Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Dose Coefficients For Radionuclides Produced In A Spallation Neutron Source, John P. Shanahan

Transmutation Sciences Physics (TRP)

Internal and external dose coefficient values have been calculated for 14 anthropogenic radionuclides which are not currently presented in Federal Guidance Reports No. 11, 12, and 13 or Publications 68 and 72 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. Internal dose coefficient values are reported for inhalation and ingestion of 1 μm and 5 μm particulates along with the f1 values and absorption types for the adult worker. Internal dose coefficient values are also reported for inhalation and ingestion of 1 μm particulates as well as the f1 values and absorption types for members of the public. Additionally, external dose …

Inside Unlv, Gian Galassi, Carol C. Harter, Gale Sinatra

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Computational Models For Diffusion Of Second Messengers In Visual Transduction, Harihar Khanal

Publications

The process of phototransduction, whereby light is converted into an electrical response in retinal rod and cone photoreceptors, involves, as a crucial step, the diffusion of cytoplasmic signaling molecules, termed second messengers. A barrier to mathematical and computational modeling is the complex geometry of the rod outer segment which contains about 1000 thin discs. Most current investigations on the subject assume a well-stirred bulk aqueous environment thereby avoiding such geometrical complexity. We present theoretical and computational spatio-temporal models for phototransduction in vertebrate rod photoreceptors, which are pointwise in nature and thus take into account the complex geometry of the …

Analysis Of Soil Lead Levels In An Historic District Of A South Central Kentucky City, Robert Cummins

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Lead in soil has been shown to be a significant pathway of lead exposure in children. Several factors including age of housing units, exterior composition, and paint loading may affect the amount of lead present in the soil. The purpose of this study was to analyze soil lead levels on properties located in an historic district and relate those levels to the variables previously mentioned. A total of 30 soil samples were collected from housing units in a nationally recognized historic district. Concentrations of lead in the soil were analyzed using a NITON X-ray Fluorescence Spectrum Analyzer, following EPA Method …

Adjusting For Non-Ignorable Verification Bias In Clinical Studies For Alzheimer’S Disease, Xiao-Hua Zhou, Pete Castelluccio

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

A common problem for comparing the relative accuracy of two screening tests for Alzheimer’s disease (D) in a two-stage design study is verification bias. If the verification bias can be assumed to be ignorable, Zhou and Higgs (2000) have proposed a maximum likelihood approach to compare the relative accuracy of screening tests in a two-stage design study. However, if the verification mechanism also depends on the unobserved disease status, the ignorable assumption does not hold. In this paper, we discuss how to use a profile likelihood approach to compare the relative accuracy of two screening tests for AD without assuming …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 45 Number 1, Summer 2003, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

8 - MASS APPEAL By Erin Ryan. Each week hundreds of students close their books for the night and crowd into Mission Santa Clara for an informal 10 p.m. Mass. The service has drawn students and the community to church for more than 30 years.

10 - BREAKING THROUGH By Francisco Jimenez. An excerpt from the autobiography of Jimenez, who faced many challenges since he and his family entered the United States from Mexico when he was 4. Through work in the fields, to deportation, to struggles in English class, he persevered. And now he's a professor at SCU.

16 …

Study Of The Distribution And Variation Of The Herbicide Atrazine In Finished Drinking Water At A Small Community Water System In Kentucky, Vijay Golla

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study examines the variation in the distribution of the concentration of atrazine, a triazine herbicide used in Kentucky to control weeds primarily in corn fields. Atrazine is known to have carcinogenic properties and is an endocrine disruptor in aquatic species even at low concentrations. Atrazine has the ability to be transported through the environment into water bodies due to its physical and chemical properties favoring its occurrence and distribution. Raw and Finished drinking water samples were collected from the Lewisburg water treatment plant which derives its drinking water supplies from a source water intake namely Spa Lake, which has …

A New Confidence Interval For The Difference Between Two Binomial Proportions Of Paired Data, Xiao-Hua Zhou, Gengsheng Qin

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Motivated by a study on comparing sensitivities and specificities of two diagnostic tests in a paired design when the sample size is small, we first derived an Edgeworth expansion for the studentized difference between two binomial proportions of paired data. The Edgeworth expansion can help us understand why the usual Wald interval for the difference has poor coverage performance in the small sample size. Based on the Edgeworth expansion, we then derived a transformation based confidence interval for the difference. The new interval removes the skewness in the Edgeworth expansion; the new interval is easy to compute, and its coverage …

A Comprehensive Approach To The Analysis Of Maldi-Tof Proteomics Spectra From Serum Samples., Keith A. Baggerly, Jeffrey S. Morris, Jing Wang, David Gold, Lian-Chun Xiao, Kevin R. Coombes

Jeffrey S. Morris

For our analysis of the data from the First Annual Proteomics Data Mining Conference, we attempted to discriminate between 24 disease spectra (group A) and 17 normal spectra (group B). First, we processed the raw spectra by (i) correcting for additive sinusoidal noise (periodic on the time scale) affecting most spectra, (ii) correcting for the overall baseline level, (iii) normalizing, (iv) recombining fractions, and (v) using variable- width windows for data reduction. Also, we identified a set of polymeric peaks (at multiples of 180.6 Da) that is present in several normal spectra (B1–B8). After data processing, we found the intensities …

Inside Unlv, Kevin Force, Gian Galassi, Carol C. Harter, Stuart Mann

Inside UNLV

No abstract provided.

Cultural And Psychological Influences On Diabetic Adherence, Keikilani Mcmillin-Williams

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Diabetes mellitus is a serious disease that poses a particular healthcare challenge because progression is considered controllable (Cox, et al, 1985; Vinicor, et al, 1996) yet treatment adherence, and thus outcome, is very poor (Gonder-Frederick, Cox, & Ritterband, 2002; Goodall, 1991). Culture is a lethal risk factor for diabetic contraction and treatment maintenance. Latinos within the United States are two-to-three times more likely to develop complications and die than non-Latinos (Haffner et al, 1996; Rubin, Peyrot, & Saudek, 1991) and are less likely to adhere to treatment (Lipton, Losey, Giachello, Mendez, & Girotti, 1998). Efforts to eliminate health disparities have …

The Effect Of Ultrasonics On Fibroblast Cells, Sheila A. Harris

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The field of dentistry uses the debriding properties of ultrasonic vibration. It is unknown if this property is detrimental to the periodontal ligament (PDL) of an avulsed tooth. This information is important when a clinician is faced with a debris-covered avulsed tooth following a traumatic event. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect that ultrasonic vibration has on those PDL cells most numerous and most vital to a successful tooth replantation, namely, the fibroblasts.

Several fibroblast cell sources were exposed to varying ultrasonic times. These included a commercially available cell line of human foreskin fibroblast (HFF), a …

Improved Confidence Intervals For The Sensitivity At A Fixed Level Of Specificity Of A Continuous-Scale Diagnostic Test, Xiao-Hua Zhou, Gengsheng Qin

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

For a continuous-scale test, it is an interest to construct a confidence interval for the sensitivity of the diagnostic test at the cut-off that yields a predetermined level of its specificity (eg. 80%, 90%, or 95%). IN this paper we proposed two new intervals for the sensitivity of a continuous-scale diagnostic test at a fixed level of specificity. We then conducted simulation studies to compare the relative performance of these two intervals with the best existing BCa bootstrap interval, proposed by Platt et al. (2000). Our simulation results showed that the newly proposed intervals are better than the BCa bootstrap …

Bootstrap Confidence Intervals For Medical Costs With Censored Observations, Hongyu Jiang, Xiao-Hua Zhou

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Medical costs data with administratively censored observations often arise in cost-effectiveness studies of treatments for life threatening diseases. Mean of medical costs incurred from the start of a treatment till death or certain timepoint after the implementation of treatment is frequently of interest. In many situations, due to the skewed nature of the cost distribution and non-uniform rate of cost accumulation over time, the currently available normal approximation confidence interval has poor coverage accuracy. In this paper, we proposed a bootstrap confidence interval for the mean of medical costs with censored observations. In simulation studies, we showed that the proposed …

A Bootstrap Confidence Interval Procedure For The Treatment Effect Using Propensity Score Subclassification, Wanzhu Tu, Xiao-Hua Zhou

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

In the analysis of observational studies, propensity score subclassification has been shown to be a powerful method for adjusting unbalanced covariates for the purpose of causal inferences. One practical difficulty in carrying out such an analysis is to obtain a correct variance estimate for such inferences, while reducing bias in the estimate of the treatment effect due to an imbalance in the measured covariates. In this paper, we propose a bootstrap procedure for the inferences concerning the average treatment effect; our bootstrap method is based on an extension of Efron’s bias-corrected accelerated (BCa) bootstrap confidence interval to a two-sample problem. …

Development Of Dose Coefficients For Radionuclides Produced In Spallation Neutron Sources, Phillip W. Patton

Transmutation Sciences Physics (TRP)

A research consortium comprised of representatives from several universities and national laboratories has been established as part of this on-going project to generate internal and external dose conversion coefficients for radionuclides produced in spallation neutron sources. Information obtained from this multi-year study will be used to support the siting and licensing of future accelerator-driven nuclear initiatives within the U.S. Department of Energy complex, including the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) and the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) Projects. Determination of these coefficients will also fill data gaps for several hundred radionuclides that exist in Federal Guide Report No. 11 and in …

Regulation And Localization Of Endogenous Human Tristetraprolin, Anna-Marie Fairhurst, John E. Connolly, Katharine A Hintz, Nicolas J Goulding

Dartmouth Scholarship

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) has been implicated in the development and pathogenicity of infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders, such as septic shock and arthritis. The zinc-finger protein tristetraprolin (TTP) has been identified as a major regulator of TNF biosynthesis. To define its intracellular location and examine its regulation of TNF, a quantitive intracellular staining assay specific for TTP was developed. We establish for the first time that in peripheral blood leukocytes, express

Genescene: Biomedical Text And Data Mining, Gondy Leroy, Hsinchun Chen, Jesse D. Martinez, Shauna Eggers, Ryan R. Falsey, Kerri L. Kislin, Zan Huang, Jiexun Li, Jie Xu, Daniel M. Mcdonald, Gavin Ng

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

To access the content of digital texts efficiently, it is necessary to provide more sophisticated access than keyword based searching. GeneScene provides biomedical researchers with research findings and background relations automatically extracted from text and experimental data. These provide a more detailed overview of the information available. The extracted relations were evaluated by qualified researchers and are precise. A qualitative ongoing evaluation of the current online interface indicates that this method to search the literature is more useful and efficient than keyword based searching.

Water Quality Assessment In Cypress Creek Nature Preserve, Jason Flora

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Swamps are unique ecological communities that provide many valuable ecosystem services. In Kentucky, however, many swamps were altered by cypress removal and land development in their watersheds. Cypress Creek Swamp, which lies near Paducah in western Kentucky, is a good example of a swamp whose ecological integrity may be threatened by past and current nearby land use practices. This study was conducted to assess the water quality and macro- and microinvertebrate communities in the swamp. Three sites were monitored for temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, specific conductivity, depth, phosphorus measured as orthophosphate, nitrite (NO2") and nitrate (NO3", NOx collectively), and ammonia …

2003 - The Eighth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Eighth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 18, 2003. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 44 Number 4, Spring 2003, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

8 - DREAMS REFLECT OUR WAKING WORLD By Kelly Bulkeley. A teacher of religious studies at SCU argues that dreams are much more than just personal - they reflect larger issues in culture, politics, and society.

12 - SCHOOL WORK By Jean Merl. High school students in South Central L.A. are gaining valuable job skills while they help pay for their private education. And SCU alumni are helping to make it all work.

18 - BELIEVING IN HEALTH By Thomas G. Plante. Research shows that religion may be good for your health, but that does not mean that doctors will …

Modeling The Decision Process Of A Joint Task Force Commander, John Anthony Sokolowski

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The U.S. military uses modeling and simulation as a tool to help meet its warfighting needs. A key element within military simulations is the ability to accurately represent human behavior. This is especially true in a simulation's ability to emulate realistic military decisions. However, current decision models fail to provide the variability and flexibility that human decision makers exhibit. Further, most decision models are focused on tactical decisions and ignore the decision process of senior military commanders at the operational level of warfare. In an effort to develop a better decision model that would mimic the decision process of a …

Automatic Speaker Identification Using Reusable And Retrainable Binary-Pair Partitioned Neural Networks, Ashutosh Mishra

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This thesis presents an extension of the work previously done on speaker identification using Binary Pair Partitioned (BPP) neural networks. In the previous work, a separate network was used for each pair of speakers in the speaker population. Although the basic BPP approach did perform well and had a simple underlying algorithm, it had the obvious disadvantage of requiring an extremely large number of networks for speaker identification with large speaker populations. It also requires training of networks proportional to the square of the number of speakers under consideration, leading to a very large number of networks to be trained …

Estimating The Accuracy Of Polymerase Chain Reaction-Based Tests Using Endpoint Dilution, Jim Hughes, Patricia Totten

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

PCR-based tests for various microorganisms or target DNA sequences are generally acknowledged to be highly "sensitive" yet the concept of sensitivity is ill-defined in the literature on these tests. We propose that sensitivity should be expressed as a function of the number of target DNA molecules in the sample (or specificity when the target number is 0). However, estimating this "sensitivity curve" is problematic since it is difficult to construct samples with a fixed number of targets. Nonetheless, using serially diluted replicate aliquots of a known concentration of the target DNA sequence, we show that it is possible to disentangle …

Bayesian Shrinkage Estimation Of The Relative Abundance Of Mrna Transcripts Using Sage, Jeffrey S. Morris, Keith A. Baggerly, Kevin R. Coombes

Jeffrey S. Morris

Serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) is a technology for quantifying gene expression in biological tissue that yields count data that can be modeled by a multinomial distribution with two characteristics: skewness in the relative frequencies and small sample size relative to the dimension. As a result of these characteristics, a given SAGE sample may fail to capture a large number of expressed mRNA species present in the tissue. Empirical estimators of mRNA species’ relative abundance effectively ignore these missing species, and as a result tend to overestimate the abundance of the scarce observed species comprising a vast majority of …

Global Challenges Show, Nat Quansah

Nat Quansah

No abstract provided.

Enterobius Vermicularis: Ancient Dna From North And South American Human Coprolites, Alena M. Iñiguez, Karl J. Reinhard, Adauto Araújo, Luiz F. Ferreira, Ana Carolina P. Vicente

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A molecular paleoparasitological diagnostic approach was developed for Enterobius vermicularis. Ancient DNA was extracted from 27 coprolites from archaeological sites in Chile and USA. Enzymatic amplification of human mtDNA sequences confirmed the human origin. We designed primers specific to the E. vermicularis 5S ribosomal RNA spacer region and they allowed reproducible polymerase chain reaction identification of ancient material. We suggested that the paleoparasitological microscopic identification could accompany molecular diagnosis, which also opens the possibility of sequence analysis to understand parasite-host evolution.

Stage Based Interventions For Low Fat Diet With Middle School Students, Marilyn Frenn, Shelly Malin, Naveen K. Bansal

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Preventing obesity and cardiovascular disease at early ages is important; however, few effective interventions for early adolescents have been reported. In this study, low-income, culturally diverse students from an urban middle school (n = 60) received four classroom interventions with the use of a combined Health Promotion/Transtheoretical Model to control fat in diet and increase physical activity. A control group (n = 57) received the usual classroom education. Pretest percentage fat in diet was regressed on demographics, access to low-fat foods, perceived self-efficacy, benefits/barriers, and stage of change with results as proposed by the model [F(9,64) …

Selecting Differentially Expressed Genes From Microarray Experiments, Margaret S. Pepe, Gary M. Longton, Garnet L. Anderson, Michel Schummer

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

High throughput technologies, such as gene expression arrays and protein mass spectrometry, allow one to simultaneously evaluate thousands of potential biomarkers that distinguish different tissue types. Of particular interest here is cancer versus normal organ tissues. We consider statistical methods to rank genes (or proteins) in regards to differential expression between tissues. Various statistical measures are considered and we argue that two measures related to the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve are particularly suitable for this purpose. We also propose that sampling variability in the gene rankings be quantified and suggest using the “selection probability function”, the probability distribution of rankings …

Semiparametric Receiver Operating Characteristic Analysis To Evaluate Biomarkers For Disease, Tianxi Cai, Margaret S. Pepe

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is a popular method for characterizing the accuracy of diagnostic tests when test results are not binary. Various methodologies for estimating and comparing ROC curves have been developed. One approach, due to Pepe, uses a parametric regression model with the baseline function specified up to a finite-dimensional parameter. In this article we extend the regression models by allowing arbitrary nonparametric baseline functions. We also provide asymptotic distribution theory and procedures for making statistical inference. We illustrate our approach with dataset from a prostate cancer biomarker study. Simulation studies suggest that the extra flexibility inherent …