Biometry Commons^™

Utilizing New Technologies To Measure Therapy Effectiveness For Mental And Physical Health, Jonathan Ossie

Dissertations

Mental health is quickly becoming a major policy concern, with recent data reporting increasing and disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, including anxiety, depression, increased substance abuse, and elevated suicidal ideation. One specific population that is especially high risk for these issues is the military community because military conflict, deployment stressors, and combat exposure contribute to the risk of mental health problems.

Although several pharmacological approaches have been employed to combat this epidemic, their efficacy is mixed at best, which has led to novel nonpharmacological approaches. One such approach is Operation Surf, a nonprofit that provides nature-based programs advocating the restorative …

Unified Methods For Feature Selection In Large-Scale Genomic Studies With Censored Survival Outcomes, Lauren Spirko-Burns, Karthik Devarajan

COBRA Preprint Series

One of the major goals in large-scale genomic studies is to identify genes with a prognostic impact on time-to-event outcomes which provide insight into the disease's process. With rapid developments in high-throughput genomic technologies in the past two decades, the scientific community is able to monitor the expression levels of tens of thousands of genes and proteins resulting in enormous data sets where the number of genomic features is far greater than the number of subjects. Methods based on univariate Cox regression are often used to select genomic features related to survival outcome; however, the Cox model assumes proportional hazards …

Compound-Specific Isotope Analysis Of Amino Acids In Biological Tissues: Applications In Forensic Entomology, Food Authentication And Soft-Biometrics In Humans, Mayara Patricia Viana De Matos

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this work we demonstrate the power of compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) to analyze proteinaceous biological materials in three distinct forensic applications, including: 1) linking necrophagous blow flies in different life stages to their primary carrion diet; 2) identifying the harvesting area of oysters for food authentication purposes; and 3) the ability to predict biometric traits about humans from their hair.

In the first application, we measured the amino-acid-level fractionation that occurs at each major life stage of Calliphora vicina (Robineau-Desvoidy) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) blow flies. Adult blow flies oviposited on raw pork muscle, beef muscle, or chicken liver. Larvae, pupae …

Hpcnmf: A High-Performance Toolbox For Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, Karthik Devarajan, Guoli Wang

COBRA Preprint Series

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is a widely used machine learning algorithm for dimension reduction of large-scale data. It has found successful applications in a variety of fields such as computational biology, neuroscience, natural language processing, information retrieval, image processing and speech recognition. In bioinformatics, for example, it has been used to extract patterns and profiles from genomic and text-mining data as well as in protein sequence and structure analysis. While the scientific performance of NMF is very promising in dealing with high dimensional data sets and complex data structures, its computational cost is high and sometimes could be critical for …

Models For Hsv Shedding Must Account For Two Levels Of Overdispersion, Amalia Magaret

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

We have frequently implemented crossover studies to evaluate new therapeutic interventions for genital herpes simplex virus infection. The outcome measured to assess the efficacy of interventions on herpes disease severity is the viral shedding rate, defined as the frequency of detection of HSV on the genital skin and mucosa. We performed a simulation study to ascertain whether our standard model, which we have used previously, was appropriately considering all the necessary features of the shedding data to provide correct inference. We simulated shedding data under our standard, validated assumptions and assessed the ability of 5 different models to reproduce the …

Macrobenthic Communities In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Hypoxic Zone: Testing The Pearson-Rosenberg Model, Shivakumar Shivarudrappa

Dissertations

The Pearson and Rosenberg (P-R) conceptual model of macrobenthic succession was used to assess the impact of hypoxia (dissolved oxygen [DO] ≤ 2 mg/L) on the macrobenthic community on the continental shelf of northern Gulf of Mexico for the first time. The model uses a stress-response relationship between environmental parameters and the macrobenthic community to determine the ecological condition of the benthic habitat. The ecological significance of dissolved oxygen in a benthic habitat is well understood. In addition, the annual recurrence of bottom-water hypoxia on the Louisiana/Texas shelf during summer months is well documented.

The P-R model illustrates the decreasing …

The Relationship Between The Level Of Support Group Participation And Psychosocial Factors In Prostate Cancer Patients Treated With Proton Therapy, Carol A. L. Davis

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Background. The role of support groups for cancer patients is known to be beneficial in helping people adjust to the disease, and cope with the myriad of effects that cancer has on quality of life. Although many people express interest in attending such support groups, few attend regularly. It is unclear what characteristics distinguish those who use such services from those who do not, especially among proton therapy patients.

Objective. To examine demographic and psychosocial characteristics associated with the Brotherhood of the Balloon (BOB) prostate cancer support group membership, a unique treatment-focused group originating at Loma Linda University Medical Center …

The Incidence And Magnitude Of Tooth-Size Discrepancies In Caucasians, Blacks And Hispanics, Dana R. Shaltry

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The present investigation utilized the Bolton Analysis to determine the incidence and magnitude of tooth-size discrepancy in a sample of 227 orthodontic patients. Sliding calipers were used to measure the mesiodistal width of the permanent dentition on pretreatment study models of 120 Caucasian, 51 Black, and 56 Hispanic patients. The overall and anterior ratios were analyzed and the frequency and magnitude of excess maxillary and mandibular tooth structure was determined. Each racial group demonstrated a significant incidence of tooth-size discrepancy in the maxillary and mandibular arches of a magnitude (> 0.5mm) which would require some form of correction. In addition, …