Approximation to Multivariate Normal Higher Dimensional Probabilities in Mixed - Data Model with Missing Responses

Multivariate data with mixed ordinal and continuous responses with the possibility of nonignorable missingness are often common in follow up social studies and their analysis need to be promoted. One of the standard methods of analysis is based on joint modelling. In this method, we use that simultaneously allow modelling non-ignorable mechanism and a full likelihood-based approach is used to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of parameters of joint modelling. In this approach, when the dimension of the vector responses are increased, includes somehow troubling computations which are often time-consuming. Another alternative is an approximation for multivariate normal probabilities for higher dimensional regions, based conditional expectations in joint modelling. A comparison between approximation method and full likelihood-based approach is used to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of parameters of joint modelling. To illustrate the utility of the proposed model, a large data set excerpted from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) is analyzed. For these data, the simultaneous effects of some covariates on life satisfaction, income and the amount of money spent on leisure activities per month as three mixed correlated responses are explored

Gaussian Copula Mixed Models with Non-Ignorable Missing Outcomes

This paper is concerned with the analysis of mixed data with ordinal and continuous outcomes with the possibility of non - ignorable missing outcomes . A copula-based regression model is proposed that accounts for associations between ordinal and continuous outcomes . Our approach entails specifying underlying latent variables for the mixed outcomes to indicate the latent mechanisms which generate the ordinal and continuous variables . Maximum likelihood estimation of our model parameters is implemented using standard software such as function nlminb in R . Results of simulations concern the relative biases of parameter estimates of joint and marginal models using data with non-ignorable outcomes . The proposed methodology is illustrated using a medical data obtained from an observational study on women with three correlated responses , an ordinal response of osteoporosis of the spine and two continuous responses of body mass index and waistline . The effect of the amount of total body calcium (Ca) , job status (Job) , type of dwelling (Ta) and age on all responses are investigated simultaneously

Analysis of Mixed Correlated Bivariate Negative Binomial and Continuous Responses

A general model for the mixed correlated negative binomial and continuous responses is proposed. It is shown how to construct parameter of the models, using the maximization of the full likelihood. Influence of a small perturbation of correlation parameter of the model on the likelihood displacement is also studied. The model is applied to a medical data, obtained from an observational study on women, where the correlated responses are the negative binomial response of joint damage and continuous responses of body mass index. Simultaneous effects of some covariates on both responses are investigated

Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) effects on serum paraoxanase-1 activity

زمینه و هدف: گیاه خرفه یکی از غنی ترین منابع گیاهی دارای اسید های چرب امگا 3 می باشد و مواد آنتی اکسیدان و عناصر معدنی متعدد در بخش های مختلف این گیاه وجود دارد. این مطالعه با هدف بررسی تاثیر گیاه خرفه بر سطح لیپوپروتئین ها به ویژه لیپوپروتئین های با دانسیته پایین اکسیده (OxLDL) و فعالیت آنزیم پاراکسوناز1 و مقایسه آن با اثر لواستاتین انجام شد. روش بررسی: در این مطالعه کارآزمایی بالینی از بین بیماران مراجعه کننده به پزشک متخصص داخلی کلینیک تخصصی بیمارستان آیت اله کاشانی شهرکرد، 93 بیمار که دارای LDL بیشتر از mg/dl 100 بودند به روش در دسترس انتخاب و به دو گروه دریافت کننده روزانه 50 تا 60 گرم خرفه خام و گروه دریافت کننده روزانه mg/day20 لواستاتین تقسیم شدند. در شروع مطالعه و 45 روز پس از مصرف خرفه و لواستاتین از همه افراد دو گروه 5 میلی لیتر خون به صورت ناشتا گرفته و بر روی نمونه ها آزمایشات مربوط با روشهای استاندارد انجام شده و نتایج بدست آمده از طریق آزمون های آماری t و t زوجی مورد تجزیه و تحلیل قرار گرفت. یافته ها: مصرف خرفه و لواستاتین باعث کاهش در کلسترول تام، LDL-C و OxLDL شد (05/0

Chromosome 1p13 genetic variants antagonize the risk of myocardial infarction associated with high ApoB serum levels

PMCID: PMC3480949This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

A generalized quantum nonlinear oscillator

We examine various generalizations, e.g. exactly solvable, quasi-exactly solvable and non-Hermitian variants, of a quantum nonlinear oscillator. For all these cases, the same mass function has been used and it has also been shown that the new exactly solvable potentials possess shape invariance symmetry. The solutions are obtained in terms of classical orthogonal polynomials

Introducing dusty plasma particle growth of nanospherical titanium dioxide

In dusty plasma environments, the spontaneous growth of nanoparticles from reactive gases has been extensively studied for over three decades, primarily focusing on hydrocarbons and silicate particles. Here, we introduce the growth of titanium dioxide, a wide band gap semiconductor, as dusty plasma nanoparticles. The resultant particles exhibited a spherical morphology and reached a maximum homogeneous radius of 230 $\pm$ 17 nm after an elapsed time of 70 seconds. The particle grew linearly and the growth displayed a cyclic behavior; that is, upon reaching their maximum radius, the largest particles fell out of the plasma, and a new growth cycle immediately followed. The particles were collected after being grown for different amounts of time and imaged using scanning electron microscopy. Further characterization was carried out using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy to elucidate the chemical composition and crystalline properties of the maximally sized particles. Initially, the as-grown particles after 70 seconds exhibited an amorphous structure. However, annealing treatments at temperatures of 400 $^\circ$C and 800 $^\circ$C induced crystallization, yielding anatase and rutile phases, respectively. Notably, annealing at 600 $^\circ$C resulted in a mixed phase of anatase and rutile. These findings open new avenues for a rapid and controlled growth technique of titanium dioxide as dusty plasma.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Polymorphisms in the WNK1 gene are asociated with blood pressure variation and urinary potassium excretion

WNK1 - a serine/threonine kinase involved in electrolyte homeostasis and blood pressure (BP) control - is an excellent candidate gene for essential hypertension (EH). We and others have previously reported association between WNK1 and BP variation. Using tag SNPs (tSNPs) that capture 100% of common WNK1 variation in HapMap, we aimed to replicate our findings with BP and to test for association with phenotypes relating to WNK1 function in the British Genetics of Hypertension (BRIGHT) study case-control resource (1700 hypertensive cases and 1700 normotensive controls). We found multiple variants to be associated with systolic blood pressure, SBP (7/28 tSNPs min-p = 0.0005), diastolic blood pressure, DBP (7/28 tSNPs min-p = 0.002) and 24 hour urinary potassium excretion (10/28 tSNPs min-p = 0.0004). Associations with SBP and urine potassium remained significant after correction for multiple testing (p = 0.02 and p = 0.01 respectively). The major allele (A) of rs765250, located in intron 1, demonstrated the strongest evidence for association with SBP, effect size 3.14 mmHg (95%CI:1.23–4.9), DBP 1.9 mmHg (95%CI:0.7–3.2) and hypertension, odds ratio (OR: 1.3 [95%CI: 1.0–1.7]).We genotyped this variant in six independent populations (n = 14,451) and replicated the association between rs765250 and SBP in a meta-analysis (p = 7×10−3, combined with BRIGHT data-set p = 2×10−4, n = 17,851). The associations of WNK1 with DBP and EH were not confirmed. Haplotype analysis revealed striking associations with hypertension and BP variation (global permutation p10 mmHg reduction) and risk for hypertension (OR<0.60). Our data indicates that multiple rare and common WNK1 variants contribute to BP variation and hypertension, and provide compelling evidence to initiate further genetic and functional studies to explore the role of WNK1 in BP regulation and EH

Bivariate genetic modelling of the response to an oral glucose tolerance challenge: A gene x environment interaction approach

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Twin and family studies have shown the importance of genetic factors influencing fasting and 2 h glucose and insulin levels. However, the genetics of the physiological response to a glucose load has not been thoroughly investigated. METHODS: We studied 580 monozygotic and 1,937 dizygotic British female twins from the Twins UK Registry. The effects of genetic and environmental factors on fasting and 2 h glucose and insulin levels were estimated using univariate genetic modelling. Bivariate model fitting was used to investigate the glucose and insulin responses to a glucose load, i.e. an OGTT. RESULTS: The genetic effect on fasting and 2 h glucose and insulin levels ranged between 40% and 56% after adjustment for age and BMI. Exposure to a glucose load resulted in the emergence of novel genetic effects on 2 h glucose independent of the fasting level, accounting for about 55% of its heritability. For 2 h insulin, the effect of the same genes that already influenced fasting insulin was amplified by about 30%. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: Exposure to a glucose challenge uncovers new genetic variance for glucose and amplifies the effects of genes that already influence the fasting insulin level. Finding the genes acting on 2 h glucose independently of fasting glucose may offer new aetiological insight into the risk of cardiovascular events and death from all causes

Increased entropy of signal transduction in the cancer metastasis phenotype

Studies into the statistical properties of biological networks have led to important biological insights, such as the presence of hubs and hierarchical modularity. There is also a growing interest in studying the statistical properties of networks in the context of cancer genomics. However, relatively little is known as to what network features differ between the cancer and normal cell physiologies, or between different cancer cell phenotypes. Based on the observation that frequent genomic alterations underlie a more aggressive cancer phenotype, we asked if such an effect could be detectable as an increase in the randomness of local gene expression patterns. Using a breast cancer gene expression data set and a model network of protein interactions we derive constrained weighted networks defined by a stochastic information flux matrix reflecting expression correlations between interacting proteins. Based on this stochastic matrix we propose and compute an entropy measure that quantifies the degree of randomness in the local pattern of information flux around single genes. By comparing the local entropies in the non-metastatic versus metastatic breast cancer networks, we here show that breast cancers that metastasize are characterised by a small yet significant increase in the degree of randomness of local expression patterns. We validate this result in three additional breast cancer expression data sets and demonstrate that local entropy better characterises the metastatic phenotype than other non-entropy based measures. We show that increases in entropy can be used to identify genes and signalling pathways implicated in breast cancer metastasis. Further exploration of such integrated cancer expression and protein interaction networks will therefore be a fruitful endeavour.Comment: 5 figures, 2 Supplementary Figures and Table