Consequences of gene targeting procedures for behavioural responses and morphological development of newborn mice

In this study the effects of gene targeting procedures on the early behaviour and morphological development of the resulting offspring have been investigated. Six groups of mice, each having undergone a specific aspect of the biotechnological procedure, (including electroporation, microinjection and/or embryo culture) and one control group, were compared. Development of behaviour, morphological characteristics and body weight of the progeny were tested daily from birth to weaning (0–3 weeks) for all groups. No significant differences in behaviour or morphological development were observed. However, the occurrence of increased (perinatal) pup mortality and increased body weight in the procedural groups, indicates that during the production of gene targeted mice, some of the normal physiological and/or developmental processes can be affected. Therefore, gene targeting procedures should always be accompanied by careful monitoring of health and welfare of the resulting offspring.     

Analysis of Profiles Based on Ordinal Classification Functions and Rank Tests

In this article a test for the comparison of K groups of independent profiles is suggested. It is based on rank tests, in which the criterion is obtained by using a suitably chosen ordinal classification function. This function represents a specific view on the profiles. The test, which is easy to use, can be regarded as a generalisation of other well known tests and can be applied within a variety of situations. The relationships to other procedures for the analysis of profiles are described. Some properties are discussed.     

The Structure of Ellipsoidal Distributions I. Canonical Analysis

This study is concerned with the structure of variables having ellipsoidal distributions. In Part I it is shown that many normal-theory results in canonical analysis are exact for all ellipsoidal distributions under a specified model for sampling. In Part II similar conclusions are drawn regarding the use of principal components. These findings suggest using normal-theory procedures in canonical and principal components analyses as approximate large-sample procedures for distributions attracted to ellipsoidal stable laws.     

Application of Multiple Test Procedures to the Combination of Multivariate and Univariate Tests with Varying Variable Sets

The positive ascertainment of location differences in a multivariate comparison of two or more groups gives rise to the question for the contribution of the single variables or of subsets of variables to the multivariate difference. In this paper two methods are proposed to accomplish the original multivariate test by tests in variable subsets or in single variables using a closed test procedure and Holm's procedure, respectively. Both control the multiple level of the whole procedure.     

On Some Nuisance Parameter Free Uniformly Most Powerful Tests

TAKEUCHI (1969) provides a uniformly most powerful (UMP) one side test for testing the location parameter of the two parameters exponential model when the scale parameter is unknown. The power of his similar size α test depends, however, on the unknown scale parameter. In this case and in more general situations when there exists a sufficient statistic for the nuisance parameter, the theory of generalized THOMPSON's distributions, more specifically, the Thompsonization of a test statistic, LAURENT (1959, 1972) provides a UMP test whose power does not depend on the nuisance parameter. Examples of application of the general nuisance parameter free test procedure include here the truncated exponential, the inverse Gaussian, and the geometric distributions.     

A More Powerful Simultaneous Test Procedure in Configural Frequency Analysis

In the Configural Frequency Analysis (CFA) of KRAUTH and LIENERT (1973 a, b), overfrequented (or underfrequented) cells in multivariate contingency tables are identified by simultaneous binomial tests. As an alternative, finite and asymptotic tests are proposed, which are derived from the (exact conditional) generalized hypergeometrical distribution of the cell frequencies. These tests allow for considerably more powerful decisions than do the conservative binomial tests.     

On the Assessment of the Performance of Multiple Test Procedures

Based on the concept of the multiple level of significance two criteria for assessing the performance of multiple tests are proposed: The simultaneous power is defined as the probability of rejecting all false null hypotheses. The probability of a correct decision is defined as the probability of correctly rejecting all false null hypotheses and accepting all true ones. Both criteria are discussed for nonstagewise and stagewise procedures in case of independent test statistics. For the example of 5 independently and normally distributed test statistics the values of the two criteria are calcutated under reasonably simple alternatives.