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Experimental Variability (experimental + variability)
Selected AbstractsProper Assessment of the JFK Assassination Bullet Lead Evidence from Metallurgical and Statistical PerspectivesJOURNAL OF FORENSIC SCIENCES, Issue 4 2006Erik Randich Ph.D. ABSTRACT: The bullet evidence in the JFK assassination investigation was reexamined from metallurgical and statistical standpoints. The questioned specimens are comprised of soft lead, possibly from full-metal-jacketed Mannlicher-Carcano (MC), 6.5-mm ammunition. During lead refining, contaminant elements are removed to specified levels for a desired alloy or composition. Microsegregation of trace and minor elements during lead casting and processing can account for the experimental variabilities measured in various evidentiary and comparison samples by laboratory analysts. Thus, elevated concentrations of antimony and copper at crystallographic grain boundaries, the widely varying sizes of grains in MC bullet lead, and the 5,60 mg bullet samples analyzed for assassination intelligence effectively resulted in operational sampling error for the analyses. This deficiency was not considered in the original data interpretation and resulted in an invalid conclusion in favor of the single-bullet theory of the assassination. Alternate statistical calculations, based on the historic analytical data, incorporating weighted averaging and propagation of experimental uncertainties also considerably weaken support for the single-bullet theory. In effect, this assessment of the material composition of the lead specimens from the assassination concludes that the extant evidence is consistent with any number between two and five rounds fired in Dealey Plaza during the shooting. [source] Lessons from leeches: a call for DNA barcoding in the labEVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 6 2006Alexandra E. Bely SUMMARY Many evolution of development labs study organisms that must be periodically collected from the wild. Whenever this is the case, there is the risk that different field collections will recover genetically different strains or cryptic species. Ignoring this potential for genetic variation may introduce an uncontrolled source of experimental variability, leading to confusion or misinterpretation of the results. Leeches in the genus Helobdella have been a workhorse of annelid developmental biology for 30 years. Nearly all early Helobdella research was based on a single isolate, but in recent years isolates from multiple field collections and multiple sites across the country have been used. To assess the genetic distinctness of different isolates, we obtained specimens from most Helobdella laboratory cultures currently or recently in use and from some of their source field sites. From these samples, we sequenced part of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome oxidase I (COI). Sequence divergences and phylogenetic analyses reveal that, collectively, the Helobdella development community has worked on five distinct species from two major clades. Morphologically similar isolates that were thought to represent the same species (H. robusta) actually represent three species, two of which coexist at the same locality. Another isolate represents part of a species complex (the "H. triserialis" complex), and yet another is an invasive species (H. europaea). We caution researchers similarly working on multiple wild-collected isolates to preserve voucher specimens and to obtain from these a molecular "barcode," such as a COI gene sequence, to reveal genetic variation in animals used for research. [source] Improvements for comparative analysis of changes in diversity of microbial communities using internal standards in PCR-DGGEFEMS MICROBIOLOGY ECOLOGY, Issue 3 2005Dorthe Groth Petersen Abstract The use of internal standards both during DNA extraction and PCR-DGGE procedure gives the opportunity to analyse the relative abundance of individual species back to the original sample, thereby facilitating relative comparative analysis of diversity. Internal standards were used throughout the DNA extraction and PCR-DGGE to compensate for experimental variability. Such variability causes decreased reproducibility among replicate samples as well as compromise comparisons between samples, since experimental errors cannot be differentiated from actual changes in the community abundance and structure. The use of internal standards during DNA extraction and PCR-DGGE is suitable for ecological and ecotoxicological experiments with microbial communities, where relative changes in the community abundance and structure are studied. We have developed a protocol Internal Standards in Molecular Analysis of Diversity (ISMAD) that is simple to use, inexpensive, rapid to perform and it does not require additional samples to be processed. The internal standard for DNA extraction (ExtrIS) is a fluorescent 510-basepair PCR product which is added to the samples prior to DNA extraction, recovered together with the extracted DNA from the samples and analysed with fluorescence spectrophotometry. The use of ExtrIS during isolation of sample DNA significantly reduced variation among replicate samples. The PCR internal standard (PCRIS) originates from the Drosophila melanogaster genome and is a 140-basepair long PCR product, which is amplified by non-competitive primers in the same PCR reaction tubes as the target DNA and analysed together with the target PCR product on the same DGGE gel. The use of PCRIS during PCR significantly reduced variation among replicate samples both when assessing total PCR product and when comparing bands representing species on a DGGE gel. The entire ISMAD protocol was shown to accurately describe changes in relative abundance in an environmental sample using PCR-DGGE. It should, however, be mentioned that despite the use of ISMAD some inherent biases still exist in DNA extraction and PCR-DGGE and these should be taken into consideration when interpreting the diversity in a sample based on a DGGE gel. [source] Assessment of uncertainty in computer experiments from Universal to Bayesian KrigingAPPLIED STOCHASTIC MODELS IN BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY, Issue 2 2009C. Helbert Abstract Kriging was first introduced in the field of geostatistics. Nowadays, it is widely used to model computer experiments. Since the results of deterministic computer experiments have no experimental variability, Kriging is appropriate in that it interpolates observations at data points. Moreover, Kriging quantifies prediction uncertainty, which plays a major role in many applications. Among practitioners we can distinguish those who use Universal Kriging where the parameters of the model are estimated and those who use Bayesian Kriging where model parameters are random variables. The aim of this article is to show that the prediction uncertainty has a correct interpretation only in the case of Bayesian Kriging. Different cases of prior distributions have been studied and it is shown that in one specific case, Bayesian Kriging supplies an interpretation as a conditional variance for the prediction variance provided by Universal Kriging. Finally, a simple petroleum engineering case study presents the importance of prior information in the Bayesian approach. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||