Crime and Labor Market: A panel data analysis

This study empirically investigates the causal relationship between crime and labor market. Panel regression analysis with time period 2012- 2014 along with pool OLS method has been used for this purpose. The countries under study are divided into three categories: high, moderate and low crime index. The variables used in this study are also of three kinds: socio economic, demographic and deterrence variables. The results indicate that in high crime index countries (UDCs) unemployment & urbanization have significant positive impact on crime index whereas inflation, GDP growth rate, prison population rate and participation of youth 18-24 years in education and training are insignificant. In moderate crime index countries (UDCs) GDP growth rate & urbanization have significant negative impact on crime index. Whereas inflation, unemployment, prison population rate and participation of youth 18-24 years in education and training are insignificant.  In low crime index countries, the same socioeconomic and demographic factors as are noticed in high crime index countries i.e. unemployment and urbanization in addition to prison population rate are found to be responsible for labor market crimes. In order to control labor market crimes, the study recommends the improvement in GDP growth rate, discouraging the trend of urbanization, enhancement in education and training programs so that unemployment level be controlled and hence labor market can be saved from crimes

The Role of Systems Biology in Deciphering Asthma Heterogeneity

Asthma is one of the most common and lifelong and chronic inflammatory diseases characterized by inflammation, bronchial hyperresponsiveness, and airway obstruction episodes. It is a heterogeneous disease of varying and overlapping phenotypes with many confounding factors playing a role in disease susceptibility and management. Such multifactorial disorders will benefit from using systems biology as a strategy to elucidate molecular insights from complex, quantitative, massive clinical, and biological data that will help to understand the underlying disease mechanism, early detection, and treatment planning. Systems biology is an approach that uses the comprehensive understanding of living systems through bioinformatics, mathematical, and computational techniques to model diverse high-throughput molecular, cellular, and the physiologic profiling of healthy and diseased populations to define biological processes. The use of systems biology has helped understand and enrich our knowledge of asthma heterogeneity and molecular basis; however, such methods have their limitations. The translational benefits of these studies are few, and it is recommended to reanalyze the different studies and omics in conjugation with one another which may help understand the reasons for this variation and help overcome the limitations of understanding the heterogeneity in asthma pathology. In this review, we aim to show the different factors that play a role in asthma heterogeneity and how systems biology may aid in understanding and deciphering the molecular basis of asthma

Improved Generalization for Secure Data Publishing

In data publishing, privacy and utility are essential for data owners and users respectively, which cannot coexist well. This incompatibility puts the data privacy researchers under an obligation to find newer and reliable privacy preserving tradeoff-techniques. Data providers like many public and private organizations (e.g. hospitals and banks) publish microdata of individuals for various research purposes. Publishing microdata may compromise the privacy of individuals. To prevent the privacy of individuals, data must be published after removing personal identifiers like name and social security numbers. Removal of the personal identifiers appears as not enough to protect the privacy of individuals. K-anonymity model is used to publish microdata by preserving the individual's privacy through generalization. There exist many state-of-the-arts generalization-based techniques, which deal with pre-defined attacks like background knowledge attack, similarity attack, probability attack and so on. However, existing generalization-based techniques compromise the data utility while ensuring privacy. It is an open question to find an efficient technique that is able to set a trade-off between privacy and utility. In this paper, we discussed existing generalization hierarchies and their limitations in detail. We have also proposed three new generalization techniques including conventional generalization hierarchies, divisors based generalization hierarchies and cardinality-based generalization hierarchies. Extensive experiments on the real-world dataset acknowledge that our technique outperforms among the existing techniques in terms of better utility

DETERMINATION CADMIUM, LEAD AND ZINC IN HUMAN HAIR BY USING FLAME ATOMIC ABSORPTION SPECTROMETRY (FAAS)

The heavy metals mean serious hazard in environmental pollution. Some of them are vital for many organisms in a low concentration, however the others ought to be poisonous at low concentrations, too. This paper gives an example for the correlation of the attention in human hair and in the environment of different heavy metals. Human hair (n=50) Volunteers (35 males and 15 females) of different age groups between 1 to 57 years samples were collected in Al – Ajailat, Libya. Hair samples were analyzed for heavy metals (Cd, Pb and Zn) by Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometric technique (FAAS). The results showed that the samples concentrations ranged between 0.0001 and 0.3840 mg.kg−1 for cadmium, followed by zinc between 68.99 mg kg−1 and 225mg. kg−1while lead was between 0.632 mg kg−1 and 7.708mg. Kg−1. The results indicated that metal concentrations in male samples varied based on age, such that age group 33-43 years had the highest zinc concentration (206.2±11.6 mg/kg), and age group 1-10 years had the highest Cd (0.384±0.01 mg/kg) and Pb (1.929±0.05 mg/kg) concentrations. while, the cadmium and lead contents in children’s hair samples of both sexes was higher than compared to the values available in some countries. The difference between male and female concentration could be due to individual differences in exposure to heavy metal load as a result of habitual or environmental factors

COVID-19 symptoms at hospital admission vary with age and sex: results from the ISARIC prospective multinational observational study

Background: The ISARIC prospective multinational observational study is the largest cohort of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. We present relationships of age, sex, and nationality to presenting symptoms. Methods: International, prospective observational study of 60 109 hospitalized symptomatic patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 recruited from 43 countries between 30 January and 3 August 2020. Logistic regression was performed to evaluate relationships of age and sex to published COVID-19 case definitions and the most commonly reported symptoms. Results: ‘Typical’ symptoms of fever (69%), cough (68%) and shortness of breath (66%) were the most commonly reported. 92% of patients experienced at least one of these. Prevalence of typical symptoms was greatest in 30- to 60-year-olds (respectively 80, 79, 69%; at least one 95%). They were reported less frequently in children (≤ 18 years: 69, 48, 23; 85%), older adults (≥ 70 years: 61, 62, 65; 90%), and women (66, 66, 64; 90%; vs. men 71, 70, 67; 93%, each P < 0.001). The most common atypical presentations under 60 years of age were nausea and vomiting and abdominal pain, and over 60 years was confusion. Regression models showed significant differences in symptoms with sex, age and country. Interpretation: This international collaboration has allowed us to report reliable symptom data from the largest cohort of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. Adults over 60 and children admitted to hospital with COVID-19 are less likely to present with typical symptoms. Nausea and vomiting are common atypical presentations under 30 years. Confusion is a frequent atypical presentation of COVID-19 in adults over 60 years. Women are less likely to experience typical symptoms than men

A Comparative Numerical Study of Heat and Mass Transfer Individualities in Casson Stagnation Point Fluid Flow Past a Flat and Cylindrical Surfaces

There is a consensus among researchers that the simultaneous involvement of heat and mass transfer in fluid flow owns numerous daily life applications like energy systems, automobiles, cooling of electronic devices, power generation by the stream, electric power, and diagnosing and characterizing diseases, to mention just a few. Owing to such motivation, we considered both heat and mass transfer aspects in non-Newtonian fluid flow regimes. The Casson fluid is considered as a non-Newtonian fluid. For better novelty the flow is considered at both flat and cylindrical surfaces along with stagnation point, magnetic field, mixed convection, heat generation, viscous dissipation, thermal radiations, and temperature-dependent thermal conductivity. The ultimate differential equations are nonlinear, and hence difficult to solve analytically. Therefore, a numerical scheme, namely the shooting method with the Runge–Kutta algorithm, is adopted to report an acceptable solution for flow field description. The outcomes are shared comparatively for flat and cylindrical surfaces. We have seen that compared to a flat surface, the cylindrical surface has a larger Nusselt number magnitude

EXOC6 (Exocyst Complex Component 6) Is Associated with the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Pancreatic β-Cell Dysfunction

EXOC6 and EXOC6B (EXOC6/6B) components of the exocyst complex are involved in the secretory granule docking. Recently, EXOC6/6B were anticipated as a molecular link between dysfunctional pancreatic islets and ciliated lung epithelium, making diabetic patients more prone to severe SARS-CoV-2 complications. However, the exact role of EXOC6/6B in pancreatic β-cell function and risk of T2D is not fully understood. Herein, microarray and RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) expression data demonstrated the expression of EXOC6/6B in human pancreatic islets. Expression of EXOC6/6B was not affected by diabetes status. Exploration of the using the translational human pancreatic islet genotype tissue-expression resource portal (TIGER) revealed three genetic variants (rs947591, rs2488071 and rs2488073) in the EXOC6 gene that were associated (p < 2.5 × 10−20) with the risk of T2D. Exoc6/6b silencing in rat pancreatic β-cells (INS1-832/13) impaired insulin secretion, insulin content, exocytosis machinery and glucose uptake without cytotoxic effect. A significant decrease in the expression Ins1, Ins1, Pdx1, Glut2 and Vamp2 was observed in Exoc6/6b-silenced cells at the mRNA and protein levels. However, NeuroD1, Gck and InsR were not influenced compared to the negative control. In conclusion, our data propose that EXOC6/6B are crucial regulators for insulin secretion and exocytosis machinery in β-cells. This study identified several genetic variants in EXOC6 associated with the risk of T2D. Therefore, EXOC6/6B could provide a new potential target for therapy development or early biomarkers for T2D

A multi-country analysis of COVID-19 hospitalizations by vaccination status

Background: Individuals vaccinated against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), when infected, can still develop disease that requires hospitalization. It remains unclear whether these patients differ from hospitalized unvaccinated patients with regard to presentation, coexisting comorbidities, and outcomes. Methods: Here, we use data from an international consortium to study this question and assess whether differences between these groups are context specific. Data from 83,163 hospitalized COVID-19 patients (34,843 vaccinated, 48,320 unvaccinated) from 38 countries were analyzed. Findings: While typical symptoms were more often reported in unvaccinated patients, comorbidities, including some associated with worse prognosis in previous studies, were more common in vaccinated patients. Considerable between-country variation in both in-hospital fatality risk and vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated difference in this outcome was observed. Conclusions: These findings will inform allocation of healthcare resources in future surges as well as design of longer-term international studies to characterize changes in clinical profile of hospitalized COVID-19 patients related to vaccination history. Funding: This work was made possible by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Wellcome (215091/Z/18/Z, 222410/Z/21/Z, 225288/Z/22/Z, and 220757/Z/20/Z); the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1209135); and the philanthropic support of the donors to the University of Oxford's COVID-19 Research Response Fund (0009109). Additional funders are listed in the "acknowledgments" section