1,563 research outputs found
Household Environments and Functional Decline Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults in China
This thesis investigates the associations between household social, economic, and physical environment conditions and the trajectory of self-reported functional limitations over time among middle-aged and older adults in China. Despite the increasing interest in the impact of household environments on functional decline, most existing studies are cross-sectional or concern changes in functioning observed in two waves of surveys, and they primarily focus on the influence of one condition. This thesis explores how the trajectory of functional decline is influenced jointly by multiple household factors, including living arrangement, annual living expenditure per capita, indoor air pollution resulting from solid fuels, and housing quality. To analyze the data, a linear growth curve model is applied to four waves of surveys of 13,564 respondents aged 45 years and older from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) conducted between 2011 and 2018. The study finds that female and older respondents experience faster functional decline compared to male and younger respondents, but there is no significant urban-rural difference in the rate of decline. Living alone, particularly for rural, female, and older respondents, is associated with a faster functional decline when compared to living with a spouse and without children. Improved housing quality is linked to a slower functional decline. Living with young descendants and without adult children for urban residents, and living with a lower expenditure per capita for younger respondents, are associated with a faster functional decline. Discussions are given for expected and unexpected results, the limitations and implications of this study
Forward Private Searchable Symmetric Encryption with Optimized I/O Efficiency
Recently, several practical attacks raised serious concerns over the security
of searchable encryption. The attacks have brought emphasis on forward privacy,
which is the key concept behind solutions to the adaptive leakage-exploiting
attacks, and will very likely to become mandatory in the design of new
searchable encryption schemes. For a long time, forward privacy implies
inefficiency and thus most existing searchable encryption schemes do not
support it. Very recently, Bost (CCS 2016) showed that forward privacy can be
obtained without inducing a large communication overhead. However, Bost's
scheme is constructed with a relatively inefficient public key cryptographic
primitive, and has a poor I/O performance. Both of the deficiencies
significantly hinder the practical efficiency of the scheme, and prevent it
from scaling to large data settings. To address the problems, we first present
FAST, which achieves forward privacy and the same communication efficiency as
Bost's scheme, but uses only symmetric cryptographic primitives. We then
present FASTIO, which retains all good properties of FAST, and further improves
I/O efficiency. We implemented the two schemes and compared their performance
with Bost's scheme. The experiment results show that both our schemes are
highly efficient, and FASTIO achieves a much better scalability due to its
optimized I/O
Probing dynamics of dark energy with latest observations
We examine the validity of the CDM model, and probe for the dynamics
of dark energy using latest astronomical observations. Using the
diagnosis, we find that different kinds of observational data are in tension
within the CDM framework. We then allow for dynamics of dark energy
and investigate the constraint on dark energy parameters. We find that for two
different kinds of parametrisations of the equation of state parameter , a
combination of current data mildly favours an evolving , although the
significance is not sufficient for it to be supported by the Bayesian evidence.
A forecast of the DESI survey shows that the dynamics of dark energy could be
detected at confidence level, and will be decisively supported by the
Bayesian evidence, if the best fit model of derived from current data is
the true model.Comment: 4.5 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; references adde
Analysis of TCM syndrome elements and relevant factors for senile diabetes
AbstractObjectiveTo explore the laws governing the distribution of TCM syndrome elements (SEs) of senile diabetes (SD) and their relationship to relevant factors.MethodAn investigation of patients who met the inclusion criteria was conducted by trained doctors, using case report forms. All related data were collected, including body mass index (BMI =body weight [kg]/height2 [m]), glycated hemoglobin, illness course, complications, symptoms, and tongue and pulse manifestation. The SEs of each patient were judged by three qualified associate chief physicians independently.ResultThe main SEs of SD are Yin deficiency, Qi deficiency, blood stasis, and phlegm turbidity. Yin deficiency, Qi deficiency, blood stasis, and phlegm turbidity are most commonly seen among 4-SE combinations. Yang deficiency is typically related to illness course and BMI, phlegm turbidity to hypertension and hyperlipidemia, excessive heat to diabetic microangiopathy, and blood stasis to illness course and diabetic macroangiopathy.ConclusionSD pathogenesis has a deficiency in origin and excess in superficiality. Deficiency syndrome mainly manifests as deficiency of both Qi and Yin, and concurrently in Yang deficiency. Excess syndrome is characterized by blood stasis and phlegm turbidity. SE analysis provides a basis for the prevention and treatment of SD with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and lays the foundation for objectively evaluating multicentric clinical research for SD in TCM
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