Risk factors for prostate cancer: a case-control study investigating selected key exposures and their interactions with predisposition genes

Prostate cancer is the UK number one male cancer. Evidence from epidemiological studies suggests only age, race and family history as established risk factors. Other factors such as low dose diagnostic radiations and surrogate hormone markers such as baldness, finger length pattern and acne are hypothesized to have a potential role in the aetiology of prostate cancer. It is evident that genetics plays an important role in prostate cancer aetiology. This thesis focuses both environmental and genetic factors. The environmental factors include selected surrogate hormone markers, medical diagnostic radiation procedures and family history of prostate cancer. The genetic part explores genetic polymorphisms that could have implications for interactions with exposures studied. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) involved in mechanistic pathways related to DNA repair genes and potential hormone marker genes were the main targets

Which Pairs of Stocks should we Trade? Selection of Pairs for Statistical Arbitrage and Pairs Trading in Karachi Stock Exchange

Pairs Trading refers to a statistical arbitrage approach devised to take advantage from short term fluctuations simultaneously depicted by two stocks from long run equilibrium position. In this study a technique has been designed for the selection of pairs for pairs trading strategy. Engle-Granger 2-step Cointegration approach has been applied for identifying the trading pairs. The data employed in this study comprised of daily stock prices of Commercial Banks and Financial Services Sector. Restricted pairs have been formed out of highly liquid log share price series of 22 Commercial Banks and 19 Financial Services companies listed on Karachi Stock Exchange. Sample time period extended from November 2, 2009 to June 28, 2013 having total 911 observations for each share prices series incorporated in the study. Out of 231 pairs of commercial banks 25 were found cointegrated whereas 40 cointegrated pairs were identified among 156 pairs formed in Financial Services Sector. Furthermore a Cointegration relationship was estimated by regressing one stock price series on another, whereas the order of regression is accessed through Granger Causality Test. The mean reverting residual of Cointegration regression is modeled through the Vector Error Correction Model in order to assess the speed of adjustment coefficient for the statistical arbitrage opportunity. The findings of the study depict that the cointegrated stocks can be combined linearly in a long/short portfolio having stationary dynamics. Although for the given strategy profitability has not been assessed in this study yet the VECM results for residual series show significant deviations around the mean which identify the statistical arbitrage opportunity and ensure profitability of the pairs trading strategy. JEL classifications: C32, C53, G17 Keywords: Pairs Trading, Statistical Arbitrage, Engle-Granger 2-step Cointegration Approach, VECM

Risk factors for prostate cancer: a case-control study investigating selected key exposures and their interactions with predisposition genes

Prostate cancer is the UK number one male cancer. Evidence from epidemiological studies suggests only age, race and family history as established risk factors. Other factors such as low dose diagnostic radiations and surrogate hormone markers such as baldness, finger length pattern and acne are hypothesized to have a potential role in the aetiology of prostate cancer. It is evident that genetics plays an important role in prostate cancer aetiology. This thesis focuses both environmental and genetic factors. The environmental factors include selected surrogate hormone markers, medical diagnostic radiation procedures and family history of prostate cancer. The genetic part explores genetic polymorphisms that could have implications for interactions with exposures studied. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) involved in mechanistic pathways related to DNA repair genes and potential hormone marker genes were the main targets

Information extraction from semi and unstructured data sources: a systematic literature review

Millions of structured, semi structured and unstructured documents have been produced around the globe on a daily basis. Sources of such documents are individuals as well as several research societies like IEEE, Elsevier, Springer and Wiley that we use to publish the scientific documents enormously. These documents are a huge resource of scientific knowledge for research communities and interested users around the world. However, due to their massive volume and varying document formats, search engines are facing problems in indexing such documents, thus making retrieval of information inefficient, tedious and time consuming. Information extraction from such documents is among the hottest areas of research in data/text mining. As the number of such documents is increasing tremendously, more sophisticated information extraction techniques are necessary. This research focuses on reviewing and summarizing existing state-of-theart techniques in information extraction to highlight their limitations. Consequently, the research gap is formulated for the researchers in information extraction domain

Oil Price Flux and Macroeconomy of Oil Exporters

Oil is an important energy source, embodies the largest commodity market in the world. Global economic performance has been highly correlated with oil price changes. The study considered 10 major oil exporters to measure the effect of oil price changes on their economies considering variables: Oil Prices (OP), Inflation (CPI) , GDP deflator, Lending interest rate (IR), real interest rate (RIR), Official Exchange Rate (EX), and Net domestic credit (LDU).  By applying Johansen Co-integration techniques, long run relationship among variables has been analyzed covering the time period from 1970 to 2019. In order to find the short run relationship, Error Correction Model (ECM) technique is used. Study affirmed that there exist a strong relation among economic variables and oil price fluctuations; however the intensity of relationship displays a variation. Oil prices are associated with GDP deflator and RIR significantly as compared to other variables. Moreover, it can be suggested that each country should observe it own economic strategy in response to price change to reflect on economic policy instead of following some other country trends

Procjena kvalitete obrazovanja u privatnim srednjim školama u Khyber Pakhtunkhwi u Pakistanu

The current study evaluates the quality of education in private secondary schools of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan). It is descriptive in nature. The study population included principals, teachers and students of private secondary schools of Kohat. All the principals of 30 private secondary schools were selected as sample whereas random sampling technique was employed for selecting the study sample of teachers and students. Three different questionnaires were framed by using a five-point Likert scale. Data were interpreted by simple percentages. The results revealed that majority of teachers of private secondary schools are professionals, yet they were not content with their pay and service structure. It was concluded that the schools follow the curriculum prescribed by Education Boards. There were scientific labs, but there was also a lack of modern and contemporary books in libraries.U ovome istraživanju ispituje se kvaliteta obrazovanja u privatnim srednjim školama u KhyberPakhtunkhwi u Pakistanu. Istraživanje je deskriptivnoga karaktera. Populacija ispitanika sastojala se od ravnatelja, nastavnika i učenika privatnih srednjih škola u Kohatu. Ravnatelji svih 30 privatnih srednjih škola odabrani su za uzorak ispitanika, a tehnikom slučajnoga uzorkovanja odabran je ostatak ispitanika. Izrađena su tri različita upitnika po modelu Likertove skale od 5 stupnjeva. Podatci su interpretirani s pomoću jednostavnih postotaka. Rezultati su pokazali da je većina nastavnika privatnih srednjih škola stručna, no nisu bili zadovoljni svojom plaćom i strukturom zaposlenika u školi. Zaključak je da škole prate kurikul koji propisuje nadležni odbor. U školama postoje laboratoriji za prirodoslovne predmete, no u knjižnicama nedostaju moderna i suvremena literatura

Opinion mining summarization and automation process a survey

In this modern age, the internet is a powerful source of information. Roughly, one-third of the world population spends a significant amount of their time and money on surfing the internet. In every field of life, people are gaining vast information from it such as learning, amusement, communication, shopping, etc. For this purpose, users tend to exploit websites and provide their remarks or views on any product, service, event, etc. based on their experience that might be useful for other users. In this manner, a huge amount of feedback in the form of textual data is composed of those webs, and this data can be explored, evaluated and controlled for the decision-making process. Opinion Mining (OM) is a type of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and extraction of the theme or idea from the user's opinions in the form of positive, negative and neutral comments. Therefore, researchers try to present information in the form of a summary that would be useful for different users. Hence, the research community has generated automatic summaries from the 1950s until now, and these automation processes are divided into two categories, which is abstractive and extractive methods. This paper presents an overview of the useful methods in OM and explains the idea about OM regarding summarization and its automation process

Quantum memory assisted entropic uncertainty and entanglement dynamics: Two qubits coupled with local fields and Ornstein Uhlenbeck noise

Entropic uncertainty and entanglement are two distinct aspects of quantum mechanical procedures. To estimate entropic uncertainty relations, entropies are used: the greater the entropy bound, the less effective the quantum operations and entanglement are. In this regard, we analyze the entropic uncertainty, entropic uncertainty lower bound, and concurrence dynamics in two non-interacting qubits. The exposure of two qubits is studied in two different qubit-noise configurations, namely, common qubit-noise and independent qubit-noise interactions. To include the noisy effects of the local external fields, a Gaussian Ornstein Uhlenbeck process is considered. We show that the rise in entropic uncertainty gives rise to the disentanglement in the two-qubit Werner type state and both are directly proportional. Depending on the parameters adjustment and the number of environments coupled, different classical environments have varying capacities to induce entropic uncertainty and disentanglement in quantum systems. The entanglement is shown to be vulnerable to current external fields; however, by employing the ideal parameter ranges we provided, prolonged entanglement retention while preventing entropic uncertainty growth can be achieved. Besides, we have also analyzed the intrinsic behavior of the classical fields towards two-qubit entanglement without any imperfection with respect to different parameter

Advantage of gravitational cat states in preserving non-classical characteristics

We investigate how resourceful gravitational cat states are to preserve quantum correlations. In this regard, we explore the dynamics of gravitational cat states under different situations such as thermal, classical stochastic, general decaying, and power-law noisy fields. In particular, the one-way steerability, Bell non-locality, entanglement, and purity in two qubits are our main focus. We also address the weak measurement reversal protocol on the dynamics of quantum correlations and purity of the state. Our results show that the gravitational cat states have a reliable and better capacity to preserve quantum correlations and remain one of the good resources for the deployment of quantum information processing protocols