Student SPHere 2008-09

Fall in Minnesota is like getting a really nice piece of jewelry from your boyfriend right before he dumps you. It is stunningly beautiful, and then, out of nowhere, you are left “out in the cold.� Only at least you get a nice gift out of the ex-boyfriend situation; Minnesota just gives you frostbite. That’s one of the reasons it is so hard for me to enjoy the Minnesotan fall; it’s like a really funny preview right before a movie that you know is going to be total crap. But, I tried to make the best of it this week. I tried to take in all of the fall colors without thinking about the fact that the reason those leaves are turning those pretty colors is because they are dying. I tried to enjoy watching the squirrels scurry around campus, their cute chubby cheeks loaded with food without thinking about the fact that all of that labor is necessary because in a couple of weeks, no squirrel in his right mind is going to be outside looking for food. That’s right; even the squirrels are smart enough to avoid Minnesota winters, while we insist on trudging around outside like packs of human popsicles with the snot frozen inside our heads. But let’s be optimistic. Maybe this winter won’t be so bad. And maybe the Detroit Lions will win the Super Bowl and OJ Simpson will admit he killed Nicole and Jack Black will make a movie that’s actually funny.
Aside from the fall foliage signaling the impending months of agonizing cold, this week was pretty much business as usual. I took an exam in my stat theory class, and finished the take-home portion on Friday. We’ve started discussing bivariate transformations. In survival analysis, we’ve been learning about testing for differences in survival rates between groups (for example, between men and women). We’ve got a midterm on Tuesday, but I’m feeling pretty confident about it, AND I already have the homework finished for that class that is also due this week. Finally, in my latent variables class, we’re looking at latent class analysis which is done to determine whether the patterns of responses to an instrument can be attributed to the fact that the respondents are from a series of latent “classes� or groups. For example, for our homework this week we examined a questionnaire administered to women living in Bangladesh that pertained to their ability to go certain places in their village or outside of their village such as a hospital or a club. Using this method of latent class analysis, there appeared to be a group of conservative women who were not permitted to really go anywhere, a more moderate group, and a more “free� group that reported that they were able to go anywhere they pleased. I’m particularly exited about learning this analysis method because I think that I can use it in my plan B project.
Speaking of Plan B, I have made quite a bit of progress with that in the past couple of weeks. I have a data set that consists of the responses to the SSAGA (Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism) from a large sample of African Americans. The data set is actually from a research project I worked on as an undergraduate, and the PI from that project is letting me use the data set for my plan B. A huge portion of this semi-structured interview is a family history interview that contains several questions that I feel could be measuring various latent variables (such as maternal attachment or paternal strictness). I will be hopefully creating a latent variables model of family structures that will be used to predict various alcohol use outcomes (also to be derived from the SSAGA). I’m excited about the latent class analysis, because there are a series of questions in the SSAGA that address personality traits of both the study participant’s mother and father figures, and I hope to parse out some distinct “parental personalities�—or classes—from these items.
I’ve also been working with the Department of Psychiatry as an RA on a project that is looking for genetic associations among various genes and ADHD and illicit drug and alcohol dependence. I’ve been researching which genes, and which SNPs in particular—would be most prudent for us to examine. I’m really excited about the amount of recent research that has been done with genetics and our phenotypes of interest, and it looks like I have a pretty good list of candidate SNPs to be examined.
Finally, no Sunday night blog would be complete without an update on my beloved Steelers. In short, they continue to rock. This week, they defeated the Cincinnati Bengals in a crushing and decisive victory without the aid of either their starting running back or his backup who were both out due to injury. We will ignore the fact that the Bengals are 0 and 7, and merely savor the victory and try to forget that next week my poor Steelers must face last year’s Super Bowl champs, much like I am savoring the crisp fall weather and attempting to forget that winter is just around the corner.