University of Missouri

About: University of Missouri is a education organization based out in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 41427 authors who have published 83598 publications receiving 2911437 citations. The organization is also known as: Mizzou & Missouri-Columbia.

Predicting the Onset of Cigarette Smoking in Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract: In a longitudinal study, the second-year-smoking status of adolescents who were initially Nonsmokers or Triers was predicted from their Year 1 standing on three types of social psychological variables: Ajzen and Fishbein's factors (predicting smoking transitions from attitudes, normative beliefs and behavioral intentions about smoking); Jessor and Jessor's distal variables (predicting smoking transitions from more generalized personality and perceived environment factors), and smoking environment variables (predicting smoking transitions from the extent of smoking models in an adolescent's social milieu). The predictive power of these three categories of factors was compared. All three classes of social psychological variables were statistically significant predictors of smoking transition, although the Ajzen and Fishbein variables were more important for Triers while the Jessor and Jessor and smoking environment variables were more important for initial Never Smokers. Moreover, each category of variables made independent contributions to the prediction of smoking transition. Finally, there were several age and sex differences in the relative importance of predictor variables. Implications of these findings for the design of effective smoking prevention programs are discussed. Smoking prevention programs might be more effective if they were aimed at a specific high risk audience (as identified by the current study) rather than at a general adolescent population.

Fourier Analysis in Convex Geometry

Abstract: Introduction Basic concepts Volume and the Fourier transform Intersection bodies The Busemann-Petty problem Intersection bodies and $L_p$-spaces Extremal sections of $\ell_q$-balls Projections and the Fourier transform Bibliography Index.

Adult age differences in episodic memory: further support for an associative-deficit hypothesis.

Abstract: This study further tested an associative-deficit hypothesis (ADH; M. Naveh-Benjamin, 2000), which attributes a substantial part of older adults' deficient episodic memory performance to their difficulty in merging unrelated attributes-units of an episode into a cohesive unit. First, the results of 2 experiments replicate those observed by M. Naveh-Benjamin (2000) showing that older adults are particularly deficient in memory tests requiring associations. Second, the results extend the type of stimuli (pictures) under which older adults show this associative deficit. Third, the results support an ADH in that older adults show less of an associative deficit when the components of the episodes used are already connected in memory, thereby facilitating their encoding and retrieval. Finally, a group of younger adults who encoded the information under divided-attention conditions did not show this associative deficit.

Circulating microRNAs in breast cancer and healthy subjects.

Abstract: Background: It has been demonstrated that extracellular mRNA can be detected in the circulation. Our hypothesis was that circulating miRNAs are also present and differentially expressed in the serum of breast cancer patients compared to controls. Findings: We measured miRNA in the serum of samples with and without the addition of miRNA prior to analysis. To test our RNA extraction efficiency, we spiked-in serial dilutions of singlestrand C elegens miR-39 (cel-miR-39) and human miR-145 (has-miR-145) into goat serum and a 10 year old human serum specimen. We next analyzed miR-16, -145, and -155 in archived serum specimens from 21 participants, 13 of whom did and 8 of whom did not have breast cancer. We were able to detect the miRNAs from all the serum samples to which the miRNAs had been added. We were also able to detect endogenous miR-16, -145, and -155 in all serum samples. While the expression of all three miRNAs was similar in samples from healthy women compared to those with breast cancer, women with progesterone receptor (PR, p = 0.016) positive tumors had higher miR-155 expression than tumors that were negative for these receptors. Conclusion: 1) RNA species can be detected in archived serum; 2) miR-155 may be differentially expressed in the serum of women with hormone sensitive compared to women with hormone insensitive breast cancer. Screening serum for miRNAs that predict the presence of breast cancer is feasible, and may be useful for breast cancer detection.