Parametric, Nonparametric, and Semiparametric Linear Regression in Classical and Bayesian Statistical Quality Control

Statistical process control (SPC) is used in many fields to understand and monitor desired processes, such as manufacturing, public health, and network traffic. SPC is categorized into two phases; in Phase I historical data is used to inform parameter estimates for a statistical model and Phase II implements this statistical model to monitor a live ongoing process. Within both phases, profile monitoring is a method to understand the functional relationship between response and explanatory variables by estimating and tracking its parameters. In profile monitoring, control charts are often used as graphical tools to visually observe process behaviors. We construct a practitioner’s guide to provide a stepby- step application for parametric, nonparametric, and semiparametric methods in profile monitoring, creating an in-depth guideline for novice practitioners. We then consider the commonly used cumulative sum (CUSUM), multivariate CUSUM (mCUSUM), exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA), multivariate EWMA (mEWMA) charts under a Bayesian framework for monitoring respiratory disease related hospitalizations and global suicide rates with parametric, nonparametric, and semiparametric linear models

Specific Subpopulations of Hypothalamic Leptin Receptor-Expressing Neurons Mediate the Effects of Early Developmental Leptin Receptor Deletion on Energy Balance

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank MedImmune, Inc. and James Trevaskis, PhD and Christopher Rhodes, PhD for the gift of leptin. We thank members of the Myers and Olson labs for helpful discussions. Research support was provided by the Michigan Diabetes Research Center (NIH P3 0 DK020572, including the Molecular Genetics, Animal Phenotyping, and Clinical Cores), the American Diabetes Association (MGM), the Marilyn H. Vincent Foundation (MGM), the NIH (MGM: D K05673 1; ACR:DK071212; MBA: DK097861), the BBSRC (LKH: BB/NO17838/1) and WellcomeTrust (LKH: 098012).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Teixobactin kills bacteria by a two-pronged attack on the cell envelope

Antibiotics that use novel mechanisms are needed to combat antimicrobial resistance1–3. Teixobactin4 represents a new class of antibiotics with a unique chemical scaffold and lack of detectable resistance. Teixobactin targets lipid II, a precursor of peptidoglycan5. Here we unravel the mechanism of teixobactin at the atomic level using a combination of solid-state NMR, microscopy, in vivo assays and molecular dynamics simulations. The unique enduracididine C-terminal headgroup of teixobactin specifically binds to the pyrophosphate-sugar moiety of lipid II, whereas the N terminus coordinates the pyrophosphate of another lipid II molecule. This configuration favours the formation of a β-sheet of teixobactins bound to the target, creating a supramolecular fibrillar structure. Specific binding to the conserved pyrophosphate-sugar moiety accounts for the lack of resistance to teixobactin4. The supramolecular structure compromises membrane integrity. Atomic force microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations show that the supramolecular structure displaces phospholipids, thinning the membrane. The long hydrophobic tails of lipid II concentrated within the supramolecular structure apparently contribute to membrane disruption. Teixobactin hijacks lipid II to help destroy the membrane. Known membrane-acting antibiotics also damage human cells, producing undesirable side effects. Teixobactin damages only membranes that contain lipid II, which is absent in eukaryotes, elegantly resolving the toxicity problem. The two-pronged action against cell wall synthesis and cytoplasmic membrane produces a highly effective compound targeting the bacterial cell envelope. Structural knowledge of the mechanism of teixobactin will enable the rational design of improved drug candidates

Catching Element Formation In The Act

Gamma-ray astronomy explores the most energetic photons in nature to address some of the most pressing puzzles in contemporary astrophysics. It encompasses a wide range of objects and phenomena: stars, supernovae, novae, neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes, nucleosynthesis, the interstellar medium, cosmic rays and relativistic-particle acceleration, and the evolution of galaxies. MeV gamma-rays provide a unique probe of nuclear processes in astronomy, directly measuring radioactive decay, nuclear de-excitation, and positron annihilation. The substantial information carried by gamma-ray photons allows us to see deeper into these objects, the bulk of the power is often emitted at gamma-ray energies, and radioactivity provides a natural physical clock that adds unique information. New science will be driven by time-domain population studies at gamma-ray energies. This science is enabled by next-generation gamma-ray instruments with one to two orders of magnitude better sensitivity, larger sky coverage, and faster cadence than all previous gamma-ray instruments. This transformative capability permits: (a) the accurate identification of the gamma-ray emitting objects and correlations with observations taken at other wavelengths and with other messengers; (b) construction of new gamma-ray maps of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies where extended regions are distinguished from point sources; and (c) considerable serendipitous science of scarce events -- nearby neutron star mergers, for example. Advances in technology push the performance of new gamma-ray instruments to address a wide set of astrophysical questions.Comment: 14 pages including 3 figure

A standard protocol to report discrete stage-structured demographic information

Stage-based demographic methods, such as matrix population models (MPMs), are powerful tools used to address a broad range of fundamental questions in ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation science. Accordingly, MPMs now exist for over 3000 species worldwide. These data are being digitised as an ongoing process and periodically released into two large open-access online repositories: the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database. During the last decade, data archiving and curation of COMPADRE and COMADRE, and subsequent comparative research, have revealed pronounced variation in how MPMs are parameterized and reported. Here, we summarise current issues related to the parameterisation and reporting of MPMs that arise most frequently and outline how they affect MPM construction, analysis, and interpretation. To quantify variation in how MPMs are reported, we present results from a survey identifying key aspects of MPMs that are frequently unreported in manuscripts. We then screen COMPADRE and COMADRE to quantify how often key pieces of information are omitted from manuscripts using MPMs. Over 80% of surveyed researchers (n = 60) state a clear benefit to adopting more standardised methodologies for reporting MPMs. Furthermore, over 85% of the 300 MPMs assessed from COMPADRE and COMADRE omitted one or more elements that are key to their accurate interpretation. Based on these insights, we identify fundamental issues that can arise from MPM construction and communication and provide suggestions to improve clarity, reproducibility and future research utilising MPMs and their required metadata. To fortify reproducibility and empower researchers to take full advantage of their demographic data, we introduce a standardised protocol to present MPMs in publications. This standard is linked to www.compa dre-db.org, so that authors wishing to archive their MPMs can do so prior to submission of publications, following examples from other open-access repositories such as DRYAD, Figshare and Zenodo. Combining and standardising MPMs parameterized from populations around the globe and across the tree of life opens up powerful research opportunities in evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation research. However, this potential can only be fully realised by adopting standardised methods to ensure reproducibility

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Antimicrobial resistance among migrants in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are rising globally and there is concern that increased migration is contributing to the burden of antibiotic resistance in Europe. However, the effect of migration on the burden of AMR in Europe has not yet been comprehensively examined. Therefore, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and synthesise data for AMR carriage or infection in migrants to Europe to examine differences in patterns of AMR across migrant groups and in different settings. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus with no language restrictions from Jan 1, 2000, to Jan 18, 2017, for primary data from observational studies reporting antibacterial resistance in common bacterial pathogens among migrants to 21 European Union-15 and European Economic Area countries. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data on carriage or infection with laboratory-confirmed antibiotic-resistant organisms in migrant populations. We extracted data from eligible studies and assessed quality using piloted, standardised forms. We did not examine drug resistance in tuberculosis and excluded articles solely reporting on this parameter. We also excluded articles in which migrant status was determined by ethnicity, country of birth of participants' parents, or was not defined, and articles in which data were not disaggregated by migrant status. Outcomes were carriage of or infection with antibiotic-resistant organisms. We used random-effects models to calculate the pooled prevalence of each outcome. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42016043681. FINDINGS: We identified 2274 articles, of which 23 observational studies reporting on antibiotic resistance in 2319 migrants were included. The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or AMR infection in migrants was 25·4% (95% CI 19·1-31·8; I2 =98%), including meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (7·8%, 4·8-10·7; I2 =92%) and antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (27·2%, 17·6-36·8; I2 =94%). The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or infection was higher in refugees and asylum seekers (33·0%, 18·3-47·6; I2 =98%) than in other migrant groups (6·6%, 1·8-11·3; I2 =92%). The pooled prevalence of antibiotic-resistant organisms was slightly higher in high-migrant community settings (33·1%, 11·1-55·1; I2 =96%) than in migrants in hospitals (24·3%, 16·1-32·6; I2 =98%). We did not find evidence of high rates of transmission of AMR from migrant to host populations. INTERPRETATION: Migrants are exposed to conditions favouring the emergence of drug resistance during transit and in host countries in Europe. Increased antibiotic resistance among refugees and asylum seekers and in high-migrant community settings (such as refugee camps and detention facilities) highlights the need for improved living conditions, access to health care, and initiatives to facilitate detection of and appropriate high-quality treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections during transit and in host countries. Protocols for the prevention and control of infection and for antibiotic surveillance need to be integrated in all aspects of health care, which should be accessible for all migrant groups, and should target determinants of AMR before, during, and after migration. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College Healthcare Charity, the Wellcome Trust, and UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare-associated Infections and Antimictobial Resistance at Imperial College London

Aging brain from a network science perspective: Something to be positive about?

To better understand age differences in brain function and behavior, the current study applied network science to model functional interactions between brain regions. We observed a shift in network topology whereby for older adults subcortical and cerebellar structures overlapping with the Salience network had more connectivity to the rest of the brain, coupled with fragmentation of large-scale cortical networks such as the Default and Fronto-Parietal networks. Additionally, greater integration of the dorsal medial thalamus and red nucleus in the Salience network was associated with greater satisfaction with life for older adults, which is consistent with theoretical predictions of age-related increases in emotion regulation that are thought to help maintain well-being and life satisfaction in late adulthood. In regard to cognitive abilities, greater ventral medial prefrontal cortex coherence with its topological neighbors in the Default Network was associated with faster processing speed. Results suggest that large-scale organizing properties of the brain differ with normal aging, and this perspective may offer novel insight into understanding age-related differences in cognitive function and well-being. © 2013 Voss et al