Statistical methods of background correction for Illumina BeadArray data.

Motivation: Advances in technology have made different microarray platforms available. Among the many, Illumina BeadArrays are relatively new and have captured significant market share. With BeadArray technology, high data quality is generated from low sample input at reduced cost.

A novel SNP of the Hesx1 gene in bovine and its associations with average daily gain.

As an essential repressor, the homeobox gene Hesx1/HESX1 is required within the anterior neural plate for normal forebrain development. Mutations within the Hesx1 gene have been associated with GH deficiency or combined pituitary hormone deficiency. We detected the polymorphism of Hesx1 gene by PCR-SSCP and DNA sequencing methods in 702 individuals from four Chinese cattle breeds.

A distribution-free test of constant mean in linear mixed effects models.

We propose a distribution-free procedure, an analogy of the DIP test in non-parametric regression, to test whether the means of responses are constant over time in repeated measures data. Unlike the existing tests, the proposed procedure requires very minimal assumptions to the distributions of both random effects and errors. We study the asymptotic reference distribution of the test statistic analytically and propose a permutation procedure to approximate the finite-sample reference distribution.

A nonparametric mean estimator for judgment poststratified data.

MacEachern, Stasny, and Wolfe (2004, Biometrics60, 207-215) introduced a data collection method, called judgment poststratification (JPS), based on ideas similar to those in ranked set sampling, and proposed methods for mean estimation from JPS samples. In this article, we propose an improvement to their methods, which exploits the fact that the distributions of the judgment poststrata are often stochastically ordered, so as to form a mean estimator using isotonized sample means of the poststrata. This new estimator is strongly consistent with similar asymptotic properties to those in MacEachern et al.

[Image analysis of avulsion fracture, permanent osteoepiphyte, sesamoid and accessory bones].

Objective: To investigate a method to distinguish avulsion fracture from sesamoid, accessory bone, and permanent osteoepiphyte.

Methods: Fourteen cases of suspicious avulsion fractures of articular portion of tubular bones were reviewed. Direct/indirect signs and the injury mechanism of avulsion fractures were analyzed and compared with permanent osteoepiphyte, sesamoid and accessory bones for their morphological characteristics.

Identification and characterization of COI1-dependent transcription factor genes involved in JA-mediated response to wounding in Arabidopsis plants.

The phytohormone jasmonic acid (JA) is an important signaling molecular involved in many developmental and physiological processes, especially in the response of plants to wounding. In this study, we adopted a new strategy, taking into consideration the microarray data of the CHX treatment, to identify 15 COI1-dependent JA-inducible transcription factors (JCTFs) that have distinct expression patterns in response to wounding. After the analysis on the JCTFs over-expressor plants, we identified four JCTFs, i.