Posted on March 30, 2013  Comments (2)

Reposted from my management blog.

I would most likely not exist if it were not for George Box. My father took a course from George while my father was a student at Princeton. George agreed to start the Statistics Department at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and my father followed him to Madison, to be the first PhD student. Dad graduated, and the next year was a professor there, where he and George remained for the rest of their careers.

George died today, he was born in 1919. He recently completed An Accidental Statistician: The Life and Memories of George E. P. Box which is an excellent book that captures his great ability to tell stories. It is a wonderful read for anyone interested in statistics and management improvement or just great stories of an interesting life.

George Box by Brent Nicastro.

George Box was a fantastic statistician. I am not the person to judge, but from what I have read one of the handful of most important applied statisticians of the last 100 years. His contributions are enormous. Several well know statistical methods are known by his name, including:

• Box–Jenkins model
• Box–Cox transformations
• and Box–Behnken designs

George was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1979. He also served as president of the American Statistics Association in 1978. George is also an honorary member of ASQ.

George was a very kind, caring and fun person. He was a gifted storyteller and writer. He had the ability to present ideas so they were easy to comprehend and appreciate. While his writing was great, seeing him in person added so much more. Growing up I was able to enjoy his stories often, at our house or his. The last time I was in Madison, my brother and I visited with him and again listened to his marvelous stories about Carl Pearson, Ronald Fisher and so much more. He was one those special people that made you very happy whenever you were near him.

George Box, Stuart Hunter and Bill Hunter (my father) wrote what has become a classic text for experimenters in scientific and business circles, Statistics for Experimenters. I am biased but I think this is acknowledged as one of (if not the) most important books on design of experiments.

George also wrote other classic books: Time series analysis: Forecasting and control (1979, with Gwilym Jenkins) and Bayesian inference in statistical analysis. (1973, with George C. Tiao).

George Box and Bill Hunter co-founded the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984. The Center develops, advances and communicates quality improvement methods and ideas.

The Box Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Industrial Statistics recognizes development and the application of statistical methods in European business and industry in his honor.

“All models are wrong but some are useful” is likely his most famous quote. More quotes By George Box

A few selected articles and reports by George Box

• William G. Hunter: An Innovator and Catalyst for Quality Improvement
• The Scientific Context of Quality Improvement
• Statistics for Discovery
• Statistics as a Catalyst to Learning by Scientific Method
• Improving Almost Anything – collection of great articles and reports

Related: It is not about proving a theorem it is about being curious about things – Box on Quality – Soren Bisgaard – Learning Design of Experiments with Paper Helicopters – Peter Scholtes

Posted on March 17, 2013  Comments (2)

When cells divide the process fails to copy DNA all the way to the end. Telomeres are are the end of DNA strands, as essentially a buffer of material that won’t cause information to be lost when part of the telomere isn’t copied. As DNA is copied, as new cells are created, the length of telomeres at the end is reduced. Once the telomeres are gone the cell will no longer divide.

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to 3 scientists for discovering how the chromosomes can be copied in a complete way during cell divisions and how they are protected against degradation. The Nobel Laureates have shown that the solution is to be found in the ends of the chromosomes – the telomeres – and in an enzyme that forms them – telomerase.

There is some debate over the benefit of the mechanism of cells not dividing do to lack of telomere. This can prevent cancerous cells from replicating (once they replicate to the extent that the necessary telomere buffer is gone). It is also seen that as telomeres get shorter the cells become more likely to become cancerous.

Cancer also can stimulate the production of telomerase which can stop telomeres from getting shorter as cells divide and thus allow the cancer cells to keep dividing (thus producing more cancer cell and increasing the amount of cancerous cells). Using telomerase to allow health cells to avoid the limits of division is being researched.

Are Telomeres the Key to Aging and Cancer? (University of Utah)

Related: The Naked Mole Rat is the Only Known Cancerless Animal – Webcast of a T-cell Killing a Cancerous Cell – RNA interference webcast

Posted on March 14, 2013  Comments (1)

Interesting open access paper on looking at the Y-chromosome to explore our ancestry: A calibrated human Y-chromosomal phylogeny based on resequencing. I can’t understand all the details but the basic idea isn’t that complicated. It is interesting to see these details as are the conclusions that can be drawn: that we had a big explosion of human population o 41,000–52,000 years ago.

This population explosion occurred, between the first expansion of modern humans out of Africa 60,000 to 70,000 years ago and the Neolithic expansions of people in several parts of the world starting 10,000 years ago.

“We think this second, previously unknown population boom, may have occurred as humans adapted to their new environment after the first out-of-Africa expansion,” says Dr Qasim Ayub, lead author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger institute. “We think that when humans moved from the horn of Africa to Asia, Australia and eventually Europe, they remained in small groups by the coasts. It took them tens of thousands of years to adapt to the mountainous, forested surroundings on the inner continents. However, once their genetic makeup was suited to these new environments, the population increased extremely rapidly as the groups travelled inland and took advantage of the abundance of space and food.”

The work highlights how it is now possible to obtain new biological insights from existing DNA sequencing data sets, and the value of sharing data. The majority of the DNA information used for this study was obtained from freely-available online data-sets.

This is the first time researchers have used the information from large-scale DNA sequencing to create an accurate family tree of the Y chromosome, from which the inferences about human population history could be made.

Full press release

Related: Laser Tool Creates “blueprints” of Archeology Sites – HHMI on Science 2.0: Information Revolution – Scientists crack 40-year-old DNA puzzle

Posted on March 8, 2013  Comments (1)

Untreatable and hard-to-treat infections from Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) germs are on the rise among patients in medical facilities. CRE germs have become resistant to all or nearly all the antibiotics we have today. Types of CRE include Klebsiella pneumoniae Carbapenemase (KPC) and New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM). By following the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, we can slow the penetration of CRE infections in hospitals and other medical facilities and potentially spread to otherwise healthy people outside of medical facilities.

The CDC has worked with hospitals to successfully apply these measures. The CDC worked with Florida to stop a year-long CRE outbreak in a long-term acute care hospital. With the improved use of CDC recommendations (such as educating staff; dedicating staff, rooms, and equipment to patients with CRE; and improving use of gloves and gowns) the percentage of patients who got CRE at the facility dropped from 44% to 0.

One travesty has been how poorly health care professionals have been about prescribe antibiotics wisely We need to improve and follow CDC antibiotics guidelines (stop the overuse of antibiotics) and use culture results (for patients undergoing treatment) to modify prescriptions, if needed. Antibiotic overuse contributes to the growing problems of Clostridium difficile (c-diff) infection and antibiotic resistance in healthcare facilities. Studies indicate that nearly 50% of antimicrobial use in hospitals is unnecessary or inappropriate (per CDC web site).

Israel decreased CRE infection rates in all 27 of its hospitals by more than 70% in one year with a coordinated prevention program. The USA is at a critical time in which CRE infections could be controlled if addressed in a rapid, coordinated, and consistent effort by doctors, nurses, lab staff, medical facility leadership, health departments/states, policy makers, and the federal government.

As I have been saying for years the damage we are creating due to our actions around the use and abuse of antibiotics is likely to kill tens of thousands, or more people. Because the deaths are delayed and often not dramatic we have continued dangerous practices for years when we know better. It is a shame we are condemning so many to increased risks. The CDC, and others, are doing good work, unfortunately too much bad work is continuing in the face of evidence of how dangerous that is.

Related: CDC Urges Increased Effort to Reduce Drug-Resistant Infections (2006) – Key scientific articles on Healthcare Associated Infections via CDC – Our Dangerous Antibiotic Practices Carry Great Risks – Dangerous Drug-Resistant Strains of TB are a Growing Threat

Posted on March 3, 2013  Comments (11)

3D printing is an amazing technology that opens up great opportunities for us to enjoy life. The future is great. It is exciting to see how quickly advances are being made in this area. I think the ability to print replacement parts is a huge benefit. And the creative uses people will put these printers too will be a joy to see.

Related: A Pen That Prints in 3D While You Draw – Open Source 3-D Printing (2007) – Great 3D Printing Presentation by a kid (2011) – 3D Printing is Here (2009) – A plane You Can Print (2006)