This work examines our perception of distance within "action space" (about 2m ~ 30m), an ability that is important for various actions. Two general problems are addressed: what information can be used to judge distance accurately and how...
I will report the development of a semi-empirical self-consistent and environment-dependent model Hamiltonian, which is intended to treat large systems in the order of 10000 atoms. This covers a range of important physical phenomena that are too...
Pattern recognition systems; Cluster analysis; Data mining
Despite the large number of existing clustering methods, clustering remains a challenging task especially when the structure of the data does not correspond to easily separable categories, and when clusters vary in size, density and shape. Existing...
Osteoporosis has become a growing health threat with rising social and economic consequences. The understanding of the relationship between bone mechanical strength and bone structural quality is important for the diagnosis of osteoporosis and the...
For complex classification systems, data is usually gathered from multiple sources of information that have varying degree of reliability. In fact, assuming that the different sources have the same relevance in describing all the data might lead to...
Mixed-effects model is an efficient tool for analyzing longitudinal data. The random effects in mixed-effects model can be used to capture the correlations among repeated measurements within a subject. The time points are not fixed and all...
Clustered longitudinal data is often collected as repeated measurements on subjects over time arising in the clusters. Examples include longitudinal community intervention studies, or family studies with repeated measures on each member. Meanwhile,...
Data mining; Lungs--Cancer; Outcome assessment (Medical care)
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States and the world, with more than 1.3 million deaths worldwide per year. However, because of a lack of effective tools to diagnose Lung Cancer, more than half of all cases are...
Rapid Electrokinetic Patterning (REP) is a relatively new method for collecting and manipulating micrometer-scale particles at an electrode surface. REP is an AC electrokinetic technique that uses induced fluid motion to capture and manipulate...
Genes in folate metabolizing pathway are responsible for modulating key enzymes in folate metabolisms necessary for DNA synthesis and repair and influence DNA methylation. Irregularity in DNA methylation may modify tumor phenotype response to...
Integrins are major receptors for cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix, and play key roles in various cellular processes including adhesion, migration, proliferation and survival. Apart from developmental and physiological events, integrins...
Nuclear Factor of Activated T-cells (NFAT) is a calcium-responsive transcription factor that orchestrates immune response and cardiovascular development. NFAT is also present in neurons and glia from the Central Nervous System (CNS) where it...
Activity-based rehabilitation is important for clinically treating spinal cord injury (SCI). Advances in SCI research are dependent on quality animal models, which rely on our ability to detect functional differences in animals following injury....
In this dissertation research, we aim to solve problems of two types of survival data, clustered survival data with potentially informative cluster size and sojourn time data. The methods for these two types of data are different. However, both...
Medical records--Data processing; Data mining; Medical care--Data processing; Coronary heart disease--Treatment
The goal of this study is to use a data mining framework to assess the three main treatments for acute myocardial infarction: thrombolytic therapy, percutaneous coronary intervention (percutaneous angioplasty), and coronary artery bypass surgery....
The use of a fluidized bed dryer to dry acrylo-nitrile-
butadiene-styrene terpolymer was studied. Data for
fluidized bed drying were obtained from the Monsanto
Company's fluid bed dryer. Fluid bed theory, drying
phenomena, and fluid bed drying...
The complexity of high-dimensional data creates a number of concerns when trying to analyze it. This data often consists of a response or survival time and potentially thousands of predictors. These predictors can be highly correlated, and the...
Masculinity--Social aspects; Drug dealers--Psychology; Male college students--Effect of stress on; Drug abuse and crime
This thesis integrates James Messerschmidt's Masculinity Theory (1997) with Robert Agnew's General Strain Theory (1992) to examine the relationship between failure to achieve ideal masculine standards, resultant psychological stressors, and the...
DNA microarrays--Statistical methods; Gene expression--Statistical methods
Data derived from gene expression microarrays are frequently used to identify candidate genes which can characterize and distinguish between two biological phenotypes. A key step in this process is the selection of an appropriate test statistic to...
The immune system is of profound importance for host survival due to its ability to clear many acquired diseases. In case of infections and cancer, disease arises due to under-performance of immune system. Whereas in autoimmunity and...
