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Vaccine Induced Protection Against Influenza: Persistence of Serum Antibodies, Vaccine Efficacy as a Function of Time, and Use of Transmission Models to Estimate Vaccine Effectiveness in Household Cohort Studies.
(2016)
Influenza vaccine is currently the best available means of preventing influenza infection, though vaccine effectiveness can vary year to year based on factors such as match between circulating viruses and those included ...
Statistical Issues in the Analysis of Correlated Data.
(2015)
We first extend the original classification and regression trees (CART) paradigm (Breiman et al. 1984) to clustered binary outcomes, where individuals within a cluster are correlated. We propose to generate tree models ...
New Instrumental Variable Methods for Causal Inference.
(2016)
In observational studies, unmeasured differences between treatment groups often confound the relationship of interest. Instrumental variable (IV) methods can give consistent effect estimates in the presence of this ...
Three Studies of Variation in Medical Decision-Making and Care Delivery by Physicians.
(2015)
In this dissertation, I examine the effects of select non-financial factors on the organizational and medical decisions of primary care practice managers, specialist consultants, and Veterans Health Administration (VA) ...
Characterization of A. baumannii Environmental Survival and Biofilm Formation and the Impact on Environmental Transmission.
(2015)
Acinetobacter baumannii is a gram-negative, opportunistic pathogen primarily affecting the critically ill, causing 3% of all nosocomial-related deaths in the United States. A. baumannii’s successful environmental survival ...
Putative Early Life Epigenetic Biomarkers of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Mice Perinatally Exposed to Bisphenol A.
(2015)
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a high production-volume chemical with hormone-like properties that has been implicated as a potential carcinogen. Early life exposure has been linked to increased risk for precancerous lesions in ...
Using P-Splines to Estimate Nonlinear Covariate Effects in Latent Factor Models.
(2015)
Latent factor models are useful for summarizing information among multiple outcomes. In this thesis I apply semiparametric methods based on P-splines to latent factor models in order to estimate and test non-constant factor ...
Adaptive Phase I and II Clinical Trial Designs in Oncology with Repeated Measures using Markov Models for the Conditional Probability of Toxicity.
(2014)
We consider models for the dose toxicity relationship in early clinical trials in oncology where different dose levels of a study drug are being tested over multiple cycles in the same patient and an assessment of toxicity ...
Control of Measles and Pneumococcal Disease in China.
(2015)
China has made great strides in controlling most common vaccine-preventable diseases by increasing access to childhood vaccines through the government-funded Expanded Program for Immunization. Despite this success, China ...
Bayesian Local Smoothing Modeling and Inference for Pre-surgical FMRI Data.
(2016)
There is a growing interest in using fMRI measurements and analyses as tools for pre-surgical planning. For such applications, spatial precision and control over false negatives and false positives are vital, requiring ...