36,155 research outputs found
Sequential Allocation and Balancing Prognostic Factors in a Psychiatric Clinical Trial
In controlled clinical trials, each of several prognostic factors should be balanced across the trial arms. Traditional restricted randomization may be proved inadequate especially with small sample sizes. In psychiatric disorders such as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), small trials prevail. Therefore, procedures to minimize the chance of imbalance between treatment arms are advisable. This paper describes a minimization procedure specifically designed for a clinical trial that evaluates treatment efficacy for OCD patients. Aitchison's compositional distance was used to calculate vectors for each possibility of allocation in a covariate adaptive method. Two different procedures were designed to allocate patients in small blocks or sequentially one-by-one. Partial results of this allocation procedure as well as simulated ones are shown. In the clinical trial for which this procedure was developed, the balancing between treatment arms was achieved successfully. Simulations of results considering different arrival order of patients showed that most of the patients are allocated in a different treatment arm if arrival order is modified. Results show that a random factor is maintained with the random arrival order of patients. This specific procedure allows the use of a large number of prognostic factors for the allocation decision and was proved adequate for a psychiatric trial design
Oxidation reactions are required to produce atranorin from acetate by alginate-immobilized cells of Cladonia verticillaris.
Atranorin, a p-depside of the b-orcinol series, is produced by several Cladonia species. Immobilized cells of Cladonia verticillaris in calcium alginate are able to produce atranorin when they are supplied with 1.0 mM acetate as a precursor. Production of the depside is enhanced by adding an oxidant agent (NAD+ or FMN) to the incubation media and its secretion to these media is facilitated by permeabilizing the immobilized cells with 2 % iso-propanol
Bayesian Analysis of Simple Random Densities
A tractable nonparametric prior over densities is introduced which is closed
under sampling and exhibits proper posterior asymptotics.Comment: 19 pages; 6 figure
Probing the Effects of Lorentz-Symmetry Violating Chern-Simons and Ricci-Cotton Terms in Higher Derivative Gravity
The combined effects of the Lorentz-symmetry violating Chern-Simons and
Ricci-Cotton actions are investigated for the Einstein-Hilbert gravity in the
second order formalism modified by higher derivative terms, and their
consequences on the spectrum of excitations are analyzed. We follow the lines
of previous works and build up an orthonormal basis of operators that splits
the fundamental fields according to their individual degrees of freedom. With
this new basis, the attainment of the propagators is remarkably simplified and
the identification of the physical and unphysical modes gets a new insight. Our
conclusion is that the only tachyon- and ghost-free model is the
Einstein-Hilbert action added up by the Chern-Simons term with a time-like
vector of the type . Spectral consistency imposes taht
the Ricci-Cotton term must be switched off. We then infer that gravity with
Lorentz-symmetry violation imposes a drastically different constraint on the
background if compared to usual gauge theories whenever conditions for
suppression of tachyons and ghosts are required.Comment: 15 pages. It coincides with the version published in Phys. Rev.
Predictive analysis of microarray data
Microarray gene expression data are analyzed by means of a Bayesian
nonparametric model, with emphasis on prediction of future observables,
yielding a method for selection of differentially expressed genes and a
classifier
Chemical analysis of giant stars in the young open cluster NGC 3114
Context: Open clusters are very useful targets for examining possible trends
in galactocentric distance and age, especially when young and old open clusters
are compared. Aims: We carried out a detailed spectroscopic analysis to derive
the chemical composition of seven red giants in the young open cluster NGC
3114. Abundances of C, N, O, Li, Na, Mg, Al, Ca, Si, Ti, Ni, Cr, Y, Zr, La, Ce,
and Nd were obtained, as well as the carbon isotopic ratio. Methods: The
atmospheric parameters of the studied stars and their chemical abundances were
determined using high-resolution optical spectroscopy. We employed the
local-thermodynamic-equilibrium model atmospheres of Kurucz and the spectral
analysis code MOOG. The abundances of the light elements were derived using the
spectral synthesis technique. Results: We found that NGC 3114 has a mean
metallicity of [Fe/H] = -0.01+/-0.03. The isochrone fit yielded a turn-off mass
of 4.2 Msun. The [N/C] ratio is in good agreement with the models predicted by
first dredge-up. We found that two stars, HD 87479 and HD 304864, have high
rotational velocities of 15.0 km/s and 11.0 km/s; HD 87526 is a halo star and
is not a member of NGC 3114. Conclusions: The carbon and nitrogen abundance in
NGC 3114 agree with the field and cluster giants. The oxygen abundance in NGC
3114 is lower compared to the field giants. The [O/Fe] ratio is similar to the
giants in young clusters. We detected sodium enrichment in the analyzed cluster
giants. As far as the other elements are concerned, their [X/Fe] ratios follow
the same trend seen in giants with the same metallicity.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 10 tables; accepted for publication in A&
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