Prevalence and risk factor of diabetes among the elderly people in West Bengal: evidence-based LASI 1st wave.

BACKGROUND: The complication of Diabetes is one of the important health issues among the older adult population in any region. The higher risks of diabetes prevalence among older adult people in the countries was due to social-cultural changes such as increasing urbanization, dietary changes, without physical activity, and unhealthy lifestyle behavior. The present study examines the prevalence and associated risk factors of diabetes among older adults in the state of West Bengal. METHODS: The first wave of the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India 2017-18 was used to achieve the study objectives. Descriptive statistics with multinomial logistic regression models were used to carry out crude and adjusted odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals and examine the associated risk factors of diabetes prevalence among older adults. RESULTS: The findings of the study indicate that the overall prevalence of diabetes among the study participants was found to be 12.4% which was significantly higher in urban areas (19%) compare to rural areas (6%). The socio-economic and bio-demographic factors like educational status, richest background family, marital status, obesity, and family history of diabetes were significantly associated with higher risks of diabetes prevalence among the older adult population in West Bengal. The risks of diabetes in the richest adult people were significantly higher than in the poorest adult people (OR = 2.78; 95% CI: 1.974-3.917). The higher risks of diabetes mellitus among the richest wealthy people are because of lifestyle behavior, smoking, and tobacco consumption respectively. CONCLUSION: The study needs to policy and awareness program to reduce economic inequality and prevention of diabetes care and treatment-seeking behavior, especially for the older adult population in West Bengal.

Are delay ages at marriage increasing? Pre-marital sexual relation among youth people in the place of residence in India.

BACKGROUND: Adolescent sexual and reproductive health is a major public health issue throughout the world. At the same time shifting of marriage are undergoing discernible changes in country like India. This paper attempts to examine the effect of delay age at marriage on the risks of pre-marital sexual intercourse for the youth people in the place of residence. METHODS: Data used in the present study is from various annual publications of Sample Registration System (SRS) and four round of National Family Health Survey, which was conducted in 2015-2016. The Kaplan-Meier life table technique and multivariate regression models are used to examine the premarital sex by the place of residence and marriage cohort. RESULTS: Findings of the study indicate that the reasons underlying delayed marriage differs between blow 21 years age group and 22-30 years age group. Multinomial analysis clearly shows education, wealth quintile and mass media are major controlling factors of delayed age at marriage. Residing in urban adolescent women who belonged to better economic family background and exposed to mass media had a higher probability to experience premarital sexual intercourse than the rural adolescent in delay age group. CONCLUSION: The study concludes that the restorative the empowerment of youth especially for women and health care provider should consider a multidimensional approach for higher education among youth people and safe sexual behaviour in pre-marital sexual intercourse.

Semiparametric multiple inflation count model with application to a smoking cessation study.

Count data are observed by practitioners across various fields. Often, a substantially large proportion of one or some values causes extra variation and may lead to a particular case of mixed structured data. In these cases, a standard count model may lead to poor inference of the parameters involved because of its inability to account for extra variation. Furthermore, we hypothesize a possible nonlinear relationship of a continuous covariate with the logarithm of the mean count and with the probability of belonging to an inflated category. We propose a semiparametric multiple inflation Poisson (MIP) model that considers the two nonlinear link functions. We develop a sieve maximum likelihood estimator (sMLE) for the regression parameters of interest. We establish the asymptotic behavior of the sMLE. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed sieve MIP (sMIP). Then, we illustrate the methodology on data from a smoking cessation study. Finally, some remarks and opportunities for future research conclude the article.

Effect of Main Versus Ancillary Ligand Substitution on the Photophysical Properties of a Series of Ir(III) Complexes: A Detailed Theoretical Investigation.

Herein, we report the effects of different electron-withdrawing groups (EWG) (-F) and electron-donating groups (EDG) (-OMe and -NH2) on main ligands (ppy) and ancillary (acac) of [Ir(ppy)2(acac)] [ppy = 2-phenylpyridine; acac = acetylacetonato] using seven complexes by DFT and TDDFT calculations. We find that irrespective of the substituents, absorption of ppy-substituted complexes is blue-shifted, while for the acac-substituted complexes, it is red-shifted. The calculations also show that the substitution of EWGs causes an overall drop in the frontier molecular orbital energy levels; however, we observed a reverse effect for EDGs. To calculate the radiative rate kr, we considered the spin-orbit coupling matrix element (SOCME) (⟨T1|HSOC|Sn⟩) between Sn (n = 1, 2, etc.) excited state and T1, transition dipole moment (µ(Sn)), and the energy difference between excited singlet states Sn and T1 state (ΔE(Sn - T1)). To compare the temperature-independent nonradiative process, we considered SOC between T1 and S0 (⟨T1|HSOC|S0⟩) and the energy gap between optimized T1 and S0 states. Furthermore, to formulate the temperature-dependent nonradiative rate, we computed the activation barrier (E1) for the metal-to-ligand state (3MLCT) to a metal-centered state (3MC) conversion. The emission peaks show that the changes of triplet state T1 from 3MLCT → 3MC via transition states (3TS) and 3MLCT → 1GS (GS = ground state) via the 3MC/1GS minimum energy crossing point are not much affected by the nature of substituents in the ancillary and the main ligand. The order of E1 for the investigated complexes indicates that electron-donating substituents -OMe at both ppy and acac ligands can cause a decrease in nonradiative rate constants. Natural transition orbitals of the complexes show that they are mainly localized on the main ligand ppy and the Ir atoms and hardly on the ancillary ligand acac.

Surface Defect Passivation and Reaction of c-Si in H2S.

A unique passivation process of Si surface dangling bonds through reaction with hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is demonstrated in this paper. A high-level passivation quality with an effective minority carrier lifetime (τeff) of >2000 µs corresponding to a surface recombination velocity of <3 cm/s is achieved at a temperature range of 550-650 °C. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed the bonding states of Si and S and provides insights into the reaction pathway of Si with H2S and other impurity elements both during and after the reaction. Quantitative analysis of XPS spectra showed that the τeff increases with an increase in the surface S content up to ∼3.5% and stabilizes thereafter, indicative of surface passivation by monolayer coverage of S on the Si surface. However, S passivation of the Si surface is highly unstable because of thermodynamically favorable reaction with atmospheric H2O and O2. This instability can be eliminated by capping the S-passivated Si surface with a protective thin film such as low-temperature-deposited amorphous silicon nitride.

InterPro in 2011: new developments in the family and domain prediction database.

InterPro (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/) is a database that integrates diverse information about protein families, domains and functional sites, and makes it freely available to the public via Web-based interfaces and services. Central to the database are diagnostic models, known as signatures, against which protein sequences can be searched to determine their potential function. InterPro has utility in the large-scale analysis of whole genomes and meta-genomes, as well as in characterizing individual protein sequences. Herein we give an overview of new developments in the database and its associated software since 2009, including updates to database content, curation processes and Web and programmatic interfaces.

Menstrual and reproductive factors associated with risk of breast cancer among Indian women: a cross sectional study from National Family Health Survey, 2019-21.

BACKGROUND: The breast cancer is common cancer in women globally. The risk of breast cancer is strongly associated with women's menstrual and reproductive factors that have been established in different countries. Therefore present study was aim to explore the association between menstrual and reproductive factors and the risk of breast cancer screening in Indian women. METHODS: The present study data has been used fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-V) with 724,115 women in aged 15-49 in 2019-21. The self-reported ever screened of breast cancer for women aged 30-49 was the main outcome variable of the study. Logistic regression models were used to estimate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for breast cancer by menstrual and reproductive factors adjusted for potential confounders. RESULTS: Late menarche (OR = 2.20, 95% CI: 1.48-3.28), irregular menstrual cycle (OR = 1.29, 95% CI: 1.08-3.53)), delay age at first birth (OR = 1.93, 95% CI: 1.11-3.04) and contraceptive pill used (OR = 1.11, 95% CI: 0.74-2.10) were significantly associated to increases the uptake of screening breast cancer. While, a higher number of birth (OR = 0.52, 95% CI: 0.10-1.03), and long duration of breast-feeding practice (OR = 0.75, 95% CI: 0.63-0.91) were reduced to participate for screening breast cancer. CONCLUSION: The results of the study confirm the role of menstrual and reproductive factors in breast cancer in Indian women. Therefore, our findings are imperative for developing breast cancer prevention strategies and better preparedness. Creating awareness and providing knowledge on cancer could be key strategies for the reduction of breast cancer in Indian reproductive age group women.

Corrected profile likelihood confidence interval for binomial paired incomplete data.

Clinical trials often use paired binomial data as their clinical endpoint. The confidence interval is frequently used to estimate the treatment performance. Tang et al. (2009) have proposed exact and approximate unconditional methods for constructing a confidence interval in the presence of incomplete paired binary data. The approach proposed by Tang et al. can be overly conservative with large expected confidence interval width (ECIW) in some situations. We propose a profile likelihood-based method with a Jeffreys' prior correction to construct the confidence interval. This approach generates confidence interval with a much better coverage probability and shorter ECIWs. The performances of the method along with the corrections are demonstrated through extensive simulation. Finally, three real world data sets are analyzed by all the methods. Statistical Analysis System (SAS) codes to execute the profile likelihood-based methods are also presented.

Approximate confidence intervals for the difference in proportions for partially observed binary data.

We consider partially observed binary matched-pair data. We assume that the incomplete subjects are missing at random. Within this missing framework, we propose an EM-algorithm based approach to construct an interval estimator of the proportion difference incorporating all the subjects. In conjunction with our proposed method, we also present two improvements to the interval estimator through some correction factors. The performances of the three competing methods are then evaluated through extensive simulation. Recommendation for the method is given based on the ability to preserve type-I error for various sample sizes. Finally, the methods are illustrated in two real-world data sets. An R-function is developed to implement the three proposed methods.

Procalcitonin and C-Reactive Protein as an Early Predictor of Infection in Elective Gastrointestinal Cancer Surgery-a Prospective Observational Study.

BACKGROUND: Postoperative infections are a common entity following elective gastrointestinal surgery among which intra-abdominal infection is notorious and life threatening. Early detection could reduce postoperative morbidity and permit safe and early discharge. This study was aimed to establish the usefulness of procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) on postoperative day 3 as reliable markers for early detection of intra-abdominal infection and other postoperative infections following elective gastrointestinal cancer surgery. METHODS: A total of 125 patients following elective gastrointestinal cancer surgery were prospectively observed until discharge from January 2018 to December 2019. The incidence of intra-abdominal infections and other postoperative infections was recorded. Serum PCT and CRP were estimated on postoperative day 3 for all the patients. ROC analysis of PCT and CRP was performed to establish their predictability in detecting these infections. Risk factors for postoperative infections were also studied. RESULTS: The incidence of intra-abdominal infection (IAI) was 24%. The difference in PCT between the infected and non-infected patients was statistically significant (p = 0.001) but not in CRP (p = 0.223). On ROC analysis of CRP and PCT in detecting IAI, the areas under the curve were 0.494 and 0.615 respectively. CONCLUSION: Raised serum PCT values on postoperative day 3 indicate the presence of infections and should prompt the surgeon to consider other investigations to confirm the presence of IAI and other postoperative infections and plan early intervention thus expediting the postoperative recovery. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: CTRI/2018/12/016695.

Pancreaticoduodenectomy: Impact of Volume on Outcomes at a Tertiary Care Center-Our Experience in Single Institute of Nepal.

BACKGROUND: Pancreaticoduodenectomy is a complex high-risk surgical procedure usually done for malignant disease carrying significant postoperative morbidity and mortality. An audit and analysis of rate of postoperative morbidity and mortality and the impact of case volume can provide information about the lacunas in patient care and methods to improve it for safe and early discharge of patients. This study was conducted to find out demographic profile, the rate of perioperative morbidities, mortality, and impact of case volume on patients undergoing pancreaticoduodenectomy for malignant disease which may serve as a guide to uplift the patient care in our center. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data of patients undergoing pancreaticoduodenectomy from 2015 to 2019 was performed. A total of 62 patients were included in the study. Patient's clinic-demographic details and intraoperative and postoperative events were recorded. The rate of various postoperative morbidities and mortality and year-wise trend of these factors were analyzed. RESULTS: Most of the patients were in the sixth decade of life (38.7%) with male preponderance (61.3%). Pancreatic cancer was most commonly seen followed by cholangiocarcinoma (46.8%). SSI (32.3%), intraabdominal collection (25.8%), anastomotic leak (14.5%), pancreatic fistula (22.6%), and postpancreatectomy hemorrhage (8.1%) were the major postoperative events. Mortality was found in 12.9% patients. CONCLUSION: There has been a decrease in rate of all these postoperative adverse events and improvement in the intraoperative blood loss and surgical duration with advancing years and increasing number of cases.

Correction: Iridium-mediated C-S bond activation and transformation: organoiridium(III) thioether, thiolato, sulfinato and thiyl radical compounds. Synthesis, mechanistic, spectral, electrochemical and theoretical aspects.

Correction for 'Iridium-mediated C-S bond activation and transformation: organoiridium(III) thioether, thiolato, sulfinato and thiyl radical compounds. Synthesis, mechanistic, spectral, electrochemical and theoretical aspects' by Ujjwal Das et al., Dalton Trans., 2015, 44, 8625-8639, DOI: 10.1039/C5DT00448A.

InterPro: the integrative protein signature database.

The InterPro database (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/) integrates together predictive models or 'signatures' representing protein domains, families and functional sites from multiple, diverse source databases: Gene3D, PANTHER, Pfam, PIRSF, PRINTS, ProDom, PROSITE, SMART, SUPERFAMILY and TIGRFAMs. Integration is performed manually and approximately half of the total approximately 58,000 signatures available in the source databases belong to an InterPro entry. Recently, we have started to also display the remaining un-integrated signatures via our web interface. Other developments include the provision of non-signature data, such as structural data, in new XML files on our FTP site, as well as the inclusion of matchless UniProtKB proteins in the existing match XML files. The web interface has been extended and now links out to the ADAN predicted protein-protein interaction database and the SPICE and Dasty viewers. The latest public release (v18.0) covers 79.8% of UniProtKB (v14.1) and consists of 16 549 entries. InterPro data may be accessed either via the web address above, via web services, by downloading files by anonymous FTP or by using the InterProScan search software (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/InterProScan/).

Analysis of interval-censored competing risks data under missing causes.

In this article, interval-censored competing risks data are analyzed when some of the causes of failure are missing. The vertical modeling approach has been proposed here. This approach utilizes the data to extract information to the maximum possible extent especially when some causes of failure are missing. The maximum likelihood estimates of the model parameters are obtained. The asymptotic confidence intervals for the model parameters are constructed using approaches based on observed Fisher information matrix, and parametric bootstrap. A simulation study is considered in detail to assess the performance of the point and interval estimators. It is observed that the proposed analysis performs better than the complete case analysis. This establishes the fact that the our methodology is an extremely useful technique for interval-censored competing risks data when some of the causes of failure are missing. Such analysis seems to be quite useful for smaller sample sizes where complete case analysis may have a significant impact on the inferential procedures. Through Monte Carlo simulations, the effect of a possible model misspecification is also assessed on the basis of the cumulative incidence function. For illustration purposes, three datasets are analyzed and in all cases the conclusion appears to be quite realistic.

The growth of methylammonium lead iodide perovskites by close space vapor transport.

Vapor deposition processes have shown promise for high-quality perovskite solar cells with potential pathways for scale-up to large area manufacturing. Here, we present a sequential close space vapor transport process to deposit CH3NH3PbI3 (MAPI) perovskite thin films by depositing a layer of PbI2 then reacting it with CH3NH3I (MAI) vapor. We find that, at T = 100 °C and pressure = 9 torr, a ∼225 nm-thick PbI2 film requires ≥125 minutes in MAI vapor to form a fully-reacted MAPI film. Raising the temperature to 160 °C increases the rate of reaction, such that MAPI forms within 15 minutes, but with reduced surface coverage. The reaction kinetics can be approximated as roughly first-order with respect to PbI2, though there is evidence for a more complicated functional relation. Perovskite films reacted at 100 °C for 150 minutes were fabricated into solar cells with an SLG/ITO/CdS/MAPI/Spiro-OMeTAD/Au structure, and a device efficiency of 12.1% was achieved. These results validate the close space vapor transport process and serve as an advance toward scaled-up, vapor-phase perovskite manufacturing through continuous vapor transport deposition.

New developments in the InterPro database.

InterPro is an integrated resource for protein families, domains and functional sites, which integrates the following protein signature databases: PROSITE, PRINTS, ProDom, Pfam, SMART, TIGRFAMs, PIRSF, SUPERFAMILY, Gene3D and PANTHER. The latter two new member databases have been integrated since the last publication in this journal. There have been several new developments in InterPro, including an additional reading field, new database links, extensions to the web interface and additional match XML files. InterPro has always provided matches to UniProtKB proteins on the website and in the match XML file on the FTP site. Additional matches to proteins in UniParc (UniProt archive) are now available for download in the new match XML files only. The latest InterPro release (13.0) contains more than 13 000 entries, covering over 78% of all proteins in UniProtKB. The database is available for text- and sequence-based searches via a webserver (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro), and for download by anonymous FTP (ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/interpro). The InterProScan search tool is now also available via a web service at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/webservices/WSInterProScan.html.

Correlation between in Situ Diagnostics of the Hydrogen Plasma and the Interface Passivation Quality of Hydrogen Plasma Post-Treated a-Si:H in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells.

Passivation of the interface defect states is crucial to mitigate the recombination losses in silicon solar cells. In this work, we have investigated the role of hydrogen plasma treatment (HPT) to passivate the interfacial defects between crystalline (c-Si) and hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) in silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells. For the first time, we have found a correlation between the dynamic properties of hydrogen plasma and passivation quality of the films by using in situ optical emission spectroscopy and quasi-steady state photoconductance measurement. The optimum condition for saturation of the dangling bonds by HPT has been studied in detail by tuning the excited hydrogen (H) species and ion bombardment energies by controlling physical parameters like plasma current and chamber pressure. We have investigated the role of annealing after HPT to redistribute the H in the post-treated a-Si:H film and have obtained an i Voc of 755 mV, minority carrier lifetime (τeff) of 4.6 ms, and SRV of 1.5 cm/s on test structures having only an 10 nm intrinsic a-Si:H layer on textured silicon wafers. The H bond configuration at the interface of a-Si:H and c-Si has been investigated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, which demonstrates improved monohydride bonding in the films after HPT derived from the analysis of microstructure parameter and H concentration values. Raman spectroscopy shows the absence of the nanocrystalline fraction after HPT and verifies reduced coordination defects due to annealing after HPT. The proof of concept has been validated by fabricated SHJ solar cells having a Voc of 729 mV and efficiency of 18.7% after HPT, with the best cell efficiency reaching 20.2% after doped layer optimization. The decrease in reverse saturation current and ideality factor after HPT verifies that the improvement in performance is from reduced recombination losses at the interface due to passivation of defects in midgap states.

Integr8 and Genome Reviews: integrated views of complete genomes and proteomes.

Integr8 is a new web portal for exploring the biology of organisms with completely deciphered genomes. For over 190 species, Integr8 provides access to general information, recent publications, and a detailed statistical overview of the genome and proteome of the organism. The preparation of this analysis is supported through Genome Reviews, a new database of bacterial and archaeal DNA sequences in which annotation has been upgraded (compared to the original submission) through the integration of data from many sources, including the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database, the UniProt Knowledgebase, InterPro, CluSTr, GOA and HOGENOM. Integr8 also allows the users to customize their own interactive analysis, and to download both customized and prepared datasets for their own use. Integr8 is available at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/integr8.

InterPro, progress and status in 2005.

InterPro, an integrated documentation resource of protein families, domains and functional sites, was created to integrate the major protein signature databases. Currently, it includes PROSITE, Pfam, PRINTS, ProDom, SMART, TIGRFAMs, PIRSF and SUPERFAMILY. Signatures are manually integrated into InterPro entries that are curated to provide biological and functional information. Annotation is provided in an abstract, Gene Ontology mapping and links to specialized databases. New features of InterPro include extended protein match views, taxonomic range information and protein 3D structure data. One of the new match views is the InterPro Domain Architecture view, which shows the domain composition of protein matches. Two new entry types were introduced to better describe InterPro entries: these are active site and binding site. PIRSF and the structure-based SUPERFAMILY are the latest member databases to join InterPro, and CATH and PANTHER are soon to be integrated. InterPro release 8.0 contains 11 007 entries, representing 2573 domains, 8166 families, 201 repeats, 26 active sites, 21 binding sites and 20 post-translational modification sites. InterPro covers over 78% of all proteins in the Swiss-Prot and TrEMBL components of UniProt. The database is available for text- and sequence-based searches via a webserver (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro), and for download by anonymous FTP (ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/interpro).

The InterPro Database, 2003 brings increased coverage and new features.

InterPro, an integrated documentation resource of protein families, domains and functional sites, was created in 1999 as a means of amalgamating the major protein signature databases into one comprehensive resource. PROSITE, Pfam, PRINTS, ProDom, SMART and TIGRFAMs have been manually integrated and curated and are available in InterPro for text- and sequence-based searching. The results are provided in a single format that rationalises the results that would be obtained by searching the member databases individually. The latest release of InterPro contains 5629 entries describing 4280 families, 1239 domains, 95 repeats and 15 post-translational modifications. Currently, the combined signatures in InterPro cover more than 74% of all proteins in SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL, an increase of nearly 15% since the inception of InterPro. New features of the database include improved searching capabilities and enhanced graphical user interfaces for visualisation of the data. The database is available via a webserver (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro) and anonymous FTP (ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/interpro).