Cellular ability to regulate homeostasis is measured by basal Ca pump activity. Deregulation of calcium homeostasis can

Question:

Cellular ability to regulate homeostasis is measured by basal Ca pump activity. Deregulation of calcium

homeostasis can trigger serious effects of cell functioning. Can maternal mercury exposure measured by mercury deposits in hair (ug/g) affect newborn's basal Ca pump activity (nmol/mg/hr)? The following data summaries and graph are from a human study involving a sample of 75 newborns and their mothers.11
= 2.11183 = 3196.8196 sx = 0.61166 sy = 611.34876 r = -0.45289
(a) It is a good habit to always plot our data before analysis. Examining the preceding scatterplot, does there seem to be a linear trend in the data? Is it increasing or decreasing? Is it weak or strong?
(b) Examining the plot, we see there is a mother with a maternal hair level around 4.2 ug/g. If her child's basal Ca pump activity were changed from about 2800 to about 2000 nmol/mg/hr, would the sample correlation increase or decrease in magnitude?
(c) Is there evidence that newborn basal Ca pump activity linearly decreases with maternal hair level? Carry out an appropriate test using a = 0.05.
(d) In part (c) you should have found that there is strong evidence for a linearly decreasing relationship between X and Y. Explain how the evidence can be so strong even though the graph displays substantial scatter and the sample correlation is not close to -1.
(e) Based on your answer to part (c) and the design of this study, what can we say regarding the primary research question: Is there statistical evidence that maternal mercury exposure measured by mercury deposits in hair (pg/g) affects newborn's basal Ca pump activity (nmol/mg/hr)?