On the statistical analysis of the GS-NS0 cell proteome: Imputation, clustering and variability testing

We have undertaken two-dimensional gel electrophoresis proteomic profiling on a series of cell lines with different recombinant antibody production rates. Due to the nature of gel-based experiments not all protein spots are detected across all samples in an experiment, and hence datasets are invariably incomplete. New approaches are therefore required for the analysis of such graduated datasets. We approached this problem in two ways. Firstly, we applied a missing value imputation technique to calculate missing data points. Secondly, we combined a singular value decomposition based hierarchical clustering with the expression variability test to identify protein spots whose expression correlates with increased antibody production. The results have shown that while imputation of missing data was a useful method to improve the statistical analysis of such data sets, this was of limited use in differentiating between the samples investigated, and highlighted a small number of candidate proteins for further investigation. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Parapsychology on the couch: The psychology of occult belief in Germany, c. 1870-1939

This article considers the attempts of academic psychologists and critical occultists in Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to construct a psychology of occult belief. While they claimed that the purpose of this new subdiscipline was to help evaluate the work of occult researchers, the emergence of a psychology of occult belief in Germany served primarily to pathologize parapsychology and its practitioners. Not to be outdone, however, parapsychologists argued that their adversaries suffered from a morbid inability to accept the reality of the paranormal. Unable to resolve through experimental means the dispute over who should be allowed to mold the public's understanding of the occult, both sides resorted to defaming their opponent. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Tool support for generating passive C++ test oracles from object-z specifications

A test oracle provides a means for determining whether an implementation behaves according to its specification. A passive test oracle checks that the correct behaviour has been implemented, but does not implement the behaviour itself. In previous work, we have presented a method that allows us to derive passive C++ test oracles from formal specifications written in Object-Z. We describe the "Warlock" prototype tool that supports the method. Warlock is built on top of an existing Object-Z type checker and generates oracle code for a substantial subset of the Object-Z language. We describe the architecture of Warlock and its application to a number of Object-Z specifications. We also discuss its current limitations.