Statistical Model for Locating Fragile Points on Nucleic-ACID Molecules

Breakage is an important behavioral characteristic of nucleic-acid molecules. This paper concerns the problem of estimating the location of fragile (F) points on biological macromolecules such as DNA or RNA. We assume that the original length of the macromolecules is a random variable, breakage occurs more likely at some points of the macromolecules than others, and the number of breakages, except for those occurring at such points, is according to a Poisson process. Under these assumptions, the density function of the length of a randomly chosen segment has been derived. The Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) is suggested for estimating the parameters. The model is applied to the data available on RNA of Avian Myeloblostosis Virus (AMV), and three possible F-points have been located. The robustness of the model is discussed.     

A Note on Robust Intensity Estimation for Point Processes

A robust intensity estimator based on independent marking is derived. A simulation study is made to convince that the new estimator works also in such cases where the usual estimators based on the distance methods do not work. Some truncated distributions are derived.     

A Note on Testing Hypotheses about Trimmed Means

A well known result is that skewness can cause problems when testing hypotheses about measures of location, particulary when a one-sided test is of interest. Wilcox (1994) reports both theoretical and simulation results showing that when testing hypotheses about trimmed means, control over Type I error probabilities can be substantially better than methods for means. However, at least in some situations, control over the probability of a Type I error might still be judged to be inadequate. One way of adressing this concern is to combine trimmed means with the bootsrap method advocated by Westfall and Yuong (1993). This note reports simulation results indicating that there are situations where substantial improvements over Type I error probabilities are indeed obtained.