Income distribution and mortality in Sweden

<p><strong>Background</strong>: The hypothesis that a high income inequality on a societal level is associated with poor health outcomes has been both rejected and accepted in empirical studies. Whether the influence of economic circumstances on health operates at the individual level or societal level has important implications on policy and intervention alternatives. The objective of this study was to analyse the relationship between income inequality and mortality in Swedish municipalities and if the relationship varies depending on the mean income or on the time-lag between income inequality and mortality.</p><p><strong>Methods</strong>: The study was based on register data on mean income and income inequality (Gini coefficients) from Statistics Sweden 1982 and 1998, aggregated on the municipality level. Data on age-standardised death rates per 100,000 persons were obtained for 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998 and 2002. The analysis on 1998 was a test of the robustness of the results.</p><p><strong>Results</strong>: The relationship between high income inequality in 1982 and mortality in 1983 was negative with a similar relationship in 1998. Using latency periods, the results show a decreasing trend of mortality in relation to higher Gini coefficients. A positive relationship between Gini and mean income implies that municipalities with larger income distribution also had a higher mean income and vice versa.</p><p><strong>Conclusions</strong>: High income inequality does not have a negative effect on mortality in Swedish municipalities. The municipalities with high income inequality have also high mean income as opposed to many other countries. The income level seems to be more substantial for mortality than the income inequality.</p&gt

Identifying some bottlenecks of the concurrency workbench

We present results which identify some of the bottlenecks of the Concurrency Workbench (CWB). Our results concentrate on the Minimize command which computes an agent with the smallest state space that is observation equivalent with a supplied agent. Measurements show that three major bottlenecks can be identified and that the performance of the CWB depends heavily on the amount of available primary memory

A Bayesian Framework for Active Learning

Copyright © 2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.We describe a Bayesian framework for active learning for non-separable data, which incorporates a query density to explicitly model how new data is to be sampled. The model makes no assumption of independence between queried data-points; rather it updates model parameters on the basis of both observations and how those observations were sampled. A `hypothetical' look-ahead is employed to evaluate expected cost in the next time-step. We show the efficacy of this algorithm on the probabilistic high-low game which is a non-separable generalisation of the separable high-low game introduced by Seung et al. Our results indicate that the active Bayes algorithm performs significantly better than passive learning even when the overlap region is wide, covering over 30% of the feature space

A Boundary Element Formulation for the Wave Propagation in Unsaturated soils

International audienceThis paper aims at obtaining an advanced formulation of the time -domain Boundary Element Method (BEM) for two-dimensional dynamic analysis of unsaturated soil. Unlike the usual time-domain BEM the present formulation applies a Convolution Quadrature which requires only the Laplace-domain instead of the time-domain fundamental solutions. The coupled equations governing the dynamic behavior of unsaturated soils ignoring contributions of the inertia effects of the fluids (water and air) are derived based on the poromechanics theory within the framework of the suction-based mathematical model. In this formulation, the solid skeleton displacements, water pressure and air pressure are presumed to be independent variables. As there is no analytical solution for the 2D wave propagation in unsaturated soils in the literature, to verify the accuracy of this implementation, the displacement response obtained by the boundary element formulation is partially verified by comparison with the elastodynamics problem

Psykosocial yrkesexponeringsmatris : En uppdatering av ett klassifikationssystem för yrkesrelaterade psykosociala exponeringar

Psychosocial Job Exposure Matrix : An Update of a Classification System for Work-related Psychosocial Exposures A previous psychosocial job exposure matrix was constructed by Johnson et al. in 1990 based on data from the annual Swedish Living Conditions Survey (ULF) 1977 and 1979. Changes in the working life and in the occupational classification system have made an update necessary. The objective was also to further develop this method of measurement. The new matrix was constructed using questionnaire data from the Swedish Work Environment Survey 1989-97 (n=48,894). Items measuring control, demand, and support were identified by factor analyses. Occupational code, sex, age and duration of work were used to construct the matrix. A borrowing system based on "closest neighbour occupation" was used to impute the score in empty cells. Various ways of defining the matrix were tested but the structure of the previous matrix was retained in this first version, except for minor changes in the imputation system and the age categorisation. The matrix has been validated through linkage with individual data from from the Swedish Work Environment Survey 1989-97 (back pain and sleep problems) and the ULF 1988-96 (back pain, sleep problems, all mortality and cardiovascular mortality). Keywords: Psychosocial work environment, psychosocial job exposure matrix. demand, control, support.År 1990 konstruerade Johnson m fl en "psychosocial job exposure matrix" baserad på data från Statistiska centralbyråns undersökningar av levnadsförhållanden (ULF) 1977 och 1979. Förändringar i arbetslivet och införandet av ett nytt yrkesklassifikationssystem har gjort det nödvändigt med en uppdatering. Målsättningen med detta arbete har också varit att ytterligare utveckla denna mätmetod. Matrisen baserar sig på data från Statistiska centralbyråns Arbetsmiljöundersökningar 1989-97 (n=48 894). Med hjälp av faktoranalys kunde arbetsmiljödimensionerna "Krav", "Kontroll" och "Stöd" tydligt identifieras. Förutom yrke är matrisen uppdelad på kön, ålder och tid i yrket. I de fall matrisen innehållit tomma celler så har ett lånesystem tillämpats där man tagit värdet från närmaste "grannyrke". Under arbetets gång har flera olika varianter av matrisens utformning testats. Den slutliga versionen överensstämmer dock i stort med den första versionen förutom mindre förändringar av lånesystemet och ålderskategoriseringen. Validering av matrisen har skett genom samkörning med individdata från Arbetsmiljöundersökningarna 1989-97 (ryggont och sömnbesvär) och ULF-databasen 1988-96 (ryggont, sömnbesvär, alla dödsorsaker och hjärt-kärl-dödlighet)

Finite driving rate and anisotropy effects in landslide modeling

In order to characterize landslide frequency-size distributions and individuate hazard scenarios and their possible precursors, we investigate a cellular automaton where the effects of a finite driving rate and the anisotropy are taken into account. The model is able to reproduce observed features of landslide events, such as power-law distributions, as experimentally reported. We analyze the key role of the driving rate and show that, as it is increased, a crossover from power-law to non power-law behaviors occurs. Finally, a systematic investigation of the model on varying its anisotropy factors is performed and the full diagram of its dynamical behaviors is presented.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure