BACKGROUND Efficient neuropsychological tests are needed to measure cognitive impairment in moderate to severe dementia. OBJECTIVE To examine construct validity of the Severe Impairment Battery Short Version (SIB-S) in nursing home patients with moderate to severe dementia, and to examine potential floor effects for the SIB-S. METHODS Cross-sectional comparison of cognitive measures, dement...

Onset of puberty was measured in 850 F2 Friesian x Jersey animals in a QTL discovery trial. Phenotypes for onset of puberty were defined by age at puberty based on endocrine profiles, and predicted proportion of mature live weight. A QTL analysis was conducted on the derived phenotypes using line of descent and half sib regression models. Results from the proportion of estimated mature live wei...

Prevalence of self-injurious behavior (SIB) is as high as 50% among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Identification of risk factors for the development of SIB is critical to early intervention and prevention. However, there is little empirical research utilizing a prospective design to identify early risk factors for SIB. The purpose of this study was to evaluate behavioral charact...

The early development of SIB in young children with developmental disabilities was examined by tracking over an 18-month period 16 school-age children who had recently started to show early SIB. Naturalistic observations were conducted in each child's classroom every 3 months, and the association between early SIB and environmental events was examined. Results showed that for the 4 children who...

The aim of this study was to characterize the individuals with sacroiliac joint bridging (SIB) by analyzing the degenerative changes in their whole vertebral column and comparing them with the controls. A total of 291 modern Japanese male skeletons, with an average age at death of 60.8 years, were examined macroscopically. They were divided into two groups: individuals with SIB and those withou...

Designs used for detecting QTL in livestock vary from experimental backcross and F2 populations to half-sib designs that use existing family structures within a commercial population. This contribution discusses how the initial design in which the QTL are detected affects: a) the implementation of MAS and b) the fine mapping of the QTL. The optimal approach depends on the livestock species and ...

Methods of identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) using a half-sib design are generally based on least-squares or maximum likelihood approaches. These methods differ in the genetical model considered and in the information used. Despite these differences, the power of the two methods in a daughter design in very similar. Using an analogy with a one-way analysis of variance, we propose ...

Data from an F 2 cross between breeds of livestock are typically analysed by least squares line-cross or half-sib models to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL) that differ between or segregate within breeds. These models can also be combined to increase power to detect QTL, while maintaining the computational efficiency of least squares. Tests between models allow QTL to be characterized into ...

In livestock, current statistical approaches utilize extensive molecular data, e.g., single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), to improve the genetic evaluation of individuals. The number of model parameters increases with the number of SNPs, so the multicollinearity between covariates can affect the results obtained using whole genome regression methods. In this study, dependencies between SNPs ...

A maximum-likelihood method to estimate the recombination fraction and its sampling variance using informative and noninformative half-sib offspring is derived. Estimates of the recombination fraction are biased up to 20 cM when noninformative offspring are discarded. In certain scenarios, the sampling variance can be increased or reduced up to fivefold due to the bias in estimating the recombi...