An intuitive risk factors search algorithm: usage of the Bayesian network technique in personalized medicine

The article focuses on the application of the Bayesian networks (BN) technique to problems of personalized medicine. The simple (intuitive) algorithm of BN optimization with respect to the number of nodes using naive network topology is developed. This algorithm allows to increase the BN prediction quality and to identify the most important variables of the network. The parallel program implementing the algorithm has demonstrated good scalability with an increase in the computational cores number, and it can be applied to the large patients database containing thousands of variables. This program is applied for the prediction for the unfavorable outcome of coronary artery disease (CAD) for patients who survived the acute coronary syndrome (ACS). As a result, the quality of the predictions of the investigated networks was significantly improved and the most important risk factors were detected. The significance of the tumor necrosis factor-alpha gene polymorphism for the prediction of the unfavorable outcome of CAD for patients survived after ACS was revealed for the first time.     

Lowering Inventory Systems Costs by Using Regression-Derived Estimators of Demand Variability*

Scientific techniques for inventory management typically are applied to systems containing many items. Such techniques require an estimation of the demand variance (and mean) of each item from historical data. This research demonstrates a significant potential for improvement in system cost performance from using least-squares regression fits of a variance-to-mean functional relation instead of the standard statistical variance estimate. Even when there is a moderate degree of heterogeneity among items and when the form of the variance-to-mean relation is misspecified, substantial cost savings may be realized. The cost of statistical uncertainty may be reduced by half. The research also provides evidence that system cost is fairly insensitive to the number of items used to fit the regression. This paper provides the underlying reason why a regression-derived variance estimator yields lower cost: it is less variable than the usual individual item variance estimator.     

The perceptions of female media professionals in Kuwait about their job: an empowerment perspective

This study explores the perceptions of women who work in the media in Kuwait—a conservative, male-dominated society. It examines how female media professionals are treated and explores the factors that either encourage or discourage the empowerment of Kuwaiti women working in this field. In-depth interviews were conducted with five female media professionals and academics in Kuwait in order to develop measures of perceptions towards their profession, media organizations, and the general outlook of Kuwait society. The perceptions of a sample of 237 female media professionals were measured using a fifty-one-item questionnaire. An exploratory factor analysis shows that the respondents’ perceptions are grouped into eight sets of variables. The results show that, while the respondents feel empowered by education, regulations, and the current lifestyle in Kuwait, their cultural upbringing, self-image, and societal outlook discourage their empowerment.     

Implementing an Ally Development Model to Promote Safer Schools for LGB Youth: A Trans-Disciplinary Approach

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) students experience ongoing bullying, harassment, and lack of safety in school. Specialized instructional support personnel (SISPs), such as school counselors, school social workers, and school psychologists, are in a unique position to advocate for LGB students and to implement an ally development model. The purpose of this article is to describe the current climate for LGB students, to discuss the current barriers facing SISPs in advocating for change, and to provide a model of ally development for use at each level of the K–12 system.     

Another Issue Comes Out: Gay Rights Policy Voting in Recent U.S. Presidential Elections

Drawing from the theory of policy voting, this study examines the impact of opinions about gay rights on voting for presidential candidates. Qualitative analysis of the major party platforms and candidate campaign rhetoric from the six presidential elections held between 1988 and 2008 indicates that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates began openly expressing opposing positions on gay rights issues in 1992. Quantitative analysis of public opinion shows that, starting in 1992 and continuing through 2008, gay rights issues became more salient to the public, and opinions about gay rights began to exert a significant effect on vote choice. The study concludes with a discussion of the partisan forces that shaped the electoral significance of gay rights issues during the period from 1988 to 2008 and speculation about the role of gay rights issues in shaping future partisan electoral strategy.     

Cemetery locus as a mechanism of socio-cultural identity

In cultural studies of cemetery locus there is a very important aspect of understanding the cemetery as a tool for the formation of the socio-cultural identity of living people. I adhere to the point of view that the cemetery has always produced, and continues to produce, a variety of identities. While during the pre-Modern period the cemetery was a necessary element of individual self-understanding as a member of a certain community, in the Modern era the cemetery produces more particularistic identities. Modernity generates some universal and abstract schemes of identification, and by means of the repression of death from public consciousness, cemeteries lose their role as a focal point in social communication. I draw attention to the radical utopian ideas of the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, who not only considered the cemetery as a locus of memory, but also proclaimed the task of the transformation of cemeteries into a base for universal work on resurrection of dead ancestors and the restoration of brotherly relations in all mankind.     

Welfare reform and immigrant fertility

Immigration policy is at the forefront of US policy discussions, and the use of welfare benefits by immigrants has been hotly debated. In 1996, Congress enacted welfare reform legislation, which imposed strict restrictions on welfare eligibility for noncitizens. However, a number of states restored access to welfare benefits to immigrants that had been cut out in the federal welfare reform law. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we examine whether immigrant women adjusted their childbearing in response to changes in the generosity of welfare benefits at the state-level. We find that noncitizen women reduced their fertility in response to cutbacks imposed by the legislation. Our findings, which prove robust to a number of identification and robustness checks, underscore how immigrants respond to state-level policies and provide insight into the potential impacts of comprehensive immigration reform, particularly the components related to the path to citizenship and access to public benefits.     

Measuring disparities in access to water based on the normative content of the human right

Measuring access to water in the Sustainable Development Goals era involves taking into account the human rights framework. Therefore, its content should be considered to conceptualize the level of service through adequate indicators and to follow-up inequities reduction at global, national and local level. This research develops and tests a methodology to measure intra-community disparities based on human right to water normative criteria through a stratified sampling, splitting households served by community based organizations and those self-provided. This approach implies considering much reduced populations, thus special care needs to be taken with sample sizes and uncertainty of estimators. The proposed methodology is practical to locate and accurately characterize minority sectors within rural communities and allows moving beyond central-tendency estimators. It implies higher costs for field data collection than traditional approaches, but this can be assumed given the relevance of the approach from a human rights perspective, which calls for adequate tools for equity-oriented policy making at local level. The research point out how results might be used to shape decision-making processes.     

Improved randomized response in additive scrambling models

Randomized response models deal with stigmatizing variables appearing in health surveys. Additive and subtractive scrambling in split sample and double response yield unbiased mean and sensitivity estimators of high precision. The split sample method is protective of privacy. The double response method is as protective only conditionally. To achieve the maximum efficiency, the scrambling variables must be similar to each other and the probability of obtaining a true response must be as large as possible. The randomized response procedures yield more efficient estimates of the average total number of classes missed by university students.     

Climate,migration, and the local food security context: introducing Terra Populus

Studies investigating the connection between environmental factors and migration are difficult to execute because they require the integration of microdata and spatial information. In this article, we introduce the novel, publically available data extraction system Terra Populus (TerraPop), which was designed to facilitate population–environment studies. We showcase the use of TerraPop by exploring variations in the climate–migration association in Burkina Faso and Senegal based on differences in the local food security context. Food security was approximated using anthropometric indicators of child stunting and wasting derived from Demographic and Health Surveys and linked to the TerraPop extract of climate and migration information. We find that an increase in heat waves was associated with a decrease in international migration from Burkina Faso, while excessive precipitation increased international moves from Senegal. Significant interactions reveal that the adverse effects of heat waves and droughts are strongly amplified in highly food insecure Senegalese departments.