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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Long-term trend of esophageal cancer survival rate in Qidong, 1972-2016

Zhonghua Zhong Liu Za Zhi. 2022 Oct 23;44(10):1091-1095. doi: 10.3760/cma.j.cn112152-20220307-00156.

ABSTRACT

Objective: To analyze the survival of esophageal cancer cases in Qidong, Jiangsu Province from 1972 to 2016, and provide a basis for the prognosis evaluation and prevention of esophageal cancer patients. Methods: The data of esophageal cancer were obtained from the Qidong Cancer Registration and Reporting System, and the follow-up date ended December 31, 2021. Observed survival rate (OSR) and relative survival rate (RSR) were calculated by SURV 3.01 software, and Hakulinen’s likelihood ratio test was used for statistical difference comparison. Joinpoint regression model was used to conduct the average annual percentage change (AAPC) in esophageal cancer survival rate, and the ARIMA model was used to predict the trend of esophageal cancer survival rate. Results: During 1972 to 2016, there were 5 112 new cases of esophageal cancer in Qidong. The OSR of esophageal cancer at 1, 5 and 10 years were 24.43%, 6.93% and 4.43%, and the RSR at 1, 5 and 10 years were 25.88%, 9.35% and 8.34%, respectively. Dividing 1972-2016 into 9 periods, compared with 1972-1976, the 5-year RSR from 2012-2016 increased from 4.47% to 17.85%, and the RSR trend of the 9 periods was statistically significant (χ(2)=263.43, P<0.001). The survival rate of female with esophageal cancer was slightly higher than that of male, however, there was no significant difference in RSR between male and female (χ(2)=9.40, P=0.401). The 5-OSR and 5-RSR for male were 6.73% and 9.11%, and for female were 7.37% and 9.87%, respectively. The 5-RSR for the age groups of 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, and over 75 years old were 11.99%, 11.21%, 8.17% and 7.08%, respectively. There was a statistically significant difference in RSR among different age groups (χ(2)=98.19, P<0.001). The time trend results showed that the overall AAPC of the 5-RSR of esophageal cancer in Qidong from 1972 to 2016 was 3.89% (t=11.98, P<0.001). The 5-RSR uptrend was consistent among different genders, and the uptrend was greater in female (AAPC=4.25% for male, and AAPC=5.72% for female, P<0.05). Furthermore, the 5-RSR of esophageal cancer in all age groups showed an upward trend, and the upward trend was statistically significant in the 55-64-year-old group (AAPC=4.23%, P<0.05) and the 65-74-year-old group (AAPC=6.82%, P<0.05), there was no statistical significance in the 45-54-year-old group (AAPC=2.17%, P>0.05) and more than 75 years old group (AAPC=1.82%, P>0.05). Survival rate prediction of esophageal cancer showed that by 2026, 5-RSR will increase to 24.79%. Conclusions: During 1972 to 2016, the overall survival rate of esophageal cancer in the whole population of Qidong has improved to a certain extent, but there is still a large room for improvement. More emphasis should be continued to strengthen on the early diagnosis and early treatment of esophageal cancer.

PMID:36319454 | DOI:10.3760/cma.j.cn112152-20220307-00156

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Integrated 2D beam emission spectroscopy diagnostic at the Huan-Liuqi-2A (HL-2A) tokamak

Rev Sci Instrum. 2022 Oct 1;93(10):103535. doi: 10.1063/5.0101806.

ABSTRACT

Two newly developed, eight-channel, integrated Beam Emission Spectroscopy (BES) detectors have been installed at Huan-Liuqi-2A tokamak, which extends the existing 16 single-channel modular BES system with additional 16 spatial channels. The BES collects the Doppler-shifted Balmer Dα emission with a spatial resolution of 1 cm (radial) × 1.5 cm (poloidal) and a temporal resolution of 0.5 µs to measure long-wavelength (kρi < 1) density fluctuations. Compared to the modular BES, the dark noise of the integrated BES is reduced by 50%-60% on average. The signal-to-noise ratio of the integrated BES system is optimized by the high light throughput front-end optics, high quantum efficiency photodiodes, high-gain, low-noise preamplifiers, and sufficient cooling capacity provided by the thermoelectric cooling (TEC) units that maintain the detectors at -20 °C. Crosstalk between channels that share the same optical system is found to be negligible. High-quality density fluctuation data enables 2D (radial-poloidal) imaging of turbulence, which allows for multi-channel spectral analysis, multi-channel cross-correlation analysis and velocimetry analysis. Preliminary results show that BES successfully captures the spatiotemporal features of the local turbulence and obtains statistically consistent turbulence characterization results.

PMID:36319390 | DOI:10.1063/5.0101806

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Streaked sub-ps-resolution x-ray line shapes and implications for solid-density plasma dynamics (invited)

Rev Sci Instrum. 2022 Oct 1;93(10):103527. doi: 10.1063/5.0101853.

ABSTRACT

A high-resolution x-ray spectrometer was coupled with an ultrafast x-ray streak camera to produce time-resolved line shape spectra measured from hot, solid-density plasmas. A Bragg crystal was placed near laser-produced plasma to maximize throughput; alignment tolerances were established by ray tracing. The streak camera produced single-shot, time-resolved spectra, heavily sloped due to photon time-of-flight differences, with sufficient reproducibility to accumulate photon statistics. The images are time-calibrated by the slope of streaked spectra and dewarped to generate spectra emitted at different times defined at the source. The streaked spectra demonstrate the evolution of spectral shoulders and other features on ps timescales, showing the feasibility of plasma parameter measurements on the rapid timescales necessary to study high-energy-density plasmas.

PMID:36319349 | DOI:10.1063/5.0101853

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Scale-free avalanche dynamics possibly generated by randomly jumping among many stable states

Chaos. 2022 Oct;32(10):103116. doi: 10.1063/5.0104853.

ABSTRACT

A large amount of research has used the scale-free statistics of neuronal avalanches as a signature of the criticality of neural systems, which bears criticisms. For instance, the work of Touboul and Destexhe demonstrated that non-critical systems could also display such scale-free dynamics, which passed their rigorous statistical analyses. In this paper, we show that a fully connected stochastic neural network may also generate scale-free dynamics simply by jumping among many stable states.

PMID:36319307 | DOI:10.1063/5.0104853

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Statistical properties of extreme soliton collisions

Chaos. 2022 Oct;32(10):101102. doi: 10.1063/5.0120404.

ABSTRACT

Synchronous collisions between a large number of solitons are considered in the context of a statistical description. It is shown that, during the interaction of solitons of the same signs, the wave field is effectively smoothed out. When the number of solitons increases and the sequence of their amplitudes decay slower, the focused wave becomes even smoother and the statistical moments get frozen for a long time. This quasi-stationary state is characterized by greatly reduced statistical moments and by the density of solitons close to some critical value. This state may be treated as the small-dispersion limit, what makes it possible to analytically estimate all high-order statistical moments. While the focus of the study is made on the Korteweg-de Vries equation and its modified version, a much broader applicability of the results to equations that support soliton-type solutions is discussed.

PMID:36319295 | DOI:10.1063/5.0120404

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Birth of strange nonchaotic attractors in a piecewise linear oscillator

Chaos. 2022 Oct;32(10):103106. doi: 10.1063/5.0096959.

ABSTRACT

Nonsmooth systems are widely encountered in engineering fields. They have abundant dynamical phenomena, including some results on the complex dynamics in such systems under quasiperiodically forced excitations. In this work, we consider a quasiperiodically forced piecewise linear oscillator and show that strange nonchaotic attractors (SNAs) do exist in such nonsmooth systems. The generation and evolution mechanisms of SNAs are discussed. The torus-doubling, fractal, bubbling, and intermittency routes to SNAs are identified. The strange properties of SNAs are characterized with the aid of the phase sensitivity function, singular continuous spectrum, rational frequency approximation, and the path of the partial Fourier sum of state variables in a complex plane. The nonchaotic properties of SNAs are verified by the methods of maximum Lyapunov exponent and power spectrum.

PMID:36319293 | DOI:10.1063/5.0096959

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Girls at risk: FGM intentions among in-school adolescents of a rural community in Osun State, Nigeria

Eur J Contracept Reprod Health Care. 2022 Nov 1:1-7. doi: 10.1080/13625187.2022.2135371. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Knowledge of adolescents’ intention to sustain female genital mutilation (FGM) practice is required to guide efforts to eradicate FGM in Africa and Asia where about 200 million women are affected. Nigeria has one of the highest FGM cases in the world. The study sought to determine the knowledge, attitude, and intentions of adolescents to sustain FGM practice when they become parents.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study is a cross-sectional descriptive survey of 195 in-school adolescents aged 14-19 years, in Imesi-Ile, a rural town in South-west Nigeria selected through a multistage sampling method.

RESULTS: Overall, 44.6% of adolescents had good knowledge of FGM, while 44.6% had a positive attitude and 55.4% had a negative attitude towards FGM. More females (57.4%) have a negative attitude towards FGM. About 42.1% of adolescents intend to continue the practice of FGM, while 47% have no intentions and 10.8% remain undecided. Gender, age group and family affluence were not statistically associated with intention to continue FGM.

CONCLUSION: Intention to continue FGM practice is high among adolescents in the rural community. FGM eradication campaign among adolescents should seek to improve knowledge, attitude and intentions towards FGM practice.

PMID:36318829 | DOI:10.1080/13625187.2022.2135371

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Analysis of Clinical Characteristics and Laboratory Data Related to the Prognosis of Korean Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Patients: A Single-Center Study

Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis. 2022 Nov 1. doi: 10.1089/vbz.2022.0035. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Background: Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS), an emerging viral infectious disease, is mainly transmitted by ticks in the surrounding environment. Clinical progress and risk factors for prognosis in SFTS patients were not yet fully understood. Thus, the objective of this study was to analyze clinical progression and laboratory data related to the prognosis of South Korean SFTS patients in a single institution from 2014 to 2021. Materials and Methods: Fifty-three confirmed SFTS patients from August 2014 to September 2021 at Gyeongsang National University Hospital (GNUH) in Jinju, South Korea were enrolled. Electronic medical records of SFTS patients’ demographic features, clinical data, and laboratory data were retrospectively reviewed. Risk factors for fatality were statistically analyzed by classifying enrolled patients into fatal and non-fatal groups. Results: The mean age of patients in the fatal group was significantly higher than that in the non-fatal group (p = 0.036). Hemorrhagic manifestations (p = 0.001) and multiple organ dysfunction (MOD) (p < 0.001) were significantly common in the fatal group. Age, hemorrhagic manifestations, and MOD were also associated with death (p = 0.001, p = 0.008, and p = 0.041, respectively), with adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) of 1.14, 18.25, and 2.36, respectively. Onset of illness to admission was also significantly associated with death (p = 0.005), with aHR of 0.48. Age, interval from onset of illness to admission, hemorrhagic manifestations, and MOD were found to be variables related to the fatality of SFTS patients. Conclusion: Laboratory test results showed a significant difference between the fatal group and the non-fatal group, but they did not have a statistically significant effect on the prognosis of SFTS patients.

PMID:36318815 | DOI:10.1089/vbz.2022.0035

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Perceived health and capacity to cope with stress in recent ex-smokers: Impact of vaping vs quitting all nicotine

Nicotine Tob Res. 2022 Nov 1:ntac252. doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntac252. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the continued use of nicotine following smoking cessation on perceived well-being in comparison to complete cessation of nicotine use. Aims: To explore aspects of perceived well-being and coping among recent ex-smokers as a function of vaping status.

METHODS: Ever-daily smokers in the International Tobacco Control 4 country smoking and vaping surveys in 2016 (W1 N=883) and 2018 (W2 N=1088). Cross-sectional associations and longitudinal samples for those who quit between waves and those quit at W1 who maintained abstinence to W2.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES WERE: past 30 days depression symptoms, perceived stress, stress management since quitting and change in perceived day-to-day health.

RESULTS: In the cross-sectional analyses vapers were more likely to report both improved stress management (aOR = 1.71, 95% CI 1.23-2.36) and perceived day-to-day health (aOR = 1.65, 95% CI 1.26-2.16) than nicotine abstainers. In the longitudinal analyses, smokers who switched to vaping between waves (n=372) were more likely to report depression symptoms at W2 (aOR = 2.00, 95% CI 1.09-3.65) but reported improved perceived health (aOR = 1.92, 95% CI 1.16-3.20). For the past daily smokers who remained quit between waves (n=382), vapers were more likely to report improved stress management relative to abstainers (RRR =5.05. 95% CI 1.19-21.40). There were no other significant differences between vapers and nicotine abstainers.

CONCLUSIONS: There is little evidence to support the view that perceptions of well-being deteriorate in vapers compared to complete nicotine abstainers in the immediate years after smoking cessation.

IMPLICATIONS: This study could find no conclusive evidence that the continued use of nicotine via e-cigarettes was detrimental to health compared to completely stopping nicotine intake altogether. Our results would suggest that continuing to use nicotine may even result in some benefits in the short term such as improved stress management, however further longitudinal studies are required to examine if these effects are restricted to the early post-quitting phase and whether other positive or negative effects on psychosocial health emerge in the future.

PMID:36318814 | DOI:10.1093/ntr/ntac252

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Nevin Manimala Statistics

Hyperopic LASIK Enhanced by Pharmacological Treatment of Presbyopia

J Ocul Pharmacol Ther. 2022 Nov 1. doi: 10.1089/jop.2022.0095. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Regression of the refractive outcome is a major concern of LASIK procedures mainly in presbyopic patients. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the long-term efficacy of the pharmacological treatment of presbyopia performed with Benozzi’s method, in combination with hyperopic LASIK surgery in presbyopic population. Methods: A nonrandomized case series was developed, including presbyopic patients who underwent bilateral “Hyperopic LASIK surgery” and were pharmacologically treated with Benozzi’s Method from January 2011 to August 2018, with at least 2 years of follow-up, at two private ophthalmological clinics of Argentina. Main outcomes were spherical equivalent (SE), uncorrected distance visual acuity (UDVA), and uncorrected near visual acuity (UNVA). Measurements were evaluated at baseline and postoperative at 1 month (without Benozzi’s treatment), 2 months (starting with Benozzi’s treatment), and 2 years. The SE stability across the time was statistically compared. Results: A total of 84 eyes of 42 patients, with a mean age at the time of the surgery of 51.07 ± 4.5 (42-59), were found following 2 years of follow-up. Patients have improved and maintained UDVA, achieving Jaeger 1 in the second postoperative month, which was maintained up to the last year of follow-up. Refractive stability across the time is observed comparing first month after surgery with the last year of follow-up, without statistical significant difference (p: 0.11). Conclusion: Hyperopic presbyopic patients that underwent LASIK surgery and 1 month after surgery started with the pharmacological treatment of presbyopia (Benozzi’s method) results in excellent UNVA and UDVA that is stable over time without refractive regression.

PMID:36318813 | DOI:10.1089/jop.2022.0095