Knowledge-based Biomedical Data Science 2019

Knowledge-based biomedical data science (KBDS) involves the design and implementation of computer systems that act as if they knew about biomedicine. Such systems depend on formally represented knowledge in computer systems, often in the form of knowledge graphs. Here we survey the progress in the last year in systems that use formally represented knowledge to address data science problems in both clinical and biological domains, as well as on approaches for creating knowledge graphs. Major themes include the relationships between knowledge graphs and machine learning, the use of natural language processing, and the expansion of knowledge-based approaches to novel domains, such as Chinese Traditional Medicine and biodiversity.Comment: Manuscript 43 pages with 3 tables; Supplemental material 43 pages with 3 table

Exploring perceptions of help-seeking for mental health care among young adults in Maputo, Mozambique

The aim of this research was to gain an understanding of the general perceptions, barriers, and facilitators to seeking mental health care among young adults in Maputo, Mozambique. In the context of the pandemic, semi-structured interviews were conducted using the voice note feature on the mobile application WhatsApp. Participants were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling, with the initial participants originating from a social media-led mental health organisation based in the city. The participants' ages ranged from nineteen to thirty and all identified as female. The study employed a phenomenological approach and used theoretical models such as the Behavioural Model of Health Service Utilisation and the Social Identity Perspective to conceptualise and analyse the data. In comparison to studies of mental health help-seeking both globally and in low to middle-income countries, the participants shared similar perceptions surrounding perceived attitudinal and structural barriers and facilitators to seeking mental health care. Participants provided accounts of the different attitudinal barriers such as stigma, societal norms, and perceptions of care. Perceived structural barriers included the availability and affordability of care, with the latter pertaining to private services. Although barriers such as stigma and cultural and religious norms did not directly affect most participants, the importance of addressing them in the broader public was acknowledged. Facilitating factors for seeking care, such as social support, financial alternatives, and access to information proved to assist help-seekers in their search for care. The benefits of the internet and social media as sources of information and network were outlined. From this research, it was concluded that multiple aspects of the help-seeking process may be improved to increase better outcomes for those who need care. Increasing public mental health literacy in a socio-culturally sensitive manner, standardising care, and creating more mental health services in clinics and places of employment or education may contribute to the ease of people's journey to look after their mental health

Exploring the Digital Support Needs of Caregivers of People With Serious Mental Illness

In low-and middle-income countries like India, people with severe mental illness (PSMI) rely on their families as a primary source of care, given the lack of support from healthcare systems. The demanding nature of caregiving places significant physical and mental demands on caregivers, who are the primary source of support to PSMI. We explore how caregivers in under-resourced settings can be better supported through everyday digital technologies. We conducted interviews with caregivers (from urban and rural India), as well as workshops with professionals from Indian NGOs that work directly with PSMIs. We found that technology has the potential to (1) provide carer-centred support that empowers carers who experience stigma and issues with existing support networks; (2) provide support for carers to overcome barriers and progress in the recovery of the PSMI. We conclude with design considerations, proposing how an online peer community can leverage carers’ expertise to actualise support provision

In search of a cure : experiences in alternative medicine in Masvingo Urban, Zimbabwe

This thesis examines the consumption patterns of Asian alternative medicines in Masvingo urban. My focus was on understanding the flourishing of the Asian cures in the Zimbabwe’s oldest city by focusing on the distributor, the consumer and the environment characterising the discourse on alternative medicine. The major arguments point to a changing landscape of the experience of health and healing due to several factors. I argue that macro politico-economic factors and cultural issues are responsible for structuring the consumption of Asian alternative medicines. The political and economic crisis has had a huge bearing on the health sector hence spurring the emergence of alternatives which seek to fill in the gap and simultaneously offer an opportunity of income to many individuals whose livelihoods cannot be sufficiently met through the formal channels. On the other hand, the political leanings of the country towards the East have brought with it an influx of Eastern products and health remedies. I also argue that local cultural factors are responsible for the patterns in which the medicines have found place in the city since they claim to deal with issues which are of cultural and social significance to the people in the study.Thesis (PhD (Anthropology))--University of Pretoria, 2021.Anthropology and ArchaeologyPhD (Anthropology)Unrestricte

Care to explain?:A critical epistemic in/justice based analysis of legal explanation obligations and ideals for ‘AI’-infused times

Fundamental legal explanation rights are seen to be in peril because of the use of inscru-table computational methods in decision making across important domains such as health care, welfare, and the judiciary. New technology-oriented explanation rules are created in response to this. As part of such rules, human explainers are tasked with re-humanizing the automated decisional processes. By providing their explainees with meaningful information, explainers are expected to help protect these decision subjects from AI-related harms such as wrongful discrimination, and to sustain their ability to participate in decision making about them in responsible ways.De Groot questions the merits, and the ideas behind these legislative approaches. Harms that are typically ascribed to the use of algorithms and modern ‘AI’ are not so different in character from harms that existed long before the ‘digital revolution.’ If explanation rights have a role to play as a tool against what De Groot describes as knowledge related wrong-doing, law has something to answer for since its explanation rules have thus far underserved those in less privileged societal positions; before and after decisions were automated.To conduct this critical questioning this thesis approaches explanation as a form of knowledge making. It builds a ‘re-idealized’ model of explanation duties based on val-ues described in the philosophical fields of epistemic justice and injustice. Starting from critical insights with regard to responsibly informed interaction in situations of social-informational inequality, the model relates duties of explanation care to different phases of an explanation cycle. The model is then applied in an analysis of the main explanation rules for administrative and medical decision making in The Netherlands. In ‘technology and regulation’ discus-sions, both domains are appealed to as benchmarks for the dignified treatment of ex-plainees. The analysis however teases out how the paradigms ignore important dimen-sions of decision making, and how explainers are not instructed to engage with explain-ees in ways that allow to fundamentally respect them as knowers and rights holders. By generating conceptual criticism and making practical, detailed points, the thesis demon-strates work that can be done to improve explanation regulation moving forward.<br/

Poetry/Therapy

The subject of this thesis is the role writing plays in maintaining our mental health. It is primarily concerned with poetry and its relationship to therapy. The key idea put forward in this thesis is that language is experienced as a fabric of meanings which individuals use in therapeutic ways: as a means of self-expression, to attain agency, or to change the world as it is experienced to make it more liveable. The methodology employed throughout is to apply literary criticism and theory (poststructuralist analysis) in a consideration of literary texts, workshop and interview material and evidence from the clinical literature in counselling and psychology. Chapter one provides an overview of poetry therapy as a distinct modality. In this thesis I explore the relationship between poetry and therapy from two positions: as distinct therapeutic intervention and as a theme which runs through much writing practice and theory. The main finding here is that engaging in writing poetry for therapeutic purposes results in both an increased sense of personal agency and an opportunity to transform difficult or traumatic experiences. These findings are evidenced through the discussion of a series of poetry therapy workshops I facilitated at the University of East Anglia. Chapter two provides an account and a discussion of a series of interviews with three professional poets. These poets are explicit about the fact that writing helps them to re-fashion the world and to achieve a sense of personal identity and agency: these are all benefits which are ascribed to amateur writers writing for therapy. I conclude that even when individuals write for purely aesthetic reasons there is a contiguous therapeutic effect. Chapter three is concerned with how empathy is established and communicated in a therapeutic setting through the use of language. The focus of the chapter is a poetry therapy group I facilitated with four counsellors. The key finding which emerges from this chapter is that the image (or word) is a powerful mechanism for containment and transformation of feeling and is identified as the predominant function of group talk in this context. Chapter four focusses on how poetic images can be employed to articulate trauma in an oblique way. The first half of the chapter is concerned with literary texts and explores the idea that one of the key psychological drivers to writing poetically is to have our experience represented in an accurate way ⏤which takes account of what is known and has been assimilated at the conscious level as well as that which remains liminal at the lived edge of experiencing. In the second half I look at the ways in which images figure in therapy in an analysis of a discussion with two therapists and close-reading literary texts related to trauma. The key finding here is that poetic imagery provides a way of naming trauma which is able to articulate experience in profound and complex ways. Chapter five addresses the idea of narrative: how extant narrative/s (or story) can provide a psychological resource for the individual seeking to make sense of, support or change their personal experience of the world. This chapter explores literary texts and narratives derived from other sources – narrative poetry, material from Twitter and poetry produced in therapy are considered in the discussion. Chapter six presents a final exploration of how language carries with it more meanings than what we ourselves bring to it. I examine poetry as a form of psychological ritual and the ritual function of poetry and consider the role poetry plays in magic and religion. This chapter includes a discussion of poetry which uses ritual forms in relation to a workshop I facilitated in which participants were invited to construct a ‘personal ritual’ for a specific purpose. This material is set in the context of both the anthropological and psychological literature on ritual practice. This thesis brings together ideas from psychology and the therapeutic modalities with discourses from literary theory, philosophy and political thought; it also breaks down what has hitherto been seen as a boundary between the activity of professional poets and amateurs writing with an explicitly therapeutic intent. In this way, the approach taken to the topic offers a comprehensive explanation of why writing poetry in the service of mental health works

The Global Regime of Intellectual Property Rights. An interpretation grounded in their social function. The case of pharmaceutical patents

992 p.In an attempt to find conceptual frames to recover the original balance teween propietary aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and their public, social regarding dimensions, i.e., the attainment of certain conception of social justice, in is found that the "social function of property" inherent to traditional property rights is a helpful tool for that purpose. The analysis of property and the social function of property permit ot better understand the condition of IPRs and patents as a specially pronounced contingent, historiacal and social product aimed at the achievement of certainsocial goals. This is even more true for the case of pharmaceutical patents. In is not intended to question patents as a valid system to provide incentives for innovation, nether is it explored the possiblitiy of resorting to other systems for innovation based on public prizes or in general public intervention (in any case, any incentive seem to be necessary to attract and provoke the large investments required in the pharmaceutical business). It is highlighted its instrumental nature, the iuris tantum (versus iuris et de iure) legal presumption in which those patent rights are grounded and justified in order to verify taht IPRs fulfill their inherent social functions. This will enable us to claim for an alternative interpretation and implementation of law adjusted to the social needs and goals wich justify and explain their proper existence and enforceability

The Global Regime of Intellectual Property Rights. An interpretation grounded in their social function. The case of pharmaceutical patents

992 p.In an attempt to find conceptual frames to recover the original balance teween propietary aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and their public, social regarding dimensions, i.e., the attainment of certain conception of social justice, in is found that the "social function of property" inherent to traditional property rights is a helpful tool for that purpose. The analysis of property and the social function of property permit ot better understand the condition of IPRs and patents as a specially pronounced contingent, historiacal and social product aimed at the achievement of certainsocial goals. This is even more true for the case of pharmaceutical patents. In is not intended to question patents as a valid system to provide incentives for innovation, nether is it explored the possiblitiy of resorting to other systems for innovation based on public prizes or in general public intervention (in any case, any incentive seem to be necessary to attract and provoke the large investments required in the pharmaceutical business). It is highlighted its instrumental nature, the iuris tantum (versus iuris et de iure) legal presumption in which those patent rights are grounded and justified in order to verify taht IPRs fulfill their inherent social functions. This will enable us to claim for an alternative interpretation and implementation of law adjusted to the social needs and goals wich justify and explain their proper existence and enforceability

One along side the other : the collected letters of William Carlos Williams and Kenneth Burke

The collected letters of William Carlos Williams and Kenneth Burke from the Beineke Library at Yale, the Pattee Library at The Pennsylvania State University, and the Kenneth Burke estate, which span the entire forty-two years .of their relationship from 1921-1962, have been collected, collated, annotated, and introduced. The introduction describes their first meeting, offers a brief look at their lives and works, and contrasts their relationship with that of the attenuated image created by the John C. Thirlwall Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957). The introduction goes on to examine the nature of their relationship as reflected by The Collected Letters and information gathered from interviews with Kenneth Burke, Michael Burke, and Bill Williams, Jr., as well as other sources and concludes with a brief characterization of the nature of their collaboration