Pareto effects in the eCasino: differences across online products and links with self-exclusion

Consumption of many goods adheres to the Pareto rule (or 80:20 law) that the 20% most engaged consumers generate 80% of revenue. Using a dataset from the eCasino section of the provincial online gambling platform in British Columbia, Canada, we recently observed that Pareto values exceeded the conventional 80:20 ratio, with the top 20% generating ~92% of bets and ~90% of revenue (Deng, Lesch & Clark, 2021 Addictive Behaviors 120: 106968). In this presentation, we will examine how these effects vary across different gambling product types within the eCasino: online slot machine games, table games, video poker, and other probability games. As a marker of likely gambling harm, we test rates of enrolment in Voluntary Self-Exclusion (VSE). The dataset comprises 30,920 account holders who placed at least one bet on the platform in 2014-2015, comprising over half a billion individual bets. Across the four product types, Pareto values indicated greatest concentration for video poker (98%) and lowest for slot machines (89%). We also observe higher levels of VSE in the top 20% compared to the remaining 80% (13% vs 7%) with some differences across products. Statement of Importance: As online gambling expands, behavioural tracking offers a promising technique for detecting risk, but limited work has examined behavioural markers across different online gambling products. We examine concentrations of consumption using the Pareto rule across 4 different product types in an online casino, and associations with gambling self-exclusion

Level Set Based Hippocampus Segmentation in MR Images with Improved Initialization Using Region Growing

The hippocampus has been known as one of the most important structures referred to as Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders. However, segmentation of the hippocampus from MR images is still a challenging task due to its small size, complex shape, low contrast, and discontinuous boundaries. For the accurate and efficient detection of the hippocampus, a new image segmentation method based on adaptive region growing and level set algorithm is proposed. Firstly, adaptive region growing and morphological operations are performed in the target regions and its output is used for the initial contour of level set evolution method. Then, an improved edge-based level set method utilizing global Gaussian distributions with different means and variances is developed to implement the accurate segmentation. Finally, gradient descent method is adopted to get the minimization of the energy equation. As proved by experiment results, the proposed method can ideally extract the contours of the hippocampus that are very close to manual segmentation drawn by specialists

PO-075 Effects of hypoxic exercise on weight loss and lipid metabolism in overweight/obese adult women

Objective To investigate the effectiveness of hypoxic exercise intervention on weight loss and weight control in overweight and obese people from the perspective of lipid metabolism through the exercise intervention in this experiment under normal pressure and low oxygen environment. Exercise is indispensable in the prevention and treatment of obesity. Scientific weight loss is firstly to change the original unhealthy daily life habits and to develop a good lifestyle and to control diet and to exercise regularly. Exercise in a hypoxic environment, the body should accept the dual stimulation of environmental what hypoxia and exercise hypoxia. Exercise in a hypoxic environment can deepen the impact on lipid metabolism. In a hypoxic environment, the oxygen saturation of the human arteries (the concentration of blood oxygen in the blood) is reduced; in altitude training or intermittent hypoxia training conditions, blood oxygen saturation can be reduced to 80-85%, and it is not in the normoxic environment. The result of hypoxia is that the muscles are forced to do anaerobic metabolism. In order to provide energy during exercise, and the body will store the stored fat to supply energy. Methods The subjects in this study were adult overweight or obese women between the ages from 18 to 47 for a total of 40. Subjects with a BMI ≥ 24 were overweight and subjects with a BMI ≥ 28 were obese. Subjects who passed the physical examination screening were healthy and had normal motor function. All subjects used the weight index to pair the average into subgroups what hypoxic and normoxic groups. Exercise intervention, the training period is 6 weeks, the training the next day and 7 times in two weeks. The training content is divided into strength training and endurance training. The strength training is divided into each group of eight. To complete two cycles and the interval is 30s. The interval between each subgroup is 10s. Warm up and stretch before training. The time is 30 minutes. 12RM weight for strength training dumbbells, each group do 10-15 times. Eight actions include dead lift, upright row, squat, shoulder press, calf Jump, advance junge, biceps curl and triceps extension. Endurance training uses a running platform with a slope of 0°. The running speed is adjusted according to the target heart rate interval. The formula for calculating the target heart rate interval is (220-age) × 60%~(220-age) × 70%, running time is 30 minutes. In the hypoxic group, a suction-type atmospheric hypoxic device was used during exercise, and a mixed gas having an oxygen content of 16% was inhaled. The normoxic group is in a normal atmospheric environment during exercise. The ideological education of a reasonable nutritional diet for the subjects before and during the intervention is not mandatory to control the subject's daily diet. Height and weight and BMI were measured before and after exercise intervention. Fasting venous blood was taken to detect total cholesterol (TC), total triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-). C), leptin (LEP) and adiponectin (ADPN). All test results were expressed as mean ± standard deviation, non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was used for comparison between groups, and non-parametric Wilcoxo was used for comparison within the group.The n-match was tested on the symbol level, with a significance level of P < 0.05 and a very significant level of P < 0.01. Results After the intervention, the body weight of both groups decreased. The Δ body weight (P<0.01), body weight change rate (P<0.01) and BMI change rate (P<0.01) in the hypoxic group were significantly higher than the normal rate. Oxygen group. TG, TC and LDL-C decreased in hypoxia group, and TG (P<0.05), TC (P<0.05) and LDL-C (P<0.01) were significantly different from those before intervention (P<0.01). The levels of TG and LDL-C increased after the intervention of normoxia group, and LDL-C was significantly different from that before intervention (P<0.05). The TC change rate (P<0.01) and LDL-C change rate (P<0.01) in the hypoxic group were significantly higher than those in the normoxic group, and the TG change rate was not different from the normoxic group (P>0.05). The HDL-C in hypoxia group and normoxia group increased after intervention. The hypoxia group had a statistically significant difference compared with the pre-intervention group (P<0.01), and the HDL-C rate in the hypoxic group was significantly higher than that in the hypoxic group. Oxygen group (P<0.05). LEP and ADPN in the hypoxic group increased after intervention, but there was no significant difference compared with before intervention (P>0.05). There was no significant difference between LEP and ADPN in the normoxic group before and after intervention (P>0.05). The change rate of LEP (P<0.05) and ADPN (P<0.01) were significantly higher in the group than in the normoxic group. Conclusions (1) Under the same exercise intensity, After 6 weeks of hypoxic exercise intervention the hypoxic environment is more conducive to weight loss in overweight/obese women. (2) Compared with normotensive exercise, The six weeks of hypoxic exercise can effectively improve the lipid metabolism of overweight/obese women. (3) Hypoxic exercise failed to significantly increase serum LEP and ADPN levels in subjects, but the index change rate was better than that of oxygen group

Single “Swiss-roll” microelectrode elucidates the critical role of iron substitution in conversion-type oxides

Advancing the lithium-ion battery technology requires the understanding of electrochemical processes in electrode materials with high resolution, accuracy, and sensitivity. However, most techniques today are limited by their inability to separate the complex signals from slurry-coated composite electrodes. Here, we use a three-dimensional “Swiss-roll” microtubular electrode that is incorporated into a micrometer-sized lithium battery. This on-chip platform combines various in situ characterization techniques and precisely probes the intrinsic electrochemical properties of each active material due to the removal of unnecessary binders and additives. As an example, it helps elucidate the critical role of Fe substitution in a conversion-type NiO electrode by monitoring the evolution of Fe2O3 and solid electrolyte interphase layer. The markedly enhanced electrode performances are therefore explained. Our approach exposes a hitherto unexplored route to tracking the phase, morphology, and electrochemical evolution of electrodes in real time, allowing us to reveal information that is not accessible with bulk-level characterization techniques

Developing discriminate model and comparative analysis of differentially expressed genes and pathways for bloodstream samples of diabetes mellitus type 2

Background: Diabetes mellitus of type 2 (T2D), also known as noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) or adult-onset diabetes, is a common disease. It is estimated that more than 300 million people worldwide suffer from T2D. In this study, we investigated the T2D, pre-diabetic and healthy human (no diabetes) bloodstream samples using genomic, genealogical, and phonemic information. We identified differentially expressed genes and pathways. The study has provided deeper insights into the development of T2D, and provided useful information for further effective prevention and treatment of the disease. Results: A total of 142 bloodstream samples were collected, including 47 healthy humans, 22 pre-diabetic and 73 T2D patients. Whole genome scale gene expression profiles were obtained using the Agilent Oligo chips that contain over 20,000 human genes. We identified 79 significantly differentially expressed genes that have fold change ≥ 2. We mapped those genes and pinpointed locations of those genes on human chromosomes. Amongst them, 3 genes were not mapped well on the human genome, but the rest of 76 differentially expressed genes were well mapped on the human genome. We found that most abundant differentially expressed genes are on chromosome one, which contains 9 of those genes, followed by chromosome two that contains 7 of the 76 differentially expressed genes. We performed gene ontology (GO) functional analysis of those 79 differentially expressed genes and found that genes involve in the regulation of cell proliferation were among most common pathways related to T2D. The expression of the 79 genes was combined with clinical information that includes age, sex, and race to construct an optimal discriminant model. The overall performance of the model reached 95.1% accuracy, with 91.5% accuracy on identifying healthy humans, 100% accuracy on pre-diabetic patients and 95.9% accuract on T2D patients. The higher performance on identifying pre-diabetic patients was resulted from more significant changes of gene expressions among this particular group of humans, which implicated that patients were having profound genetic changes towards disease development. Conclusion: Differentially expressed genes were distributed across chromosomes, and are more abundant on chromosomes 1 and 2 than the rest of the human genome. We found that regulation of cell proliferation actually plays an important role in the T2D disease development. The predictive model developed in this study has utilized the 79 significant genes in combination with age, sex, and racial information to distinguish pre-diabetic, T2D, and healthy humans. The study not only has provided deeper understanding of the disease molecular mechanisms but also useful information for pathway analysis and effective drug target identification