BACKGROUND The low (LF) vs. high (HF) frequency energy ratio, computed from the spectral decomposition of heart beat intervals, has become a major tool in cardiac autonomic system control and sympatho-vagal balance studies. The (statistical) distributions of response variables designed from ratios of two quantities, such as the LF/HF ratio, are likely to non-normal, hence preventing e.g., from ...

BACKGROUND Analyses of multicenter studies often need to account for center clustering to ensure valid inference. For binary outcomes, it is particularly challenging to properly adjust for center when the number of centers or total sample size is small, or when there are few events per center. Our objective was to evaluate the performance of generalized estimating equation (GEE) log-binomial an...

The effect of the pre-weaning housing system on play behaviour before weaning and agonistic behaviour after weaning and during the fattening period was investigated in 32 litters of domestic pigs. Three preweaning housing systems were compared: poor crate (standard farrowing crate without straw), enriched crate (crate with straw, 20% larger), and, as a control, a farrowing pen (pen with straw, ...

The function of UreC, the product of a 1,335-bp-long open reading frame upstream from the urease structural genes (ureAB) of Helicobacter pylori, was investigated. We present data showing that the ureC gene product is a phosphoglucosamine mutase. D. Mengin-Lecreulx and J. van Heijenoort (J. Biol. Chem. 271:32-39, 1996) observed that UreC is similar (43% identity) to the GlmM protein of Escheric...

In psychophysics, researchers usually apply a two-level model for the analysis of the behavior of the single subject and the population. This classical model has two main disadvantages. First, the second level of the analysis discards information on trial repetitions and subject-specific variability. Second, the model does not easily allow assessing the goodness of fit. As an alternative to th...