ii To my family. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those who helped me in completing this dissertation. Most and foremost, Karem Sakallah, who has been an outstanding academic advisor and a very good friend for the course of my graduate work at Michigan. His suggestions, thorough reviews, and encouragement at the various stages of my Ph.D research are gratefully acknowledged. Many ...

Esophageal pH monitoring is considered the gold standard for the diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease because of the normal ranges across the pediatric age range. However, this method can only detect acid reflux. Multichannel intraluminal impedance-pH (MII-pH) monitoring has recently been used for the detection of bolus reflux in infants and children. This method allows for the detectio...

In this essay I analyze Einstein’s statistical papers from 1902–1904. In these papers, Einstein developed the foundations of a theoretical program that he applied to concrete problems in 1905 and in subsequent years. It combined skepticism about classical mechanics, a firm belief in molecules, and absolute confidence in statistical principles. However, Einstein’s dissertation does not follow hi...

We consider a PH/PH/1 queue in which a threshold policy determines the stage of the system. The arrival and service processes follow a Phase-Type (PH) distribution depending on the stage of the system. Each stage has both a lower and an upper threshold at which the stage of the system changes, and a new stage is chosen according to a prescribed distribution. The PH/PH/1 multi-threshold queue is...

Front-side connected, N-channel, normally-off, chemical field effect transistor (ChemFET) microsensors including a SiO2/Si3N4 pH-sensitive gate have been fabricated using a standard P-well silicon technology. The fabrication and packaging processes are described and sensor properties and performances are demonstrated through pHmeasurements. Finally, the front-side connected ChemFETs microsensor...

Despite past research, uncertainty exists about the processes and factors that motivate couples to limit family size. Under the Measurement, Learning & Evaluation (MLE) Project for the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, the authors undertook a comprehensive review to advance the current state of knowledge about what makes family planning programs work. The review synthesized research conduct...

This paper develops a class of density regression models based on proportional hazards family, namely, Gamma transformation proportional hazard (Gt-PH) model . Exact inference for the regression parameters and hazard ratio is derived. These estimators enjoy some good properties such as unbiased estimation, which may not be shared by other inference methods such as maximum likelihood estimate (M...

Previous research introduced Conditional Phase-type distributions (C-Ph) consisting of a Coxian phase-type distribution conditioned on a BN where the phase-type distribution represents a continuous survival variable, the duration of time until a particular event occurs and the BN represents a network of inter-related variables. The C-Ph model has proved to be a suitable technique for modeling p...