The body mass index (BMI), defined as weight/height, is often used to monitor childhood obesity. BMI values for 979 children (438 White, 283 Black, and 258 Hispanic) aged 3-18 years living in the Houston, Texas, metropolitan area from 1994 to 1998 were compared with percentage of fat (%Fat) measurements obtained by using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry. The associations between %Fat and BMI we...

This paper proposes a new estimation algorithm for the parameters of an HMM as to best account for the observed data. In this model, in addition to the observation sequence, we have partial and noisy access to the hidden state sequence as side information. This access can be seen as “partial labeling” of the hidden states. Furthermore, we model possible mislabeling in the side information in a ...

Honey is generated by various bee species from diverse plants, and because the value of different types of honey varies more than 100-fold, it is a target for fraud. This paper describes a protocol that employs DNA metabarcoding of three gene regions (ITS2, rbcLa, and COI) to provide an inexpensive tool to simultaneously deliver information on the botanical and entomological origins of honey. T...

Often the most expensive and time-consuming task in building a pattern recognition system is col­ lecting and accurately labeling training and testing data. In this paper, we explore the use of inexpen­ sive noisy testing data for evaluating a classifier's performance. We assume 1) the (human) labeler provides category labels with a known mislabeling rate and 2) the trained classifier and the l...

Recently the field of machine learning, pattern recognition, and data mining has witnessed a new research stream that is learning with partial supervision -LPS(known also as semi-supervised learning). This learning scheme is motivated by the fact that the process of acquiring the labeling information of data could be quite costly and sometimes prone to mislabeling. The general spectrum of learn...

Phishing is a significant problem that tricks unsuspecting users into revealing private information involving fraudulent email and websites. This causes tremendous economic loss every year. In this paper, we proposed a novel hybrid phish detection method based on phishing blacklists and phishing properties. We used some fresh phish from PhishTank that were recently added to test that it can be ...

Timely detection of concerning events is an important problem in clinical practice. In this paper, we consider the problem of conditional anomaly detection that aims to identify data instances with an unusual response, such as the omission of an important lab test. We develop a new non-parametric approach for conditional anomaly detection based on the soft harmonic solution, with which we estim...

Automated rule induction procedures like machine learning and statistical techniques result in rules that lack generalization and maintainability. Developing rules manually through incorporation of attack signatures results in meaningful but weak rules as it is difficult to define thresholds. This paper utilizes a hybrid procedure for developing rules by combining signature analysis with automa...

A Real Time-PCR method based on TaqMan technology for the 14 identification of Scomber Scombrus has been developed. A system of specific 15 primers and a Minor Groove Binding (MGB) TaqMan probe based on 16 sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome b region was designed. The 17 method was successfully tested in 81 specimens of Scomber scombrus and 18 related species and validated in 26 different...

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report on diagnostic errors in September, 2015. The report highlights the urgency of reducing errors and calls for system-level intervention and changes in our basic clinical interactions. Using the report's controversial definition of diagnostic error as a starting point, we introduce the issues and the potential impact on practicing physicians. We ...