The Mediterranean fruit fly (Medfly) is one of the world's most economically damaging pests. It displays highly seasonal population dynamics, and the environmental conditions suitable for its abundance are not constant throughout the year in most places. An extensive literature search was performed to obtain the most comprehensive data on the historical and contemporary spatio-temporal occurren...

Distinguishing between longitudinal dependence due to the effects of previous responses on subsequent responses and dependence due to unobserved heterogeneity is important in many disciplines. For example, wheezing is an inflammatory reaction that may ‘remodel’ a child’s airway structure and thereby affect the probability of future wheezing (state dependence). Alternatively, children could vary...

The study of disease etiology and the search for susceptible genes of schizophrenia have attracted scientists' attention for decades. Many findings however are inconsistent, possibly due to the higher order interactions involving multi-dimensional genetic and environmental factors or due to the commingling of different ethnic groups. Several studies applied generalized linear mixed models (GLMM...

We investigate whether relative contributions of genetic and shared environmental factors are associated with an increased risk in melanoma. Data from the Queensland Familial Melanoma Project comprising 15,907 subjects arising from 1912 families were analyzed to estimate the additive genetic, common and unique environmental contributions to variation in the age at onset of melanoma. Two complem...

OBJECTIVES Approximately 13% of all births occur prior to 37 weeks gestation in the U.S. Some established risk factors exist for preterm birth, but the etiology remains largely unknown. Recent studies have suggested an association with environmental exposures. We examined the relationship between preterm birth and exposure to a commonly used herbicide, atrazine, in drinking water. METHODS We ...

Generalized estimating equations (Liang and Zeger, 1986) is a widely used, moment-based procedure to estimate marginal regression parameters. However, a subtle and often overlooked point is that valid inference requires the mean for the response at time t to be expressed properly as a function of the complete past, present, and future values of any time-varying covariate. For example, with envi...

We define a combined DEA score to evaluate efficiency in agricultural research. The production model we propose considers efficiency measurements under variable returns to scale for each year in the period 2012–2017. We postulate a first-order autoregressive process in the presence of covariates, to explain efficiency. Powers of the autocorrelation coefficient estimated assuming a dynamic panel...

Appalachia has higher morbidity and mortality compared to the nation, and suffers greater socioeconomic disadvantages. This article investigates the relationship of coal mining to elevated mortality rates in Appalachia. Total mortality rates for the years 1999–2004 were investigated in a national county-level analysis that included coal mining as the primary independent variable. Counties in Ap...

Eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN), have genetic and environmental underpinnings. To explore genetic contributions to AN, we measured psychiatric, personality and temperament phenotypes of individuals diagnosed with eating disorders from 196 multiplex families, all accessed through an AN proband, as well as genotyping a battery of 387 short tandem repeat (S...