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- Naghavi, Mohsen, et al.
(författare)
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Global, regional, and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013
- 2015
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Ingår i: The Lancet. - 1474-547X .- 0140-6736. ; 385:9963, s. 117-171
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background Up-to-date evidence on levels and trends for age-sex-specifi c all-cause and cause-specifi c mortality is essential for the formation of global, regional, and national health policies. In the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013) we estimated yearly deaths for 188 countries between 1990, and 2013. We used the results to assess whether there is epidemiological convergence across countries. Methods We estimated age-sex-specifi c all-cause mortality using the GBD 2010 methods with some refinements to improve accuracy applied to an updated database of vital registration, survey, and census data. We generally estimated cause of death as in the GBD 2010. Key improvements included the addition of more recent vital registration data for 72 countries, an updated verbal autopsy literature review, two new and detailed data systems for China, and more detail for Mexico, UK, Turkey, and Russia. We improved statistical models for garbage code redistribution. We used six different modelling strategies across the 240 causes; cause of death ensemble modelling (CODEm) was the dominant strategy for causes with sufficient information. Trends for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias were informed by meta-regression of prevalence studies. For pathogen-specifi c causes of diarrhoea and lower respiratory infections we used a counterfactual approach. We computed two measures of convergence (inequality) across countries: the average relative difference across all pairs of countries (Gini coefficient) and the average absolute difference across countries. To summarise broad findings, we used multiple decrement life-tables to decompose probabilities of death from birth to exact age 15 years, from exact age 15 years to exact age 50 years, and from exact age 50 years to exact age 75 years, and life expectancy at birth into major causes. For all quantities reported, we computed 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs). We constrained cause-specific fractions within each age-sex-country-year group to sum to all-cause mortality based on draws from the uncertainty distributions. Findings Global life expectancy for both sexes increased from 65.3 years (UI 65.0-65.6) in 1990, to 71.5 years (UI 71.0-71.9) in 2013, while the number of deaths increased from 47.5 million (UI 46.8-48.2) to 54.9 million (UI 53.6-56.3) over the same interval. Global progress masked variation by age and sex: for children, average absolute diff erences between countries decreased but relative diff erences increased. For women aged 25-39 years and older than 75 years and for men aged 20-49 years and 65 years and older, both absolute and relative diff erences increased. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the prominent role of reductions in age-standardised death rates for cardiovascular diseases and cancers in high-income regions, and reductions in child deaths from diarrhoea, lower respiratory infections, and neonatal causes in low-income regions. HIV/AIDS reduced life expectancy in southern sub-Saharan Africa. For most communicable causes of death both numbers of deaths and age-standardised death rates fell whereas for most non-communicable causes, demographic shifts have increased numbers of deaths but decreased age-standardised death rates. Global deaths from injury increased by 10.7%, from 4.3 million deaths in 1990 to 4.8 million in 2013; but age-standardised rates declined over the same period by 21%. For some causes of more than 100 000 deaths per year in 2013, age-standardised death rates increased between 1990 and 2013, including HIV/AIDS, pancreatic cancer, atrial fibrillation and flutter, drug use disorders, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and sickle-cell anaemias. Diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, neonatal causes, and malaria are still in the top five causes of death in children younger than 5 years. The most important pathogens are rotavirus for diarrhoea and pneumococcus for lower respiratory infections. Country-specific probabilities of death over three phases of life were substantially varied between and within regions. Interpretation For most countries, the general pattern of reductions in age-sex specifi c mortality has been associated with a progressive shift towards a larger share of the remaining deaths caused by non-communicable disease and injuries. Assessing epidemiological convergence across countries depends on whether an absolute or relative measure of inequality is used. Nevertheless, age-standardised death rates for seven substantial causes are increasing, suggesting the potential for reversals in some countries. Important gaps exist in the empirical data for cause of death estimates for some countries; for example, no national data for India are available for the past decade.
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| 5. |
- Ahmed, Shafique, et al.
(författare)
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Terahertz probing of low-temperature degradation in zirconia bioceramics
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of The American Ceramic Society. - : Wiley. - 0002-7820 .- 1551-2916. ; 105:2, s. 1106-1115
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- ZrO2-based ceramics are widely used in biomedical applications due to its color, biocompatibility, and excellent mechanical properties. However, low-temperature degradation (LTD) introduces a potential risk for long-term reliability of these materials. The development of innovative nondestructive techniques, which can explore LTD in zirconia-derived compounds, is strongly required. Yttria stabilized zirconia, 3Y-TZP, is one of the well-developed ZrO2-based ceramics with improved resistance to LTD for dental crown and implant applications. Here, 3Y-TZP ceramic powders were pressed and sintered to study the LTD phenomenon by phase transition behavior. The LTD-driven tetragonal-to-monoclinic phase transition was confirmed by XRD. XPS analysis demonstrated that induced LTD reduced the oxygen vacancies which supports these findings. It is proved that after the degradation, the 3Y-TZP ceramics show the decreased dielectric permittivity at terahertz frequencies due to the crystallographic phase transformation. Terahertz nondestructive probe is a promising method to investigate LTD in zirconia ceramics.
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| 7. |
- Chen, Jingjing, et al.
(författare)
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FishBuddy : Promoting Student Engagement in Self-Paced Learning through Wearable Sensing
- 2017
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Ingår i: 2017 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SMART COMPUTING (SMARTCOMP). - : IEEE. - 9781509065172 ; , s. 211-219
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Student engagement is crucial for successful self-paced learning. Feeling isolated during self-paced learning with neither adequate supervision nor intervention by teachers may cause negative emotions such as anxiety. Such emotions may in turn significantly weaken students' motivation to engage in learning activities. In this paper, we develop a self-paced learning environment (FishBuddy) that aims to reduce anxiety and promote student engagement. We construct and implement a physiologically-state-aware performance-evaluation model for identifying potentially fruitful moments of intervention when students show frustration during learning activities using an Apple Watch application that measures heart rate and alerts the student to watch a visualization of his or her own physiological state. We have conducted an experiment with 20 first-year undergraduate students, randomly separated into an experimental group and a control group, who carry out online, self-paced English grammar exercises. The students in the experimental group used FishBuddy and those in the control group did not. The self-reports from both groups show that FishBuddy significantly reduced reported experiences of anxiety and isolation in the experiment. Further to this, students who used FishBuddy were engaged longer with the exercises. The average scores on the exercises between the two groups, however, were not significantly different.
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| 9. |
- Cichocka, Magdalena O., et al.
(författare)
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High-throughput continuous rotation electron diffraction data acquisition via software automation
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of applied crystallography. - 0021-8898 .- 1600-5767. ; 51:6, s. 1652-1661
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Single-crystal electron diffraction (SCED) is emerging as an effective technique to determine and refine the structures of unknown nano-sized crystals. In this work, the implementation of the continuous rotation electron diffraction (cRED) method for high-throughput data collection is described. This is achieved through dedicated software that controls the transmission electron microscope and the camera. Crystal tracking can be performed by defocusing every nth diffraction pattern while the crystal rotates, which addresses the problem of the crystal moving out of view of the selected area aperture during rotation. This has greatly increased the number of successful experiments with larger rotation ranges and turned cRED data collection into a high-throughput method. The experimental parameters are logged, and input files for data processing software are written automatically. This reduces the risk of human error, and makes data collection more reproducible and accessible for novice and irregular users. In addition, it is demonstrated how data from the recently developed serial electron diffraction technique can be used to supplement the cRED data collection by automatic screening for suitable crystals using a deep convolutional neural network that can identify promising crystals through the corresponding diffraction data. The screening routine and cRED data collection are demonstrated using a sample of the zeolite mordenite, and the quality of the cRED data is assessed on the basis of the refined crystal structure.
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- Deng, Juan, et al.
(författare)
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Hierarchical Segmentation of Multitemporal RADARSAT-2 SAR Data Using Stationary Wavelet Transform and Algebraic Multigrid Method
- 2014
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Ingår i: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. - 0196-2892 .- 1558-0644. ; 52:7, s. 4353-4363
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The objective of this paper is to develop a new effective method for hierarchical segmentation of multitemporal ultrafine-beam synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data in urban areas. Multitemporal RADARSAT-2 ultrafine-beam high-resolution horizontal transmit and horizontal receive-Synthetic Aperture Radar (HH-SAR) images acquired in the rural-urban fringe of the Greater Toronto Area during the summer of 2008 are selected for this research. Stationary wavelet transform (SWT) and algebraic multigrid (AMG) method are proposed for segmentation of SAR data. SWT is applied for decomposition of multitemporal SAR images in image preprocessing. The hierarchical and matrix-based AMG method is applied for segmentation. A pyramid of fine-to-coarse grids is constructed by iteration of selecting representative pixels and calculating the interpolation matrix between a fine-level grid and a coarse-level grid. When the pyramid is completed, segments are determined by a top-down scanning based on the interpolation matrices. The AMG techniques provide a complete hierarchical segmentation of SAR data. The experimental results show that our method produces higher accuracy than eCognition.
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