Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Multidiscipline Approach To Mitigating The Insider Threat, Jonathan W. Butts, Robert F. Mills, Gilbert L. Peterson

Faculty Publications

Preventing and detecting the malicious insider is an inherently difficult problem that expands across many areas of expertise such as social, behavioral and technical disciplines. Unfortunately, current methodologies to combat the insider threat have had limited success primarily because techniques have focused on these areas in isolation. The technology community is searching for technical solutions such as anomaly detection systems, data mining and honeypots. The law enforcement and counterintelligence communities, however, have tended to focus on human behavioral characteristics to identify suspicious activities. These independent methods have limited effectiveness because of the unique dynamics associated with the insider threat. The …

The Environmental Impact Of Dietary Choice And Agriculture In California, Harold J. Marlow Jr.

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Food demand influences agricultural production. Modern agricultural practices have resulted in polluted soil, air and water, eroded soil, dependence on imported oil, and loss of biodiversity. The goal of this research is to investigate the environmental impact of pesticide and fertilizer application, water consumption, and energy used to produce commodities for a vegetarian and non vegetarian diet in California. The working assumption is that greater number and amount of inputs are associated with greater environmental impact. The literature supports this notion. To accomplish this goal, dietary preferences were quantified using the Adventist Health Study and state agricultural data were collected …

Low Birth Weight, Very Low Birth Weight And Infant Mortality In San Bernardino County : A Secondary Analysis Of Maternal Factors, Rebecca D. Nanyonjo

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Purpose: National and state infant mortality rates have slowly declined over the last several years. Despite this reduction, San Bernardino County still has one of the highest infant mortality rates in California and racial disparities between Black and White infants not only persist but continue to widen. These disparities remain at the forefront of concern. Healthy People 2010 target objectives have yet to be reached, while national and state proposed plans have supported the statement that a community's largest health problem is initiated by its infant mortality. The purpose of this study was to investigate maternal factors through use of …

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Update: June 2006, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2006

LSUHSC Dailly Facilities Updates from June 2006. These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: June 2006, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2006

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from June 9 and 23, 2006.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Semantic Empowerment Of Health Care And Life Science Applications, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Science & Research Strategy Charter, Public Lands Institute

Interagency Science and Research Strategy

• Cooperatively established tools to measure ecosystem health are implemented
• Common methodologies for data management are agreed to and implemented
• Compatible database methods are utilized
• Award of funding is fair and transparent
• Establishment of a long-term strategy with tested and implemented proposal process

An Analysis Of Financial Planning For Employees Of East Tennessee State University., Steven Roy Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if East Tennessee State University provides its employees appropriate financial planning services. In particular, it is unknown to what degree employees of East Tennessee State University have actively engaged in financial planning.

The research was conducted during June and July, 2005. Data were gathered by surveying faculty, staff, and retirees of the university. Ten percent of the population responded to the study. The survey instrument covered the areas of retirement, other financial planning services, and attitudes toward financial planning.

The results of the data analysis gave insight into what degree employees of …

Who Participates In Today's Environmental Movement? Not The Rich Or The Educated, Jessica Schaum

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Presentation To Snap Board Of Directors, Public Lands Institute

Interagency Science and Research Strategy

• Conduct survey and produce a written report on the various alternative workforce suppliers available to the federal agencies for land management activities; include descriptions of each type of supplier, types of work each can supply, and costs and reimbursement requirements.
• Identify required agreements and/or contracts and suggested adjustments needed in agency staffing to support alternative workforce capabilities.

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2006, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

The senior design competition helps to focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects …

Amherst Ma: A New Village Plan For Atkins Corner, Maggie Jones, Richard Barringer

Planning

The case study describes a successful smart growth initiative in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, at an intersection known as Atkins Corner. The initiative grew from two motivating factors: the necessity of realigning Route 116, a major north-to-south artery through the town, to decrease traffic accidents at the intersection and improve pedestrian safety; and a desire on the part of Hampshire College and the Town to create a village center at the intersection. Through a consensus-building process involving key town officials, Hampshire College, neighbors, and the design firm of Dodson Associates, agreement on the project was reached with local stakeholders …

Confidence Intervals For An Effect Size When Variances Are Not Equal, James Algina, H. J. Keselman, Randall D. Penfield

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Confidence intervals must be robust in having nominal and actual probability coverage in close agreement. This article examined two ways of computing an effect size in a two-group problem: (a) the classic approach which divides the mean difference by a single standard deviation and (b) a variant of a method which replaces least squares values with robust trimmed means and a Winsorized variance. Confidence intervals were determined with theoretical and bootstrap critical values. Only the method that used robust estimators and a bootstrap critical value provided generally accurate probability coverage under conditions of nonnormality and variance heterogeneity in balanced as …

Limitations Of The Analysis Of Variance, Phillip I. Good, Clifford E. Lunneborg

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Conditions under which the analysis of variance will yield inexact p-values or would be inferior in power to a permutation test are investigated. The findings for the one-way design are consistent with and extend those of Miller (1980).

Ancova: A Robust Omnibus Test Based On Selected Design Points, Rand R. Wilcox

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Many robust analogs of the classic analysis of covariance method have been proposed. One approach, when comparing two independent groups, uses selected design points and then compares the groups at each design point using some robust method for comparing measures of location. So, if K design points are of interest, K tests are performed. There are rather obvious ways of performing, instead, an omnibus test that for all K points, no differences between the groups exist. One of the main results here is that several variations of these methods can perform very poorly in simulations. An alternative approach, based in …

Penalized Splines For Longitudinal Data With An Application In Aids Studies, Hua Liang, Yuanhui Xiao

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A penalized spline approximation is proposed in considering nonparametric regression for longitudinal data. Standard linear mixed-effects modeling can be applied for the estimation. It is relatively simple, efficiently computed, and robust to the smooth parameters selection, which are often encountered when local polynomial and smoothing spline techniques are used to analyze longitudinal data set. The method is extended to time-varying coefficient mixed-effects models. The proposed methods are applied to data from an AIDS clinical study. Biological interpretations and clinical implications are discussed. Simulation studies are done to illustrate the proposed methods.

Choosing Smoothing Parameters For Exponential Smoothing: Minimizing Sums Of Squared Versus Sums Of Absolute Errors, Terry E. Dielman

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

When choosing smoothing parameters in exponential smoothing, the choice can be made by either minimizing the sum of squared one-step-ahead forecast errors or minimizing the sum of the absolute onestep- ahead forecast errors. In this article, the resulting forecast accuracy is used to compare these two options.

The Efficiency Of Ols In The Presence Of Auto-Correlated Disturbances In Regression Models, Samir Safi, Alexander White

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates in the regression model are efficient when the disturbances have mean zero, constant variance, and are uncorrelated. In problems concerning time series, it is often the case that the disturbances are correlated. Using computer simulations, the robustness of various estimators are considered, including estimated generalized least squares. It was found that if the disturbance structure is autoregressive and the dependent variable is nonstochastic and linear or quadratic, the OLS performs nearly as well as its competitors. For other forms of the dependent variable, rules of thumb are presented to guide practitioners in the choice …

Understanding Eurasian Convergence: Application Of Kohonen Self-Organizing Maps, Joel I. Deichmann, Abdolreza Eshghi, Dominique Haughton, Selin Sayek, Nicholas Teebagy, Heikki Topi

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Kohonen self-organizing maps (SOMs) are employed to examine economic and social convergence of Eurasian countries based on a set of twenty-eight socio-economic measures. A core of European Union states is identified that provides a benchmark against which convergence of post-socialist transition economies may be judged. The Central European Visegrád countries and Baltics show the greatest economic convergence to Western Europe, while other states form clusters that lag behind. Initial conditions on the social dimension can either facilitate or constrain economic convergence, as discovered in Central Europe vis-à-vis the Central Asian Republics. Disquiet in the convergence literature is resolved by providing …

Analysis Of Type-Ii Progressively Hybrid Censored Competing Risks Data, Debasis Kundu, Avijit Joarder

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A Type-II progressively hybrid censoring scheme for competing risks data is introduced, where the experiment terminates at a pre-specified time. The likelihood inference of the unknown parameters is derived under the assumptions that the lifetime distributions of the different causes are independent and exponentially distributed. The maximum likelihood estimators of the unknown parameters are obtained in exact forms. Asymptotic confidence intervals and two bootstrap confidence intervals are also proposed. Bayes estimates and credible intervals of the unknown parameters are obtained under the assumption of gamma priors on the unknown parameters. Different methods have been compared using Monte Carlo simulations. One …

Jmasm23: Cluster Analysis In Epidemiological Data (Matlab), Andrés M. Alonso

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Matlab functions for testing the existence of time, space and time-space clusters of disease occurrences are presented. The classical scan test, the Ederer, Myers and Mantel’s test, the Ohno, Aoki and Aoki’s test, and the Knox’s test are considered.

Properties Of Bound Estimators On Treatment Effect Heterogeneity For Binary Outcomes, Edward J. Mascha, Jeffrey M. Albert

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Variability in individual causal effects, treatment effect heterogeneity (TEH), is important to the interpretation of clinical trial results, regardless of the marginal treatment effect. Unfortunately, it is usually ignored. In the setting of two-arm randomized studies with binary outcomes, there are estimators for bounds on the probability of control success and treatment failure for an individual, or the treatment risk. Here, those bounds were refined and the sampling properties were assessed using simulations of correlated multinomial data via the Dirichlet multinomial. Results indicated low bias and mean squared error. Moderate to high intraclass correlation (ICC) and large numbers of clusters …

Two New Unbiased Point Estimates Of A Population Variance, Matthew E. Elam

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Two new unbiased point estimates of an unknown population variance are introduced. They are compared to three known estimates using the mean-square error (MSE). A computer program, which is available for download at http://program.20m.com, is developed for performing calculations for the estimates.

Multiple Comparison Procedures, Trimmed Means And Transformed Statistics, Rhonda K. Kowalchuk, H. J. Keselman, Rand R. Wilcox, James Algina, James Algina, James Algina

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A modification to testing pairwise comparisons that may provide better control of Type I errors in the presence of non-normality is to use a preliminary test for symmetry which determines whether data should be trimmed symmetrically or asymmetrically. Several pairwise MCPs were investigated, employing a test of symmetry with a number of heteroscedastic test statistics that used trimmed means and Winsorized variances. Results showed improved Type I error control than competing robust statistics.

Confidence Intervals On Subsets May Be Misleading, Juliet Popper Shaffer

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

No abstract provided.

Projecting The Economic Impact Of The Fayetteville Shale Play For 2005-2008, Jeffery T. Collins, Katherine A. Deck

Publications and Presentations

This study projects the general economic impact from exploration and development activities related to the Fayetteville Shale. The Fayetteville Shale is an unconventional gas reservoir located on the Arkansas side of the Arkoma Basin, ranging in thickness from 50 to 325 feet and ranging in depth from 1,500 to 6,500 feet. The Fayetteville Shale is aerially extensive and may be present across numerous counties in central and eastern Arkansas, including the counties of Cleburne, Conway, Faulkner, Independence, Johnson, St. Francis, Prairie, Van Buren, White, and Woodruff.

People, Pixels, & Weights: Some Novel Applications Of Remote Sensing And Geographically Weighted Regression For Evansville, Indiana, Eric W. Lafary

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The exploration of urban-environmental changes and how those transformations co-vary with observed socio-economic realities is currently a major research initiative in geography. To that end, this thesis develops an urban-environmental assessment regime that examines how environmental change co-varies with observed socio-economic conditions. Research has demonstrated existing linkages between observed conditions in regard to socio-economic status (SES) and a particular greenness index, as represented by, normal difference vegetation index (NDVI). However, a gap within the literature has been identified concerning the current methodologies that propose to predict SES using remotely sensed data. Therefore, this thesis addresses this gap within the related …

Indiana School Districts' Capacity To Use Student-Data Information Systems For Analysis And Decision Making, Rodney A. King

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study investigated if student data is readily accessible and utilized to determine the academic abilities of the student. This study also investigated the current capabilities of the district and school to perform multiple tasks pertinent to data collection, assessment, and to what extent the system could be utilized to predict the principles of instructional change, staff training, communication and feedback. A review of the literature was conducted to design a survey instrument to measure the capacity of school districts student data-information systems. The population of this study consisted of all superintendents, assistant superintendents, business managers, or technology directors in …

Semantic Analytics Visualization, Leonidas Deligiannidis, Amit P. Sheth, Boanerges Aleman-Meza

Kno.e.sis Publications

In this paper we present a new tool for semantic analytics through 3D visualization called “Semantic Analytics Visualization” (SAV). It has the capability for visualizing ontologies and meta-data including annotated web-documents, images, and digital media such as audio and video clips in a synthetic three-dimensional semi-immersive environment. More importantly, SAV supports visual semantic analytics, whereby an analyst can interactively investigate complex relationships between heterogeneous information. The tool is built using Virtual Reality technology which makes SAV a highly interactive system. The backend of SAV consists of a Semantic Analytics system that supports query processing and semantic association discovery. Using a …

The Effect On Type I Error And Power Of Various Methods Of Resolving Ties For Six Distribution-Free Tests Of Location, Bruce R. Fay

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The impact on Type I error robustness and power for nine different methods of resolving ties was assessed for six distribution-free statistics with four empirical data sets using Monte Carlo techniques. These statistics share an underlying assumption of population continuity such that samples are assumed to have no equal data values (no zero difference–scores, no tied ranks). The best results across all tests and combinations of simulation parameters were obtained by randomly resolving ties, although there were exceptions. The method of dropping ties and reducing the sample size performed poorly.