We present the study of the SiGe quantum ring (QR) modeled by an anharmonic axially symmetric potential with a centrifugal core in the effective mass approximation. We show how the femtosecond laser ...pulses (FLPs) can be used efficiently for controlling the induced current and magnetic field. We have compared the strength of induced currents and magnetic fields with and without pulsed laser which shows a substantial change. The spin-orbit interaction (SOI) and Zeeman energy show a massive impact on the generation and enhancement of these induced current and magnetic fields. These induced currents and magnetic fields have many applications in interdisciplinary areas. We have shown that the SOI presence with the FLP fields while competing with the confinement strength lowers the strength of the induced current and field.
Summary Background Young people's health has emerged as a neglected yet pressing issue in global development. Changing patterns of young people's health have the potential to undermine future ...population health as well as global economic development unless timely and effective strategies are put into place. We report the past, present, and anticipated burden of disease in young people aged 10–24 years from 1990 to 2013 using data on mortality, disability, injuries, and health risk factors. Methods The Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013) includes annual assessments for 188 countries from 1990 to 2013, covering 306 diseases and injuries, 1233 sequelae, and 79 risk factors. We used the comparative risk assessment approach to assess how much of the burden of disease reported in a given year can be attributed to past exposure to a risk. We estimated attributable burden by comparing observed health outcomes with those that would have been observed if an alternative or counterfactual level of exposure had occurred in the past. We applied the same method to previous years to allow comparisons from 1990 to 2013. We cross-tabulated the quantiles of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) by quintiles of DALYs annual increase from 1990 to 2013 to show rates of DALYs increase by burden. We used the GBD 2013 hierarchy of causes that organises 306 diseases and injuries into four levels of classification. Level one distinguishes three broad categories: first, communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional disorders; second, non-communicable diseases; and third, injuries. Level two has 21 mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive categories, level three has 163 categories, and level four has 254 categories. Findings The leading causes of death in 2013 for young people aged 10–14 years were HIV/AIDS, road injuries, and drowning (25·2%), whereas transport injuries were the leading cause of death for ages 15–19 years (14·2%) and 20–24 years (15·6%). Maternal disorders were the highest cause of death for young women aged 20–24 years (17·1%) and the fourth highest for girls aged 15–19 years (11·5%) in 2013. Unsafe sex as a risk factor for DALYs increased from the 13th rank to the second for both sexes aged 15–19 years from 1990 to 2013. Alcohol misuse was the highest risk factor for DALYs (7·0% overall, 10·5% for males, and 2·7% for females) for young people aged 20–24 years, whereas drug use accounted for 2·7% (3·3% for males and 2·0% for females). The contribution of risk factors varied between and within countries. For example, for ages 20–24 years, drug use was highest in Qatar and accounted for 4·9% of DALYs, followed by 4·8% in the United Arab Emirates, whereas alcohol use was highest in Russia and accounted for 21·4%, followed by 21·0% in Belarus. Alcohol accounted for 9·0% (ranging from 4·2% in Hong Kong to 11·3% in Shandong) in China and 11·6% (ranging from 10·1% in Aguascalientes to 14·9% in Chihuahua) of DALYs in Mexico for young people aged 20–24 years. Alcohol and drug use in those aged 10–24 years had an annual rate of change of >1·0% from 1990 to 2013 and accounted for more than 3·1% of DALYs. Interpretation Our findings call for increased efforts to improve health and reduce the burden of disease and risks for diseases in later life in young people. Moreover, because of the large variations between countries in risks and burden, a global approach to improve health during this important period of life will fail unless the particularities of each country are taken into account. Finally, our results call for a strategy to overcome the financial and technical barriers to adequately capture young people's health risk factors and their determinants in health information systems. Funding Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Better childhood health and nutrition, extensions to education, delays in family formation, and new technologies offer the possibility of this being the healthiest generation of adolescents ever. But ...these are also the ages when new and different health problems related to the onset of sexual activity, emotional control, and behaviour typically emerge. Global trends include those promoting unhealthy lifestyles and commodities, the crisis of youth unemployment, less family stability, environmental degradation, armed conflict, and mass migration, all of which pose major threats to adolescent health and wellbeing.
The burden of cardiovascular diseases is increasing in India, but a systematic understanding of its distribution and time trends across all the states is not readily available. In this report, we ...present a detailed analysis of how the patterns of cardiovascular diseases and major risk factors have changed across the states of India between 1990 and 2016.
We analysed the prevalence and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to cardiovascular diseases and the major component causes in the states of India from 1990 to 2016, using all accessible data sources as part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016. We placed states into four groups based on epidemiological transition level (ETL), defined using the ratio of DALYs from communicable diseases to those from non-communicable diseases and injuries combined, with a low ratio denoting high ETL and vice versa. We assessed heterogeneity in the burden of major cardiovascular diseases across the states of India, and the contribution of risk factors to cardiovascular diseases. We calculated 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs) for the point estimates.
Overall, cardiovascular diseases contributed 28·1% (95% UI 26·5–29·1) of the total deaths and 14·1% (12·9–15·3) of the total DALYs in India in 2016, compared with 15·2% (13·7–16·2) and 6·9% (6·3–7·4), respectively, in 1990. In 2016, there was a nine times difference between states in the DALY rate for ischaemic heart disease, a six times difference for stroke, and a four times difference for rheumatic heart disease. 23·8 million (95% UI 22·6–25·0) prevalent cases of ischaemic heart disease were estimated in India in 2016, and 6·5 million (6·3–6·8) prevalent cases of stroke, a 2·3 times increase in both disorders from 1990. The age-standardised prevalence of both ischaemic heart disease and stroke increased in all ETL state groups between 1990 and 2016, whereas that of rheumatic heart disease decreased; the increase for ischaemic heart disease was highest in the low ETL state group. 53·4% (95% UI 52·6–54·6) of crude deaths due to cardiovascular diseases in India in 2016 were among people younger than 70 years, with a higher proportion in the low ETL state group. The leading overlapping risk factors for cardiovascular diseases in 2016 included dietary risks (56·4% 95% CI 48·5–63·9 of cardiovascular disease DALYs), high systolic blood pressure (54·6% 49·0–59·8), air pollution (31·1% 29·0–33·4), high total cholesterol (29·4% 24·3–34·8), tobacco use (18·9% 16·6–21·3), high fasting plasma glucose (16·7% 11·4–23·5), and high body-mass index (14·7% 8·3–22·0). The prevalence of high systolic blood pressure, high total cholesterol, and high fasting plasma glucose increased generally across all ETL state groups from 1990 to 2016, but this increase was variable across the states; the prevalence of smoking decreased during this period in all ETL state groups.
The burden from the leading cardiovascular diseases in India—ischaemic heart disease and stroke—varies widely between the states. Their increasing prevalence and that of several major risk factors in every part of India, especially the highest increase in the prevalence of ischaemic heart disease in the less developed low ETL states, indicates the need for urgent policy and health system response appropriate for the situation in each state.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
Food policies and environment (availability, accessibility, affordability, marketing) in and around educational institutes can influence food choices and behaviours of children and adolescents.
...Cross-sectional, mixed-methods study was implemented in schools (n = 9; Private = 6, Public = 3) and colleges (n = 4) from Delhi and National Capital Region (India). The data was collected from students of schools (n = 253) and colleges (n = 57), parents of school students (n = 190), teachers (n = 12, schools = 9, colleges = 3) and canteen operators of Private schools and colleges (n = 10; schools = 6, and colleges = 4). The primary and secondary data was collected to: 1) identify the strengths and weaknesses of the existing guidelines and directives (desk review); 2) examine food environment, existing policies and its implementation (structured observations, in-depth interviews, surveys, focus group discussions), and; 3) assess food choices, behaviours of students (focus group discussions). The thematic analysis was used for qualitative data and descriptive analysis for quantitative data.
The available food and beverage options, in and around the participating educational institutes were either high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS), despite government and educational institute guidelines on restricting the availability and accessibility of HFSS foods. The healthy food and beverage options were expensive compared to HFSS foods both inside and outside educational institutes. In total, 37 vendors (Private = 27; Public:10) were observed outside schools at dispersal and twelve at lunchtime. Around colleges, vendors (n = 14) were seen throughout the day. Students from all Private schools (n = 6) and colleges (n = 2) were exposed to food and beverage advertisements either HFSS (Private schools = 1-3 and colleges = 0-2 advertisements), whereas no advertisements were observed around Public schools.
It is imperative to implement food policies to improve the food environment in and around educational institutes to ensure the availability of healthy foods to establish and sustain healthy eating behaviours among students. Thus, the study findings emphasise stringent implementation, regular monitoring and surveillance of recently introduced Food Safety and Standards (Safe food and balanced diets for children in school) Regulation 2020, ensuring its compliance through effective enforcement strategies.
India has 18% of the global population and an increasing burden of chronic respiratory diseases. However, a systematic understanding of the distribution of chronic respiratory diseases and their ...trends over time is not readily available for all of the states of India. Our aim was to report the trends in the burden of chronic respiratory diseases and the heterogeneity in their distribution in all states of India between 1990 and 2016.
Using all accessible data from multiple sources, we estimated the prevalence of major chronic respiratory diseases and the deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) caused by them for every state of India from 1990 to 2016 as part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016. We assessed heterogeneity in the burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma across the states of India. The states were categorised into four groups based on their epidemiological transition level (ETL). ETL was defined as the ratio of DALYs from communicable diseases to those from non-communicable diseases and injuries combined, with a low ratio denoting high ETL and vice versa. We also assessed the contribution of risk factors to DALYs due to COPD. We compared the burden of chronic respiratory diseases in India against the global average in GBD 2016. We calculated 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs) for the point estimates.
The contribution of chronic respiratory diseases to the total DALYs in India increased from 4·5% (95% UI 4·0–4·9) in 1990 to 6·4% (5·8–7·0) in 2016. Of the total global DALYs due to chronic respiratory diseases in 2016, 32·0% occurred in India. COPD and asthma were responsible for 75·6% and 20·0% of the chronic respiratory disease DALYs, respectively, in India in 2016. The number of cases of COPD in India increased from 28·1 million (27·0–29·2) in 1990 to 55·3 million (53·1–57·6) in 2016, an increase in prevalence from 3·3% (3·1–3·4) to 4·2% (4·0–4·4). The age-standardised COPD prevalence and DALY rates in 2016 were highest in the less developed low ETL state group. There were 37·9 million (35·7–40·2) cases of asthma in India in 2016, with similar prevalence in the four ETL state groups, but the highest DALY rate was in the low ETL state group. The highest DALY rates for both COPD and asthma in 2016 were in the low ETL states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. The DALYs per case of COPD and asthma were 1·7 and 2·4 times higher in India than the global average in 2016, respectively; most states had higher rates compared with other locations worldwide at similar levels of Socio-demographic Index. Of the DALYs due to COPD in India in 2016, 53·7% (43·1–65·0) were attributable to air pollution, 25·4% (19·5–31·7) to tobacco use, and 16·5% (14·1–19·2) to occupational risks, making these the leading risk factors for COPD.
India has a disproportionately high burden of chronic respiratory diseases. The increasing contribution of these diseases to the overall disease burden across India and the high rate of health loss from them, especially in the less developed low ETL states, highlights the need for focused policy interventions to address this significant cause of disease burden in India.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Indian Council of Medical Research, Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
In health and social science and other fields where count data analysis is important, zero-inflated models have been employed when the frequency of zero count is high (inflated). Due to multiple ...reasons, there are scenarios in which an additional count value of k > 0 occurs with high frequency. The zero- and k-inflated Poisson distribution model (ZkIP) is more appropriate for such situations. The ZkIP model is a mixture distribution with three components: degenerate distributions at 0 and k count and a Poisson distribution. In this article, we propose an alternative and computationally fast expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm to obtain the parameter estimates for grouped zero and k-inflated count data. The asymptotic standard errors are derived using the complete data approach. We compare the zero- and k-inflated Poisson model with its zero-inflated and non-inflated counterparts. The best model is selected based on commonly used criteria. The theoretical results are supplemented with the analysis of two real-life datasets from health sciences.
ObjectiveTo assess the changes in prevalence of past-year self-reported sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and its symptoms among married couples between 2006 and 2016 in India, overall and by ...socioeconomic status.DesignThis cross-sectional study uses the two most recent waves (2005–2006 vs 2015–2016) of nationally representative health surveys in India. We examined the changes of self-reported STI and symptoms among married couples aged 15–54 by overall and by socioeconomic status. Adjusted logistic regression was used to assess the changes, accounting for covariates and the complex survey design.SettingCross-sectional, nationally representative population-based survey in 2005–2006 and 2015–2016 from National Family Health Survey data from Demographic and Health Survey.Participants39 257 married couples aged 15–49 years for the 2005–2006 survey wave and 63 696 married couples aged 15–49 years for the 2015–2016 wave.Outcome measureSelf-reported STI was used as a primary outcome measure.ResultsIn 2016, 2.5% of married women reported having had an STI in the past year, a significant increase from 1.6% in 2006 (p<0.001). The past-year self-reported STI prevalence among married men significantly increased from 0.5% in 2006 to 1.1% in 2016 (p<0.001). Adjusted results showed that the uptrend of couples’ self-reported STI was more significant among those whose husbands are currently employed and those families in middle or higher wealth quintiles. Alarmingly, among couples who reported STI or symptoms, they were less likely to seek advice or treatment in 2016 as compared with 2006 (adjusted OR=0.50, p<0.001, 95% CI=0.40 to 0.61).ConclusionThe study identifies a substantial increase in self-reported STI prevalence with a notable treatment seeking gap among married couples in India over the past decade.
Globally, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are identified as one of the leading causes of mortality. NCDs have several modifiable risk factors including unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco ...use and alcohol abuse. Schools provide ideal settings for health promotion, but the effectiveness of school policies in the reduction of risk factors for NCD is not clear. This study reviewed the literature on the impact of school policies on major NCD risk factors.
A systematic review was conducted to identify, collate and synthesize evidence on the effectiveness of school policies on reduction of NCD risk factors. A search strategy was developed to identify the relevant studies on effectiveness of NCD policies in schools for children between the age of 6 to 18 years in Ovid Medline, EMBASE, and Web of Science. Data extraction was conducted using pre-piloted forms. Studies included in the review were assessed for methodological quality using the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) quality assessment tool. A narrative synthesis according to the types of outcomes was conducted to present the evidence on the effectiveness of school policies.
Overall, 27 out of 2633 identified studies were included in the review. School policies were comparatively more effective in reducing unhealthy diet, tobacco use, physical inactivity and inflammatory biomarkers as opposed to anthropometric measures, overweight/obesity, and alcohol use. In total, for 103 outcomes independently evaluated within these studies, 48 outcomes (46%) had significant desirable changes when exposed to the school policies. Based on the quality assessment, 18 studies were categorized as weak, six as moderate and three as having strong methodological quality.
Mixed findings were observed concerning effectiveness of school policies in reducing NCD risk factors. The findings demonstrate that schools can be a good setting for initiating positive changes in reducing NCD risk factors, but more research is required with long-term follow up to study the sustainability of such changes.
In high-income countries, secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure is higher among disadvantaged groups. We examine socioeconomic inequalities in SHS exposure at home and at workplace in 15 low- and ...middle-income countries (LMICs).
Secondary analyses of cross-sectional data from 15 LMICs participating in Global Adult Tobacco Survey (participants ≥ 15 years; 2008-2011) were used. Country-specific analyses using regression-based methods were used to estimate the magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities in SHS exposure: (1) Relative Index of Inequality and (2) Slope Index of Inequality.
SHS exposure at home ranged from 17.4% in Mexico to 73.1% in Vietnam; exposure at workplace ranged from 16.9% in Uruguay to 65.8% in Bangladesh. In India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Uruguay, Poland, Turkey, Ukraine, and Egypt, SHS exposure at home reduced with increasing wealth (Relative Index of Inequality range: 1.13 95% confidence interval CI 1.04-1.22 in Turkey to 3.31 95% CI 2.91-3.77 in Thailand; Slope Index of Inequality range: 0.06 95% CI 0.02-0.11 in Turkey to 0.43 95% CI 0.38-0.48 in Philippines). In these 11 countries, and in China, SHS exposure at home reduced with increasing education. In India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Philippines, SHS exposure at workplace reduced with increasing wealth. In India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Poland, Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine, and Egypt, SHS exposure at workplace reduced with increasing education.
SHS exposure at homes is higher among the socioeconomically disadvantaged in the majority of LMICs studied; at workplaces, exposure is higher among the less educated. Pro-equity tobacco control interventions alongside targeted efforts in these groups are recommended to reduce inequalities in SHS exposure.
SHS exposure is higher among the socioeconomically disadvantaged groups in high-income countries. Comprehensive smoke-free policies are pro-equity for certain health outcomes that are strongly influenced by SHS exposure. Using nationally representative Global Adult Tobacco Survey (2008-2011) data from 15 LMICs, we studied socioeconomic inequalities in SHS exposure at homes and at workplaces. The study showed that in most LMICs, SHS exposure at homes is higher among the poor and the less educated. At workplaces, SHS exposure is higher among the less educated groups. Accelerating implementation of pro-equity tobacco control interventions and strengthening of efforts targeted at the socioeconomically disadvantaged groups are needed to reduce inequalities in SHS exposure in LMICs.
PDF
