Correlates of weapon carrying among high school students in the United States

Abstract Background Deaths and injuries arising from interpersonal violence among adolescents are major public health concerns in the United States. The bearing of weapons among adolescents is a critical factor in many of these deaths and injuries. Methods A secondary analysis of the 2005 United States Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System Survey data was carried out to examine the variables associated with self-reported history of weapon carrying on school property among high school students. We used logistic regression analysis to assess the associations. Results Of the 13,707 respondents who participated in the survey, 10.2% of males and 2.6% of females reported carrying a weapon on school property. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, males were more likely to report having carried a weapon than females (odds ratio (OR) = 5.58; 95% confidence interval (CI) [4.23, 7.62]). Self-reported race/ethnicity was also associated with weapon carrying. Other variables positively associated with weapon carrying at school were substance use (OR = 1.77; 95% CI [1.16, 2.68]), depression (OR = 1.44; 95% CI [1.10, 1.89]), suicidal ideation (OR = 1.64; 95% CI [1.23, 2.19]), having had property stolen or deliberately damaged at school (OR = 1.55; 95% CI [1.21, 1.98]), having been raped (OR = 1.70; 95% CI [1.22, 2.37]), having been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property (OR = 2.19; 95% CI [1.63, 2.95]), and having engaged in physical fighting (OR = 2.02; 95% CI [1.56, 2.63]). Conclusion This research identifies factors that are associated with weapon bearing among adolescents in the United States. These factors may be important in the design of interventions aimed at improving school safety and adolescent health

Mathematical modelling of lymphatic filariasis elimination programmes in India: Required duration of mass drug administration and post-treatment level of infection indicators

Background: India has made great progress towards the elimination of lymphatic filariasis. By 2015, most endemic districts had completed at least five annual rounds of mass drug administration (MDA). The next challenge is to determine when MDA can be stopped. We performed a simulation study with the individual-based model LYMFASIM to help clarify this. Methods: We used a model-variant for Indian settings. We considered different hypotheses on detectability of antigenaemia (Ag) in relation to underlying adult worm burden, choosing the most likely hypothesis by comparing the model predicted association between community-level microfilaraemia (Mf) and antigenaemia (Ag) prevalence levels to observed data (collated from literature). Next, we estimated how long MDA must be continued in order to achieve elimination in different transmission settings and what Mf and Ag prevalence may still remain 1 year after the last required MDA round. The robustness of key-outcomes was assessed in a sensitivity analysis. Results: Our model matched observed data qualitatively well when we assumed an Ag detection rate of 50 % for single worm infections, which increases with the number of adult worms (modelled by relating detection to the presence of female worms). The required duration of annual MDA increased with higher baseline endemicity and lower coverage (varying between 2 and 12 rounds), while the remaining residual infection 1 year after the last required treatment declined with transmission intensity. For low and high transmission settings, the median residual infection levels were 1.0 % and 0.4 % (Mf prevalence in the 5+ population), and 3.5 % and 2.0 % (Ag prevalence in 6-7 year-old children). Conclusion: To achieve elimination in high transmission settings, MDA must be continued longer and infection levels must be reduced to lower levels than in low-endemic communities. Although our simulations were for Indian settings, qualitatively similar patterns are also expected in other areas. This should be taken into account in decision algorithms to define whether MDA can be interrupted. Transmission assessment surveys should ideally be targeted to communities with the highest pre-control transmission levels, to minimize the risk of programme failure

Dimensionality Reduction on the Cartesian Product of Embeddings of Multiple Dissimilarity Matrices

Dissimilarity representation, Multidimensional scaling, Dimensionality reduction, Principal components analysis, Linear discriminant analysis,