College students' health-risk behaviors on spring break were examined via pre-and post-surveys. Over one-half reported getting drunk on the previous vacation and stated intentions to do so again. Personal normative beliefs and situational expectations emerged as strong predictors of intentions to binge and pacts of actual bingeing. Intentions for casual sex were predicted by attitudes, personal normative beliefs, situational expectations, and pacts, whereas engagement in casual sex was predicted by intentions for and prior experience with it. The majority of students reported rarely/never using condoms during spring break. They appear to participate in riskier behaviors in the spring break environment than at home. Keywords: binge drinking, casual sex, spring break, theory of interpersonal behavior. Résumé: Soũlerie et rapports sexuels occasionnels pendant les vacances de printemps. On a examiné les comportements á risque pour la santé des étudiants universitaires pendant les vacances de printemps par moyen d'enquêtes antérieures et postérieures. Plus de la moitié des étudiants ont signalé qu'ils s'étaient enivrés pendant les vacances de l'année précédente et ont indiqué l'intention de le faire encore. Les croyances normatives personnelles et les attentes situationnelles ont surgi comme de forts indices des intentions de se soũler ainsi que de vrais pactes de beuverie. Les intentions de rapports sexuels occasionnels ont été prédites par des attitudes, des croyances normatives personnelles, des attentes situationnelles et des pactes, tandis que la participation aux rapports sexuels occasionnels a été prédite par les intentions et l'expérience antérieure. La majorité des étudiants ont signalé qu'ils utilisaient rarement des préservatifs ou pas du tout pendant les vacances de printemps. Ils semblent participer á des comportements plus risqués dans l'environnement des vacances de printemps que chez eux. Motsclés: soũlerie, rapports sexuels occasionnels, vacances de printemps, thrie de comportement interpersonnel. Article: 1999), the tripartite relationship among youth, tourism, and risk-taking has the potential to constitute a serious public-health hazard. The ''Disinhibiting" Effect of Traditional Spring Break Recent studies in diverse geographic milieux have highlighted unprecedented health risks of young tourists at seaside resorts (Clark and Clift 1996; Eiser and Ford 1995; Hennink, Cooper and Diamond 2000; Ryan and Robertson 1997). Pronounced substance abuse and risky sexual practices were found among vacationing young adults at rates considerably higher than in their home environments. Such high-risk behaviors were traced back to situational disinhibition in settings encouraging sexual and emotional transience and to liminality (a sense of inbetweenness involving a temporary loss of social bearings). Further, high-risk behaviors in these settings seemed to be strongly associated with situational factors (the resort and what it entails), tourists' expectations of relevant experiences, social context (including p...

As neural network model sizes have dramatically increased, so has the interest in various techniques to reduce their parameter counts and accelerate their execution. An active area of research in this field is sparsity -encouraging zero values in parameters that can then be discarded from storage or computations. While most research focuses on high levels of sparsity, there are challenges in universally maintaining model accuracy as well as achieving significant speedups over modern matrix-math hardware. To make sparsity adoption practical, the NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture introduces sparsity support in its matrix-math units, Tensor Cores. We present the design and behavior of Sparse Tensor Cores, which exploit a 2:4 (50%) sparsity pattern that leads to twice the math throughput of dense matrix units. We also describe a simple workflow for training networks that both satisfy 2:4 sparsity pattern requirements and maintain accuracy, verifying it on a wide range of common tasks and model architectures. This workflow makes it easy to prepare accurate models for efficient deployment on Sparse Tensor Cores.

The methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene is one of the most investigated of the genes associated with chronic human diseases because of its associations with hyperhomocysteinemia and toxicity. It has been proposed as a prototype gene for the prevention of colorectal cancer (CRC). The major objectives of this meta-analysis were to examine the polymorphism-mutation patterns of MTHFR and their associations with risk for CRC as well as potential contributing factors for mutations and disease risks. This analysis included 33,626 CRC cases and 48,688 controls across 92 studies for MTHFR 677 and 16,367 cases and 24,874 controls across 54 studies for MTHFR 1298, comprising data for various racial and ethnic groups, both genders, and multiple cancer sites. MTHFR 677 homozygous TT genotype was protective (p < .05) for CRC for all included populations; however, with heterogeneity across various racial–ethnic groups and opposing findings, it was a risk genotype for the subgroup of Hispanics (p < .01). Additional countries for which subgroup analyses resulted in 677 TT as a risk genotype included Turkey, Romania, Croatia, Hungary, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, U.S. Hawai’i, Taiwan, India, and Egypt. Countries with the highest mutation rates and risks for both MTHFR 677 and 1298 genotypes are presented using global maps to visualize the grouping patterns. Meta-predictive analyses revealed that air pollution levels were associated with gene polymorphisms for both genotypes. Future nursing research should be conducted to develop proactive measures to protect populations in cities where air pollution causes more deaths.

BackgroundGiven the long hours on the road involving multiple and interacting work stressors (i.e., delivery pressures, irregular shifts, ergonomic hazards), commercial drivers face a plethora of health and safety risks. Researchers goal was to determine whether and to what extent long-haul trucker work schedules influence sleep duration and quality.MethodsSurvey and biometric data collected from male long-haul truck drivers at a major truckstop in central North Carolina over a six month period.ResultsDaily hours worked (mean = 11 hours, 55 minutes) and frequency of working over government-mandated daily HOS regulations (23.8% “frequently or always”) were statistically significant predictors of sleep duration. Miles driven per week (mean = 2,812.61), irregular daily hours worked (63.8%), and frequency of working over the daily hour limit (23.8% “frequently or always”) were statistically significant predictors of sleep quality.ConclusionImplications of findings suggest a comprehensive review of the regulations and operational conditions for commercial motor vehicle drivers be undertaken.

To personalize nutrition, the purpose of this study was to examine five key genes in the folate metabolism pathway, and dietary parameters and related interactive parameters as predictors of colorectal cancer (CRC) by measuring the healthy eating index (HEI) in multiethnic families. The five genes included methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) 677 and 1298, methionine synthase (MTR) 2756, methionine synthase reductase (MTRR 66), and dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) 19bp, and they were used to compute a total gene mutation score. We included 53 families, 53 CRC patients and 53 paired family friend members of diverse population groups in Southern California. We measured multidimensional data using the ensemble bootstrap forest method to identify variables of importance within domains of genetic, demographic, and dietary parameters to achieve dimension reduction. We then constructed predictive generalized regression (GR) modeling with a supervised machine learning validation procedure with the target variable (cancer status) being specified to validate the results to allow enhanced prediction and reproducibility. The results showed that the CRC group had increased total gene mutation scores compared to the family members (p < 0.05). Using the Akaike’s information criterion and Leave-One-Out cross validation GR methods, the HEI was interactive with thiamine (vitamin B1), which is a new finding for the literature. The natural food sources for thiamine include whole grains, legumes, and some meats and fish which HEI scoring included as part of healthy portions (versus limiting portions on salt, saturated fat and empty calories). Additional predictors included age, as well as gender and the interaction of MTHFR 677 with overweight status (measured by body mass index) in predicting CRC, with the cancer group having more men and overweight cases. The HEI score was significant when split at the median score of 77 into greater or less scores, confirmed through the machine-learning recursive tree method and predictive modeling, although an HEI score of greater than 80 is the US national standard set value for a good diet. The HEI and healthy eating are modifiable factors for healthy living in relation to dietary parameters and cancer prevention, and they can be used for personalized nutrition in the precision-based healthcare era.