The Relationship of Education and Acculturation with Vigorous Intensity Leisure Time Physical Activity by Gender in Latinos

Objectives: Latinos have poorer health outcomes among certain conditions (e.g. diabetes, obesity, mental health) compared to non-Latino Whites in the U.S., in part due to difference in the amount of physical activity, which are heavily influenced by sociocultural factors such as educational attainment and acculturation. Vigorous-intensity leisure time physical activity (VLTPA) may provide health benefits with a shorter amount of time than moderate-to-light physical activity. However, VLTPA has been significantly understudied compared to LTPA in general. The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between educational attainment, acculturation, and VLTPA by gender among Latino adults in the U.S. Design: Nationally representative samples of Latino adults aged 25 years and older (n = 4393) from the 2010 National Health Interview Survey were analyzed. VLTPA was measured as the number of hours per week of VLTPA consisting of heavy sweating or large increases in breathing and heart rate. Acculturation was measured as the degree to which the English language versus the Spanish language was spoken most often. The zero-inflated Poisson regression model was constructed using the full information maximum likelihood estimation and controlling for a series of sociodemographic characteristics and relevant health behaviors. Results: Educational attainment was positively associated with VLTPA among Latino adults [exp(b) = 1.09, p \u3c 0.05)]. Similarly, greater acculturation was associated with greater hours/week of VLTPA [exp(b) = 1.10, p \u3c 0.05)]. Lastly, the effect of educational attainment on VLTPA significantly varied by gender. Conclusions: Education had a positive association and acculturation had negative association with the hours/week of VLTPA among Latinos. Also, the association between education and VLTPA was significantly stronger among women than men. These findings inform culturally and socially sensitive approaches to improve the health of Latinos, in hopes to address health disparities by race/ethnicity the U.S

Hopfield Networks in Relevance and Redundancy Feature Selection Applied to Classification of Biomedical High-Resolution Micro-CT Images

We study filter–based feature selection methods for classification of biomedical images. For feature selection, we use two filters — a relevance filter which measures usefulness of individual features for target prediction, and a redundancy filter, which measures similarity between features. As selection method that combines relevance and redundancy we try out a Hopfield network. We experimentally compare selection methods, running unitary redundancy and relevance filters, against a greedy algorithm with redundancy thresholds [9], the min-redundancy max-relevance integration [8,23,36], and our Hopfield network selection. We conclude that on the whole, Hopfield selection was one of the most successful methods, outperforming min-redundancy max-relevance when\ud more features are selected

The exactly solvable spin Sutherland model of B_N type and its related spin chain

We compute the spectrum of the su(m) spin Sutherland model of B_N type, including the exact degeneracy of all energy levels. By studying the large coupling constant limit of this model and of its scalar counterpart, we evaluate the partition function of their associated spin chain of Haldane-Shastry type in closed form. With the help of the formula for the partition function thus obtained we study the chain's spectrum, showing that it cannot be obtained as a limiting case of its BC_N counterpart. The structure of the partition function also suggests that the spectrum of the Haldane-Shastry spin chain of B_N type is equivalent to that of a suitable vertex model, as is the case for its A_{N-1} counterpart, and that the density of its eigenvalues is normally distributed when the number of sites N tends to infinity. We analyze this last conjecture numerically using again the explicit formula for the partition function, and check its validity for several values of N and m.Comment: Typeset in LaTeX (24 pages, 4 figures). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0909.296

Gauge field theory approach to spin transport in a 2D electron gas

We discuss the Pauli Hamiltonian including the spin-orbit interaction within an U(1) x SU(2) gauge theory interpretation, where the gauge symmetry appears to be broken. This interpretation offers new insight into the problem of spin currents in the condensed matter environment, and can be extended to Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interactions. We present a few outcomes of the present formulation: i) it automatically leads to zero spin conductivity, in contrast to predictions of Gauge symmetric treatments, ii) a topological quantization condition leading to voltage quantization follows, and iii) spin interferometers can be conceived in which, starting from a arbitrary incoming unpolarized spinor, it is always possible to construct a perfect spin filtering condition.Comment: Invited contribution to Statphys conference, June 2009, Lviv (Ukraine