Yield decline has been the hallmark of Ethiopian sugarcane plantations. However, the extent and causes of the decline have not yet been empirically studied, making it difficult to manage the problem. This study aimed at analyzing the long-term yield data (1954–2022) with respect to variety and soil type. Thus, 8,923 records of yield data were summarized and sorted into decades, varieties, and soil types and then analyzed by applying Mann-Kendall and Tukey’s tests. The fields were classified and mapped using ArcGIS 10.3. The results revealed that 69% of the plantation fields were classified as “yield declining,” and the overall rate of decline has been 8.4 quintals ha−1 year−1 (R2 = 0.76). The rate of decline was higher for older than newer varieties and for vertisols than cambiols. Therefore, the older varieties should be micropropagated or replaced with improved ones, and the vertisols should be amended through practices such as green manuring, improved fallows, etc.

We describe an outbreak of echovirus 18 infection involving 10 patients in our neonatal intensive care unit (an attack rate of 33%). The mean age at the onset of illness was 26.8 days. Eighty percent were preterm infants. All were discharged home without sequelae. There were no differences in gestation age, birth weight, delivery mode, use of antibiotics, and parenteral nutrition between the enterovirus (EV) group and non-EV group, but the rate of breastfeeding was significantly higher in the EV group. Separation care and reinforcement of hand-washing seemed to be effective in preventing further spread of the virus. Visiting policy, hygiene practice, and handling of expressed breastmilk should be reinforced.

Infectious intestinal disease (IID) studies conducted at different levels of the surveillance pyramid have found heterogeneity in the association of socioeconomic deprivation with illness. The aim of this study was to analyse the association between socioeconomic deprivation and incidence of IID by certain gastrointestinal pathogens reported to UKHSA. Data were extracted from 2015 to 2018 for Salmonella, Campylobacter, Shigella, Giardia species, and norovirus. Rates were calculated per 100,000 person-years by the index of multiple deprivation quintile, and an ecological analysis was conducted using univariant and multvariable regression models for each pathogen. Incidence of Campylobacter, and Giardia species decreased with increasing deprivation. Conversely, the incidence of norovirus, non-typhoidal Salmonella, Salmonella typhi/paratyphi, Shigella species increased with increasing deprivation. Multivariable analysis results showed that higher deprivation was significantly associated with higher odds of higher number of cases for Shigella flexneri, norovirus and S. typhi/paratyphi. Infections most associated with deprivation were those transmitted by person-to-person spread, and least associated were those transmitted by zoonotic contamination of the environment. Person-to-person transmission can be contained by implementing policies targeting over-crowding and poor hygiene. This approach is likely to be the most effective solution for the reduction of IID.

Tang et al. (2022) propose a new class of models for stochastic mortality modelling using Hermite splines. There are four useful features of this class that are worth emphasising. First, for single-sex datasets, this new class of projection models can be fitted as a generalised linear model. Second, these models can automatically extrapolate mortality rates to ages above the maximum age of the data set. Third, simpler sub-variants of the models exist for forecasting when one of the variables lacks a clear drift. Finally, a minor reparameterisation increases the quality of long-range forecasts of period mortality.

We study the problem of finding the root vertex in large growing networks. We prove that it is possible to construct confidence sets of size independent of the number of vertices in the network that contain the root vertex with high probability in various models of random networks. The models include uniform random recursive dags and uniform Cooper-Frieze random graphs.

To harness the promises of digital transformation, different players take different paths. Departing from corporate-driven (e.g., the United States) and state-led (e.g., China) approaches, in various documents, the European Union states its goal to establish a citizen-centric data ecosystem. However, it remains contentious the extent to which the envisioned digital single market can enable the creation of public value and empower citizens. As an alternative, in this article, we argue in favor of a fair data ecosystem, defined as an approach capable of representing and keep in balance the data interests of all actors, while maintain a collective outlook. We build such ecosystem around data commons—as a third path to market and state approaches to the managing of resources—coupled with open data (OD) frameworks and spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). Indeed, based on literature, we claim that these three regimes complement each other, with OD and SDIs supplying infrastructures and institutionalization to data commons’ limited replicability and scalability. This creates the preconditions for designing the main roles, rules, and mechanisms of a data republic, as a possible enactment of a fair data ecosystem. While outlining here its main traits, the testing of the data republic model is open for further research.

Recently, the relevation transformation has received further attention from researchers, and some interesting results have been developed. It is well known that the active redundancy at component level results in a more reliable coherent system than that at system level. However, the lack of study of this problem with relevation redundancy prevents us from fully understanding such a generalization of the active redundancy. In this note we deal with relevation redundancy to coherent systems of homogeneous components. Typically, for a series system of independent components, we have proved that the lifetime of a system with relevation redundancy at component level is larger than that with relevation redundancy at system level in the sense of the usual stochastic order and the likelihood ratio order, respectively. For a coherent system with dependent components, we have developed a sufficient condition in terms of the domination function to the usual stochastic order between the system lifetime with redundancy at component level and that at system level.

Consider a financial market with nonnegative semimartingales which does not need to have a numéraire. We are interested in the absence of arbitrage in the sense that no self-financing portfolio gives rise to arbitrage opportunities, where we are allowed to add a savings account to the market. We will prove that in this sense the market is free of arbitrage if and only if there exists an equivalent local martingale deflator which is a multiplicative special semimartingale. In this case, the additional savings account relates to the finite-variation part of the multiplicative decomposition of the deflator.