Jornal de Biometria e Bioestatística

Summary overview of intelligence development in young children coinciding with neocortex verbal areas development by means of mastery of the reading skill and of the state of children literacy development in the world.

        Rotation of the earth around the sun paces daily biologic rhythms (circadian rhythms). Additional rhythms spanning days are mutidien. The energy for biologic rhythms is provided by metabolism.     We measured biologic rhythms in dinosaur’s fossilized feather and rachis imprints and in contemporaneous wild turkey tail-feather.         Daily growth lines were measured in 9 photographs of dinosaur feather-imprints. They were from an enantiornithine bird (Mesozoic 245-265 million years), from a troodontid theropod (Cretaceous ~160 million years) and from Sinosauropteryx (Early Cretaceous; ~125 million years; rachis only). We measured 27 growth lines and 39 rachis intervals in the turkey feather. We compared our measurements in the dinosaurs to those in the modern feather. We used biometrics to analyze the measurements, we found circadian and multidien rhythms in all feathers. The gliding Microraptor had large feathers. In contrast, the feathered dinosaurs had smaller feathers. Wild turkey feathers were of intermediate size.        We conclude, based on measurements and statistically identified spectral peaks, that circadian and multidien rhythms are present in feather imprints of dinosaurs and in extant birds similar to those described in mammals. Feather growth is related to metabolism, to function and to body mass; this suggests a similar metabolism in feathered dinosaurs and modern birds.

Meshless methods are advanced discretization techniques, which permit to discretize the problem physical domain with an unstructured nodal cloud. This discretization flexibility allows obtaining the geometrical model directly from medical images, such as computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. Then, it is possible to analyse straightforwardly the biomechanical behaviour of biological structures. When compared with other mesh-dependent discretization techniques, meshless methods are capable of producing smoother and much more accurate stress and strain fields. The literature shows that meshless methods have the potential to be the future of biomechanical computational simulation.

Phase I oncology trials are designed to identify a safe dose with an acceptable toxicity profile. In traditional phase I dose-finding design, the dose is typically determined based on the probability of severe toxicity observed during the first treatment cycle. The recent development of molecularly targeted agents and cancer immunotherapies call for new innovations in phase I designs, because of prolonged treatment cycles often involved. Various phase I designs using toxicity and efficacy endpoints from multiple treatment cycles have been developed for these new treatment agents. Here, we will review the novel endpoints and designs for the phase I oncology clinical trials.

Human facial appearance is strongly influenced by demographical characteristics such as categorical age, ethnicity, and gender with each category further partitioned into classes-Black, White, Male, Female, Young (18-30), Middle Age (30-50), and Old (50-70)-and groups−mix of classes. Most subjects share a more similar appearance with their own demographic class than with other classes. We evaluate here the accuracy of automatic facial verification for subjects belonging to varying age, ethnicity, and gender categories. Towards that end, we use a convolutional neural network for feature extraction and show that our method yields better performance on individual demographics compared to a commercial face recognition engine. For one-class demographic groups, we corroborate empirical findings that biometric performance on verification is relatively lower for females, young subjects in the 18-30 age group, and blacks. We then expand the scope of our method and evaluate the accuracy of face verification for several multiclass demographic groups. We discuss the results and make suggestions for improving face verification across varying demographics.

The problem of testing for normality is fundamental in both theoretical and empirical statistical research. This paper compares the performances of eighteen normality tests available in literature. Since a theoretical comparison is not possible, MonteCarlo simulation were done from various symmetric and asymmetric distributions for different sample sizes ranging from 10 to 1000. The performance of the test statistics are compared based on empirical Type I error rate and power of the test. The simulations results show that the Kurtosis Test is the most powerful for symmetric data and Shapiro Wilk test is the most powerful for asymmetric data.

Objectives: This review examines malaria control and treatment interventions in Zanzibar. This review seeks to identify current malaria prevention and control intervention strategies, to better understand cultural barriers to intervention, and to make recommendations on how malaria prevention and treatment activities might be adapted to address underlying cultural barriers that would otherwise impede intervention efforts. Methods: The review documents published data from 36 studies on the current malaria intervention activities in Zanzibar; and identifies whether extant literature includes attention to cultural barriers as part of the implementation and dissemination of interventions. Results: Quality data and information on health expenditures in Zanzibar is scarce and often out-of-date. The beliefs and cultural practices of patients are largely related to the success of malaria control programs. The most commonly described malaria prevention and treatment interventions in Zanzibar are indoor residual spraying, insecticide treated nets, sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine, and Artemisinin based combination therapy. Controlling malaria requires a competent workforce. Lack of education and financial resources restrict program success. Conclusions: Integration of culture practices with malaria control strategies is the ideal solution to effectively reach communities.

Here is a brief overview of the main features of the comprehension process, stemming from the research of Pavlov, Chauchard and Korzybski.