatment Of Acute St-Elevation Myocardial Infarction (Stemi) Is Associated With Reduced Length Of Hospital Stay And Improved Clinical Outcomes, Yassir Nawaz Md, Ataul Qureshi Md, Navin K. Subrayappa Md, Orlando E. Rivera Rn, Bruce Feldman Do, Nainesh C. Patel Md

Bruce A. Feldman DO

No abstract provided.

Pixley-Roy Hyperspaces Of Ω-Graphs, Joe Mashburn

Joe D. Mashburn

The techniques developed by Wage and Norden are used to show that the Pixley-Roy hyperspaces of any two ω-graphs are homeomorphic. The Pixley-Roy hyperspaces of several subsets of Rn are also shown to be homeomorphic.

Countable Covers Of Spaces By Migrant Sets, Zoltan Balogh, Joe Mashburn, Peter Nyikos

Joe D. Mashburn

The motivation for this note is a paper by Hidenori Tanaka in which he shows that the Pixley-Roy hyperspace of a metric space X is normal if and only if X is an almost strong q-set.

Linearly Ordered Topological Spaces And Weak Domain Representability, Joe Mashburn

Joe D. Mashburn

It is well known that domain representable spaces, that is topological spaces that are homeomorphic to the space of maximal elements of some domain, must be Baire. In this paper it is shown that every linearly ordered topological space (LOTS) is homeomorphic to an open dense subset of a weak domain representable space. This means that weak domain representable spaces need not be Baire.

A Comparison Of Three Topologies On Ordered Sets, Joe Mashburn

Joe D. Mashburn

We introduce two new topologies on ordered sets: the way below topology and weakly way below topology. These are similar in definition to the Scott topology, but are very different if the set is not continuous. The basic properties of these three topologies are compared. We will show that while domain representable spaces must be Baire, this is not the case with the new topologies.

Football Betting And The Efficient Market Hypothesis, Ravija Badarinathi, Ladd Kochman

Ladd Kochman

Three betting rules which had been nonrandomly profitable in both their initial application to the 1969-74 National Football League seasons and their replication during the years of 1975-81 were applied to all NFL games played between September 1984 and January 1994. One rule proved to be nonrandom and profitable for a third consecutive trial--a feat suggesting that bettors may be able to "beat the bookie" and, more broadly, that prices in competitive markets may not discount all available information in swift fashion.

Neoadjuvant Or Adjuvant Therapy For Resectable Esophageal Cancer: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Richard Malthaner, Rebecca Wong, R. Rumble, Lisa Zuraw

Richard A. Malthaner

Background: Carcinoma of the esophagus is an aggressive malignancy with an increasing incidence. Its virulence, in terms of symptoms and mortality, justifies a continued search for optimal therapy. The large and growing number of patients affected, the high mortality rates, the worldwide geographic variation in practice, and the large body of good quality research warrants a systematic review with meta-analysis.

Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis investigating the impact of neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy on resectable thoracic esophageal cancer to inform evidence-based practice was produced.MEDLINE, CANCERLIT, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and abstracts from the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the …

Neoadjuvant Or Adjuvant Therapy For Resectable Esophageal Cancer: A Clinical Practice Guideline, Richard Malthaner, Rebecca Wong, R. Rumble, Lisa Zuraw

Richard A. Malthaner

Background: Carcinoma of the esophagus is an aggressive malignancy with an increasing incidence. Its virulence, in terms of symptoms and mortality, justifies a continued search for optimal therapy. A clinical practice guideline was developed based on a systematic review investigating neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy on resectable thoracic esophageal cancer. Methods: A systematic review with meta-analysis was developed and clinical recommendations were drafted. External review of the practice guideline report by practitioners in Ontario, Canada was obtained through a mailed survey, and incorporated. Final approval of the practice guideline was obtained from the Practice Guidelines Coordinating Committee. Results: The systematic review …

Cyclosporin Versus Tacrolimus For Liver Transplanted Patients, Elizabeth Haddad, Vivian Mcalister, Elizabeth Renouf, Richard Malthaner, Mette Kjaer, Lise Gluud

Richard A. Malthaner

A systematic review of randomized clinical trials (RCT) was undertaken to evaluate the beneficial and harmful effects of immunosuppression with cyclosporin versus tacrolimus for liver transplanted patients. MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central and Hepato-Biliary Group Controlled Trials Registers were searched. Using fixed and random effects model, relative risk (RR), values <1 favoring>tacrolimus, with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Of 717 potentially relevant references, 16 RCTs were eligible for inclusion. Mortality and graft loss at 1 year were significantly reduced in tacrolimus-treated recipients (Death: RR 0.85, 95% CI 0.73-0.99; graft loss: RR 0.73, 95% CI 0.61-0.86). Tacrolimus reduced the number of recipients …

Neoadjuvant Or Adjuvant Therapy For Resectable Esophageal Cancer: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Richard Malthaner, Rebecca Wong, R. Rumble, Lisa Zuraw

Richard A. Malthaner

Background: Carcinoma of the esophagus is an aggressive malignancy with an increasing incidence. Its virulence, in terms of symptoms and mortality, justifies a continued search for optimal therapy. The large and growing number of patients affected, the high mortality rates, the worldwide geographic variation in practice, and the large body of good quality research warrants a systematic review with meta-analysis.

Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis investigating the impact of neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy on resectable thoracic esophageal cancer to inform evidence-based practice was produced.MEDLINE, CANCERLIT, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and abstracts from the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the …

Neoadjuvant Or Adjuvant Therapy For Resectable Esophageal Cancer: A Clinical Practice Guideline, Richard Malthaner, Rebecca Wong, R. Rumble, Lisa Zuraw

Richard A. Malthaner

Background: Carcinoma of the esophagus is an aggressive malignancy with an increasing incidence. Its virulence, in terms of symptoms and mortality, justifies a continued search for optimal therapy. A clinical practice guideline was developed based on a systematic review investigating neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy on resectable thoracic esophageal cancer.

Methods: A systematic review with meta-analysis was developed and clinical recommendations were drafted. External review of the practice guideline report by practitioners in Ontario, Canada was obtained through a mailed survey, and incorporated. Final approval of the practice guideline was obtained from the Practice Guidelines Coordinating Committee.

Results: The systematic review …

Cyclosporin Versus Tacrolimus For Liver Transplanted Patients, Elizabeth Haddad, Vivian Mcalister, Elizabeth Renouf, Richard Malthaner, Mette Kjaer, Lise Gluud

Richard A. Malthaner

A systematic review of randomized clinical trials (RCT) was undertaken to evaluate the beneficial and harmful effects of immunosuppression with cyclosporin versus tacrolimus for liver transplanted patients. MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central and Hepato-Biliary Group Controlled Trials Registers were searched. Using fixed and random effects model, relative risk (RR), values <1 favoring>tacrolimus, with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Of 717 potentially relevant references, 16 RCTs were eligible for inclusion. Mortality and graft loss at 1 year were significantly reduced in tacrolimus-treated recipients (Death: RR 0.85, 95% CI 0.73-0.99; graft loss: RR 0.73, 95% CI 0.61-0.86). Tacrolimus reduced the number of recipients …

Nonparametric Methods For Doubly Robust Estimation Of Continuous Treatment Effects, Edward Kennedy, Zongming Ma, Matthew Mchugh, Dylan Small

Edward H. Kennedy

Continuous treatments (e.g., doses) arise often in practice, but available causal effect estimators require either parametric models for the effect curve or else consistent estimation of a single nuisance function. We propose a novel doubly robust kernel smoothing approach, which requires only mild smoothness assumptions on the effect curve and allows for misspecification of either the treatment density or outcome regression. We derive asymptotic properties and also discuss an approach for data-driven bandwidth selection. The methods are illustrated via simulation and in a study of the effect of nurse staffing on hospital readmissions penalties.

Propagating Lyapunov Functions To Prove Noise-Induced Stabilization, Tiffany Kolba, Avanti Athreya, Jonathan Mattingly

Tiffany N Kolba

No abstract provided.

Semiparametric Causal Inference In Matched Cohort Studies, Edward Kennedy, Arvid Sjolander, Dylan Small

Edward H. Kennedy

Odds ratios can be estimated in case-control studies using standard logistic regression, ignoring the outcome-dependent sampling. In this paper we discuss an analogous result for treatment effects on the treated in matched cohort studies. Specifically, in studies where a sample of treated subjects is observed along with a separate sample of possibly matched controls, we show that efficient and doubly robust estimators of effects on the treated are computationally equivalent to standard estimators, which ignore the matching and exposure-based sampling. This is not the case for general average effects. We also show that matched cohort studies are often more efficient …

Leukoaraiosis Predicts Poor 90-Day Outcome After Acute Large Cerebral Artery Occlusion, Nils Henninger, Eugene Lin, Stephen Baker, Ajay Wakhloo, Deepak Takhtani, Majaz Moonis

Nils Henninger

BACKGROUND: To date limited information regarding outcome-modifying factors in patients with acute intracranial large artery occlusion (ILAO) in the anterior circulation is available. Leukoaraiosis (LA) is a common finding among patients with ischemic stroke and has been associated with poor post-stroke outcomes but its association with ILAO remains poorly characterized. This study sought to clarify the contribution of baseline LA and other common risk factors to 90-day outcome (modified Rankin Scale, mRS) after stroke due to acute anterior circulation ILAO. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 1,153 consecutive patients with imaging-confirmed ischemic stroke during a 4-year period (2007-2010) at a single academic …

Neurological And Cardiovascular Outcomes After Cardiac Arrest At Six Regional Interventional Cardiology Centers In The United States 2007-2011, David Seder, Nainesh Patel, J Mcpherson, P Mcmullen, K Kern, B Unger, J Browning, Sudip Nanda, M Hacobian, M Kelley, N Nielsen, M Mooney

Nainesh C Patel MD

No abstract provided.

Geriatric Experience Following Cardiac Arrest At Six Interventional Cardiology Centers In The United States 2007-2011, David Seder, Nainesh Patel, John Mcpherson, Paul Mcmullen, Karl Kern, Barbara Unger, J Browning, Sudip Nanda, Melkon Hacobian, Michael Kelley, Niklas Nielsen, Michael Mooney

Nainesh C Patel MD

No abstract provided.

Total Positivity For A Class Of Non-Exchangeable Copulas, Roy Cerqueti, Claudio Lupi

Claudio Lupi

A Modified Version Of The Lewellen And Badrinath Measure Of Tobin's Q, Darrell Lee, James Tompkins

James Tompkins

Lewellen and Badrinath (1997) propose a superior method of measuring Tobin's Q. Unfortunately, their method is prone to a high percentage of missing observations and results in selecting samples of larger and more mature firms with lower Q statistics. A slight modification is proposed that preserves the appeal of their method, yet almost doubles the sample size, avoids sampling problems, and is statistically indistinguishable from their Q measure. In addition, a step in the Lewellen and Badrinath Q calculation is clarified, which was inadvertently omitted in their explanation, and, if left undone, can result in downward-biased measures of Q.

Higher Order Dynamic Equations On Measure Chains: Wronskians, Disconjugacy, And Interpolating Families Of Functions, Martin Bohner, Paul Eloe

Paul W. Eloe

This paper introduces generalized zeros and hence disconjugacy of nth order linear dynamic equations, which cover simultaneously as special cases (among others) both differential equations and difference equations. We also define Markov, Fekete, and Descartes interpolating systems of functions. The main result of this paper states that disconjugacy is equivalent to the existence of any of the above interpolating systems of solutions and that it is also equivalent to a certain factorization representation of the operator. The results in this paper unify the corresponding theories of disconjugacy for nth order linear ordinary differential equations and for nth order linear difference …

Bifurcations In Steady State Solutions Of A Class Of Nonlinear Dispersive Wave Equation, Paul Eloe, Muhammad Usman

Paul W. Eloe

We consider the damped externally excited KdV and BBM equations and use an asymptotic perturbation method to analyze the stability of solutions. We consider the primary resonance by defining the detuning parameter. External-excitation and frequency-response curves are shown to exhibit jump and hysteresis phenomena (dis-continuous transitions between two stable solutions) for both KdV and BBM equations.

Identifying Key Variables And Interactions In Statistical Models Of Building Energy Consumption Using Regularization, David Hsu

David Hsu

Statistical models can only be as good as the data put into them. Data about energy consumption continues to grow, particularly its non-technical aspects, but these variables are often interpreted differently among disciplines, datasets, and contexts. Selecting key variables and interactions is therefore an important step in achieving more accurate predictions, better interpretation, and identification of key subgroups for further analysis.

This paper therefore makes two main contributions to the modeling and analysis of energy consumption of buildings. First, it introduces regularization, also known as penalized regression, for principled selection of variables and interactions. Second, this approach is demonstrated by …

A New Undergraduate Curriculum On Mathematical Biology At University Of Dayton, Muhammad Usman, Amit Singh

Muhammad Usman

The beginning of modern science is marked by efforts of pioneers to understand the natural world using a quantitative approach. As Galileo wrote, "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics". The traditional undergraduate course curriculum is heavily focused on individual disciplines like biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics rather than interdisciplinary courses. This fragmented teaching of sciences in majority of universities leave biology outside the quantitative and mathematical approaches. The landscape of biomedical science has transformed dramatically with advances in high throughput experimental approaches, which led to the huge amount of data. The best possible approach to generate …