Statistics and Probability Commons^™

How To Evaluate The Science Of Non-Human Animal Use In Biomedical Research And Testing: A Proposed Format For Debate, Ray Greek, Lisa A. Kramer

Validation of Alternative Methods Collection

Over time, the interpretation of science has occasionally been corrupted by vested interest groups, be they financially motivated or ego driven. Scientific consensus and widespread public beliefs usually catch up with the evidence, but this can take a very long time and often costs lives. The use of non-human animals in biomedical research and testing is a scientific endeavor and, as such, can and should be evaluated in light of the best science currently available. But facts that have been accepted in all areas of science are routinely ignored or called into question by well-funded, vested interest groups, compromising the …

Extrapolation Of Animal Research Data To Humans: An Analysis Of The Evidence, Rebecca Ram

Validation of Animal Experimentation Collection

The ethical arguments against animal experimentation remain ever-strong. In addition, the scientific case against the use of animals in research grows more compelling, with exponential progress in the development of alternative methods and new research technologies. The Dutch authorities recently announced an ambitious, but welcome, proposal to phase out “the use of laboratory animals in regulatory safety testing of chemicals, food ingredients, pesticides and (veterinary) medicines” by 2025, as well as “the use of laboratory animals for the release of biological products, such as vaccines” (Netherlands National Committee for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes, NCad, 2016, p. …

Replacing Animal Tests To Improve Safety For Humans, Kathy Archibald, Robert Coleman, Tamara Drake

Application of Alternative Methods Collection

In this chapter, we propose a new, pragmatic approach that could accelerate the replacement of most, if not all, regulatory animal tests with superior tests based on human biology. We also propose that changes to the requirements for safety testing, issued by the us Food and Drug Administration (fda), must be made in order to enable the use of superior new tests, which are currently disadvantaged by the outdated language of the regulations. But first, it is imperative to establish some level of understanding of the efficacy of existing animal-based methods in order to know whether any possible replacement is …

The Changing Paradigm In Preclinical Toxicology: In Vitro And In Silico Methods In Liver Toxicity Evaluations, Fozia Noor

Application of Alternative Methods Collection

In vitro methods, based on human primary cells, cell lines, and genetically modified reporter cell lines, have greatly expanded the scope of in vitro toxicology. Other significant progress in the area of human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) (Asgari et al., 2010; Schwartz et al., 2014; Shinde et al., 2016; Shtrichman, Germanguz and Itskovitz-Eldor, 2013) is allowing the application of patient and disease-specific hiPSCs (Ghodsizadeh et al., 2010; McCracken et al., 2014; Siller et al., 2013). Moreover, the tools of precise genome editing with engineered nucleases, such as the zinc finger nucleases (zfns), the transcription activator-like effecter nucleases (talens) and, more …

The Potential Of Organ On Chip Technology For Replacing Animal Testing, Malcolm Wilkinson

Human Clinical Trials Collection

The term organ on a chip is used to describe the latest stage of development of in vitro cell culture technology. Figure 26.1 shows its steady development since the 1960s. Each step forward has improved our ability to model human-clinical response to new drugs or therapies and has enabled safety risk assessment of existing cosmetics, personal care products, or other chemicals in the environment. Scientific evidence that the predictive power of in vitro tests is superior to the use of animals will trigger a major shift in the way that medical research, in many areas, is carried out. In this …

Recent Developments In Alternatives To Animal Testing, Katy Taylor

Application of Alternative Methods Collection

Methods that replace techniques that use live animals, or methods of testing substances without live animal use, are known as alternatives, replacements or non-animal methods. Some prefer the term advanced technologies given the fact that they often rely on more sophisticated technology and are more human- relevant than the animal test they replace (see Langley et al., 2015). There have been efforts to replace animal tests since the 1960s. Significant progress initially came in replacing animals used to diagnose human disease; to produce biological drugs (such as vaccines); and to safety test batches of these drugs as they were produced. …

A Second Order Bdf Numerical Scheme With Variable Steps For The Cahn-Hilliard Equation, Wenbin Chen, Xiaoming Wang, Yue Yan, Zhuying Zhang

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works

We present and analyze a second order in time variable step BDF2 numerical scheme for the Cahn-Hilliard equation. the construction relies on a second order backward difference, convex-splitting technique and viscous regularizing at the discrete level. We show that the scheme is unconditionally stable and uniquely solvable. in addition, under mild restriction on the ratio of adjacent time-steps, an optimal second order in time convergence rate is established. the proof involves a novel generalized discrete Gronwall-type inequality. as far as we know, this is the first rigorous proof of second order convergence for a variable step BDF2 scheme, even in …

Statistical Inference For The Transformed Rayleigh Lomax Distribution With Progressive Type-Ii Right Censorship, Amani Alghami, Wei Ning, Arjun K. Gupta

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

In this paper, we study the transformed Rayleigh Lomax (Trans-RL) distribution which belongs to a certain family of two parameters lifetime distributions given by Wang et al (2010). Confidence intervals and inverse estimators of the Trans-RL parameters are derived in terms of order statistics. A simulation study is conducted to report the coverage probabilities, the average biases and the average relative mean square errors for the maximum likelihood, L-moments and inverse estimators. We compare the performance of these methods under different schemes of progressively Type-II right censoring. Finally, an illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the proposed methods.

Exploring New Statistical Frontiers At The Intersection Of Survey Science And Big Data: Convergence At "Bigsurv18", Craig A. Hill, Paul Biemer, Trent Buskirk, Mario Callegaro, Analucía Córdova Cazar, Adam Eck, Lilli Japec, Antje Kirchner, Stas Kolenikov, Lars Lyberg, Patrick Sturgis

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

Held in October 2018, The Big Data Meets Survey Science conference, also known as “Big- Surv18,” provided a first-of-its-kind opportunity for survey researchers, statisticians, computer scientists, and data scientists to convene under the same roof. At this conference, scientists from multiple disciplines were able to exchange ideas about their work might influence and enhance the work of others. This was a landmark event, especially for survey researchers and statisticians, whose industry has been buffeted of late by falling response rates and rising costs at the same time as a proliferation of new tools and techniques, coupled with increasing availability of …

Be Wary Of Black-Box Trading Algorithms, Gary N. Smith

Pomona Economics

Black-box algorithms now account for nearly a third of all U. S. stock trades. It is a mistake to think that these algorithms possess superhuman intelligence. In reality, computers do not have the common sense and wisdom that humans have accumulated by living. Trading algorithms are particularly dangerous because they are so efficient at discovering statistical patterns—but so utterly useless in judging whether the discovered patterns are meaningful.

The Paradox Of Big Data, Gary N. Smith

Pomona Economics

Data-mining is often used to discover patterns in Big Data. It is tempting believe that because an unearthed pattern is unusual it must be meaningful, but patterns are inevitable in Big Data and usually meaningless. The paradox of Big Data is that data mining is most seductive when there are a large number of variables, but a large number of variables exacerbates the perils of data mining.

Outcome Prediction In Intensive Care Unit Settings With Claims Data, Lauren Staples, Ryan Rimby

Published and Grey Literature from PhD Candidates

The MIMIC III data comes from an Intensive Care Unit in Boston over a period of 10 years. This data contains billing codes as well as lab and demographic data. This project predicts the outcome “death within 30 days of discharge” through the lense of a healthcare billing company, to see if healthcare companies can play a role in healthcare quality, by only using data that they would have access to (billing and demographic data). This project used a unique method of nominal data variable reduction specific to ICD 9 and CPT codes, and compared the performance of logistic regression …

The Scaling Limit Of The Membrane Model, Alessandra Cipriani, Biltu Dan, Rajat Subhra Hazra

Journal Articles

On the integer lattice, we consider the discrete membrane model, a random interface in which the field has Laplacian interaction. We prove that, under appropriate rescaling, the discrete membrane model converges to the continuum membrane model in d ≥ 2. Namely, it is shown that the scaling limit in d = 2, 3 is a Holder continuous random field, while in d ≥ 4 the membrane model converges to a random distribution. As a by-product of the proof in d = 2, 3, we obtain the scaling limit of the maximum. This work complements the analogous results of Caravenna and …

The Effect Of Exemplar Likability On Moral Elevation, Nathan Lefebre, Peter Meindl

Summer Research

• “Moral elevation,” the emotional response to exceptional virtue, increases prosocial behavior (Thompson & Siegel, 2017).
• We examined the effect of actors’ morallyirrelevant characteristics (namely, likability) on elevation levels.
• Despite an effective manipulation, participants in the likable condition did not significantly differ from the control condition
• Perhaps counterintuitively, this suggests that exemplar likability does not have a direct effect on feelings of moral elevation.

10. Corrections To Design And Analysis Of Experiments, Angela Dean, Dan Voss, Danel Draguljic

Design and Analysis of Experiments

Corrections for the provided by the authors for Design and Analysis of Experiments.

An Information Theory-Based Approach To Assessing Spatial Patterns In Complex Systems, Tarsha Eason, Wen Ching-Chuang, Shana Sundstrom, Heriberto Cabezas

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Given the intensity and frequency of environmental change, the linked and cross-scale nature of social-ecological systems, and the proliferation of big data, methods that can help synthesize complex system behavior over a geographical area are of great value. Fisher information evaluates order in data and has been established as a robust and effective tool for capturing changes in system dynamics, including the detection of regimes and regime shifts. The methods developed to compute Fisher information can accommodate multivariate data of various types and requires no a priori decisions about system drivers, making it a unique and powerful tool. However, the …

Time Series Forecasting And Analysis: A Study Of American Clothing Retail Sales Data, Weijun Huang

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This paper serves to address the effect of time on the sales of clothing retail, from 2010 to May 2019. The data was retrieved from the US Census, where N=113 observations were used, which were plotted to observe their trends. Once outliers and transformations were performed, the best model was fit, and diagnostic review occurred. Inspections for seasonality and forecasting was also conducted. The final model came out to be an ARIMA (2,0,1). Slight seasonality was present, but not enough to drastically influence the trends. Our results serve to highlight the economic growth of clothing retail sales for the past …

The Correlation Between Sleep And Lifespan In Drosophila Melanogaster, Joshua Randall Lisse

Masters Theses

”Adequate sleep is associated with an individual’s health. Too little sleep is associated with many health problems, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, and a general increase in all-cause mortality. Yet the molecular changes that link poor sleep and changes in health are still not well understood. Individuals have a unique daily need for sleep, and deviations from the animal’s regular sleeping patterns can be indicative of, or result in, underlying changes in its health. Therefore, we hypothesize that changes in the sleep architecture in Drosophila melanogaster reflect changes in the fly’s health.

We determined sleep architecture in wild-type male flies over …

An Examination Of Computational Methods Related To G/M/C Queueing, Thomas Michaud Ms

All Student Scholarship

The following examination of computational methods related to queues with general arrivals (i:i:d: but of unknown distribution), multiple identical servers with i:i:d: exponential service times, and ordinary first come, first served service (hereafter referred to as G/M/c to use existing naming conventions) seeks to investigate the current models and provide new results based on a draft convolution method proposed by El-Taha[3]. The new model will demonstrate the use of distributions with coefficients of variance ranging from zero to near infinity to provide flexibility in simulating a range of potential arrival distributions, and we include detailed results and software for both …

A Self-Contained Course In The Mathematical Theory Of Statistics For Scientists & Engineers With An Emphasis On Predictive Regression Modeling & Financial Applications., Tim Smith

Open Access Textbooks

Preface & Acknowledgments

This textbook is designed for a higher level undergraduate, perhaps even first year graduate, course for engineering or science students who are interested to gain knowledge of using data analysis to make predictive models. While there is no statistical perquisite knowledge required to read this book, due to the fact that the study is designed for the reader to truly understand the underlying theory rather than just learn how to read computer output, it would be best read with some familiarity of elementary statistics. The book is self-contained and the only true perquisite knowledge is a solid …

Local Hemodynamic Conditions Associated With Focal Changes In The Intracranial Aneurysm Wall, Juan R. Cebral, F. Detmer, Bong Jae Chung, J. Choque-Velasquez, B. Rezai, H. Lehto, R. Tulamo, J. Hernesniemi, M. Niemela, A. Yu, R. Williamson, Khaled Aziz, S. Sakur, S. Amin-Hanjani, F. Charbel, Y. Tobe, A. Robertson, J. Frösen

Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Aneurysm hemodynamics has been associated with wall histology and inflammation. We investigated associations between local hemodynamics and focal wall changes visible intraoperatively. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Computational fluid dynamics models were constructed from 3D images of 65 aneurysms treated surgically. Aneurysm regions with different visual appearances were identified in intraoperative videos: 1) “atherosclerotic” (yellow), 2) “hyperplastic” (white), 3) “thin” (red), 4) rupture site, and 5) “normal” (similar to parent artery), They were marked on 3D reconstructions. Regional hemodynamics was characterized by the following: wall shear stress, oscillatory shear index, relative residence time, wall shear stress gradient and divergence, …

The Use Of 3-D Highway Differential Geometry In Crash Prediction Modeling, Kiriakos Amiridis

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

The objective of this research is to evaluate and introduce a new methodology regarding rural highway safety. Current practices rely on crash prediction models that utilize specific explanatory variables, whereas the depository of knowledge for past research is the Highway Safety Manual (HSM). Most of the prediction models in the HSM identify the effect of individual geometric elements on crash occurrence and consider their combination in a multiplicative manner, where each effect is multiplied with others to determine their combined influence. The concepts of 3-dimesnional (3-D) representation of the roadway surface have also been explored in the past aiming to …

Fixed Choice Design And Augmented Fixed Choice Design For Network Data With Missing Observations, Miles Q. Ott, Matthew T. Harrison, Krista J. Gile, Nancy P. Barnett, Joseph W. Hogan

Statistical and Data Sciences: Faculty Publications

The statistical analysis of social networks is increasingly used to understand social processes and patterns. The association between social relationships and individual behaviors is of particular interest to sociologists, psychologists, and public health researchers. Several recent network studies make use of the fixed choice design (FCD), which induces missing edges in the network data. Because of the complex dependence structure inherent in networks, missing data can pose very difficult problems for valid statistical inference. In this article, we introduce novel methods for accounting for the FCD censoring and introduce a new survey design, which we call the augmented fixed choice …

Finite Mixture Of Regression Models For Complex Survey Data, Abdelbaset Abdalla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over time, survey data has become an essential source of information for modern society. However, to be effective, the structures of survey data require sampling designs that are more complex than simple random sampling. The complex sampling data collected from enormous national surveys via these complex designs ideally include sample weights that allow analysis to take account of complicated population structures. When the target of inference is the parameters of a regression model, it is crucial to know whether these weights should be incorporated into the sampling weight when fitting the model to the survey data. The finite mixture models …

Performance Measurement In Maine’S Social Sector: The Intersection Of Philanthropy And Nonprofits, Susy Hawes, Sarah Goan

Publications

The Data Innovation Project undertook this project to better understand foundations’ expectations of grantees in terms of performance measures and outcomes as outlined in their grant applications. Over the past two years, the Data Innovation Project has engaged with over 250 Maine nonprofits who are navigating the data reporting requirements of a diverse portfolio of funders with varying degrees of success and challenges. This paper looks more closely at how the important relationship between foundations and nonprofits may benefit from increased understanding and clarity around measurement approaches so that both dollars and efforts lead to meaningful and measureable results across …

Methods For Estimating Mountain Goat Occupancy And Abundance, Molly Mcdevitt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Abundance and occupancy are two parameters of central interest to the field of ecology. Furthermore, accurate (both precise and unbiased) estimates are key pieces to the puzzle of effective wildlife management decision-making. While there exist a variety of sampling techniques and statistical models for effectively estimating population parameters for frequently encountered and large mammals, methods for sampling unmarked and rare species are few and far between. The first step to acquiring usable parameter estimates is through the use of sampling theory and incorporation of probabilistic sampling designs to collect count-data and occurrence-data. Often, it is assumed that probabilistic sampling designs …

Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Nitrogen And Carbon Biogeochemistry In A Wetland-Stream Sequence, Patrick E. Hurley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Studies of aquatic ecosystems often segregate streams from the influential ponds, lakes, and wetland zones that act as important transitions between terrestrial and fluvial systems. Across the aquatic landscape, these zones interact to form linked ecosystems that function as discrete nutrient processing domains, shifting biogeochemical signals due to spatial and temporal variability in hydrologic and biologic controls. Using a mass-balance approach, we profiled nutrient dynamics along a 23-km wetland-stream sequence over three seasons. Hydrologic, morphologic, and biologic conditions, as well as landscape attributes, were quantified to determine potential controls on biogeochemical cycling in a tributary of the Upper Clark Fork …

High Dimensional Outlier Detection, Omid Khormali

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In statistics and data science, outliers are data points that differ greatly from other observations in a data set. They are important attributes of the data because they can dramatically influence patterns and relationships manifested by non-outliers. It is therefore very important to detect and adequately deal with outliers. Recently, a novel algorithm, the ROMA algorithm, has been proposed [11]. In this paper, we propose a modification of the ROMA algorithm that reduces its computational complexity from $O(n^2 m)$ to $O((n/(2^m-o(1)))^2 m)$ where $n$ is the number of data points and $m$ is the dimension of the space. And as …

Biodiversity And Distribution Of Benthic Foraminifera In Harrington Sound, Bermuda: The Effects Of Physical And Geochemical Factors On Dominant Taxa, Nam Le

Honors Theses

Harrington Sound, Bermuda, is a nearly enclosed lagoon acting as a subtropical/tropical, carbonate-rich basin in which carbonate sediments, reef patches, and carbonate-producing organisms accumulate. Here, one of the most important calcareous groups is the Foraminifera. Analyses of common benthic orders, including miliolids (Quinqueloculina and Triloculina spp.) and rotaliids (Homotrema rubrum, Elphidium spp., and Ammonia beccarii), are essential in understanding past and present environmental conditions affecting the island's coastal environment. These taxa have been studied previously; however, factors explaining their individual patterns of abundance in the Sound are not well detailed. The goal of this study is …

Bayesian Nonparametric Analysis Of Longitudinal Data With Non-Ignorable Non-Monotone Missingness, Yu Cao

Theses and Dissertations

In longitudinal studies, outcomes are measured repeatedly over time, but in reality clinical studies are full of missing data points of monotone and non-monotone nature. Often this missingness is related to the unobserved data so that it is non-ignorable. In such context, pattern-mixture model (PMM) is one popular tool to analyze the joint distribution of outcome and missingness patterns. Then the unobserved outcomes are imputed using the distribution of observed outcomes, conditioned on missing patterns. However, the existing methods suffer from model identification issues if data is sparse in specific missing patterns, which is very likely to happen with a …