Given data sampled from an unknown discrete probability distribution p, does the underlying distribution possess some property of interest? For instance, is the distribution uniform? Monotone? Are its marginals independent? This class of problems is one of the most fundamental questions in statistics, where it is known as hypothesis testing. Classical work on this problem has focused on distrib...

BACKGROUND Despite evidence on the short-term benefits of early intervention (EI) service for psychosis, long-term outcome studies are limited by inconsistent results. This study examined the 10-year outcomes of patients with first-episode psychosis who received 2-year territory-wide EI service compared to those who received standard care (SC) in Hong Kong using an historical control design. ...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether the theory of planned behavior (TPB) predicted intent of child restraint system (CRS) use among pregnant women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). METHODS In this cross-sectional study conducted in Dallah Hospital, Riyadh, KSA during June-July 2013, 196 pregnant women completed surveys assessing their beliefs regarding CRS. Simultaneous observations were cond...

We address discrete nonlinear inverse problems with weighted least squares and Tikhonov regularization. Regularization is a way to add more information to the problem when it is ill-posed or ill-conditioned. However, it is still an open question as to how to weight this information. The discrepancy principle considers the residual norm to determine the regularization weight or parameter, while ...

This study compared the outcome of students' performance using the standard setting method with the equivalent outcome they would have obtained using the absolute grading method. It involved the comparison of fail, pass, honors and distinction grades in Digestive System, Endocrine System, Cardiovascular System and Health and the Environment courses in the MBBS Stage I examination. The performan...

A dynamic coloring of a graph is a proper coloring of its vertices such that every vertex of degree more than one has at least two neighbors with distinct colors. The least number of colors in a dynamic coloring of G, denoted by χ2(G), is called the dynamic chromatic number of G. The least integer k, such that if every vertex of G is assigned a list of k colors, then G has a proper (resp. dynam...

Let G be a graph. A proper vertex coloring of G is said to be a dynamic coloring if for every v ∈ V (G) of degree at least 2, the neighbors of v receive at least two different colors. The smallest integer k such that G has a dynamic k-coloring is called the dynamic chromatic number of G and is denoted by χ2(G). It was conjectured that if G is an r-regular graph, then χ2(G)−χ(G) ≤ 2. In this tal...

Our previous studies using the mass spectrum analysis provided evidence that fibrinopeptide A (FPA) could be a potential biomarker for schizophrenia diagnosis. We sought further to demonstrate that variants in the fibrinogen alpha chain gene (FGA) coded FPA might confer vulnerability to schizophrenia. 1,145 patients with schizophrenia and 1,016 healthy volunteers from the Han population in Nort...

The purpose of this study is to assess the prognostic value of supraclavicular nodes, left gastric nodes, celiac nodes and common hepatic nodes metastasis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) treated with definitive radiotherapy. A total of 293 ESCC patients treated with radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy entered the study. The results showed that the presence of supraclavicular nodes (χ...

Background: Hyposmia is important for early and differential diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease (PD); however its mechanism remains unclear. The aim of this retrospective study is to identify the clinical phenotypic associated with hyposmia in Chinese han PD patients. Methods: We used 16-item odor identification test from Sniffin’ Sticks (SS-16) to evaluate the olfactory function of 120 Chinese H...