Prevalence of diseases and pathological conditions in young people under 45 years of age with abdominal obesity in Siberia

Aim. To study the prevalence of abdominal obesity in young people aged 25–44 years in Novosibirsk, as well as the prevalence of diseases and pathological conditions in individuals with abdominal obesity.Materials and methods. We conducted a cross-sectional, population-based study of the population of Novosibirsk aged 25–44 years. The screening examined 1,415 people, including 670 men and 745 women. For all individuals, we evaluated the presence of such conditions as abdominal obesity (AO), arterial hypertension (AH), increased body mass index (BMI), coronary heart disease (according to validated epidemiologic and functional criteria with ECG findings classified according to the Minnesota Code), diabetes mellitus (DM), reduced glomerular filtration rate (GFR), chronic bronchitis (CB), increased blood levels of total cholesterol (hypercholesterolemia) and lowdensity lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (hyper-LDL-cholesterolemia).Results. The prevalence of AO in the population of Novosibirsk aged 25–44 years was 42.4%: in men – 42.7%, in women – 42.1%. We found that AO had a significant direct effect on the development of AH (odds ratio (OR) = 2.550, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.899–3.422, p = 0.0001), CB (OR = 1.830, CI 1.326–2.527, p = 0.0001), hypercholesterolemia (OR = 1.486, CI 1.193–1.851, p = 0.0001), hyper-LDL-cholesterolemia (OR = 1.527, CI 1.222–1.907, p = 0.0001) and a reverse effect on reduced GFR (OR = 0.603, CI 0.427–0.852, p = 0.004). In the male population under 45 years of age, AO had a significant direct effect on the development of AH, CB, hypercholesterolemia, and hyper-LDL-cholesterolemia. In the female population under the age of 45, AO had a significant direct effect on the development of DM, AH, CB, and hyper-LDL-cholesterolemia and a reverse effect on the reduced GFR development.Conclusion. Therefore, in the young Siberian population under 45 years of age, abdominal obesity is associated with the development of common diseases and pathological conditions.

Spillovers Between Russia’s and Turkey’s Geopolitical Risk During the 2000–2021 Putin Administration

This paper sets out to explore the nexus between Russia and Turkey regarding their geopolitical uncertainty measures (GPR) during the Putin Administration era in Russia. The innovative Caldara and Iacoviello indices and the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) methodology are adopted. This study sheds light on the series of geopolitical events that have taken place in Russia and Turkey in recent decades. Empirical outcomes reveal that Turkish geopolitical uncertainty is a weak influencer that increases Russian GPR in the short-term while decreasing it in the medium-term. The reverse effect does not hold. The nexus between geopolitical risk in Turkey and Russia is found to be unstable. Uncertainty in Turkey constitutes both a negative and a positive determinant of geopolitical stability in Russia, depending on the time horizon of the impact. Russia could take advantage of Turkish positive effects in the medium-run. This could be alarming for investors but could also prove beneficial as they should not invest in Russian assets when the country’s geopolitical risk is elevated due to Turkey’s geopolitical instability. Additionally, it is documented that energy financial markets in Russia are not influential on geopolitical uncertainty.

SIMULATION OF AERODYNAMIC INSTABILITY OF BUILDING STRUCTURES ON THE EXAMPLE OF A BRIDGE SECTION. PART 2: SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM IN A COUPLED AEROELASTIC FORMULATION AND COMPARISON WITH ENGINEERING ESTIMATES

In this paper, we study aerodynamic instability using the example of a two-dimensional problem of flow around a simplified section of a flexible suspension bridge (on the Tacoma River, USA). A direct dynamic coupled calculation was performed to determine the critical speed of manifestation of aerodynamic instability. The results obtained were compared with the results of engineering estimates presented in [40]. This example shows that to solve such problems it is possible to use the lighter des turbulence model instead of the les turbulence model and, therefore, a coarser mesh. In contrast to existing engineering techniques, direct numerical modeling of the interaction between the structure and the air flow allows one to take into account the reverse effect of the structure on the flow, as well as the mutual influence of several types ofaerodynamic instability.

Periodic and localized structures in dusty plasma with Kaniadakis distribution

The propagation of electrostatic dust-ion-acoustic nonlinear periodic waves is investigated in dusty plasma wherein electrons follow Kaniadakis distribution. The Korteweg–de Vries (KdV) and modified Korteweg–de Vries (mKdV) equations are derived by employing reductive perturbation method and their cnoidal wave solutions are analysed. The effect of relevant parameters (viz., κ-deformed parameter κ and dust concentration β) on the dynamics of cnoidal structures is discussed. Further it is found that amplitude of compressive cnoidal waves increases with increasing values of β, while reverse effect is observed in case of rarefactive cnoidal structures with rising values of β. Also κ-deformed parameter κ bears no effect on cnoidal waves associated with KdV equation, whereas κ-deformed parameter κ significantly affects the cnoidal waves associated with mKdV equation.

Is Earth a Perfect Square? Repetition Increases the Perceived Truth of Highly Implausible Statements

A single exposure to statements is typically enough to increase their perceived truth. This Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect has long been assumed to occur only with statements whose truth value is unknown to participants. Contrary to this hypothesis, recent research found a TBR effect with statements known to be false. Of note, a recent model even posits that repetition could increase the perceived truth of highly implausible statements. As for now, however, no empirical evidence has reported a TBR effect for highly implausible statements. Here, we reasoned that one may be found provided a sensitive truth measure is used and statements are repeated more than just once. In a preregistered experiment, participants judged the truth of highly implausible statements on a 100-point scale, and these statements were either new to them or had been presented five times before the judgment task. We observed a TBR effect: truth judgments were higher for repeated statements than for new ones - even if all statements were still judged as false. Exploratory analyses additionally suggest that all participants were not equally prone to this TBR effect: about half the participants showed no or even a reverse effect. Overall, the results provide direct empirical evidence to the claim that repetition can increase perceived truth even for highly implausible statements, although not equally so for all participants and not to the point of making the statements look true.

The intensification of the outer suburbs and the impact on travel behaviour: an analysis of York Region

In an effort to retrofit outer suburban municipalities to be more supportive of public transit, and less oriented toward private auto, intensification is being practiced throughout the Greater Golden Horseshoe. York Region, an outer suburban municipality undergoing intensification, has been selected for analysis. This report studies TTS (Transportation Tomorrow Survey) data using multiple linear regression, as well as comparative analysis to evaluate the effect an increase in density has upon transit modal split. Findings align strongly with reviewed literature. Findings are that while density and transit mode split are positively statistically correlated, the impact density is estimated to have on transit mode split is minimal. This suggests intensifying the outer suburbs may have the reverse effect of increasing auto traffic at the expense of small increases in transit mode split. A series of recommendations regarding transportation policies for outer suburban municipalities are then provided to coexist with intensification policies.

The intensification of the outer suburbs and the impact on travel behaviour: an analysis of York Region

In an effort to retrofit outer suburban municipalities to be more supportive of public transit, and less oriented toward private auto, intensification is being practiced throughout the Greater Golden Horseshoe. York Region, an outer suburban municipality undergoing intensification, has been selected for analysis. This report studies TTS (Transportation Tomorrow Survey) data using multiple linear regression, as well as comparative analysis to evaluate the effect an increase in density has upon transit modal split. Findings align strongly with reviewed literature. Findings are that while density and transit mode split are positively statistically correlated, the impact density is estimated to have on transit mode split is minimal. This suggests intensifying the outer suburbs may have the reverse effect of increasing auto traffic at the expense of small increases in transit mode split. A series of recommendations regarding transportation policies for outer suburban municipalities are then provided to coexist with intensification policies.

Improving Transformer-Based Neural Machine Translation with Prior Alignments

Transformer is a neural machine translation model which revolutionizes machine translation. Compared with traditional statistical machine translation models and other neural machine translation models, the recently proposed transformer model radically and fundamentally changes machine translation with its self-attention and cross-attention mechanisms. These mechanisms effectively model token alignments between source and target sentences. It has been reported that the transformer model provides accurate posterior alignments. In this work, we empirically prove the reverse effect, showing that prior alignments help transformer models produce better translations. Experiment results on Vietnamese-English news translation task show not only the positive effect of manually annotated alignments on transformer models but also the surprising outperformance of statistically constructed alignments reinforced with the flexibility of token-type selection over manual alignments in improving transformer models. Statistically constructed word-to-lemma alignments are used to train a word-to-word transformer model. The novel hybrid transformer model improves the baseline transformer model and transformer model trained with manual alignments by 2.53 and 0.79 BLEU, respectively. In addition to BLEU score, we make limited human judgment on translation results. Strong correlation between human and machine judgment confirms our findings.

Timing of harvesting reverses the effect of cutting twice with ratoon rice

A new ratoon rice cropping method known as the SALIBU system, which uses the lower nodes of the stubble, is gradually spreading throughout the tropical regions. In the technology package, ‘cutting twice’ has a large effect on the number of ratoons (tillers), and interestingly, the effect changed from positive to negative with changes in the management conditions used to cultivate rice. A previous study investigated conditions including fertilizing, water management, and growth stage at harvesting; however, which of these conditions has the greatest effect on the effect of ‘cutting twice’ remains unclear. We performed a pot experiment to clarify which of the level of fertilizer or the delay of harvesting time affects the number of ratoons. The results showed that with a short delay in harvesting there were almost no ratoons, a long delay in harvesting resulted in many ratoons. By contrast, the single cutting results in ratoons. This indicates the negative effect of cutting twice occur due to earlier harvesting. However, adding fertilizer results in more ratoons, and the response to delayed harvesting showed a similar tendency; in short, no reverse effect occurred due to the level of fertilizer. Harvesting earlier (at the physiological maturation stage; 25% green husk) than normal is emphasized in the SALIBU technology package. However, our results show the ‘cutting twice’ has a negative effect on the number of ratoons when harvesting early.