zinc is the first modelling language which supports solver and technique independence. this means that a high level conceptual model can be automatically mapped into an appropriate low level design model for a specific solver or technique. to date, zinc uses three different techniques to solve a model: constraint programming (cp), local search (ls), and mixed integer programming (mip). in this ...

Linear mixed models (LMM) and generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) are widely used in regression analyses. With the variance structure dependent on the random effects with their variance components, the parameter estimation of LMMs is more complicated than linear models (LM). Generally, we use maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) together with some procedure such as derivative free optimizatio...

The present thesis deals with different aspects of population pharmacokinetic/ pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modelling of the male hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. The thesis consists of a summary report and five scientific research papers. An overview of the main topics covered in the thesis is provided in the summary report including PK/PD modelling in drug development, the pathological, ...

The author has proposed a method, the Levitation Mass Method (LMM). In the LMM, the inertial force of a mass levitated using a pneumatic linear bearing is used as the reference force applied to the objects under test, such as force sensors, materials or structures. The inertial force of the levitated mass is measured using an optical interferometer. The author has modified it as calibration met...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be used to monitor pathological changes in Alzheimer's disease (AD). The objective of this longitudinal study was to assess the effects of progressive amyloid-related pathology on multiple MRI parameters in transgenic arcAβ mice, a mouse model of cerebral amyloidosis. Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), T1-mapping and quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM),...

The analysis of a series of crop variety trials often proceeds using a mixed model in which the data are the combined means from individual trials. The residual variation for this model consists of genotype by environment (G.E) interactions and within trial error variation. The latter is regarded as known from the analyses of individual trials, and any associated heterogeneity can be accounted ...

Mixed models, with both random and fixed effects, are most often estimated on the assumption that the random effects are normally distributed. In this paper we propose several formal tests of the hypothesis that the random effects and/or errors are normally distributed. Most of the proposed methods can be extended to generalized linear models where tests for non-normal distributions are of inte...