Can digital signals from the keyboard capture force exposures during typing?

An exposure-response relationship has been shown between muscle fatigue and its effects on keystroke durations. Since keystroke durations can readily be measured by software programs, the method has the potential as a non-invasive exposure assessment tool. However, the software based keystroke durations may be affected by keyswitch force-displacement characteristics. Thus, this study used a force platform to measure the keystroke durations and compared them to software measured keystroke durations in order to determine whether the software based keystroke durations can be used as a surrogate force exposure measures. A total of 13 subjects (6 males and 7 females) typed for 15 minutes each on three keyboards with different force-displacement characteristics. The results showed that the software based keystroke durations were more sensitive to the keyboard force-displacement differences than the force based measures. Although the digital signal based keystroke durations depend on the force-displacement characteristics, the high correlation between the two measures indicated that the keystroke durations derived from the digital signal approximated the true force derived keystroke durations, regardless of the keyboard force-displacement characteristics. Therefore, the software based keystroke durations could be used as a non-invasive, surrogate force exposure measure in lieu of the more invasive actual force measurements.     

Causal relationships between background characteristics, service utilization, satisfaction, and service outcomes (school performance): A path analysis

This study develops a causal model to examine the relationships between service outcome (school performance) and consumer satisfaction, service utilization, and demographic characteristics of the youth receiving mental health services. Data for 281 children, aged 12–18, served from April 2003 to December 2004 were used for the analyses. Causal relationships among variables of the proposed model were tested by using AMOS, and the respecified model was accepted as the final model with good fit to the data (2 = 5.099, df = 8, NFI = .951, CFI = .998, RMSEA = .001). Results of the model test point to the importance of the children's age, service intensity, and consumer satisfaction as determinants of school performance outcome. In particular, increased worker satisfaction and overall satisfaction lead to increases in the perceived success satisfaction and this satisfaction, in turn, leads improvement in grades. Efforts to improve service satisfaction are emphasized and studies based on a more dynamic perspective are needed.     

Infants born preterm and infants born full-term generate more selective leg joint movement during the scaffolded mobile task

Infants born very preterm (PT), prior to 32 weeks gestation, are at increased risk of developing cerebral palsy. Children with spastic cerebral palsy have impaired selective leg joint movement, which contributes to lifelong walking limitations. We investigated whether infants born PT generated more selective hip–knee joint movement (e.g., hip flexes as knee extends) while participating in a scaffolded mobile task. Infants born PT and infants born full-term (FT) at 4 months corrected age participated in a scaffolded mobile task for 2–3 consecutive days. The scaffolded mobile task required infants to raise their legs vertically over a virtual threshold. Three threshold heights (low, middle, and high) were used to test whether the middle and high heights encourage infants to move their legs more selectively. Fifteen infants born FT learned the task and showed more selective hip–knee movement at each of the three threshold heights on the day that they learned, compared with their baseline spontaneous kicking. Thirteen infants born PT learned the task and showed more selective hip–knee movement on their learning day, but only when the middle and high thresholds were used. The results show that the scaffolded mobile task effectively encouraged infants to generate more selective hip–knee joint movement.     

Effects of Homelessness and Child Maltreatment on the Likelihood of Engaging in Property and Violent Crime During Adulthood

The current study employs data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 10,818; 56% female; 21% African American) to test how experiencing homelessness through emerging adulthood and child maltreatment predict adult property crime and violent crime. Unlike many published studies on homelessness, we used propensity score matching to correct for selection bias between homeless and nonhomeless individuals. Logistic regression models were run to predict violent and property crime in adulthood, controlling for child maltreatment. Participants who experienced homelessness by age 26 were 1.6 times more likely to commit violent crime in adulthood and almost 30% more likely to commit property crime. Those who were victims of child maltreatment were 15 times more likely to commit property crime, but no more likely to commit violent crime. Findings show that comparing statistically equivalent groups, homelessness through emerging adulthood significantly predicted adult criminality while child maltreatment showed more variable results. Greater prevention efforts aimed at children and adolescents at high risk of experiencing homelessness, as well as more intensive outreach services to homeless youth, may moderate exposure and reduce reliance on criminal survival behaviors.     

Controlling the false-discovery rate by procedures adapted to the length bias of RNA-Seq

In RNA-Seq experiments, the number of mapped reads for a given gene is proportional to its expression level and length. Because longer genes contribute more sequencible fragments than do shorter ones, it is expected that even if two genes have the same expression level, the longer gene will have a greater number of total reads. This characteristic creates a length bias such that the proportion of significant genes increases with the gene length. However, genes with a long length are not more biologically meaningful than genes with a short length. Therefore, the length bias should be properly corrected to determine the accurate list of significant genes in RNA-Seq. For this purpose, we proposed two multiple-testing procedures based on a weighted-FDR and a separate-FDR approach. These two methods use prior information on differential gene length while keeping the false-discovery rate (FDR) controlled at $\alpha$. In the weighted-FDR controlling procedure, we incorporated prior weights for the length of each gene. These weights increase the power when the gene’s length is short and decrease the power when its length is long. In the separate-FDR controlling procedure, we sequentially ordered all genes according to their lengths and then split these genes into two subgroups of short and long genes. The adaptive Benjamini–Hochberg procedure was then performed separately for each subgroup. The proposed procedures were compared with existing methods and evaluated in two numerical examples and one simulation study. We concluded that the weighted $p$-value procedure properly reduced the length bias of RNA-Seq.     

The Medicine Cabinet: Korean Medicine Under Dispute

This is a historical and ethnographic account of the transformation of Korean medical institutions in the context of national identity building. Focusing on the traditional medicine cabinet, the author discusses intraprofessional and interprofessional conflicts between Korean Oriental medicine and Western medicine. During the period under study, practitioners of Korean medicine institutionalized their practice by emulating the forms and institutions of Western medicine. In the process, practitioners strategically mobilized “science” and “tradition” to secure their epistemic and political power over contending medical professionals. Invoking the colonial experience as a national disgrace and associating it with the ordeal that indigenous medicine had undergone, practitioners homogenized, expanded, and secured their jurisdictional terrain by both appropriating the techniques and knowledge of traditional healers and accommodating values embedded in Western science. For example, contending that acupuncturists and herbalists had been cut off from the current of tradition by colonialism, practitioners reduced these practices to mere technical work and forced them out from the mainstream of Oriental medicine by ensuring that they were never legally recognized as true physicians. Concurrently, when faced with the expansion of Western medicine into some traditional therapies, practitioners resorted to cultural nationalism. They insisted that the theoretical foundations, diagnostic methods, and therapeutic applications of their own tradition could not be replicated by their Western rivals.     

A Bayesian criterion for selecting super saturated screening designs

Super-saturated designs in which the number of factors under investigation exceeds the number of experimental runs have been suggested for screening experiments initiated to identify important factors for future study. Most of the designs suggested in the literature are based on natural but ad hoc criteria. The “average s²” criteria introduced by Booth and Cox (Technometrics 4 (1962) 489) is a popular choice. Here, a decision theoretic approach is pursued leading to an optimality criterion based on misclassification probabilities in a Bayesian model. In certain cases, designs optimal under the average s² criterion are also optimal for the new criterion. Necessary conditions for this to occur are presented. In addition, the new criterion often provides a strict preference between designs tied under the average s² criterion, which is advantageous in numerical search as it reduces the number of local minima.     

A Bayesian multiple structural change regression model with autocorrelated errors

This paper develops a new Bayesian approach to change-point modeling that allows the number of change-points in the observed autocorrelated times series to be unknown. The model we develop assumes that the number of change-points have a truncated Poisson distribution. A genetic algorithm is used to estimate a change-point model, which allows for structural changes with autocorrelated errors. We focus considerable attention on the construction of autocorrelated structure for each regime and for the parameters that characterize each regime. Our techniques are found to work well in the simulation with a few change-points. An empirical analysis is provided involving the annual flow of the Nile River and the monthly total energy production in South Korea to lead good estimates for structural change-points.     

A 3-parameter Gompertz distribution for survival data with competing risks,with an application to breast cancer data

The cumulative incidence function is of great importance in the analysis of survival data when competing risks are present. Parametric modeling of such functions, which are by nature improper, suggests the use of improper distributions. One frequently used improper distribution is that of Gompertz, which captures only monotone hazard shapes. In some applications, however, subdistribution hazard estimates have been observed with unimodal shapes. An extension to the Gompertz distribution is presented which can capture unimodal as well as monotone hazard shapes. Important properties of the proposed distribution are discussed, and the proposed distribution is used to analyze survival data from a breast cancer clinical trial.