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BACKGROUND: End-stage liver disease (ESLD) is not considered a risk factor for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). However, lifestyle characteristics commonly associated with increased ASCVD risk are highly prevalent in ESLD. Emerging literature shows a high burden of asymptomatic coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients with ESLD and a high ASCVD risk in liver transplantation (LT) recipients. Coronary artery calcium score (CAC) is a noninvasive test providing reliable CAD risk stratification. We implemented an LT evaluation protocol with CAC playing a central role in triaging and determining the need for further CAD assessment. Here, we inform our results from this early experience. METHODS: Patients with ESLD referred for LT evaluation were prospectively studied. We compared accuracy of CAC against that of CAD risk factors/scores, troponin I, dobutamine stress echocardiogram (DSE), and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to detect coronary stenosis ≥70 (CAD ≥ 70) per left heart catheterization (LHC). Thirty-day post-LT cardiac outcomes were also analyzed. RESULTS: One hundred twenty-four of 148 (84%) patients underwent CAC, 106 (72%) DSE/SPECT, and 50 (34%) LHC. CAC ≥ 400 was found in 35 (28%), 100 to 399 in 17 (14%), and

In spatial decision-making, real estate developers should research the residential stratifications of people at different income levels. With some public services tied strictly to homeownership, and minimum size requirement for house purchasers, both completed stratification and mixed stratification exist in the model. In both patterns, developers should invest more in suburbs when the supply of urban land decreases (or the suburban land supply increases), or when the commuting cost of suburban residents decreases (or urban public services deteriorate). The quantity of property buyers with rigid demand under the mixed stratification is more than that under the completed stratification. Ignoring them, therefore, would lead to an underestimation of suburban profits when the commuting cost is reduced (or when the urban land supply decreases), and an overestimation of urban profits when the urban public services improve (or when the suburban land supply decreases), misleading the investment of developers as result.

A dispersive decay estimate is proven for the linear propagator of the three-scale rotating stratified Boussinesq equations in the stratification-dominant regime. Because the phase function of that propagator is both singular and degenerate, obtaining the estimate requires novel techniques involving cutting phase-space shells into several pieces and using different methods in each region. Using the decay estimate, we prove the long-time existence of solutions to the initial-value problem for the nonlinear equations and obtain a rate of convergence to the limit system and intermediate asymptotics.

The two main axes of inequality in the U.S. labor market—occupation and workplace—have increasingly consolidated. In 1999, the largest share of employment at high-paying workplaces was blue-collar production workers, but by 2017 it was managers and professionals. As such, workers benefiting from a high-paying workplace are increasingly those who already benefit from membership in a high-paying occupation. Drawing on occupation-by-workplace data, we show that up to two-thirds of the rise in wage inequality since 1999 can be accounted for not by occupation or workplace inequality alone, but by this increased consolidation. Consolidation is not primarily due to outsourcing or to occupations shifting across a fixed set of workplaces. Instead, consolidation has resulted from new bases of workplace pay premiums. Workplace premiums associated with teams of professionals have increased, while premiums for previously high-paid blue-collar workers have been cut. Yet the largest source of consolidation is bifurcation in the social sector, whereby some previously low-paying but high-professional share workplaces, like hospitals and schools, have deskilled their jobs, while others have raised pay. Broadly, the results demonstrate an understudied way that organizations affect wage inequality: not by directly increasing variability in workplace or occupation premiums, but by consolidating these two sources of inequality.

Background: There have been a wide variety of clinical publications on coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) focused on specific biomarkers. Acute-phase reactants, such as C-reactive protein (CRP), ferritin, serum amyloid A (SAA), and procalcitonin, have been identified as sensitive markers of acute COVID-19 illness, even though they are nonspecific markers. Objective: The purpose of this study is to summarize the role of several biomarkers in the stratification of COVID-19 disease severity. Methods: This study followed systematic literature review method. The systematic review followed the review process as it was well developed and planned to reduce biases and eliminate irrelevant and low-quality studies. The steps for implementing a systematic review include correctly formulating the COVID-19 question to answer, developing a protocol based on inclusion and exclusion criteria, performing a detailed and broad literature search and screening the abstracts of the studies identified in the search and subsequently of the selected complete texts. After selecting the study, the next steps were synthesis of the evidence like extract the necessary data into a form designed in the protocol to summarise the included studies, assess the biases of each study, identifying the quality of the available evidence, and develop tables and text that synthesise the evidence. The secondary sources of data for this study included different published topics from national & international journals. Good number of Journal articles was taken regarding “Role of Biomarkers in the Stratification of COVID-19”. Published articles were collected from renowned indexing data source like PubMed, Medline, and Scopus. Etc. Conclusion: Significantly increased white blood cell count, lymphopenia, decreased CD3, CD4, or CD8 T-lymphocyte counts, high neutrophil count, thrombocytopenia, and dramatically elevated inflammatory biomarkers were all linked to severe disease and the probability of developing sepsis as the disease progressed. Progressive decreases with lymphopenia, thrombocytopenia, elevated CRP, procalcitonin, increased liver enzymes, impaired renal function, and coagulation derangements were more common in critically sick patients and were linked to a higher rate of clinical sequelae. In seriously and critically ill patients, elevated interleukin levels and significantly increased SAA were most frequently reported. The neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio, the systemic immune inflammation index, and the COVID-19 Severity Score are all indicators of systemic inflammation that can be used to predict disease severity, outcome, and death.

The existing literature on Global Performance Indices (GPIs) is mostly dominated by unit-level analyses focused on specifying the relevant properties of the GPIs and the motivations of state actors in being influenced by GPIs. This article advances a systemic approach, which conceives of GPIs as collectively constituting a system of normative stratification in International Relations (IR). By bringing together the literature on GPIs with the relevant IR literatures on international hierarchies and status-seeking, we identify the structural attributes of the GPI-based system of stratification, how these structural attributes shape the distribution of normative status positions among states, and how this distribution is likely to condition the pursuit of status by states. In particular, we argue that the disaggregated structure and relative ranking of states, respectively, generate status ambiguity and immobility, which both dissuade states from seeking higher moral status through improving their scores in the existing indices. We illustrate the patterns of status ambiguity and immobility present in the GPI-based system of stratification through an empirical analysis of the scores and rank positions of the United States, European Union (EU) members, and “rising powers” in five different indices in the past decade.

The stratification processes taking place in the newly independent states of the post-Soviet space have both common starting principles and special tendencies. Under the conditions of market reforms, stratification processes are deepening. Based on a comparative analysis of various approaches, the author identified nine types of stratification systems and their general historical nature. A summary description of the specifics of each of them is provided. As a special feature, the article shows the division of Uzbek society into various social strata and strata according to their status indicators.

The present paper deals with the controversially discussed relationships between the gods Alalu, Anu, Kumarbi, and Tarḫunnaš in the Hittite Song of Going Forth (CTH 344). On the basis of a new philological analysis, of comparisons with theogonies or succession myths in other ancient cultures and on the background of considerations on the cross-cultural stratification of various mythical traditions in the surviving Hittite text, various proposals on the genealogical relationship of the deities in question are weighed against each other and reasons are presented for the plausibility of the proposed new translation and general reconstruction that the divine kingship always passes from father to son within a single genealogical line.

Scientific and technological progress with all its achievements has affected various spheres of human life. Philological disciplines, including communicative linguistics, are no exception. The means of communication have changed significantly in recent decades. No one is surprised by computer-mediated interactions, the internet has become available, and it is not difficult for many people to use personal electronic gadgets. These new developments have affected both the sphere of personal communication, including business, work, and professional relationships. All this is also relevant for diplomatic discourse, the evolutionary leap of which has taken place literally in half a century: from isolation and going beyond political discourse to the level of independent development to its current functioning with the active use of the entire palette of communication tools, methods, and techniques, including Internet resources, in particular, microblogs. The purpose of this article is to determine, describe and make an attempt to predict the levels and structure of genres of diplomatic discourse in the coming decades using examples of its manifestations on Twitter in the best traditions of classical linguistics schools and considering the achievements of new research areas in linguistics.

Social capital (SC) plays a fundamental role in immigration by easing entry into a new environment. We advance a novel approach to assessing the role of SC for immigrants’ labor market incorporation. First, we isolate the impact of SC activation from the mere presence of potential help. Second, we disentangle the diverse components of migration-related SC by distinguishing between individual migration- (IM) and community migration-level (CM) connections in the country of destination. Third, we trace the roles of IM SC and CM SC across multiple labor market outcomes, ranging from the search to secure the first job to the quality of the first job to longer-term occupational mobility. Absent activation, IM SC has virtually no impact on any of the outcomes. Rather, migrants’ IM SC yield their fundamental impact when activated, contributing to a successful job search while steering them into first jobs that are of lower-quality relative to their pre-migration occupation. By contrast, CM SC facilitates the initial job search and filters immigrants into higher-quality first jobs. Moreover, immigrants who arrive when CM SC is at its most mature stage reap the clearest benefits in improving their occupational status. These findings underscore the importance of both early settlement IM SC and CM SC in the processes of immigrants’ labor market stratification.

Economic stratification lies at the heart of persistent inequities, which have been considerably amplified under COVID-19. To tackle these persistent inequities, a social economics approach and com...

Today, the term ‘global’ has become a pervasive description of universities that aim to alleviate their importance and reach. The global looks inherently big. By relating to a spherical shape it at...

Background: The added value of neurofilament light chain levels in serum (sNfL) to the concept of no evidence of disease activity-3 (NEDA-3) has not yet been investigated in detail. Objective: To assess whether combination of sNfL with NEDA-3 status improves identification of patients at higher risk of disease activity during the following year. Methods: We analyzed 369 blood samples from 155 early relapsing-remitting MS patients on interferon beta-1a. We compared disease activity, including the rate of brain volume loss in subgroups defined by NEDA-3 status and high or low sNfL (> 90th or Results: In patients with disease activity (EDA-3), those with higher sNFL had higher odds of EDA-3 in the following year than those with low sNFL (86.5% vs 57.9%; OR = 4.25, 95% CI: [2.02, 8.95]; p = 0.0001) and greater whole brain volume loss during the following year (β = −0.36%; 95% CI = [−0.60, −0.13]; p = 0.002). Accordingly, NEDA-3 patients with high sNfL showed numerically higher disease activity (EDA-3) in the following year compared with those with low sNfL (57.1% vs 31.1%). Conclusion: sNfL improves the ability to identify patients at higher risk of future disease activity, beyond their NEDA-3 status. Measurement of sNfL may assist clinicians in decision-making by providing more sensitive prognostic information.

We prove power-saving bounds for general Kloosterman sums on $\operatorname{Sp}(4)$ associated to all Weyl elements via a stratification argument coupled with $p$-adic stationary phase methods. We relate these Kloosterman sums to the Fourier coefficients of $\operatorname{Sp}(4)$ Poincar\'e series., Comment: Published version

The relative education hypothesis states that in contexts where university degrees are scarce, workers with bachelor’s degrees are sought after and enter cognitively skilled occupations; but as education expands across birth cohorts, some workers with bachelor’s degrees are unable to maintain their position in the labor market. In an earlier ASR article (Horowitz 2018), I found support for this argument; however, Furey (2021) shows model instability in estimates of the education–skill relationship. We should treat the results from these two studies as a range of possible estimates, and carefully consider interpretation of the findings in the context of the selected reference categories. Future revisions of the relative education hypothesis should consider that absolute and relative education effects might not shift concurrently, and also that labor market experiences may vary considerably by field of study and occupation.

В статье приведены комментарии автора относительно Европейских рекомендаций 2018 года по артериальной гипертензии. Уделяется подробное внимание таким аспектам, как определение и классификация артериальной гипертензии, диагностика ее степени и стадии и стратификация риска осложнений, обусловленных данным заболеванием.

Every year, in a variety of countries, current higher education students welcome newcomers with a set of ritualised practices in which the latter submit to the former through tests that entail vary...

In the highly competitive research sector, performance pressure is leading to the stratification of the academic profession, and to difficulties for early-career researchers. Support is therefore v...

In stratified sampling, ever since Dalenius [1] undertook the problem of optimum stratification, the research in the area has been progressing in various perspectives and dimensions till date. Amidst the multifaceted developments in the trend of the research, consideration of the topic by taking into account various aspects such as different sample selection methods and allocations, study variable based stratification, auxiliary variable based stratification, superpopulation models, extension to two study variables for a single auxiliary variable, extension to two stratification variables for a single study variable etc., are a few noteworthy ones. However, with regard to considering optimum stratification of heteroscedastic populations, as live populations are generally heteroscedastic, it was Gupt and Ahamed [2,3] who considered the problem for a few allocations under a heteroscedastic regression superpopulation (HRS) model. As a sequel to the work of the authors, in this paper, the problem of optimum stratification for an objective variable y based on a concomitant variable x under the HRS model is considered for an allocation proposed by Gupt [4,5] and termed as Generalised Auxiliary Variable Optimum Allocation (GAVOA). Methods of stratification in the form of equations and approximate solutions to the equations which stratify populations at optimum strata boundaries (OSB) and approximately optimum strata boundaries (AOSB) respectively are obtained. Mathematical analysis is used in minimizing sampling variance of the estimator of population mean and deriving all the proposed methods of stratification. The proposed equations divide heteroscedastic populations, symmetrical or moderately skewed or highly skewed, at OSB, but, the equations are implicit in nature and not easy in solving. Therefore, a few methods of finding AOSB are deduced from the equations through analytically justified steps of approximation. The methods may provide practically feasible solutions in survey planning in stratifying heteroscedastic population of any level of heteroscedasticity and the work may contribute, to some extent, theoretically in the research area. The methods are empirically examined in a few generated heteroscedastic data of varied shapes with some assumed levels of heteroscedasticity and found to perform with high efficiency. The proposed methods of stratification are restricted to the particular allocation used.

A partial flag variety P K of a Kac–Moody group G has a natural stratification into projected Richardson varieties. When G is a connected reductive group, a Bruhat atlas for P K was constructed in He et al. (2013): P K is locally modelled with Schubert varieties in some Kac–Moody flag variety as stratified spaces. The existence of Bruhat atlases implies some nice combinatorial and geometric properties on the partial flag varieties and the decomposition into projected Richardson varieties. A Bruhat atlas does not exist for partial flag varieties of an arbitrary Kac–Moody group due to combinatorial and geometric reasons. To overcome obstructions, we introduce the notion of Birkhoff–Bruhat atlas. Instead of the Schubert varieties used in a Bruhat atlas, we use the J -Schubert varieties for a Birkhoff–Bruhat atlas. The notion of the J -Schubert varieties interpolates Birkhoff decomposition and Bruhat decomposition of the full flag variety (of a larger Kac–Moody group). The main result of this paper is the construction of a Birkhoff–Bruhat atlas for any partial flag variety P K of a Kac–Moody group. We also construct a combinatorial atlas for the index set Q K of the projected Richardson varieties in P K . As a consequence, we show that Q K has some nice combinatorial properties. This gives a new proof and generalizes the work of Williams (2007) in the case where the group G is a connected reductive group.

We ask whether patterns of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic stratification in educational attainment are amplified or attenuated when we take a longer view of educational careers. We propose a model of staged advantage to understand how educational inequalities evolve over the life course. Distinct from cumulative advantage, staged advantage asserts that inequalities in education ebb and flow over the life course as the population at risk of making each educational transition changes along with the constraints they confront in seeking more education. Results based on data from the 2014 follow-up of the sophomore cohort of High School and Beyond offer partial support for our hypotheses. The educational attainment process was far from over for our respondents as they aged through their 30s and 40s: more than six of ten continued their formal training during this period and four of ten earned an additional credential. Patterns of educational stratification at midlife became more pronounced in some ways, as women pulled further ahead of men in their educational attainments and parental education (but not income), and high school academic achievement continued to shape educational trajectories at the bachelor’s degree level and beyond. However, African American respondents gained on White respondents during this life phase through continued formal (largely academic) training and slightly greater conditional probabilities of graduate or professional degree attainment; social background fails to predict earning an associate degree. These results, showing educational changes and transitions far into adulthood, have implications for our understanding of the complex role of education in stratification processes.

The paper focuses on the contradictory results on the effect of social background on choice of field of study (field stratification) in expanded higher education systems. We predicted that the contradictory results stem from variations in institutional selectivity and curricular policy. Based on two surveys conducted in 1999 (4146 students) and 2014 (7384 students) in the Israeli expanded higher education system, this paper analyzes changes in the ratio of continuing-generation college students in fields of study offered by institutions with varying degrees of selectivity. The results show a decrease in the selectivity of the second-tier institutions in the second analyzed period, accompanied by an increase in field stratification. We suggest that this increase stems from the differential curricular policies of second-tier higher education institutions. In the second period, the second-tier institutions initiated labor market-oriented programs for the less popular fields, thus opening them to first-generation students. In popular and lucrative fields, some of them regulated by professional associations, the second-tier institutions kept to the traditional orientation of the programs, and attracted less qualified continuing-generation students. We discuss the implications of the findings on social stratification.

The moduli space of Higgs bundles can be constructed as a quotient of an infinite-dimensional space and hence admits an orbit type decomposition. In this paper, we show that the orbit type decomposition is a complex Whitney stratification such that each stratum is a complex symplectic submanifold and hence admits a complex Poisson bracket. Moreover, these Poisson brackets glue to a Poisson bracket on the structure sheaf of the moduli space so that the moduli space is a stratified complex symplectic space, 22 pages

Trigonal curves provide an example of Brill–Noether special curves. Theorem 1.3 of Larson (Invent Math 224(3):767–790, 2021) characterizes the Brill–Noether theory of general trigonal curves and the refined stratification by Brill–Noether splitting loci, which parametrize line bundles whose push-forward to $$\mathbb {P}^1$$ has a specified splitting type. This note describes the refined stratification for all trigonal curves. Given the Maroni invariant of a trigonal curve, we determine the dimensions of all Brill–Noether splitting loci and describe their irreducible components. When the dimension is positive, these loci are connected, and if furthermore the Maroni invariant is 0 or 1, they are irreducible.

Background This study explored the relevance between rs1695 and susceptibility to the lung cancer in the Chinese Han population. Stratification analysis was conducted on the basis of age, gender, smoking status, tumor-related family history, and pathological type to observe relations between rs1695 and susceptibility to lung cancer in the subgroups. Methods A case-control study was performed with 974 lung cancer patients who were pathologically diagnosed and 1005 healthy cases based on physical examination to analyze the association between rs1695 and the risk of lung cancer. Results The frequencies of the AA, GA, and GG genotypes of rs1695 were 68.4%, 28.7%, and 2.9% in cases and 64.8%, 30.8%, and 4.2% in controls, respectively. After adjustment for age, gender, smoking status, and family history, it appears that the rs1695 G allele decreases the risk of lung cancer (OR = 0.811, 95% CI 0.684–0.961, P = 0.016). Moreover, compared with the AA genotype, the GA + GG genotype decreased lung cancer susceptibility (OR = 0.808, 95% CI 0.663–0.985, P = 0.035) and the GG genotype (OR = 0.591, 95% CI 0.347–0.988, P = 0.048). In a stratified analysis, the risk of lung cancer in the G allele carriers decreased among the males, patients without a tumor-related family history, and patients with lung adenocarcinoma, especially in smokers. Conclusion The polymorphism of locus rs1695 is related to the risk of lung cancer and is expected to be a target for the prediction of lung cancer.

National stratification maps are essential to improve forest management systems. For the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the existing maps derived from remote sensing techniques do not allow an optimal representation of the diverse land cover classes constituting the national stratification scheme. This situation is inherent to the cloud persistence, the seasonality effects and the spatial resolution of the input satellite imagery used that is not always adequate for the discrimination of certain land cover classes. This paper explores a cloud-based median luminance best pixel approach to obtain a cloud-free mosaic of optimal quality. The mosaic produced has necessitated nearly 2,500 Landsat scenes and a following object-based classification enabled the generation of a stratification map for the year 2000 according to the national stratification theme. A stratified random sampling approach that required 1,141 reference samples allowed estimating the map accuracy at 79.32%. Land cover classes areas computed using standard good practices recommendations to estimate land areas indicated that the dense moist forest area was about 158,810,975 ± 7,460,671 ha representing 68.40% ± 3.21% of the country area. Thanks to the free, user-friendly and cloud-based platforms for satellite images processing, the methodology implemented is easily replicable for other tropical countries. &nbsp

This article aims to identify the moderating effect of two dimensions of the stratification of education systems (the extent to which the first selection is based on students’ ability and the age of first selection) on social background gradient in educational attainment. Individual-level data of the European Social Survey (round 1 to 9) is complemented with new contextual indicators measuring various education systems’ characteristics. This article’s contribution to the debate is twofold. First, it simultaneously investigates two dimensions of the stratification of education systems that have never been analyzed in cross-country studies investigating long-term educational outcomes. Second, it provides a series of indicators of education systems’ characteristics collected by means of an online expert survey whose validity and reliability is also tested. Findings show that the two dimensions of the stratification of education systems have opposite effects. As the first selection is increasingly based on students’ ability, social background gradient in educational attainment increases. In contrast, postponing the age of first selection decreases social inequality in educational opportunity.

This study examines the antecedents of the intention to use m-payment applications for lower-income urban users. Using the unique socioeconomic stratification system of Colombia, this is the first ...

This paper explores the interlinkages among several trends that have accelerated in the years since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC): the inability of governments in open emerging-market economies to sustain countercyclical policies; central banks’ measures to ensure the stability of hyper-leveraged global financial markets; rising inequality within and between nations; nativist fervor and a search for political scapegoats among voting publics; and enhanced global economic control by unaccountable corporate elites. We “connect the dots” between global power-plays and national and local stratification processes by following the trajectory of six papers that Eugenia Correa authored or coauthored between 2012 and 2020 in English-language journals.

Socio-economic stratification classifies people or groups of people within a society. Although social stratification is a universal characteristic of human societies, the criteria considered to classify individuals is not unique and some methodological approaches are distinguished. In this article, we build an indicator of socioeconomic stratification for Ecuador through a Nonlinear Principal Components Analysis using data from the 2010 Census. This methodology allows the incorporation of numerical and categorical variables, and nonlinear relationships. The main results suggest that the households located in the urban area show better conditions and greater access to basic services. Also, education positively affects social and economic conditions of both individuals and the households. In light of these results, public policy should target education and public investment in the provision of basic services in rural areas.

The present analysis examines the initiation of necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship ventures in Canada from the late 1980s until more recent times, to determine how these activities relate with the business cycle. The definitions of necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship mirror those in Fairlie and Fossen (2018). Unlike previous results for other countries, I find that in Canada, both necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship appear to be procyclical, with new ventures increasing as unemployment declines. These results hold after various robustness tests, including gender stratification are applied. The possibility of using these forms of entrepreneurship as leading or lagged indicators of recessions is also considered.

After illustrating by comparison why large segments of the current practices of science evaluation should be seen as absurd in procedure or outcome and often in both, this contribution asks why these practices have emerged in the first place and why they persist despite widespread criticism.

This research examines the influence of social class stratification on students’ self-reported academic engagement. Drawing from 44 interviews with students from the three major class groups at an elite university, we show how social class patterns academic engagement. We analyze academic engagement along the following four domains: strategies for academic achievement, beliefs in personal ability, connections to academics, and the alignments between academic activities and career plans (Wang and Castenada-Sound, 2008). Counterintuitively, compared to both upper class and students from the lower class, middle-class students reported the lowest levels of academic engagement. We discuss possible explanations for these non-linear findings. We conclude by recommending that our traditional conceptions of academic engagement need to take social class into account, and further, that policy makers consider scaffolding for all non-upper class students within elite spaces.

Charles Tilly proposed a model of durable social inequality that is potentially applicable to a wide range of societies. I demonstrate this potential by examining his causal mechanisms of inequalit...

Despite routine post-transplant viral monitoring and pre-emptive therapy, viral infections remain a major cause of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation-related morbidity and mortality.We here aimed to prospectively assess the kinetics and the magnitude of cytomegalovirus-(CMV), Epstein Barr virus-(EBV), and BK virus-(BKV)-specific T cell responses post-transplant and evaluate their role in guiding therapeutic decisions by patient risk-stratification.The tri-virus-specific immune recovery was assessed by Elispot, in 50 consecutively transplanted patients, on days +20, +30, +60, +100, +150, +200 post-transplant and in case of reactivation, weekly for 1 month.The great majority of the patients experienced at least one reactivation, while over 40% of them developed multiple reactivations from more than one of the tested viruses, especially those transplanted from matched or mismatched unrelated donors. The early reconstitution of virus-specific immunity (day +20), favorably correlated with transplant outcomes. Εxpanding levels of CMV-, EBV-, and BKV-specific T cells (VSTs) post-reactivation coincided with decreasing viral load and control of infection. Certain cut-offs of absolute VST numbers or net VST cell expansion post-reactivation were determined, above which, patients with CMV or BKV reactivation had 90% probability of complete response (CR).Immune monitoring of virus-specific T-cell reconstitution post-transplant may allow risk-stratification of virus reactivating patients and enable patient-tailored treatment. The identification of individuals with high probability of CR will minimize unnecessary overtreatment and drug-associated toxicity while allowing candidates for pre-emptive intervention with adoptive transfer of VSTs to be appropriately selected.

Purpose: The number of adolescent and young adult (AYA) survivors of childhood cancer is increasing, and the impacts of therapy on their daily lives are not well understood. Adaptive functions are ...

Alzheimer disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative condition that affects an individual's cognitive function over an extended period. Treatment and prevention for AD have long been sought after; however, no strategy has yet been successful, as individuals with cognitive impairment usually present to the clinic when they have reached an advanced stage of the disease. The disease is progressive and multifactorial in its pathogenesis. Precision medicine (PM) is the new era of medicine comprising a holistic approach in dealing with diseases. With scientific innovations, PM has improved our disease knowledge, altered diagnoses and therapy approaches resulting in a more precise, predictive, preventative and personalized patient care. PM in AD focuses, among other things, on stratifying individuals according to their risk factors of developing the disease and applying preventative strategies and personalized treatment approaches for a better outcome. In this mini‐review, we have focused on a few modifiable and non‐modifiable risk factors and presented recommendations for future consideration to implement.

Introduction: The inherited risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is genetically determined. We aimed to examine associations of genetic variants of APOE and ACE with age at AD onset and with...

Delivering a great customer experience is of paramount importance for any organization. The better experience customers have regarding the organization’s products, or brands, the more repeat purchases and positive reviews they will receive. This paper explores the mobile mix as an integrated approach to facilitate a positive customer experience. A total of 415 respondents were selected and completed the survey through stratification and convenient sampling from10 regions. The study adopted a positivistic paradigm and followed a quantitative research approach. The SPSS Amos 25 was utilized to analyze the collected data. The empirical results revealed that the mobile service mix has a significant positive influence and relationship with customer experiences. This paper provides relevant and practical recommendations that could increase positive customer experiences in the mobile industry.

This manuscript leverages the plethora of research on colorism and skin tone stratification among Black Americans to consider how the “Black” racial category may change going forward. I build on ideas about path dependence, racial and ethnic boundary formations, racial reorganization, and a case study on race and body size to explore how extant group-level differences in social outcomes and emerging differences in political attitudes between lighter skinned and darker skinned Black Americans may lead to a schism between the two groups that forces us to question what it means to identify or be identified as “Black.” The idea that “Black is Black” has become thoroughly engrained in the American imagination, facilitated by the history of “one-drop rules” and encouraged by racial segregation. This drives our racial categorization and fuels resistance to many public discussions of colorism. However, we may have reached an even more important crossroads in our examination of colorism that forces us to reckon with the question “what is a racial group?”

Introduction: An association between schizophrenia and urbanicity has long been observed, with studies in many countries, including several from Denmark, reporting that individuals born/raised in densely populated urban settings have an increased risk of developing schizophrenia compared to those born/raised in rural settings. However, these findings have not been replicated in all studies. In particular, a Western Australian study showed a gradient in the opposite direction which disappeared after adjustment for covariates. Given the different findings for Denmark and Western Australia, our aim was to investigate the relationship between schizophrenia and urbanicity in these two regions to determine which factors may be influencing the relationship. Methods: We used population-based cohorts of children born alive between 1980 and 2001 in Western Australia ( N = 428,784) and Denmark ( N = 1,357,874). Children were categorised according to the level of urbanicity of their mother’s residence at time of birth and followed-up through to 30 June 2015. Linkage to State-based registers provided information on schizophrenia diagnosis and a range of covariates. Rates of being diagnosed with schizophrenia for each category of urbanicity were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for covariates. Results: During follow-up, 1618 (0.4%) children in Western Australia and 11,875 (0.9%) children in Denmark were diagnosed with schizophrenia. In Western Australia, those born in the most remote areas did not experience lower rates of schizophrenia than those born in the most urban areas (hazard ratio = 1.02 [95% confidence interval: 0.81, 1.29]), unlike their Danish counterparts (hazard ratio = 0.62 [95% confidence interval: 0.58, 0.66]). However, when the Western Australian cohort was restricted to children of non-Aboriginal Indigenous status, results were consistent with Danish findings (hazard ratio = 0.46 [95% confidence interval: 0.29, 0.72]). Discussion: Our study highlights the potential for disadvantaged subgroups to mask the contribution of urban-related risk factors to risk of schizophrenia and the importance of stratified analysis in such cases.

Background: Arterial hypertension (AH) is a leading factor of cardiovascular risk (CVR), and stratification of CVR in young patients with AH is an important area of clinical research. Aim: to develop an algorithm for CVR stratification in men aged 18-29 years with AH syndrome (AHS). Materials and methods: 165 men underwent a complete physical examination, which included standard clinical, laboratory and instrumental methods, ergomtry test, analysis of heart rate variability, pulse wave velocity determination. Results: The clinical characteristics and features of the cardiovascular system functioning at rest and during ergometry test have been determined, depending on the nosological form of AHS and the established CVR. The algorithm has been developed based on the assessment of the type of hemodynamic response and determination of the probability of cardiovascular outcomes within 10 years. Conclusion: the proposed algorithm enables to optimize therapeutic, diagnostic and preventive measures in men aged 18-29 years with AHS.

The randomized response technique (RRT) is an effective method designed to obtain the stigmatized information from respondents while assuring the privacy. In this study, we propose a new two-stage RRT model to estimate the prevalence of sensitive attribute ([Formula: see text]). A simulation study shows that the empirical mean and variance of proposed estimator are close to corresponding theoretical values. The utility of proposed two-stage RRT model under stratification is also explored. An efficiency comparison between proposed two-stage RRT model and some existing RRT models is carried out numerically under simple and stratified random sampling.

Learning Health Systems (LHS) produce analyses supporting medical decision making. Though algorithms are chosen to eliminate bias, we are left with unconscious bias present in data, due to lack of representation for marginalized populations. This is especially problematic in palliative care. Medical practitioners lack historical foundations for decision making for patients in these underrepresented populations. This paper first reviews the ethical foundations that drive our approach, then describes data stratification and analysis supporting a data-ethical LHS. Kaplan-Meier curves are generated for each of the stratum, demonstrating the value of palliative care and its impact on survival. Data were collected from government and foundation sources, stratified and analyzed to more appropriately weight medical history and characteristics to improve decision making for all populations. “Very well. Sea,” cried Canute, “I command you to come no further! Waves, stop your rolling! Surf, stop your pounding! Do not dare touch my feet!”

The local Euler obstructions are key ingredients in the study of both singularity theory and geometric representation theory. In this note, we consider matrix rank stratification over algebraically...