Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Annual meeting held at ARS Southern Plains Area facility, College Station, Texas July 23-24, 2009 Official Members Present: Ted Bailey (IA), John Boyer (KS, Admin), Mary Christman (FL), Bruce Craig (IN), Sara Duke (USDA-ARS), Susan Durham (UT), George Fernandez (NV), Ed Gbur (AR), Kevin McCarter (LA), David Meek (USDA-ARS), Mark West (USDA-ARS), Linda Young (FL) Official Members Absent: Rich Alldredge (WA), Bert Bishop (OH), German Bollero (IL), Don Bullock (IL), Paul Cornelius (KY), Mark Hinds (Pioneer Hi-Bred), Ken Koehler (IA), Larry Madden (OH), George Milliken (KS), Bahram Momen (MD), Margaret Nemeth (Monsanto), Cuirong Ren (SD), Dan Schmoldt (UDSA-CREES, Admin.), Bahman Shafii (ID), Rob Tempelman (MI), Hao Zhang (IN), Jun Zhu (WI) Other Participants Present: Matt Kramer, Kathy Yeater 2008 Officers: Ed Gbur, Chair; Mary Christman, Program Chair; Sara Duke, Local Arrangements Chair; Susan Durham, Secretary NCCC-170 Website: http://www.uark.edu/misc/ncr170/ Technical program: The meeting began at 8:30 am on Thursday, July 23, 2009, with opening remarks by Dan Upchurch, Southern Plains Area Director. The morning session and working lunch were devoted to presentation and discussion of the drafts of the GLIMMIX papers. Mary Christman and Ed Gbur -- Introductory paper Linda Young and Kevin McCarter -- Repeated measures in space and time Kevin McCarter and Walt Stroup -- Power and sample size calculations Prior to the actual presentations, it was agreed that each of the drafts was already much too long for a journal article. Discussion turned to the possibility of creating a monograph based on the above drafts. In addition, the possibility of producing several related journal articles was discussed. Specific journal article material included (i) a comparison of the probability function versus simulation approaches to power calculations, (ii) a discussion of the use of transformations versus generalized linear model analyses, and (iii) an example of a multi-year, multi-location generalized linear mixed model analysis. The afternoon session consisted of the following presentations along with group discussion of each. Kathy Yeater -- Using GLIMMIX to assess multi-year, multi-crop system experiments David Meek -- A view of model performance assessment procedures Ted Bailey -- Randomization of factors in a multi-phase experiment Bruce Craig -- Diffusion test breakpoint determination George Fernandez -- Issues with some GLIMMIX examples Business meeting: The business meeting began at 8:45 am on Friday, July 24, 2009. Ed Gbur presided. Mary Christman and Sara Duke were thanked for organizing a productive and enjoyable meeting. The following items were discussed: (1) The 2010 meeting will be held in Ames, Iowa and co-hosted by David Meek and Ted Bailey. The date was set for July 8-9. Kathy Yeater will serve as program chair. The USSES group (SCC-13) will be invited to meet jointly next year. Kevin McCarter will serve as the contact person. Bruce Craig volunteered to host the 2011 meeting at Purdue. (2) The group reviewed and discussed specific goals for the next three years and impacts. The annual report and impact statement are due shortly after the annual meeting. Participants need to send Ed (egbur@uark.edu) accountings of all activities (workshops, papers, presentations, teaching related, etc.) from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009 (or since last year's report) that are related to or inspired by their participation in NCCC-170 as soon as possible. (3) It was decided to proceed with the writing of a monograph as well as some journal articles as discussed during the Thursday morning technical session. Don Bullock and Kathy Yeater will approach the Tri-Societies (Agronomy, Crop Science and Soil Science) to determine if they would be interested in publishing the monograph. If they are not interested, another publisher would be sought. Ed Gbur agreed to coordinate the writing and to edit the final draft to ensure consistency of style and notation throughout the monograph. The following deadlines were established. August 15 Revisions of the three drafts presented during the Thursday morning session are due to Ed. October 1 Final drafts of all additional material are due to Ed. December 1 Final draft of the entire monograph is ready for submission. Various individuals agreed to provide additional material on (1) transformations versus generalized linear mixed models (2) chi-squared tests (3) diagnostics for residuals (4) overdispersion (5) tests of covariance structures (6) additional examples (7) a section on other software, including the analysis of a few of the GLIMMIX examples using the alternative software. The meeting adjourned at approximately 10:25 a.m.

Statisticians who consult and do research in an Agricultural Experiment Station environment enable land grant institutions to perform their agricultural research missions more effectively and efficiently than would otherwise be possible. However, most stations have at most one or two professional statisticians who are not, and can not be expected to be, experts in every area of statistics. This multi-state committee brings together statisticians to work cooperatively to determine the best current approaches to common statistical problems and to help guide future directions of sound statistical practice. In addition to group outputs such as workshops, it serves as a resource for its members and a sounding board for new ideas in their applied statistical research. As a result, all members are able to provide more effective assistance to agricultural researchers addressing national research priorities than they would without NCCC-170. Outputs: Workshops: Rob Tempelman, Bruce Craig and Larry Douglass presented a one and a half day mixed model workshop in July, 2009 at the Joint American Dairy Science Association - American Society of Animal Science - Canadian Society of Animal Scienc Meetings in Montreal. There were 92 registrants. Linda Young presented a one day workshop entitled "Applied mixed models" for the Cleveland Chapter of the American Statistical Association in May, 2009 in Cleveland, Ohio. George Fernandez presented a three day professional continuing education workshop in collaboration with UNR Extended studies entitled "Statistical analyses of experimental data" in August, 2008 in Reno, NV. Mary Christman presented a two hour workshop entitled "Too many zeroes? Methods for analyzing zero-inflated datasets" to the Program in Environmental Statistics, Department of Statistics- IFAS, University Of Florida in October, 2008. Mary Christman and J. Colee presented two one-day workshops entitled "Introduction to SAS" and "Introduction to regression using SAS" in August, 2009 at the University of Florida. Presentations: Kathy Yeater. "Survival analysis methods for aquaculture research at Statistics in aquaculture research," a symposium held in conjunction with the Aquaculture America meeting in February, 2009 in Seattle. (Invited) John Stevens. "Statistical issues in gene expression analysis" to the Utah State University Center for Integrated Biosystems Gene Expression and Microarray Analysis Training Program in June, 2009 in Logan, UT. (Invited) C. Gotway and Linda Young. "Geostatistics: What's hot, what's not and other food for thought" at the 8th International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences in June, 2008 in Shanghai, China. (Invited) C. Gotway and Linda J. Young. "Linking environmental data and health data for environmental public health tracking" at the XXIV International Biometric Conference in July, 2008 in Dublin, Ireland. (Invited) Linda Young and C. Gotway. "Using geostatistical methods in the analysis of public health data: the final frontier?" at the 7th International Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications in September, 2008 in Southampton, UK. (Invited) C. Gotway and Linda Young. "Environmental public health tracking: A case study from Florida" at the Joint Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology and the International Society of Exposure Analysis in October, 2008 in Pasadena, CA. (Invited) Mary Christman. "Modeling mixtures of three states of a count process: Application to estimating species richness" at the Joint Statistical Meetings in August, 2008 in Denver. (Invited) T. Bohrmann and Mary Christman. "A demographic population model of Chesapeake Bay oysters to evaluate potential management and restoration strategies" at the Joint Statistical Meetings in August, 2008 in Denver. (Invited) Mary Christman. "Modeling scales of variability of harmful algae blooms in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida" at the Joint Statistical Meetings in August, 2009 in Washington, D.C. (Invited) Kathy Yeater. "Design and analysis of augmented designs in agricultural experimentation" at "New Statistical Techniques for the Analysis of Agricultural Experimentation," a symposium held in conjunction with the ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meetings in October, 2008 in Houston. David Meek, D. Laird, D. Dinnes, D. Jaynes, C.A. Cambardella, T. Colvin, J. Hatfield and D. Karlen. "Three analysis examples for time series data" at "New Statistical Techniques for the Analysis of Agricultural Experimentation," a symposium held in conjunction with the ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meetings in October, 2008 in Houston. Mark West. "Fitting models to your experimental data when they are counts or proportions. An introduction to generalized linear mixed models" at "New Statistical Techniques for the Analysis of Agricultural Experimentation," a symposium held in conjunction with the ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meetings in October, 2008 in Houston. David Meek. "Some of my SAS and statistical procedure resources" in November, 2008 and "Some new features in SAS 9.2" in July, 2009 at Iowa SAS User Group monthly meetings in Des Moines, IA. Don Bullock. "Contrast statements vs the slice option" at "Advanced statistical procedures for production agronomists," a symposium held in conjunction with the ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meetings in October, 2008 in Houston. German Bollero, F. Miguez and Don Bullock. "Understanding statistical modeling of combined experiments" at "Advanced statistical procedures for production agronomists," a symposium held in conjunction with the ASA-CSSA-SSSA annual meetings in October, 2008 in Houston. George Fernandez. "Quick and complete statistical analyses using SAS Enterprise Guide" at the Western Users of SAS Software annual conference in 2008 in Universal City, CA. George Fernandez. "User-friendly SAS® Macro application for performing all possible mixed model selection - An update" at the Western Users of SAS Software annual conference in 2008 in Universal City, CA. John Stevens and G.N. Nicholas. "Statistical and numerical dependence in gene expression summaries" at the Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture in April, 2009 in Manhattan, KS.and the; also at Joint Statistical Meetings, August 2009. John Stevens and G.N. Nicholas. "Statistical and numerical dependence in gene expression summaries" at the Joint Statistics Meetings in August, 2009 in Washington, D.C. John Aleong. "The generalized linear model with spatial variation" at the Faculty Resource Network in January, 2009 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. John Aleong. "On satellites, weather and climate (SWAC)" at the Faculty Resource Network in January, 2009 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. John Aleong "The general linear mixed model with multinomial data" at the Joint Statistics Meetings in August, 2009 in Washington, D.C. C. Aleong and John Aleong. "An integrated approach to land use policy" at the Joint Statistics Meetings in August, 2009 in Washington, D.C. David Meek gave an in-house demonstration to scientists at the National Soil Tilth Laboratory on SASGraph in SAS version 9.2 in April, 2009. Technical Reports: Christman, M. C. (2008). Sampling design for bald eagle nesting project in Florida. Report to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, FWRI. Gainesville Lab. 36 pp. Christman, M. C., Volstad, J. H., Sharov, A. F., Davis, G. R. and Fegley, L. W. (2008). Statistical analyses of crab dredge efficiency. Final Report to Virginia Institute of Marine Science, July 2008. 42 pp. Christman, M. C. and Colee, J. (2009). Statistical analyses of coral reef data collected between 1996 and 2007 in the Dry Tortugas and Florida Keys. A Report for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Coral Reef Evaluation and Monitoring Project (FKNMS CREMP). 610 pp. Christman, M. C. and Holt, N. (2009). Comparability of the FHAP and DERM sampling designs. A Report to the South Florida Water Management District. 90 pp. Other project related activities: Bruce Craig served as Chair of the Statistical Consulting Section of the American Statistical Association for the past year. David Meek is Chair-Elect of the A11 section (Biometry) of the American Society of Agronomy. Linda Young received a grant entitled "Spatial modeling of environmental hazard and health outcomes" from the Florida Department of Health for 2008 to 2009. $132,309. John Stevens received funding from the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station to continue a project entitled "Probe-Level Statistical Models for Differential Expression of Genes in Bovine NT Studies." This is in association with the W-1112 Multi-State Research Project "Reproductive Performance in Domestic Ruminants." October, 2009 - September, 2010. $18,500. John Boyer organized an invited session on the topic of current statistical advances in agriculture on behalf of the American Statistical Association at the International Indian Statistical Association Joint Statistical Meetings to be held in January, 2010 in Visakhapatnam, India. Kevin McCarter, George Fernandez and Dallas Johnson will be presenters in the session. Mary Christman served as the discussant for a session entitled "The role of statisticians in understanding climate change" at the Joint Statistical Meetings in August, 2008 in Denver. Mary Christman serves as Eastern North American Region Liaison to the American Association for the Advancement of Science Agricultural Working Group. Her term is from 2009 to 2012. Mary Christman was an invited participant on the Statistical Advisory Panel for the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) to address the adequacy of the approach for development of measures of compliance of estuaries in the CBP water quality criteria attainment program. Sponsored by the Chesapeake Bay Program Office. August, 2009. Mary Christman received a grant entitled "Independent statistical evaluation of Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay submerged aquatic vegetation monitoring efforts" from SFWMD for January to September, 2009. $47,062. A. Ogram, R. Reddy and Mary Christman received a grant entitled "Controls on methanogenesis in the Florida Everglades" from NSF for 2009 to 2013. $1,169,223. P. Carlson, P. Kubilis and Mary Christman received a grant entitled "Enhancing the Seagrass Monitoring Program manager's tolkit - Evaluating seagrass abundance measures, sampling designs, and statistical analysis models to determine best practices for characterizing status and trend of seagrass abundance in Florida" from the Florida's State Wildlife Grants Program 2008, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, FWRI for 2009 to 2012. $91,500. Mary Christman received a grant entitled "Statistical analyses of 2008 CREMP, SECREMP, and NPS Dry Tortugas Coral monitoring data" from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, FWRI for April, 2009 to August, 2009. $35,000.

Aston K.I., Li G.P., Hicks B.A., Sessions B.R., Davis A.P., Winger Q.A., Rickords L.F., Stevens J.R. and White K.L. (2009). Global gene expression analysis of bovine somatic cell nuclear transfer blastocysts and cotyledons. Molecular Reproduction and Development, 76, 471-482. Andrews, G.L., S. Tanglao, W. T. Farmer, S. Morin, S. Brotman, M.A. Berberoglu, H. Price, G.C. Fernandez, G.S. Mastick, F. Charron and T. Kidd (2008). Dscam guides embryonic axons by Netrin-dependent and -independent functions. Development, 135, 3839-3848. Bangarwa, S.K., J.K. Norsworthy and E.E. Gbur (2009). Integration of a brassicaceae cover crop with herbicides in plasticulture tomato. Weed Technology, 19, 405-410. Cardoso, F.F., G.J.M. Rosa, J.P. Steibel, C.W. Ernst, R.O. Bates, and R.J. Tempelman (2008). Selective transcriptional profiling and data analysis strategies for eQTL mapping in outbred F2 populations. Genetics, 180, 1679-1690. Checa, M. F., Barragán, A., Rodríguez, J. and Christman, M. C. (2009). Temporal abundance patterns of butterfly communities (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) in the Ecuadorian Amazonia and their relationship with climate. Annales de la Societe Entomologique Francaise. In press. Christensen, B.W., M.H.T. Troedsson, M.H. Gluck, L.J. Young, M. Oliva and L.M. Penfold (2009). Effects of sociosexual environment on serum testosterone in captive male African rhinoceros. Theriogenology. DOI: 10.1016/j.theriogenology.2008.12.003. Gibert, J., Culver, D. C., Dole-Olivier, J-C., Malard, F., Christman, M. C. and Deharveng, L. (2009). Assessing and conserving groundwater biodiversity: Synthesis and perspective. Freshwater Biology. In press. Gotway, C.A. and L.J. Young (2008). Geostatistics: Whats hot, whats not and other food for thought. Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. Shanghai, China. Karlen, D.L., D.L. Dinnes, M.D. Tomer, D.W. Meek, C.A. Cambardella, and T.B. Moorman (2009). Is no-tillage enough? A field-scale watershed assessment of conservation effects. Electronic Journal of Integrative Biosciences, 7(2), 1-24. (On-line: http//clt.astate.edu/electronicjournal/Articles/Karlen %20et%20al%2005-2 009.pdf. Kulmatiski A., K. H. Beard, J.R. Stevens and S.M. Cobbold (2008). Plant-soil feedbacks: A meta-analytical review. Ecology Letters, 11, 980-992. Malone, R., D. Meek, J. Hatfield, M. Mann, R. Jaquis, and L. Ma (2009). Quasi-biennial corn yield cycles in Iowa. Agric. For. Meteorology, 149, 1087-1094. Mallapur, A., Miller, C. P., Christman, M. C. and Estevez, I. (2009). Short-term and long-term movement patterns in confined environments by domestic fowl: Influence of group size and enclosure size. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. In press. Malone, R., D. Meek, J. Hatfield, M. Mann, R. Jaquis and L. Ma (2009). Quasi-biennial corn yield cycles in Iowa. Agric. For. Meteorol., 149, 1087-1094. Meek, D.W., T.A. Howell, and C.J. Phene (2009). Concordance correlation for model performance assessment. An example with reference evapotranspiration observations. Agronomy Journal, 101, 1012-1018. Menjoulet, B.C., K.R. Brye, A.L. Pirani, B.E. Haggard and E.E. Gbur (2009). Runoff water quality from broiler-litter amended tall fescue in broiler litter amended tall fescue in response to natural precipitation in the Ozark Highlands. Journal of Environmental Quality, 38, 1005-1017. Parvataneni, S., B. Gonipeta, R.J. Tempelman, and V. Gangur (2009). Allergic and anaphylactic reactions to cashew nut protein in micecomparison of relative potency with hazelnut. International Archives of Allergy and Immunology, 149, 299-304. Phlips, E. J., Badylak, S., Christman, M. C. and Lasi, M. A. (2009). Climatic trends and temporal patterns of phytoplankton composition, abundance and succession in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida, USA. Estuaries and Coasts. In press. Reynolds, S. M., Christman, M. C., Uy, J. A. C., Patricelli, G. L., Braun, M. J., and Borgia, G. (2008). Aggregation of related males mitigates the effect of bower destruction in satin bowerbirds. Behavioral Ecology, DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arn146. Russell, A.E., C.A. Cambardella, D.A. Laird, D.B. Jaynes, and D.W. Meek (2009). Nitrogen fertilizer effects on soil carbon balances in Midwestern U.S. agricultural systems. Ecological Applications, 19, 1102-1113. Sauer, T.J., S.R. Compston, C.P. West, G.Hernandez-Ramirez, E.E. Gbur and T.B. Parkin (2009). Nitrous oxide emissions from a bermudagrass pasture: Interseeded winter rye and poultry litter. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 41, 1417-1424. Seversike, T.M., L.C. Purcell, E.E. Gbur, P. Chen and R. Scott (2009). Radiation interception and yield response to increased leaflet number in early maturing soybean genotypes. Crop Science, 49, 281-289. Singer, J.W., S.D. Logsdon, and D.W. Meek (2008). Soybean growth and seed yield response to tillage and compost. Agronomy Journal, 100, 1039-1046. Staed, J., D.M. Miller, K.R. Brye, T.C. Daniel, C. Rom and E.E. Gbur (2009). Land use effects on near surface soil arsenic in the Ozark Highlands. Soil Science, 174(3), 121-129. Steibel, J.P., G.J.M. Rosa, and R.J. Tempelman (2009). Optimizing two-stage experiments for transcriptional profiling. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 53, 1639-1649. Stevens J.R. and G. Nicholas (2009). Metahdep: Meta-analysis of hierarchically dependent gene expression studies. Bioinformatics (advance access July, 2009). Tomaszycki, M., C. Peabody, K. Replogle, D.F. Clayton, R.J. Tempelman and J. Wade (2009). Sexual differentiation of the zebra finch song system. Potential roles for sex chromosome genes. BMC Neuroscience, 10, 24. Tempelman R.J. (2009). Assessing experimental designs for research conducted on commercial dairies. Journal of Dairy Science, 92, 1-15. Young, L. J., C.A. Gotway, G. Kearney and C. DuClos (2009). Assessing uncertainty in support-adjusted spatial misalignment problems. Communications in StatisticsTheory and Methods, 27, 3998-4015. Young, L.J. and C.A. Gotway (2008). Using geostatistical methods in the analysis of public health data: the final frontier? Proceedings of geoENV 2008, the 7th International Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications. Southampton, UK. Young, L.J., C.A. Gotway, G. Kearney and C. DuClos (2009). Models for assessing uncertainty for local regression. Proceedings of the 6th St. Petersburg Workshop on Simulation. 4. Saint Petersburg, Russia.