Rejoinder: Demystifying Double Robustness: A Comparison of Alternative Strategies for Estimating a Population Mean from Incomplete Data

Rejoinder to ``Demystifying Double Robustness: A Comparison of Alternative Strategies for Estimating a Population Mean from Incomplete Data'' [arXiv:0804.2958]Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-STS227REJ the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Constructing Crime: Neighborhood Characteristics and Police Recording Behavior

It has long been acknowledged that police officers have substantial levels of discretion in their day-to-day activities. There is a well developed body of literature that considers how this discretion is exercised across a broad array of situations including the decision to arrest, use force, and grant citizen requests for official action. Using both social disorganization and conflict theories as conceptual models, the purpose of this study was to determine if neighborhood characteristics affect police reporting behavior across a wide cross-section of reported call types. The findings indicated that reporting behavior widely varies across crime types with a greater percentage of more serious crimes translated into official crime. Neighborhood characteristics did affect reporting practices, but surprisingly only for more serious forms of disorder where discretion was perceived to be less. The findings lent support for both social disorganization and conflict theories. Theoretical implications are discussed

LABORATORY AND FIELD STUDIES WITH AN AVIAN REPELLENT FOR SPROUTING SEEDS

Development of safe bird management techniques has become necessary for the economic survival of many parameters of agriculture. Competition between man and birds for resources has always occurred but has become increasingly complex as the human population increased. As man\u27s demand for additional food and fiber has required more intensive cultivation of arable land, certain birds have caused in¬creasingly costly losses. Bird damage has become so severe in some areas that till¬age of certain crops is threatened. In some situations, troublesome bird populations can be reduced to tolerable levels; however, the primary objective of bird management should be the alleviation of damage to crops and not destruction of birds. All birds possess beneficial qualities and federal or state laws protect most species. To avoid killing birds and still reduce bird damage to agricultural production, the potentially most useful approach to bird management is the development of non-toxic repellents. DRC-3324, a butyramide, is a chemical example of this approach to bird management. It was initially examined under laboratory conditions by Denver Wild¬life Research Center scientists following suggestion of candidacy for this purpose by Upjohn personnel. The chemical met all major criteria established for judging the relative potential of compounds for repellent purposes: the effective concentration was very low; the toxic concentration was substantially greater than the repellent level; it was relatively non-toxic to mammals; and was not phytotoxic to corn seed. The objective of these trials was to evaluate the effectiveness of the chemical under field conditions as a deterrent to red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) and common grackles (Quiscalus quiscula) damaging freshly planted sweet-corn seed

LABORATORY AND FIELD STUDIES WITH AN AVIAN REPELLENT FOR SPROUTING SEEDS

Development of safe bird management techniques has become necessary for the economic survival of many parameters of agriculture. Competition between man and birds for resources has always occurred but has become increasingly complex as the human population increased. As man\u27s demand for additional food and fiber has required more intensive cultivation of arable land, certain birds have caused in¬creasingly costly losses. Bird damage has become so severe in some areas that till¬age of certain crops is threatened. In some situations, troublesome bird populations can be reduced to tolerable levels; however, the primary objective of bird management should be the alleviation of damage to crops and not destruction of birds. All birds possess beneficial qualities and federal or state laws protect most species. To avoid killing birds and still reduce bird damage to agricultural production, the potentially most useful approach to bird management is the development of non-toxic repellents. DRC-3324, a butyramide, is a chemical example of this approach to bird management. It was initially examined under laboratory conditions by Denver Wild¬life Research Center scientists following suggestion of candidacy for this purpose by Upjohn personnel. The chemical met all major criteria established for judging the relative potential of compounds for repellent purposes: the effective concentration was very low; the toxic concentration was substantially greater than the repellent level; it was relatively non-toxic to mammals; and was not phytotoxic to corn seed. The objective of these trials was to evaluate the effectiveness of the chemical under field conditions as a deterrent to red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) and common grackles (Quiscalus quiscula) damaging freshly planted sweet-corn seed

Problems in dealing with missing data and informative censoring in clinical trials

A common problem in clinical trials is the missing data that occurs when patients do not complete the study and drop out without further measurements. Missing data cause the usual statistical analysis of complete or all available data to be subject to bias. There are no universally applicable methods for handling missing data. We recommend the following: (1) Report reasons for dropouts and proportions for each treatment group; (2) Conduct sensitivity analyses to encompass different scenarios of assumptions and discuss consistency or discrepancy among them; (3) Pay attention to minimize the chance of dropouts at the design stage and during trial monitoring; (4) Collect post-dropout data on the primary endpoints, if at all possible; and (5) Consider the dropout event itself an important endpoint in studies with many

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration

Time warping of evolutionary distant temporal gene expression data based on noise suppression

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Comparative analysis of genome wide temporal gene expression data has a broad potential area of application, including evolutionary biology, developmental biology, and medicine. However, at large evolutionary distances, the construction of global alignments and the consequent comparison of the time-series data are difficult. The main reason is the accumulation of variability in expression profiles of orthologous genes, in the course of evolution.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We applied Pearson distance matrices, in combination with other noise-suppression techniques and data filtering to improve alignments. This novel framework enhanced the capacity to capture the similarities between the temporal gene expression datasets separated by large evolutionary distances. We aligned and compared the temporal gene expression data in budding (<it>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</it>) and fission (<it>Schizosaccharomyces pombe</it>) yeast, which are separated by more then ~400 myr of evolution. We found that the global alignment (time warping) properly matched the duration of cell cycle phases in these distant organisms, which was measured in prior studies. At the same time, when applied to individual ortholog pairs, this alignment procedure revealed groups of genes with distinct alignments, different from the global alignment.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our alignment-based predictions of differences in the cell cycle phases between the two yeast species were in a good agreement with the existing data, thus supporting the computational strategy adopted in this study. We propose that the existence of the alternative alignments, specific to distinct groups of genes, suggests presence of different synchronization modes between the two organisms and possible functional decoupling of particular physiological gene networks in the course of evolution.</p

Sound Studies Meets Deaf Studies

Sound studies and Deaf studies may seem at first impression to operate in worlds apart. We argue in this article, however, that similar renderings of hearing, deafness, and seeing as ideal types - and as often essentialized sensory modes - make it possible to read differences between Sound studies and Deaf studies as sites of possible articulation. We direct attention to four zones of productive overlap, attending to how sound is inferred in deaf and Deaf practice, how reimagining sound in the register of low-frequency vibration can upend deafhearing dichotomies, how “deaf futurists“ champion cyborg sound, and how signing and other non-spoken communicative practices might undo phonocentric models of speech. Sound studies and Deaf studies emerge as fields with much to offer one another epistemologically, theoretically, and practically

X-Ray Repair Cross-Complementing Group 1 (XRCC1) Genetic Polymorphisms and Risk of Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: A Meta-Analysis

Background: Recently, there have been a number of studies on the association between XRCC1 polymorphisms and childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) risk. However, the results of previous reports are inconsistent. Thus, we performed a meta-analysis to clarify the effects of XRCC1 variants on childhood ALL risk. Methods: A meta-analysis was performed to examine the association between XRCC1 polymorphisms (Arg399Gln, Arg194Trp, and Arg280His) and childhood ALL risk. We critically reviewed 7 studies with a total of 880 cases and 1311 controls for Arg399Gln polymorphism, 3 studies with a total of 345 cases and 554 controls for Arg280His polymorphism, and 6 studies with a total of 783 cases and 1180 controls for Arg194Trp polymorphism, respectively. Odds ratio (OR) and its 95% confidence interval (CI) were used. Results: Significant association between XRCC1 Arg399Gln polymorphism and childhood ALL risk was observed in total population analyses (OR additive model = 1.501, 95 % CI 1.112–2.026, P OR = 0.008; OR dominant model = 1.316, 95 % CI = 1.104–1.569, POR = 0.002) and Asian subgroup analyses (ORadditive model = 2.338, 95%CI = 1.254–4.359, POR = 0.008; ORdominant model = 2.108, 95%CI = 1.498–2.967, POR = 0.000). No association was detected in Caucasians, Metizo and mixed populations. Ethnicity was considered as a significant source of heterogeneity in the meta-regression model. For the other two XRCC1 polymorphisms, no association with childhood ALL risk was found