Error Rates for Unvalidated Medical Age Assessment Procedures

During 2014-15 Sweden received asylum applications from more than 240.000 people, of which more than 40.000 were termed unaccompanied minors. In a large number of cases, claims by asylum seekers of being below 18 years were not trusted by Swedish authorities. To handle the situation, the Swedish national board of forensic medicine (R\"attsmedicinalverket, RMV) was assigned by the government to create a centralized system for medical age assessments. RMV introduced a procedure including two biological age indicators; x-ray of the third molars and magnetic resonance imaging of the distal femoral epiphysis. In 2017 a total of 9617 males and 337 females were subjected to this procedure. No validation study for the procedure was however published, and the observed number of cases with different maturity combinations in teeth and femur were unexpected given the claims originally made by RMV. Such unexpected results might be caused by systematic errors and need to be analysed thoroughly. In the present paper we present a general stochastic model enabling us to study which combinations of age indicator model parameters and age population profiles are consistent with the observed 2017 data for males. We find that, contrary to some RMV claims, maturity of the femur, as observed by RMV, appears on average well before maturity of teeth. Although results naturally contain much uncertainty, we find that classification error rates for certain groups who based on the RMV procedure are classified as above 18 years may be around 10-30%, possibly as high as 50%

Impact of Changes in Dietary Preferences on U.S. Retail Demand for Beef: Health Concerns and the Role of Media

The goal of this study is twofold: to determine if in the long run health concerns affect, via changes in consumer dietary preferences, the retail demand for beef in the United States and to establish if media coverage of popular diets (media frenzy) causes the change in retail demand for beef, or if it simply reports the facts about the changes in consumer dietary preferences. Data used in the analysis are the quarterly retail demand index for beef and the number of newspaper articles and magazine features on low-fat, low-cholesterol and low-carb diets published in the United States between 1990:I and 2004:IV. Johansen's cointegration method and vector error correction (VEC) model based Granger causality test were used in the long-run and short-run analysis respectively. The results indicate that health concerns are an important demand shifter for beef in the long run. In the short run, media serves as a trigger that will swing people to become followers of a certain diet.Health concerns, media, demand for beef, cointegration, VEC, Granger causality, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, D12, Q13,

The quest for a donor: probability based methods offer help

When a patient in need of a stem cell transplant has no compatible donor within his or her closest family, and no matched unrelated donor can be found, a remaining option is to search within the patient’s extended family. This situation often arises when the patient is of an ethnic minority, originating from a country that lacks a well-developed stem cell donor program, and has HLA haplotypes that are rare in his or her country of residence. Searching within the extended family may be time-consuming and expensive, and tools to calculate the probability of a match within groups of untested relatives would facilitate the search. We present a general approach to calculating the probability of a match in a given relative, or group of relatives, based on the pedigree, and on knowledge of the genotypes of some of the individuals. The method extends previous approaches by allowing the pedigrees to be consanguineous and arbitrarily complex, with deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. We show how this extension has a considerable effect on results, in particular for rare haplotypes. The methods are exemplified using freeware programs to solve a case of practical importance

Fear and Loathing in Colorado: Invoking the Supreme Court’s State-Controversy Jurisdiction to Challenge the Marijuana-Legalization Experiment

This Article asserts that states may invoke the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction to challenge marijuana legalization in Colorado. The State’s introduction of marijuana into interstate commerce has reawakened a long-dormant body of constitutional law dealing with transboundary nuisance disputes between states. In making this argument, we distinguish our theory from the complaint lodged by Nebraska and Oklahoma with the Supreme Court. Nebraska and Oklahoma seek to enforce the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, contending that Colorado’s venture violates the federal Controlled Substances Act. In contrast, we assert that the Court should award damages to a prevailing state, using the Coase Theorem of market efficiency as its guide. Real-world application of this Theorem can be attained by imposing a legal rule charging the nuisance with the damages it causes. If compelling a polluter to internalize the cost of its pollution drives it out of business, then the enterprise was not the most economically efficient use of the property. In contrast, if the polluter assumes responsibility for all the costs of the venture and still realizes a sufficient profit to stay in business, then its use of the land is most efficient. If this remedy is applied, the market will determine the success or failure of Colorado’s venture and will serve as a guide to other states in deciding whether it is worth emulating

Entreprenørens dilemmaer : gode idéer uten finansiering

Denne utredningen er gjennomført som en avsluttende del av Siviløkonomutdannelsen ved Norges Handelshøyskole i Bergen. Oppgaven utgjør 30 studiepoeng og er skrevet innenfor hovedprofilene finansiell økonomi, og strategi og ledelse. Studien er skrevet som en del av forskningsprogrammet FOCUS ved NHH. I forbindelse med utredningen har vi mottatt stipend, veiledning og tilgang til kontor gjennom forskningsprogrammet. Dette har blitt høyt verdsatt. Utredningen bygger på det dagsaktuelle fenomenet equity crowdfunding. Forfatterne har begge en nær tilknytning til innovasjon og entreprenørskap gjennom arbeidsliv, studier og personlige interesser. Denne utredningen er et resultat av dette engasjementet. Arbeidet har vært arbeidsomt og krevende, men samtidig svært lærerikt og spennende. Vi har gjennom hele prosessen tilegnet oss ny kunnskap. Vi ønsker å rette en stor takk til vår veileder professor Ingeborg Astrid Kleppe som har bidratt med svært nyttige innspill og tilbakemeldinger underveis i arbeidet. Vi har satt pris på samarbeidet med veileder og de andre studentene i crowdfunding-gruppen. Vi vil også takke førsteamanuensis Rotem Shneor ved Universitetet i Agder for faglige innspill han har gitt oss gjennom korrespondanser og foredrag. En stor takk går også til familie og venner som har bidratt med motivasjon, konstruktive diskusjoner, tilbakemeldinger og korrekturlesing av oppgaven. En siste takk går til alle informantene som tok seg tid til å stille til intervju i en ellers hektisk gründerhverdag.nhhma

Using Object Oriented Bayesian Networks to Model Linkage, Linkage Disequilibrium and Mutations between STR Markers

In a number of applications there is a need to determine the most likely pedigree for a group of persons based on genetic markers. Adequate models are needed to reach this goal. The markers used to perform the statistical calculations can be linked and there may also be linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the population. The purpose of this paper is to present a graphical Bayesian Network framework to deal with such data. Potential LD is normally ignored and it is important to verify that the resulting calculations are not biased. Even if linkage does not influence results for regular paternity cases, it may have substantial impact on likelihood ratios involving other, more extended pedigrees. Models for LD influence likelihoods for all pedigrees to some degree and an initial estimate of the impact of ignoring LD and/or linkage is desirable, going beyond mere rules of thumb based on marker distance. Furthermore, we show how one can readily include a mutation model in the Bayesian Network; extending other programs or formulas to include such models may require considerable amounts of work and will in many case not be practical. As an example, we consider the two STR markers vWa and D12S391. We estimate probabilities for population haplotypes to account for LD using a method based on data from trios, while an estimate for the degree of linkage is taken from the literature. The results show that accounting for haplotype frequencies is unnecessary in most cases for this specific pair of markers. When doing calculations on regular paternity cases, the markers can be considered statistically independent. In more complex cases of disputed relatedness, for instance cases involving siblings or so-called deficient cases, or when small differences in the LR matter, independence should not be assumed. (The networks are freely available at http://arken.umb.no/~dakl/BayesianNetwor​ks.

Entreprenørens dilemmaer : gode idéer uten finansiering

Denne utredningen er gjennomført som en avsluttende del av Siviløkonomutdannelsen ved Norges Handelshøyskole i Bergen. Oppgaven utgjør 30 studiepoeng og er skrevet innenfor hovedprofilene finansiell økonomi, og strategi og ledelse. Studien er skrevet som en del av forskningsprogrammet FOCUS ved NHH. I forbindelse med utredningen har vi mottatt stipend, veiledning og tilgang til kontor gjennom forskningsprogrammet. Dette har blitt høyt verdsatt. Utredningen bygger på det dagsaktuelle fenomenet equity crowdfunding. Forfatterne har begge en nær tilknytning til innovasjon og entreprenørskap gjennom arbeidsliv, studier og personlige interesser. Denne utredningen er et resultat av dette engasjementet. Arbeidet har vært arbeidsomt og krevende, men samtidig svært lærerikt og spennende. Vi har gjennom hele prosessen tilegnet oss ny kunnskap. Vi ønsker å rette en stor takk til vår veileder professor Ingeborg Astrid Kleppe som har bidratt med svært nyttige innspill og tilbakemeldinger underveis i arbeidet. Vi har satt pris på samarbeidet med veileder og de andre studentene i crowdfunding-gruppen. Vi vil også takke førsteamanuensis Rotem Shneor ved Universitetet i Agder for faglige innspill han har gitt oss gjennom korrespondanser og foredrag. En stor takk går også til familie og venner som har bidratt med motivasjon, konstruktive diskusjoner, tilbakemeldinger og korrekturlesing av oppgaven. En siste takk går til alle informantene som tok seg tid til å stille til intervju i en ellers hektisk gründerhverdag.nhhma

Response to: DNA identification by pedigree likelihood ratio accommodating population substructure and mutations.

Mutation models are important in many areas of genetics including forensics. This letter criticizes the model of the paper 'DNA identification by pedigree likelihood ratio accommodating population substructure and mutations' by Ge et al. (2010). Furthermore, we argue that the paper in some cases misrepresents previously published papers.Please see related letter: http://www.investigativegenetics.com/content/2/1/8.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Hardware in the Loop Testing of Explicit Model Predictive Control of The CubeSat Selfie-Sat

To eksplisite Model Prediktive Kontrollere ble utviklet for CubeSaten Selfie-Sat. Den ene kontroller skulle bruke til å peke et kamera, mens den andre skulle bruke til å holde satellitten i en ideell orientasjon for lading. I tilleg bel en test benk maskinvare i løken (Hardware in the Loop) utviklet for å teste kontrollene. Som en del av maskinvare i løken ble også utviklet modeller for forstyrrelser, sensorer og aktuatorer som var skreddersydd for Selfie-Sat. Kontrollene som ble utviklet var noenlunde suksessfulle, de fungerte i ideelle tilfeller, men ikke når de ble utsatt for forstyrrelser. Kontrollene ble ikke teste i maskinvare i løkke systemet ettersom det foreslått designet ikke kunne håndtere den nødvendige dataflyten.Tow explicit Model Predictive Controllers where developed for the CubeSat Selfie-Sat. One was intended to be used for camera pointing and the other was intended to be used to keep the satellite in ideal chagrin orientation. In addition a initial design of a Hardware in the Loop test setup for testing the controller was developed. As part of the Hardware in the Loop development disturbance, sensor and actuator models where also developed tailored to the Selfi-Sat. In the end the two controllers where somewhat successful working in ideal conditions, but not when exposed to disturbances. The controller where not tested using the Hardware in the Loop environment as the proposed design could not handle the necessary data flow