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Introduction: Low socioeconomic status (SES) is identified as a pivotal risk factor for mental health. Objective socioeconomic status (OSS) is measured by tangible resources, whereas subjective social status (SSS) reflects an individual's perception of their OSS. A paucity of literature exists that elucidates the specific psychosocial mechanisms or pathways linking OSS with mental illness via SSS. This research aimed to explore the mediating role of SSS in the OSS-mental health association, utilizing data from the Iranian Mental Health Survey (IranMHS). Methods: This study is a secondary analysis of data from IranMHS, a national survey conducted in 2011 through face-to-face interviews with 7,886 Iranian adults aged 15-64. As part of the original survey, the General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28) was randomly administered to half of these participants. We focused our analysis on data from 3,759 participants who completed all items of the GHQ-28. OSS was evaluated using education, occupation, wealth, and a combined OSS index, while SSS was measured using the MacArthur Scale. We examined how SSS mediates the associations between OSS factors and GHQ scores, including its four dimensions—somatic symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction, and severe depression— while adjusting for demographic variables and conducting gender-stratified analyses. Results: Among the 3759 respondents, 2157 (57.4%) were women, 2110 (56.1%) lived in urban areas, with an average age of 33.1 years (SD=12.1). SSS mediated the associations between wealth and the overall GHQ score (mediation percentage: 92.3%), education (75.4%), OSS index (66.7%), and occupation (34.0%) on the GHQ score. The most significant mediation effects were observed for wealth on the somatic symptoms, social dysfunction, and depression dimensions, with SSS accounting for more than 80% of these associations. Conclusion: The findings indicate a significant mediating role of SSS in the relationship between OSS and mental health. Enhancing our comprehension of the social determinants that moderate the relationship between objective and subjective socioeconomic status may contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the impact of SES on mental health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Exposure to heavy metals in coffee house air poses notable occupational health risks. This study aimed to quantify heavy metal and particulate pollution levels in Tehran's traditional coffee houses. Materials and Methods: In this study of 57 Tehran coffee houses, samples were collected using personal sampling pumps and 0.8 µm cellulose ester filters following National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH-7300) guidelines. Heavy metal levels were determined using ICP-AES analysis. Results: The results showed that iron and magnesium metals had the lowest concentration of metals in the air within coffee houses, with an average of 10-8 µg/m³, whereas manganese metals had the highest concentration, with an average of 4.507 10-5 µg/m³. Two of the 57 locations under study had greater Threshold Limit Values (TLVs) than the others, whereas other locations had lower TLV mixtures, and these two locations had mixed TLVs of 1.315 and 1.282, respectively. 96.49 percent of the 57 measured locations had a mixed TLV below the standard and 3.51 percent above it. According to the findings of the current study, there are eight heavy metals present in Traditional coffee houses air, ranging in concentration from more to less of Fe, Mg > Pb > Ag > Cu > Ca >Na >Mn. Conclusions: The health of coffee house employees may suffer adverse effects from chronic exposure to these elements. To protect the health of Traditional Coffee Houses employees, it is essential to incorporate engineering controls for indoor air quality, monitor ventilation systems, and ensure compliance with safety regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiological studies on air pollution, diabetes, and hypertension conflict. This study examined air pollution, diabetes, and hypertension in adults in 11 metropolitan areas of Iran (2012-2016). Local environment departments and the Tehran Air Quality Control Company provided air quality data. The VIZIT website and Stepwise Approach to Chronic Disease Risk Factor Surveillance study delivered chronic disease data. Multiple logistic regression and generalized estimating equations evaluated air pollution-related diabetes and hypertension. In Isfahan, Ahvaz, and Tehran, PM2.5 was linked to diabetes. In all cities except Urmia, Yasuj, and Yazd, PM2.5 was statistically related to hypertension. O3 was connected to hypertension in Ahvaz, Tehran, and Shiraz, whereas NO2 was not. BMI and gender predict hypertension and diabetes. Diabetes, SBP, and total cholesterol were correlated. Iran's largest cities' poor air quality may promote diabetes and hypertension. PM2.5 impacts many cities' outcomes. Therefore, politicians and specialists have to control air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and Tourette syndrome (TS) are often concurrent. This study explores the temperament profile of complex OCD phenotypes. Methods: A clinical registry recorded demographic data, psychiatric diagnoses, and temperament traits, including novelty seeking (exploratory behaviors), harm avoidance (fear of uncertainty), reward dependence (sentimentality), and persistence (perseverance). Temperament data were accrued from the Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (JTCI). Participants were divided into (1) OCD only; (2) OCD+ADHD or TS; and (3) OCD+ADHD+TS to compare temperament. Results: Participants include 126 youths with OCD (61.9% male, 88.9% white) between the ages 6 and 18 years (12.7 ± 3.1). Among the three groups, the complex neurodevelopmental disorder group OCD+ADHD+TS expresses the highest novelty seeking and lowest persistence. Harm avoidance is increased in all groups compared to reference controls, irrespective of concurrent ADHD or TS. For the OCD+ADHD+TS group, contamination and washing symptoms have higher novelty seeking (p < 0.01), while counting and ordering have lower novelty seeking (p < 0.05). Harm avoidance is increased with aggressive, somatic, and checking symptoms in OCD only (p < 0.01), while persistence is increased with repeating and counting symptoms in the comorbid groups (OCD+ADHD or TS, OCD+ADHD+TS). Discussion/Conclusion: The complex subtype, OCD+ADHD+TS, is associated with high novelty seeking and low persistence, while high harm avoidance is linked to pediatric OCD irrespective of ADHD or TS co-occurrence. In sum, pediatric OCD with ADHD and TS confers a unique temperament profile, further refining complex phenotypes of pediatric OCD for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia is one of the most important factors affecting the auditory system and can cause sensorineural hearing loss. This study investigated the relationship between behavioral hearing thresholds in children with a history of jaundice and the maximum level of bilirubin concentration in the blood. Materials and Methods: This study was performed on 18 children with a mean age of 5.6 years and with a history of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia. Behavioral hearing thresholds, transient evoked emissions and brainstem evoked responses were evaluated in all children. Results: Six children (33.3 %) had normal hearing thresholds and the remaining (66.7 %) had some degree of hearing loss. There was no significant relationship (r= -0.28, P= 0.09) between the mean total bilirubin levels and behavioral hearing thresholds in all samples. A transient evoked emission was seen only in children with normal hearing thresholds however in eight cases brainstem evoked responses had not detected. Conclusion: Increased blood levels of bilirubin at the neonatal period were potentially one of the causes of hearing loss. There was a lack of a direct relationship between neonatal bilirubin levels and the average hearing thresholds which emphasizes on the necessity of monitoring the various amounts of bilirubin levels.

Neglecting possible growth heterogeneity and focusing only on the overall pattern of prostate cancer mortality rates can result in misunderstandings and incorrect conclusions about the growth process of the outcome. The main goal of this study was to capture the heterogeneity of prostate cancer mortality rates among countries from 1990 to 2019. To accomplish this aim, we performed the Bayesian latent Growth Mixture Model (GMM). In this longitudinal study, Prostate cancer mortality rates data from 1990 to 2019, as well as the Human Development Index (HDI), the Gross National Income (GNI), and the Life Expectancy at Birth (LEB), were obtained from WHO and UNDP platforms. The Bayesian GMM was used to discover homogeneous subgroups and estimate the pattern of prostate cancer mortality rates in each subgroup. The HDI, GNI and life expectancy effects were estimated using a Bayesian conditional Latent Growth Model (LGM). Globally, the intercept and the slope of the Bayesian LGM were equal to 8.77 and 0.19, respectively. The Bayesian GMM classified the 109 countries into four groups, which had significant positive growth patterns with different slopes except for the first class. The effect of HDI was not significant on the overall prostate cancer death rates, but GNI and LEB had a significantly positive effect on the model's intercepts and a significantly negative effect on the slope. Although the prostate cancer mortality rate increased globally, it has four distinct latent subgroups with various patterns. Additionally, the effects of HDI, GNI, and LEB on prostate cancer mortality rates varied significantly among the four subgroups, indicating a need for further investigation to identify causal factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many communications systems, data can be divided into different importance levels. For these systems, unequal error protection (UEP) techniques are used to guarantee lower BER for the more important classes. In particular, if the precise characteristics of the channel are not known, UEP can be used to recover the more important classes even in poor receiving conditions. In this paper, we derive bounds on the performance of unequal error protecting turbo codes. These bounds serve as an important tool in predicting the performance of these codes. In order to derive the bounds, we introduce the notion of UEP-uniform interleaver which is a random interleaver that does not change the order of classes in the turbo code frame. We also present a method to derive the weight enumerating function for UEP turbo codes. Index Terms--Turbo codes, unequal error protection, error bounds.

A major concern in designing communication systems is to maintain quality of service for a wide range of channel conditions. This is an important issue particularly for the applications where precise characterization of the channel is impossible. For such applications, the source data can be classified into several classes and Unequal Error Protection (UEP) can be used to effectively protect the more important classes even in poor receiving conditions. This paper is focused on the study, design, and performance evaluation of unequal error protecting turbo coded modulation schemes. We first propose several schemes for unequal error protecting using turbo coded modulation. All these schemes provide high performance gains for more important classes that can hardly be achieved using conventional coded modulation schemes. We then study unequal error protecting turbo coded modulation schemes by deriving channel capacity and cutoff rates for different protection levels. We show that for more important classes more room is available for improvement. Index Terms--Turbo coded modulation, unequal error protection.

We derive performance bounds for turbo-coded modulation systems over fading channels. We consider a Ricean fading channel model both with and without channel-state information (CSI). This model obviously includes Rayleigh fading channel as a special case. The bounds are extensions of similar bounds derived for additive white Gaussian noise channels. For the special case of a Rayleigh fading channel with CSI, we also derive a tighter version of the bound. We illustrate the use of the new bounds via some numerical examples. Index Terms: Error probability bounds, fading channels, parallel concatenated codes, turbo-coded modulation, turbo-codes.

In this paper we investigate the problem of designing reduced complexity detectors for multitrack high-density magnetic recording systems. The detectors derived in this work operate on superstate sets and carry several survivors for each set. We show that such a reduced state increased survivor approach provides near optimal performance to the maximum likelihood method, namely the Viterbi Algorithm (VA), but operate at a fractional complexity of the VA. Index Terms - Inter-track interference, multitrack multihead systems.

In this paper multistage trellis-coded vector quantization (MS-TCVQ) is developed as a constrained trellis source-coding technique. The performance of the two-stage TCVQ is studied for Gaussian sources. Issues of stage-by-stage design, output alphabet selection, and complexity are addressed with emphasis on selecting and partitioning the stage codebooks. For a given rate, MS-TCVQ achieves low encoding and storage complexity compared to TCVQ, and comparisons with same-dimensional multistage vector quantization indicate a 0.5-3-dB improvement in signal-to-quantization-noise ratio. Index Terms - Data compression, residual quantizers, trellis-coded vector quantization (TCVQ), vector quantization.

We derive a new upper bound on the word- and bit-error probabilities of turbo codes with maximum-likelihood decoding by using the Gallager bound. Since the derivation of the bound for a given interleaver is intractable, we assume uniform interleaving as in the derivation of the standard union bound for turbo codes [1], [2]. The result is a generalization of the transfer function bound and remains useful for a wider range of signal-to-noise ratios, particularly for some range below the channel cutoff rate. The new bound is also applicable to other linear codes. Index Terms - Error bounds, Gallager bound, parallel concatenated codes, performance bounds, turbo codes, union bound.

We study the decentralized detection problem in a general framework where arbitrary number of quantization levels at the local sensors are allowed, and transmission from the sensors to the fusion center is subject to both noise and interchannel interference. We treat both Bayesian and Neyman-Pearson approaches to the problem, and develop an iterative descent algorithm to design the optimal quantizers and fusion rule. Some numerical examples for both approaches are also presented.

Optimal scalar quantizer design for transmission over a finite-state channel is considered. The objective is to minimize the mean-squared error when the channel is in the normal mode of operation, while guaranteeing a minimum fidelity when the channel is in the "bad" state. An optimal quantizer design algorithm for the general case where noisy state information is available both at the receiver and at the transmitter is derived. It is shown that using mixed strategies is necessary in order to achieve the optimal performance. Finally, the case where the observation is noisy is considered and it is shown that the optimal scheme in this case is to apply the algorithm for the "no observation noise" to the mean-squared estimate of the desired random variable from the noisy data. Index Terms - Finite-state channels, quantization, joint source-channel coding, data compression.

Derivation and description of capacity, or achievable rate regions in network information theory often involves auxiliary random variables. Unless the cardinalities of these random variables are bounded, the capacity region remains uncomputable, that is, there does not exist an algorithm that can compute the capacity region with a prescribed degree of accuracy. Reducing the cardinalities of these auxiliary random variables results in a major reduction in the amount of computation required to derive the capacity regions. In this paper we present improved upper bounds on the cardinality of the auxiliary random variables encountered in network information theory. Using these new bounds results in a reduction in the dimensionality of the space over which the optimization is performed and therefore considerably decreases the amount of computation required to describe the capacity region within a given accuracy. Key words: Information theory, computational efficiency, cardinality bounds.

Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS) is a spectrum disorder due to variants in genes of the cohesin protein complex. The following abstracts are from the Cornelia de Lange Syndrome Scientific and Educational Symposium held virtually in October 2020. Aspects of behavior, including autistic features, impulsivity, adaptive skills, executive function, and anxiety are described. Applied behavioral analysis is a promising approach for autism, and an N‐acetylcysteine trial is proposed. Children below 6 years with CdLS have an increased number of and further travel to medical providers, with insurance type comprising a significant barrier. Speech, language, and feeding abilities fall significantly below expectations for age in CdLS. Augmentative alternative communication can yield potential barriers as well as interesting benefits. Developmentally, studies in animal models further elucidate the mechanisms and roles of cohesin: link with mediator transcriptional complex; facilitation of enhancer‐promoter communication; regulation of gene expression; allocation of cells to germ layers; and repair of spontaneous DNA damage in placental cells. Genome and RNA sequencing can help identify the molecular cause in the 20% of individuals with suspected CdLS and negative testing. The phenotypes in individuals with variants in the SMC1A gene are distinct, and that with intractable seizures has been further evaluated. AMA CME credits provided by GBMC, Baltimore, MD. All studies approved by an ethics committee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A K-out-of-M multiple-access channel is a mathematical model for transmission of information between a large number of potential transmitters and one receiver, where at any transmission interval only a (usually small) number of transmitters are active transmitting their messages. In this work we study the problem of matching between correlated information sources and a K-out-of-M multiple-access channel. We show that by employing the correlation between the information sources and using a two-step coding scheme better results can be achieved compared to separate source and channel coding. A coding and decoding scheme is described and sufficient conditions for reliable transmission of the correlated information sources via the K-out-of-M multiple-access channel, based on this scheme are obtained. Index Terms - Multi-user information theory, multiple-access channels, joint source-channel coding, correlated information sources, source-channel matching