Impact of cancer diagnosis on life expectancy by area-level socioeconomic groups in New South Wales, Australia: a population-based study

Objective: Improvement in cancer survival over recent decades has not been accompanied by a narrowing of socioeconomic disparities. This study aimed to quantify the loss of life expectancy(LOLE) resulting from a cancer diagnosis and examine disparities in LOLE based on area-level socioeconomic status(SES).Methods: Data were collected for all people between 50 and 89 years of age who were diagnosed with cancer, registered in the NSW Cancer Registry between 2001 and 2019, and underwent mortality follow-up evaluations until December 2020. Flexible parametric survival models were fitted to estimate the LOLE by gender and area-level SES for 12 common cancers.Results: Of 422,680 people with cancer, 24% and 18% lived in the most and least disadvantaged areas, respectively. Patients from the most disadvantaged areas had a significantly greater average LOLE than patients from the least disadvantaged areas for cancers with high survival rates, including prostate [2.9 years(95% CI: 2.5±3.2 years) vs. 1.6 years(95% CI: 1.3±1.9 years)] and breast cancer [1.6 years(95% CI: 1.4±1.8 years) vs. 1.2 years(95% CI: 1.0±1.4 years)]. The highest average LOLE occurred in males residing in the most disadvantaged areas with pancreatic [16.5 years(95% CI: 16.1±16.8 years) vs. 16.2 years(95% CI: 15.7±16.7 years)] and liver cancer [15.5 years(95% CI: 15.0±16.0 years) vs. 14.7 years(95% CI: 14.0±15.5 years)]. Females residing in the least disadvantaged areas with thyroid cancer [0.9 years(95% CI: 0.4±1.4 years) vs. 0.6 years(95% CI: 0.2±1.0 years)] or melanoma [0.9 years(95% CI: 0.8±1.1 years) vs. 0.7 years(95% CI: 0.5±0.8 years)] had the lowest average LOLE.Conclusions: Patients from the most disadvantaged areas had the highest LOLE with SES-based differences greatest for patients diagnosed with cancer at an early stage or cancers with higher survival rates, suggesting the need to prioritise early detection and reduce treatment-related barriers and survivorship challenges to improve life expectancy.

Parental Educational Expectations,Academic Pressure,and Adolescent Mental Health:An Empirical Study Based on CEPS Survey Data

Background:This study aimed to investigate the relationship between parental educational expectations and adolescent mental health problems,with academic pressure as a moderating variable.Methods:This study was based on the baseline data of the China Education Panel Survey,which was collected within one school year during 2013–2014.It included 19,958 samples from seventh and ninth graders,who ranged from 11 to 18 years old.After removing missing values and conducting relevant data processing,the effective sample size for analysis was 16344.The OLS(Ordinary Least Squares)multiple linear regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between parental educational expectations,academic pressure,and adolescents’mental health problems.In addition,we established an interaction term between parents’educational expectations and academic pressure to investigate the moderating effect of academic stress.Results:The study found that adolescents whose parents had high educational expectations reported less mental health problems.(β=−0.195;p<0.001).Additionally,adolescents who had high academic pressure reported more mental health problems.(β=0.649;p<0.001).Furthermore,the study found that academic pressure had a significant moderating effect on the relationship between parental educational expectations and adolescents’mental health problems(β=0.082;p<0.001).Conclusion:Parental educational expectations had a close relationship with adolescents’mental health problems,and academic pressure moderated this relationship.For those adolescents with high levels of academic pressure,the association between high parental educational expectations and mental health problems became stronger.On the contrary,for those adolescents with low levels of academic pressure,the association between high parental educational expectations and mental health problems became weaker.These findings shed new light on how parental educational expectations affected adolescent mental health problems and had significant implications for their healthy development.

Kinematic calibration under the expectation maximization framework for exoskeletal inertial motion capture system

This study presents a kinematic calibration method for exoskeletal inertial motion capture (EI-MoCap) system with considering the random colored noise such as gyroscopic drift.In this method, the geometric parameters are calibrated by the traditional calibration method at first. Then, in order to calibrate the parameters affected by the random colored noise, the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is introduced. Through the use of geometric parameters calibrated by the traditional calibration method, the iterations under the EM framework are decreased and the efficiency of the proposed method on embedded system is improved. The performance of the proposed kinematic calibration method is compared to the traditional calibration method. Furthermore, the feasibility of the proposed method is verified on the EI-MoCap system. The simulation and experiment demonstrate that the motion capture precision is significantly improved by 16.79%and 7.16%respectively in comparison to the traditional calibration method.

Exact controllability of rational expectations model with multiplicative noise and input delay

This paper considers the rational expectations model with multiplicative noise and input delay,where the system dynamics rely on the conditional expectations of future states.The main contribution is to obtain a sufficient condition for the exact controllability of the rational expectations model.In particular,we derive a sufficient Gramian matrix condition and a rank condition for the delay-free case.The key is the solvability of the backward stochastic difference equations with input delay which is derived from the forward and backward stochastic system.

Modeling Expected Failure Considering Repair Time and Degradation: A Rail System Case Study

The repeated failures of any equipment or systems are modeled as a renewal process. The management needs an assessment of the number of future failures to allocate the resources needed for fast repairs. Based on the idea of expectation by conditioning, special Volterra-type integral equations are derived for general types of repairs, considering the length of repair and reduced degradation of the idle object. In addition to minimal repair and failure replacement, partial repairs are also discussed when the repair results in reduction of the number of future failures or decreases the effective age of the object. Numerical integration-based algorithm and simulation study are performed to solve the resulting integral equation. Since the geometry degradation in different dimensions of a rail track and controlling and maintaining defects are of importance, a numerical example using the rail industry data is conducted. Expected number of failures of different failure type modes in rail track is calculated within a two-year interval. Results show that within a two-year period, anticipated occurrences of cross level failures, surface failures, and DPI failures are 2.4, 3.8, and 5.8, respectively.

基于Expect的自动化运维分析与设计

信息安全问题层出不穷,设备国产化要求也越来越高。终端信息统计、软件安装与运行、设备远程开关机等批量终端管理,逐步成为常态化工作。维护模式固定、操作简单,但是终端数量较多的情况下,费时费力且容易出错。以国产麒麟操作系统为例,设计了基于Expect的批量终端自动化巡检脚本,展示了终端ip地址、MAC地址、磁盘序列号等自动获取方法,远程终端软件安装与运行,回传合并统计数据等功能,给Linux终端运维人员提供一个新的运维思路。

Exceeding Expectations

The Chinese economy continued to rebound and made solid progress in 2023,despite the complex international situation and numerous risks and challenges.The accelerated economic structural transformation and upgrade,coupled with increasing economic resilience,has resulted in various highlights.

Keeping Commitments,Meeting Expectations

How well is FOCAC meeting Africa’s aspirations for development?The idea of establishing the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation(FOCAC)in 2000 initially came from African countries,eager to coordinate and manage their relationship with China.

The study of a neutron spectrum unfolding method based on particle swarm optimization combined with maximum likelihood expectation maximization

The neutron spectrum unfolding by Bonner sphere spectrometer(BSS) is considered a complex multidimensional model,which requires complex mathematical methods to solve the first kind of Fredholm integral equation. In order to solve the problem of the maximum likelihood expectation maximization(MLEM) algorithm which is easy to suffer the pitfalls of local optima and the particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm which is easy to get unreasonable flight direction and step length of particles, which leads to the invalid iteration and affect efficiency and accuracy, an improved PSO-MLEM algorithm, combined of PSO and MLEM algorithm, is proposed for neutron spectrum unfolding. The dynamic acceleration factor is used to balance the ability of global and local search, and improves the convergence speed and accuracy of the algorithm. Firstly, the Monte Carlo method was used to simulated the BSS to obtain the response function and count rates of BSS. In the simulation of count rate, four reference spectra from the IAEA Technical Report Series No. 403 were used as input parameters of the Monte Carlo method. The PSO-MLEM algorithm was used to unfold the neutron spectrum of the simulated data and was verified by the difference of the unfolded spectrum to the reference spectrum. Finally, the 252Cf neutron source was measured by BSS, and the PSO-MLEM algorithm was used to unfold the experimental neutron spectrum.Compared with maximum entropy deconvolution(MAXED), PSO and MLEM algorithm, the PSO-MLEM algorithm has fewer parameters and automatically adjusts the dynamic acceleration factor to solve the problem of local optima. The convergence speed of the PSO-MLEM algorithm is 1.4 times and 3.1 times that of the MLEM and PSO algorithms. Compared with PSO, MLEM and MAXED, the correlation coefficients of PSO-MLEM algorithm are increased by 33.1%, 33.5% and 1.9%, and the relative mean errors are decreased by 98.2%, 97.8% and 67.4%.

The Effects of Job Insecurity, Emotional Exhaustion, and Met Expectations on Hotel Employees’ Pro-Environmental Behaviors: Test of a Serial Mediation Model

There are a plethora of empirical pieces about employees’pro-environmental behaviors.However,the extant literature has either ignored or not fully examined various factors(e.g.,negative or positive non-green workplace factors)that might affect employees’pro-environmental behaviors.Realizing these voids,the present paper proposes and tests a serial mediation model that examines the interrelationships of job insecurity,emotional exhaustion,met expectations,and proactive pro-environmental behavior.We used data gathered from hotel customer-contact employees with a time lag of one week and their direct supervisors in China.After presenting support for the psychometric properties of the measures via confirmatory analysis in LISREL 8.30,the abovementioned linkages were gauged using the PROCESS plug-in for statistical package for social sciences.The findings delineated support for the hypothesized associations.Specifically,emotional exhaustion and met expectations partly mediated the effect of job insecurity on proactive pro-environmental behavior.More importantly,emotional exhaustion and met expectations serially mediated the influence of job insecurity on proactive pro-environmental behavior.These findings have important theoretical implications as well as significant implications for diminishing job insecurity,managing emotional exhaustion,increasing met expectations,and enhancing ecofriendly behaviors.

Iterative Receiver for Orthogonal Time Frequency Space with Index Modulation via Structured Prior-Based Hybrid Belief and Expectation Propagation

Orthogonal Time Frequency Space(OTFS)signaling with index modulation(IM)is a promising transmission scheme characterized by high transmission efficiency for high mobility scenarios.In this paper,we study the receiver for coded OTFS-IM system.First,we construct the corresponding factor graph,on which the structured prior incorporating activation pattern constraint and channel coding is devised.Then we develop a iterative receiver via structured prior-based hybrid belief propagation(BP)and expectation propagation(EP)algorithm,named as StrBP-EP,for the coded OTFS-IM system.To reduce the computational complexity of discrete distribution introduced by structured prior,Gaussian approximation conducted by EP is adopted.To further reduce the complexity,we derive two variations of the proposed algorithm by using some approximations.Simulation results validate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm.

Dimensionality reduction model based on integer planning for the analysis of key indicators affecting life expectancy

Purpose:Exploring a dimensionality reduction model that can adeptly eliminate outliers and select the appropriate number of clusters is of profound theoretical and practical importance.Additionally,the interpretability of these models presents a persistent challenge.Design/methodology/approach:This paper proposes two innovative dimensionality reduction models based on integer programming(DRMBIP).These models assess compactness through the correlation of each indicator with its class center,while separation is evaluated by the correlation between different class centers.In contrast to DRMBIP-p,the DRMBIP-v considers the threshold parameter as a variable aiming to optimally balances both compactness and separation.Findings:This study,getting data from the Global Health Observatory(GHO),investigates 141 indicators that influence life expectancy.The findings reveal that DRMBIP-p effectively reduces the dimensionality of data,ensuring compactness.It also maintains compatibility with other models.Additionally,DRMBIP-v finds the optimal result,showing exceptional separation.Visualization of the results reveals that all classes have a high compactness.Research limitations:The DRMBIP-p requires the input of the correlation threshold parameter,which plays a pivotal role in the effectiveness of the final dimensionality reduction results.In the DRMBIP-v,modifying the threshold parameter to variable potentially emphasizes either separation or compactness.This necessitates an artificial adjustment to the overflow component within the objective function.Practical implications:The DRMBIP presented in this paper is adept at uncovering the primary geometric structures within high-dimensional indicators.Validated by life expectancy data,this paper demonstrates potential to assist data miners with the reduction of data dimensions.Originality/value:To our knowledge,this is the first time that integer programming has been used to build a dimensionality reduction model with indicator filtering.It not only has applications in life expectancy,but also has obvious advantages in data mining work that requires precise class centers.

Complete moment convergence for ND random variables under the sub-linear expectations

In this article,we establish a general result on complete moment convergence for arrays of rowwise negatively dependent(ND)random variables under the sub-linear expectations.As applications,we can obtain a series of results on complete moment convergence for ND random variables under the sub-linear expectations.

Self-Frustration of Expectations in Major Depressive Disorder: The Syncytiopathy Hypothesis of Depression Revisited

This paper is a further elaboration of my model of the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder focusing on imbalances of glial-neuronal interactions in tripartite synapses and the glial network (syncytium). Basically, it is proposed that the connexin proteins building gap junctions in the glial syncytium are underexpressed or dysfunctional in major depression, called syncytiopathy. As a compensatory effect the astrocytic receptors in tripartite synapses are overexpressed. This leads to protracted synaptic information processing because of a relative lack of neurotransmitter substances for the occupancy of astrocytic receptors. Based on a new biophysical formal description of astrocytic receptors as expectation variables it can be shown that the protracted processing of sensory information frustrate the full comprehension of the expected event, since it cannot be grasped in time. Moreover, expectation frustration may stress the glial syncytium aggravating memory impairment. This cyclic process of dysbalanced synaptic information processing is characterized as self-frustration of expectations explanatory for the main cognitive dysfunctions in major depression as slowing down processing speed, deficits in attention and working memory. The main result of the study is that patients with major depression cannot fully acknowledge the existence of an intended event.

Understanding Expected Utility for Decision Making

In this paper,we present a brief version of de Finetti-Ramsey’s subjective probability theory and provide a rigorous yet intuitively plausible explanation of expected utility using elementary mathematics.In a final section,we take up the case of some“Paradoxes in Expected Utility Theory”and try to reconcile them with the help of subjective probabilities.

The Current Situation and Future Expectationsof China's Pilot Boatsl

Pilots need to board the ship for pilotage,but there are risks or potential dangers in the transfer of pilot.The author reviewed the history of the development of pilot boats,analyzed the potential risks or dangers of transferring pilot,proposed that pilot boat shall have the function of ensuring the safety of pilot when embarking or disembarking the ships,some suggestions on the future design and manufacture of Chinese pilot boats are also given according to the advantages and disadvantages of domestic and foreign pilot boats.

Exceeding Expectations

Despite of the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,China’s economic growth remained stable in 2022,which will benefit China-Africa economic cooperation this year.China’s GDP growth reached 3 percent year on year in 2022,the National Bureau of Statistics said on 16 January.

New Characteristics of Active Life Expectancy of the Elderly in China

Life expectancy of the elderly is a significant problem in China, and it changes not only the health care, but also the pension. This study used tracking data from the Chinese Urban and Rural Elderly Population Survey to calculate the age-specific Active Life Expectancy (ALE) of the Chinese elderly population aged 60 years and over. For analysis, this population was divided into different sub-populations according to gender, census register and region. The main conclusions of our study are as follows: 1) The quality of life for elderly males may be greater than that for elderly females;2) There were significant differences in Active Life Expectancy (ALE) and Inactive Life Expectancy (ILE) between urban and rural elderly;3) The differences in ALE between the eastern, central and western regions of China were not significant;and 4) The increased remaining life expectancy of the elderly was mainly attributed to the extended ALE in the lower age group and the expanded ILE in the higher age group. This study expands the knowledge of Chinese elderly’s life expectancy in different health status.

A Study on consumers＇ continuing to use online group-buying platforms： The impact of price performance expectations

In this study, we aim to understand the characteristics of online group-buying consumers and to investigate salient factors which influence the continuance intention of online group-buying platforms （OGBP） to bridge this knowledge gap. An expectation-confirmation model of information systems （IS） continuance is adapted to construct a research model in online group-buying contexts. A total of 289 complete and valid responses were collected. Our findings contribute to academics and practitioners in two ways： Firstly, our respondents show that they are young （93% of the respondents＇ ages range between 19 and 28 years old）, female （88% of the respondents）, and thrifty （82% of the respondents＇ transaction amounts are below US$16）. Secondly, based on our results, price performance expectations have a direct impact on confirmation. In addition, in contrast to the IS continuance model （Bhattacherjee, 2001）, the effect of perceived usefulness on satisfaction is not supported. Thus, in online group-buying settings, confirmation is the key antecedent of satisfaction. Satisfaction and perceived usefulness are significantly associated with OGBP continuance intention. Consequently, in addition to offering a wide assortment of merchandise and a convenient online shopping experience to enhance customers＇ perceived usefulness of OGBP, OGBP managers should aim low-price marketing strategies at this female, young, thrifty and price-sensitive segment to transcend consumers＇ price expectations and attract consumers＇ continued intention to visit OGBP.

Prospects Expectation for Development of Oil Olive Industry Development in China from the Domestic and Foreign Olive Oil Market

Over the past two years, China＇s olive Planting area was a bumper harvest year , extra virgin olive oil production has increased at rate of 30% an annual, the government, enterprises and farmers had should be presented to the satisfaction of all the situation. However, a large number of farmer has listed to be bought of their fresh fruit , it was presented of ＇queuing for salphenomenon, fruit can not be bought and pressed in time, farmer＇s enthusiasm was hurt and olive oil quality was reduced. In this regard, we had a comprehensive investigation and analysis of the current problems, combined with foreign research results, to researched the domestic and foreign olive oil market, has found our country disadvantages of in oil olive industry development and the existence question, and has carried on the forecast to our country oil olive industry development. Indicated that there is a lot of demand for olive oil consumer In China, and vigorously support at all levels of government, key factors restricting the healthy development of the industry had being resolved, speeding up the development of policies, technologies, talents,markets. The development prospect of olive industry is very broad.