Modeling Agreement between Binary Classifications of Multiple Raters in R and SAS

Cancer screening and diagnostic tests often are classified using a binary outcome such as diseased or not diseased. Recently large-scale studies have been conducted to assess agreement between many raters. Measures of agreement using the class of generalized linear mixed models were implemented efficiently in four recently introduced R and SAS packages in large-scale agreement studies incorporating binary classifications. Simulation studies were conducted to compare the performance across the packages and apply the agreement methods to two cancer studies

Effect of short-term temperature treatment to clusters on anthocyanin and abscisic acid content in the peel of 'Aki Queen' grape

The effect of short-term low and high temperature treatment to clusters before and after the onset of color development on anthocyanin and abscisic acid (ABA) content in the peel of 'Aki Queen' (Vitis labruscana L.), a tetraploid grape cultivar with red peel was investigated. Grape clusters were exposed to different temperature conditions, either from the beginning of the berry softening to the onset of color development, 47 to 56 days after full bloom (DAFB), or from the onset of color development onwards for 10 days, 56 to 66 DAFB. Low-temperature (2-5 °C lower than control) treatments in both, 47 to 56 DAFB and 56 to 66 DAFB had the tendency to increase anthocyanin concentration and the concentration in the peel was higher than that in the control. The difference in the ABA content after low and high temperature treatment in the 47 to 56 DAFB suggests that temperature from the beginning of berry softening to the onset of color development might affect the ABA content of the peel. On the other hand, treatment from the onset of color development onwards for 10 days might affect the anthocyanin concentration, but the effect on ABA content is relatively low. These results suggest that temperature-dependent accumulation of anthocyanin during maturation correlate with ABA content at the onset of color development in 'Aki Queen' grape.

Development of Uniform CdTe Pixel Detectors Based on Caltech ASIC

We have developed a large CdTe pixel detector with dimensions of 23.7 x 13.0 mm and a pixel size of 448 x 448 um^2. The detector is based on recent technologies of an uniform CdTe single crystal, a two-dimensional ASIC, and stud bump-bonding to connect pixel electrodes on the CdTe surface to the ASIC. Good spectra are obtained from 1051 pixels out of total 1056 pixels. When we operate the detector at -50 C, the energy resolution is 0.67 keV and 0.99 keV at 14 keV and 60 keV, respectively. Week-long stability of the detector is confirmed at operating temperatures of both -50 C and -20 C. The detector also shows high uniformity: the peak positions for all pixels agree to within 0.82%, and the average of the energy resolution is 1.04 keV at a temperature of -50 C. When we normalized the peak area by the total counts detected by each pixel, a variation of 2.1 % is obtained.Comment: 11pages, 17figures, accepted for publication in Proc. SPIE 200

Water recycling system using thermopervaporation method

A water recycling system concept for the crew of the space station is presented. A thermopervaporation method is a new key technology used for the distillation process, utilizing a hydrophobic membrane. An experimental study of thermopervaporation revealed that the permeation depends on the gap between the membrane and the cooling surface in the condensation room: the steam diffusion occurs with gaps less than 5 mm while natural convection becomes dominant with gaps more than 5 mm. A brief discussion of the system operation is also described

VvmybA1 genotype determines grape skin color

Research Not

A retrotransposon-inserted VvmybA1a allele has been spread among cultivars of Vitis vinifera but not North American or East Asian Vitis species

Research Note

Multiple Imputation When Rate of Change Is The Outcome of Interest

Little research has been devoted to multiple imputation (MI) of derived variables. We investigated various MI approaches for the outcome, rate of change, when the analysis model is a two-stage linear regression. Our simulations showed that competitive approaches depended on the missing data mechanism and presence of auxiliary terms

Portais Web desenvolvidos no laboratório de bioinformática da Embrapa Soja.

bitstream/item/71973/1/ID-30955.pd

Comparative Analysis of Non-thermal Emissions and Study of Electron Transport in a Solar Flare

We study the non-thermal emissions in a solar flare occurring on 2003 May 29 by using RHESSI hard X-ray (HXR) and Nobeyama microwave observations. This flare shows several typical behaviors of the HXR and microwave emissions: time delay of microwave peaks relative to HXR peaks, loop-top microwave and footpoint HXR sources, and a harder electron energy distribution inferred from the microwave spectrum than from the HXR spectrum. In addition, we found that the time profile of the spectral index of the higher-energy (\gsim 100 keV) HXRs is similar to that of the microwaves, and is delayed from that of the lower-energy (\lsim 100 keV) HXRs. We interpret these observations in terms of an electron transport model called {\TPP}. We numerically solved the spatially-homogeneous {\FP} equation to determine electron evolution in energy and pitch-angle space. By comparing the behaviors of the HXR and microwave emissions predicted by the model with the observations, we discuss the pitch-angle distribution of the electrons injected into the flare site. We found that the observed spectral variations can qualitatively be explained if the injected electrons have a pitch-angle distribution concentrated perpendicular to the magnetic field lines rather than isotropic distribution.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa