Cross-Linguistic Twitter Analysis of Discussion Themes before, during and after Ramadan

© 2019 IEEE. This study represents the first comprehensive analysis of Twitter data for the United Arab Emirates using both Arabic and English texts. Particular attention is given to the impact of the holy period of Ramadan on the thematic content of Twitter discourse. We examine users\u27 tweet frequency, tweet length and tweet content for different languages (English/Arabic) using statistical methods and topic modeling. The results indicate that Arabic language tweets, during the Ramadan period, included more religious themes than did English tweets. Also, relative to English, Arabic tweets showed greater consistency of content during the three months of the study (before, during and after Ramadan). English content varied significantly over the three months with notable fluctuations in the frequency of content centering on the music, shopping, and health categories. These results suggest that such analytic methods applied to social media data can provide a useful indicator of societal discussion themes. Further research is merited with larger datasets over longer timeframes

Artificial intelligence for improving Nitrogen Dioxide forecasting of Abu Dhabi environment agency ground-based stations

Abstract Nitrogen Dioxide (NO $$_{2}$$ 2 ) is a common air pollutant associated with several adverse health problems such as pediatric asthma, cardiovascular mortality,and respiratory mortality. Due to the urgent society’s need to reduce pollutant concentration, several scientific efforts have been allocated to understand pollutant patterns and predict pollutants’ future concentrations using machine learning and deep learning techniques. The latter techniques have recently gained much attention due it’s capability to tackle complex and challenging problems in computer vision, natural language processing, etc. In the NO $$_{2}$$ 2 context, there is still a research gap in adopting those advanced methods to predict the concentration of pollutants. This study fills in the gap by comparing the performance of several state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models that haven’t been adopted in this context yet. The models were trained using time series cross-validation on a rolling base and tested across different periods using NO $$_{2}$$ 2 data from 20 monitoring ground-based stations collected by Environment Agency- Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Using the seasonal Mann-Kendall trend test and Sen’s slope estimator, we further explored and investigated the pollutants trends across the different stations. This study is the first comprehensive study that reported the temporal characteristic of NO $$_{2}$$ 2 across seven environmental assessment points and compared the performance of the state-of-the-art deep learning models for predicting the pollutants’ future concentration. Our results reveal a difference in the pollutants concentrations level due to the geographic location of the different stations, with a statistically significant decrease in the NO $$_{2}$$ 2 annual trend for the majority of the stations. Overall, NO $$_{2}$$ 2 concentrations exhibit a similar daily and weekly pattern across the different stations, with an increase in the pollutants level during the early morning and the first working day. Comparing the state-of-the-art model performance transformer model demonstrate the superiority of ( MAE:0.04 (± 0.04),MSE:0.06 (± 0.04), RMSE:0.001 (± 0.01), R $$^{2}$$ 2 : 0.98 (± 0.05)), compared with LSTM (MAE:0.26 (± 0.19), MSE:0.31 (± 0.21), RMSE:0.14 (± 0.17), R $$^{2}$$ 2 : 0.56 (± 0.33)), InceptionTime (MAE: 0.19 (± 0.18), MSE: 0.22 (± 0.18), RMSE:0.08 (± 0.13), R $$^{2}$$ 2 :0.38 (± 1.35) ), ResNet (MAE:0.24 (± 0.16), MSE:0.28 (± 0.16), RMSE:0.11 (± 0.12), R $$^{2}$$ 2 :0.35 (± 1.19) ), XceptionTime (MAE:0.7 (± 0.55), MSE:0.79 (± 0.54), RMSE:0.91 (± 1.06), R $$^{2}$$ 2 : $$-$$ - 4.83 (± 9.38) ), and MiniRocket (MAE:0.21 (± 0.07), MSE:0.26 (± 0.08), RMSE:0.07 (± 0.04), R $$^{2}$$ 2 : 0.65 (± 0.28) ) to tackle this challenge. The transformer model is a powerful model for improving the accurate forecast of the NO $$_{2}$$ 2 levels and could strengthen the current monitoring system to control and manage the air quality in the region

Noise Annoyance in the UAE : A Twitter Case Study via a Data-Mining Approach

Noise pollution is a growing global public health concern. Among other issues, it has been linked with sleep disturbance, hearing functionality, increased blood pressure and heart disease. Individuals are increasingly using social media to express complaints and concerns about problematic noise sources. This behavior-using social media to post noise-related concerns-might help us better identify troublesome noise pollution hotspots, thereby enabling us to take corrective action. The present work is a concept case study exploring the use of social media data as a means of identifying and monitoring noise annoyance across the United Arab Emirates (UAE). We explored an extract of Twitter data for the UAE, comprising over eight million messages (tweets) sent during 2015. We employed a search algorithm to identify tweets concerned with noise annoyance and, where possible, we also extracted the exact location via Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates) associated with specific messages/complaints. The identified noise complaints were organized in a digital database and analyzed according to three criteria: first, the main types of the noise source (music, human factors, transport infrastructures); second, exterior or interior noise source and finally, date and time of the report, with the location of the Twitter user. This study supports the idea that lexicon-based analyses of large social media datasets may prove to be a useful adjunct or as a complement to existing noise pollution identification and surveillance strategies

Predicting early Alzheimer’s with blood biomarkers and clinical features

Abstract Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disorder that leads to dementia. This study employs explainable machine learning models to detect dementia cases using blood gene expression, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and clinical data from Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Analyzing 623 ADNI participants, we found that the Support Vector Machine classifier with Mutual Information (MI) feature selection, trained on all three data modalities, achieved exceptional performance (accuracy = 0.95, AUC = 0.94). When using gene expression and SNP data separately, we achieved very good performance (AUC = 0.65, AUC = 0.63, respectively). Using SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), we identified significant features, potentially serving as AD biomarkers. Notably, genetic-based biomarkers linked to axon myelination and synaptic vesicle membrane formation could aid early AD detection. In summary, this genetic-based biomarker approach, integrating machine learning and SHAP, shows promise for precise AD diagnosis, biomarker discovery, and offers novel insights for understanding and treating the disease. This approach addresses the challenges of accurate AD diagnosis, which is crucial given the complexities associated with the disease and the need for non-invasive diagnostic methods

Gut microbiome dysbiosis in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BackgroundAlzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes gradual memory loss. AD and its prodromal stage of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are marked by significant gut microbiome perturbations, also known as gut dysbiosis. However, the direction and extent of gut dysbiosis have not been elucidated. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis and systematic review of 16S gut microbiome studies to gain insights into gut dysbiosis in AD and MCI.MethodsWe searched MEDLINE, Scopus, EMBASE, EBSCO, and Cochrane for AD gut microbiome studies published between Jan 1, 2010 and Mar 31, 2022. This study has two outcomes: primary and secondary. The primary outcomes explored the changes in α-diversity and relative abundance of microbial taxa, which were analyzed using a variance-weighted random-effects model. The secondary outcomes focused on qualitatively summarized β-diversity ordination and linear discriminant analysis effect sizes. The risk of bias was assessed using a methodology appropriate for the included case-control studies. The geographic cohorts' heterogeneity was examined using subgroup meta-analyses if sufficient studies reported the outcome. The study protocol has been registered with PROSPERO (CRD42022328141).FindingsSeventeen studies with 679 AD and MCI patients and 632 controls were identified and analyzed. The cohort is 61.9% female with a mean age of 71.3±6.9 years. The meta-analysis shows an overall decrease in species richness in the AD gut microbiome. However, the phylum Bacteroides is consistently higher in US cohorts (standardised mean difference [SMD] 0.75, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.37 to 1.13, p DiscussionNotwithstanding possible confounding from polypharmacy, our findings show the relevance of diet and lifestyle in AD pathophysiology. Our study presents evidence for region-specific changes in abundance of Bacteroides, a major constituent of the microbiome. Moreover, the increase in Phascolarctobacterium and the decrease in Bacteroides in MCI subjects shows that gut microbiome dysbiosis is initiated in the prodromal stage. Therefore, studies of the gut microbiome can facilitate early diagnosis and intervention in Alzheimer's disease and perhaps other neurodegenerative disorders

Utilizing machine learning for survival analysis to identify risk factors for COVID-19 intensive care unit admission: A retrospective cohort study from the United Arab Emirates.

BackgroundThe current situation of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an innovative tool for addressing the evolving clinical challenges. An example is utilizing Machine Learning (ML) models-a subfield of AI that take advantage of observational data/Electronic Health Records (EHRs) to support clinical decision-making for COVID-19 cases. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical characteristics and risk factors for COVID-19 patients in the United Arab Emirates utilizing EHRs and ML for survival analysis models.MethodsWe tested various ML models for survival analysis in this work we trained those models using a different subset of features extracted by several feature selection methods. Finally, the best model was evaluated and interpreted using goodness-of-fit based on calibration curves,Partial Dependence Plots and concordance index.ResultsThe risk of severe disease increases with elevated levels of C-reactive protein, ferritin, lactate dehydrogenase, Modified Early Warning Score, respiratory rate and troponin. The risk also increases with hypokalemia, oxygen desaturation and lower estimated glomerular filtration rate and hypocalcemia and lymphopenia.ConclusionAnalyzing clinical data using AI models can provide vital information for clinician to measure the risk of morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 patients. Further validation is crucial to implement the model in real clinical settings

Baseline characteristics statistical analysis: Baseline characteristics of patients stratified by severity measure by accessing the ICU, mean (SD) or N (%).

Baseline characteristics statistical analysis: Baseline characteristics of patients stratified by severity measure by accessing the ICU, mean (SD) or N (%).</p

Baseline characteristics statistical analysis: Baseline characteristics of patients stratified by severity measure by accessing the ICU, mean (SD) or N (%).

Baseline characteristics statistical analysis: Baseline characteristics of patients stratified by severity measure by accessing the ICU, mean (SD) or N (%).</p

Missing data patterns in multivariate data.

Explore patterns of missingness between levels of included variables. The pairs plots show relationships between missing values (gray) and observed values (Blue) for all the features. The distributions are used to visualize the continuous features, and the proportions are shown for categorical variables (continue). (PDF)</p

Selected features and models combined performance using repeated 5-fold cross-validation, C-index with 95% confidence interval(95% CI).

Selected features and models combined performance using repeated 5-fold cross-validation, C-index with 95% confidence interval(95% CI).</p