Background: Time-course microarray experiments produce vector gene expression profiles across a series of time points. Clustering genes based on these profiles is important in discovering functional related and co-regulated genes. Early developed clustering algorithms do not take advantage of the ordering in a time-course study, explicit use of which should allow more sensitive detection of genes that display a consistent pattern over time. Peddada et al.[1] proposed a clustering algorithm that can incorporate the temporal ordering using order-restricted statistical inference. This algorithm is, however, very time-consuming and hence inapplicable to most microarray experiments that contain a large number of genes. Its computational burden also imposes difficulty to assess the clustering reliability, which is a very important measure when clustering noisy microarray data.

Observations on continuous populations are often rounded when recorded due to the precision of the recording mechanism. However, classical statistical approaches have ignored the effect caused by the rounding errors. When the observations are independent and identically distributed, the exact maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) can be employed. However, if rounded data are from a dependent structure, the MLE of the parameters is difficult to calculate since the integral involved in the likelihood equation is intractable. This paper presents and examines a new approach to the parameter estimation, named as "short, overlapping series" (SOS), to deal with the α-mixing models in presence of rounding errors. We will establish the asymptotic properties of the SOS estimators when the innovations are normally distributed. Comparisons of this new approach with other existing techniques in the literature are also made by simulation with samples of moderate sizes.

Biomarkers have been examined in schizophrenia research for decades. Medical morbidity and mortality rates, as well as personal and societal costs, are associated with schizophrenia patients. The identification of biomarkers and alleles, which often have a small effect individually, may help to develop new diagnostic tests for early identification and treatment. Currently, there is not a commonly accepted statistical approach to identify predictive biomarkers from high dimensional data. We used space decomposition-gradient-regression (DGR) method to select biomarkers, which are associated with the risk of schizophrenia. Then, we used the gradient scores, generated from the selected biomarkers, as the prediction factor in regression to estimate their effects. We also used an alternative approach, classification and regression tree, to compare the biomarker selected by DGR and found about 70% of the selected biomarkers were the same. However, the advantage of DGR is that it can evaluate individual effects for each biomarker from their combined effect. In DGR analysis of serum specimens of US military service members with a diagnosis of schizophrenia from 1992 to 2005 and their controls, Alpha-1-Antitrypsin (AAT), Interleukin-6 receptor (IL-6r) and connective tissue growth factor were selected to identify schizophrenia for males; and AAT, Apolipoprotein B and Sortilin were selected for females. If these findings from military subjects are replicated by other studies, they suggest the possibility of a novel biomarker panel as an adjunct to earlier diagnosis and initiation of treatment.

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Ranked-set sampling (RSS) often provides more efficient inference than simple random sampling (SRS). In this article, we propose a systematic nonparametric technique, RSS-EL, for hypothesis testing and interval estimation with balanced RSS data using empirical likelihood (EL). We detail the approach for interval estimation and hypothesis testing in one-sample and two-sample problems and general estimating equations. In all three cases, RSS is shown to provide more efficient inference than SRS of the same size. Moreover, the RSS-EL method does not require any easily violated assumptions needed by existing rank-based nonparametric methods for RSS data, such as perfect ranking, identical ranking scheme in two groups, and location shift between two population distributions. The merit of the RSS-EL method is also demonstrated through simulation studies.