This study aimed to assess whether night shift work is associated with the risk of depression by using a meta-analysis of observational studies. We searched PubMed and EMBASE in August, 2016 to ...locate eligible studies and investigated the association between night shift work and the risk of depression, reporting outcome measures with adjusted odds ratios (ORs) or relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). In the meta-analysis of a total of 11 observational studies with 9 cross-sectional study, 1 longitudinal study, and 1 cohort study, night shift work was significantly associated with an increased risk of depression (OR/RR, 1.43; 95% CI, 1.24-1.64; I² = 78.0%). Also, subgroup meta-analyses by gender, night shift work duration, type of occupation, continent, and type of publication showed that night shift work was consistently associated with the increased risk of depression. The current meta-analysis suggests that night shift work is associated with the increased risk of depression. However, further large prospective cohort studies are needed to confirm this association.
Background: Due to the job characteristics, firefighters are repeatedly exposed to trauma incidents. However, not all firefighters exhibit the same level of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or ...post-traumatic growth (PTG). Despite this, few studies have looked into firefighters' PTSD and PTG.
Objective: This study identified subgroups of firefighters based on their PTSD and PTG levels, and investigated the influence of demographic factors and PTSD/PTG-related factors on latent class classification.
Method: Latent profile analysis was used to examine the patterns of PTSD and PTG among 483 firefighters in South Korea. Using a cross-sectional design, demographic factors and job factors were examined as group covariates through a three-step approach. PTSD-related factors such as depression and suicide ideation, as well as PTG-related factors such as emotion-based response were analysed as differentiating factors.
Results: Four classes were identified and named 'Low PTSD-low PTG (65.2%),' 'Mid PTSD-mid PTG (15.5%),' 'Low PTSD-high PTG (15.3%),' and 'High PTSD-mid PTG (3.9%).' The likelihood of belonging to the group with high trauma-related risks increased with more rotating shift work and years of service. The differentiating factors revealed differences based on the levels of PTSD and PTG in each group.
Conclusions: 34.8% of firefighters experienced changes due to traumatic events while on the job, and some required serious attention. Modifiable job characteristics, such as the shift pattern, indirectly affected PTSD and PTG levels. Individual and job factors should be considered together when developing trauma interventions for firefighters.
Firefighters were classified into four groups based on their levels of PTSD and PTG. 65.2% of the participants belonged to the 'Low PTSD-low PTG' group.
The shift pattern and years of service predicted the likelihood of group classification.
This implies that, despite being frequently exposed to threatening events, not all firefighters experience trauma, and that job characteristics influence trauma-related vulnerabilities.
Aim
Body mass index (BMI) is regarded as a predictor of life expectancy and a determinant of mortality. However, the effect of age on BMI‐related mortality remains unclear. The aim of the present ...study was to examine the prognostic effect of BMI to mortality risk among Korean older persons.
Methods
Data were collected from the Korean National Health Insurance Services’ Senior Cohort database. This study analyzed the data of 79 341 men and 91 298 women aged ≥65 years who underwent health examinations in the 2007 fiscal year. Individual mortality was identified 5 years after 2008. The participants were stratified into seven groups according to basal BMI. Hazard ratios of death were calculated through Cox proportional hazards model after adjusting for age, sex, smoking status, exercise, alcohol intake and income.
Results
During the 5‐year follow up, 11 651 men and 7 235 women died. In both sexes, a lower BMI had a higher hazard ratio (HR), but the trend of increasing HR at high BMI was not clear. For men, the lowest HR was 0.79 (95% CI 0.71–0.87) at a BMI of 27.5–30.0 kg/m2. For women, the lowest HR was 0.84 (95% CI 0.78–0.91) at a BMI of 25.0–27.5 kg/m2. For both sexes, the relative mortality risk was associated with a lower BMI.
Conclusions
A high BMI is not associated with increased mortality in older adults aged ≥65 years, whereas a lower BMI is associated with an increased mortality risk in later life in this population. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2018; 18: 538–546.
A new type of a high temperature liquid metal-air energy storage cell based on solid oxide electrolyte has been successfully demonstrated at 750 ℃ by feeding metal Sn. In order to understanding the ...initial size effect of metal as a liquid fuel, we report here the impact of the thermal and electrochemical oxidation behavior of nano Sn （-100 nm）, comparing with micro-sized （-5 μm） and macro-sized （4350 μm） Sn. The thermogravimetric analysis and the monitoring OCV test indicate that the distinct property of nano-sized Sn results in a favorable thermal oxidation behavior near the melting point and a promising power performance due to enhanced fuel transport to the anode. However, the accumulated Sn oxide at the reaction interface during a discharge test towards the limitation of further electrochemical oxidation.
The fuzzy vault is an innovative way to share secret keys, combining traditional cryptography with biometrics and biometric template protection. This method forms the basis for the reliable operation ...of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) through anonymizing drone operators and safely using their data and onboard information. However, due to the inherent instability of biometrics, traditional fuzzy vault schemes face challenges, such as reduced recognition rates with increased chaff points, impractical runtimes due to high-order polynomial reconstruction, and susceptibility to correlation attacks. This paper proposes an efficient fuzzy vault scheme to address these challenges. We generate two secret keys based on biometrics: the first key is produced from the operator’s unique features like the face and iris, using a confidence interval; the second key, used to construct a polynomial, is based on what the operator remembers. These dual-key fuzzy vaults enable the stable generation of genuine points during encoding, easy extraction during decoding, and effective operator authentication while maintaining anonymity. Our experimental results demonstrate improved security and secret acquisition accuracy using the AR face database. These results are achieved regardless of increased false vaults, enabling real-time polynomial reconstruction and resilience against correlation attacks. Importantly, our enhanced fuzzy vault scheme allows the application of this secure, real-time authentication process, safeguarding the anonymity of drone operators.
Addition is the most basic operation of computing based on a bit system. There are various addition algorithms considering multiple number systems and hardware, and studies for a more efficient ...addition are still ongoing. Quantum computing based on qubits as the information unit asks for the design of a new addition because it is, physically, wholly different from the existing frequency-based computing in which the minimum information unit is a bit. In this paper, we propose an efficient quantum circuit of modular addition, which reduces the number of gates and the depth. The proposed modular addition is for the Galois Field GF(2n−1), which is important as a finite field basis in various domains, such as cryptography. Its design principle was from the ripple carry addition (RCA) algorithm, which is the most widely used in existing computers. However, unlike conventional RCA, the storage of the final carry is not needed due to modifying existing diminished-1 modulo 2n−1 adders. Our proposed adder can produce modulo sum within the range 0,2n−2 by fewer qubits and less depth. For comparison, we analyzed the proposed quantum addition circuit over GF(2n−1) and the previous quantum modular addition circuit for the performance of the number of qubits, the number of gates, and the depth, and simulated it with IBM’s simulator ProjectQ.
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