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Self-reported health (SRH) is widely used as an epidemiological instrument given the changes in public health since its introduction in the 1980s. We examined the association between SRH and mortality and how this is affected by time and health measurements in a prospective cohort study using repeated measurements and physical examinations of 11652 men and 12684 women in Tromsø, Norway. We used Cox proportional hazard regression to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) of death for SRH, controlling for pathology, biometrics, smoking, sex and age. SRH predicted mortality independently of other, more objective health measures. Higher SRH was strongly associated with lower mortality risk. Poor SRH had HR 2.51 (CI: 2.19, 2.88). SRH is affected by disease, mental health and other risk factors, but these factors had little impact on HRs (Poor SRH: HR 1.99; CI: 1.72, 2.31). SRH predicted mortality, but with a time-dependent effect. Time strongly affected the hazard ratio for mortality, especially after ten-year follow-up (Poor SRH HR 3.63 at 0–5 years decreased to HR 1.58 at 15–21 years). SRH has both methodological and clinical value. It should not be uncritically utilised as a replacement instrument when measures of physical illness and other objective health measures are lacking.

East Asia has experienced an excessive increase in myopia in the past decades with more than 80% of the younger generation now affected. Environmental and genetic factors are both assumed to contribute in the development of refractive errors, but the etiology is unknown. The environmental factor argued to be of greatest importance in preventing myopia is high levels of daylight exposure. If true, myopia prevalence would be higher in adolescents living in high latitude countries with fewer daylight hours in the autumn-winter. We examined the prevalence of refractive errors in a representative sample of 16–19-year-old Norwegian Caucasians (n = 393, 41.2% males) in a representative region of Norway (60° latitude North). At this latitude, autumn-winter is 50 days longer than summer. Using gold-standard methods of cycloplegic autorefraction and ocular biometry, the overall prevalence of myopia [spherical equivalent refraction (SER) ≤−0.50 D] was 13%, considerably lower than in East Asians. Hyperopia (SER ≥ + 0.50 D), astigmatism (≥1.00 DC) and anisometropia (≥1.00 D) were found in 57%, 9% and 4%. Norwegian adolescents seem to defy the world-wide trend of increasing myopia. This suggests that there is a need to explore why daylight exposure during a relatively short summer outweighs that of the longer autumn-winter.

Antipoverty programs in developing countries are often difficult to implement; in particular, many governments lack the capacity to deliver payments securely to targeted beneficiaries. We evaluate the impact of biometrically authenticated payments infrastructure (\"Smartcards\") on beneficiaries of employment (NREGS) and pension (SSP) programs in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, using a large-scale experiment that randomized the rollout of Smartcards over 157 subdistricts and 19 million people. We find that, while incompletely implemented, the new system delivered a faster, more predictable, and less corrupt NREGS payments process without adversely affecting program access. For each of these outcomes, treatment group distributions first-order stochastically dominated those of the control group. The investment was cost-effective, as time savings to NREGS beneficiaries alone were equal to the cost of the intervention, and there was also a significant reduction in the \"leakage \"of funds between the government and beneficiaries in both NREGS and SSP programs. Beneficiaries overwhelmingly preferred the new system for both programs. Overall, our results suggest that investing in secure payments infrastructure can significantly enhance \"state capacity\" to implement welfare programs in developing countries.

Biometrie technology was once the purview of security, with face recognition and fingerprint scans used for identification and law enforcement. This is no longer the case; biometrics is increasingly used for commercial and civil applications. Due to the widespread diffusion of biometrics, it is important to address the ethical issues inherent to the development and deployment of the technology. This article explores the burgeoning research on biometrics for non-security purposes and the ethical implications for organizations. This will be achieved by reviewing the literature on biometrics and business ethics and drawing from disciplines such as computer ethics to inform a more robust discussion of key themes. Although there are many ethical concerns, privacy is the key issue, with associated themes. These include definitions of privacy, the privacy paradox, informed consent, regulatory frameworks and guidelines, and discrimination. Despite the proliferation of biometric technology, there is little empirical research on applied biometrics and business ethics. As such, there are several avenues for research to improve understanding of the ethical implications of using this technology.

Marine litter impacts oceans and affects marine organisms, representing a potential threat for natural stocks of pelagic fish species located at the first levels of the marine food webs. In 2013–2014, on a seasonal basis, marine litter and microplastics in stomach contents from Sardinia pilchardus and Engraulis encrasicolus were evaluated. Selected species are plankitivores of great ecological and commercial importance in the Adriatic Sea. Collected data were correlated to possible factors able to affect ingested levels as well as species, season of sampling, biometry and sex of animals. Almost all tested samples (80 organisms for each species) contained marine litter (over 90% of samples from both species) and also microplastics; while any meso- or macroplastics were recorded. On average, recorded items were as follows: 4.63 ( S. plichardus ) and 1.25 ( E. encrasicolus ) per individual. Sardines evidenced a higher number of microplastics characterised by a smaller size than those recorded in anchovies . For sardines, sex, Gastro Somatic Index and sampling season showed negligible effects on the number of ingested litter; conversely, anchovies showed differences related with both sex of animals and dominant colour of ingested materials with prevalence for black and blue colours.

In the era of ubiquitous sensors and smart devices, detecting malware is becoming an endless battle between ever-evolving malware and antivirus programs that need to process ever-increasing security related data. For malware detection, various approaches have been proposed. Among them, dynamic analysis is known to be effective in terms of providing behavioral information. As malware authors increasingly use obfuscation techniques, it becomes more important to monitor how malware behaves for its detection. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for dynamic analysis of malware. We adopt DNA sequence alignment algorithms and extract common API call sequence patterns of malicious function from malware in different categories. We find that certain malicious functions are commonly included in malware even in different categories. From checking the existence of certain functions or API call sequence patterns matched, we can even detect new unknown malware. The result of our experiment shows high enough F-measure and accuracy. API call sequence can be extracted from most of the modern devices; therefore, we believe that our method can detect the malware for all types of the ubiquitous devices.

Purpose This study aims to investigate the implications, risks and challenges of data privacy due to the use of immersive technology in the hospitality industry. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopt a mixed-method approach. Study 1 is a focus group. The authors then provide external and ecological validity with a field experiment conducted with 139 hotel clients at a three-star continental European hotel. Findings Collecting biometric data results in unbalanced privacy compared to biographic data, as it diminishes individuals’ control over their data and grants organizations absolute power. This unbalanced privacy directly influences consumers’ willingness to disclose information, affecting their choice of hotels and access to services. Practical implications Hotels should redesign their strategies to accommodate heightened privacy risks with biometric data. This can be obtained by introducing systems that foster customer confidence in data usage and facilitate customers’ willingness to disclose biometrics through immersive technology or biographic data. Originality/value This study introduces unbalanced privacy as a unique state due to sharing biometric data. The authors propose a novel doctrine, the uncontrollable privacy paradox, which is a shift from the privacy paradox. The uncontrollable privacy paradox addresses the unbalanced privacy envisaged through consumer powerlessness in data management. This research addresses the literature gap on the privacy paradox by offering a broader perspective, including business, industry and mixed reality considerations.

Soft biometrics has emerged out to be a new area of interest for the researchers due to its growing real-world applications. It includes the estimation of demographic traits like age, gender, scars, ethnicity. Moreover, researchers are trying to develop models which can accurately estimate the age or the age group of a person using different biometric traits. Presently, neural networks proves out to give the best classification results for age estimation using human faces. Hence, in this paper, we have surveyed and compared all the neural network models developed and implemented for facial age estimation from 2010 to 2019. We have precisely compared all twenty-three different research works done so far to estimate age from human faces using neural networks. Most of the works are based on convolutional neural networks and a few are based on feed forward back propagation and autoencoders. Important details, issues and results of each work are thoroughly discussed for better knowledge of interested researchers. This paper also includes details on other classification techniques for facial age estimation to give an overall idea of all additional techniques adopted by the scientists till date. Details like neural network model names, datasets used, main contributions, evaluation metrics and results are adopted for a tabular and easy to understand comparison study. Finally, the paper concludes by mentioning the other relevant future research tasks that can be done in this challenging area of research.

The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between the concentration of hormones in the seminal plasma, the bull maintenance system in the insemination station, and the regularity of sperm donation and the response to the phantom (libido level). An additional goal was to determine whether there is a relationship between the hormonal profile in the blood, the sperm plasma, the oxidative and antioxidant profile in the blood of bulls and the biometry of their testicles and scrotum, as well as the quality of their sperm in both different seasons and intensities of reproductive use. For the study, 220 healthy and sexually mature Polish Holstein–Friesian bulls were used. They all had normal libido and were fed equally. The animals were grouped according to the scheme: young (16–20 month/n = 60) and old (26–30 month/n = 60) including: individually housed (n = 30) and group housed (n = 30) young, old individually housed (n = 30) and group housed (n = 30) (n total animals = 120); young animals donating semen once a week (every Thursday) (n = 25) and sporadically (once every two months on a random day of the week) (n = 25), old animals donating semen once a week (every Thursday) (n = 25 ) and sporadic donors (once every two months on a random day of the week) (n = 25) (n total animals = 100). When analyzing the results of this study, it should be stated that regular use has a positive effect on the secretion of sex hormones in bulls. Higher levels of testosterone and lower levels of estradiol and prostaglandins resulted in higher sexual performance, expressed by a stronger response to the phantom. The differences in favor of regular use were independent of the bull's age. The results of our research illustrate that the quality of semen and its freezing potential may depend on the season and frequency of its collection, as well as on the age of the males.