Promoting healthy body images in populations : does body dissatisfaction influence reactions to Québec’s charter for a healthy and diverse body image?

Problématique : Au cours des dernières années, la prévalence des problèmes de santé liés à des poids malsains a augmenté. Cependant, on ne sait que peu de choses sur la façon dont l'image corporelle et la taille du corps influencent la façon dont les populations comprennent, interprètent et réagissent aux initiatives conçues pour promouvoir des images corporelles saines. Objectifs: À partir d'un échantillon populationnel, nous avons examiné l’association entre l'insatisfaction corporelle (IC) et le niveau d’appui pour la Charte québécoise pour une image corporelle saine et diversifiée (CHIC) et les effets modérateurs de l'indice de masse corporelle (IMC), de l'âge et du sexe dans cette association. Méthodes: L’échantillon comprenait de 1738 adultes résidant au Québec qui ont répondu à un sondage en ligne. Des modèles de régression logistique multivariés ont été créés pour estimer les rapport des cotes (RC) entre l’IC et le niveau d’appui pour la CHIC et pour tester les effets d'interaction potentiels entre la catégorie d'IMC, l'âge et le sexe avec l’IC. Les analyses ont été ajustées pour le revenu familial, l'éducation et le statut d'immigration. Résultats: Les résultats montrent que les personnes qui avaient une plus grande IC avaient une probabilité plus faible d'être défavorable à la CHIC que les personnes qui n'en avaient pas (RC = 0,38; IC 95% : 0,23-0,63). Les répondants qui étaient des hommes (RC = 3.70; IC 95% : 2.12-6.43), en surpoids (OR = 1.95, IC à 95% 1.00-3.80), obèses (RC = 2.91; IC 95% : 1.43-5.91), ou avaient tout au plus une éducation secondaire (RC = 1,93; IC 95% à 1,10-3,41) avaient une probabilité plus élevée d'être défavorable à la CHIC. Les répondants adultes plus jeunes avaient une probabilité plus faible d'être défavorable (RC = 0,15; IC 95%: 0,03-0,71) et les participants dont l'IMC était insuffisant étaient significativement plus susceptibles d'être défavorable à la CHIC (RC = 10,68; 95 % CI : 2,03-56,10). Aucun effet modérateur de l'IMC, de l'âge ou du sexe sur la relation entre IC et le niveau d’appui pour le CHIC n’a été détecté. Conclusions: Cette étude présente l'un des premiers efforts visant à examiner l'impact des facteurs de risque individuels sur l'adoption des initiatives de promotion de la santé. Les résultats indiquent que l’IC influence considérablement l'adoption d'une initiative axée sur la population pour promouvoir une image corporelle saine. Ces résultats méritent d’être reproduits et étendus.Background: There is considerable concern around the increasing prevalence of unhealthy eating behaviours and attitudes, disordered eating, and eating disorders. However, little is known regarding how individual body image and size influence the way in which populations understand, interpret, and react to initiatives designed to promote healthy body images. Objectives: Using a population-based sample, we examined the relationship between body dissatisfaction (BD) and perception of the Québec Charter for a Healthy and Diverse Body Image (CHIC) and the moderating effects of BMI, age, and sex in this association. Methods: Participants included 1738 Québec adult respondents to an online survey. Multivariate logistic regression models were created to estimate odds ratios (OR) between BD and level of favourability to the CHIC and to test potential interaction effects between one’s BMI category, age, and sex with BD. Analyses were adjusted for household income, education, and immigration status. Results: Analyses suggested that those with greater BD were less likely to be unfavourable towards the CHIC compared to those who have no BD (OR= 0.38; 95% CI: 0.23-0.63). Respondents who were men (OR= 3.70; 95% CI: 2.12-6.43), overweight (OR=1.95; 95% CI: 1.00-3.80), obese (OR=2.91; 95% CI: 1.43-5.91), or had less than high school education (OR=1.93; 95% CI: 1.10-3.41) were more likely to be unfavourable towards the CHIC. Younger adult respondents were also less likely to be unfavourable (OR= 0.15, 95% CI 0.03-0.71) and those participants who had an underweight BMI were found to be significantly more likely to be unfavourable to the CHIC (OR= 10.68; 95% CI: 2.03-56.10). No moderating effects of BMI, age, or sex on the relationship between BD and level of favorability for the CHIC were detected. Conclusions: This study presents one of the first efforts to examine the impact of individual risk factors on the uptake of health promotion initiatives. Results indicate that current body image discrepancy substantially influences the uptake of a population-based initiative to promote healthy body image. This is a finding that requires replication and extension

Mental Health and Mental Healthcare Utilization in Canada's Immigrant and Ethnocultural Populations

One in five Canadians will experience a mental illness or addiction during their lifetime, but only 50% of those with a current diagnosis of mental illness will actually seek care (Lesage et al., 2006). Canada is home to growing immigrant and ethnocultural populations. Factors of migration, ethnicity, and racialization are important social determinants of mental health. However, Canada’s Mental Health Strategy identifies the lack of information available on these diverse populations and calls for further research in order to develop mental health programming (Mental Health Commission, 2012). This three-part doctoral dissertation sought to address these research gaps at the national-level, provincial-level, and community-level. The first study, “South Asian Populations in Canada: Migration and Mental Health,” was a national-level epidemiological analysis, which examined the prevalence and characteristics of mental health outcomes for South Asian immigrant populations in Canada compared to their South Asian Canadian-born counterparts. The second study, “The Epidemiology of Mental Healthcare Utilization by Service Provider Type for Ontario’s Immigrant Populations,” was a provincial-level epidemiological analysis examining the prevalence and characteristics of past-year mental health consultation by service provider type for Ontario’s immigrant populations. Lastly the third study, “The Barriers and Promoters of Seeking Mental Healthcare: A Mixed Methods Study of Bangladeshi Populations in Toronto,” was a community-level mixed methods project investigating the barriers and promoters of seeking mental healthcare identified by Toronto Bangladeshi newcomer and longer-term immigrant populations. These three studies seek to address the knowledge and research gaps identified by Canada’s Mental Health Strategy (Mental Health Commission, 2012). This research provides important information on the mental health outcomes, mental health service utilization, and barriers and promoters of mental healthcare access for immigrant and ethnocultural populations in order to inform the development of a mental health system inclusive of Canada’s diverse populations

Hybrid precoding design using MMSE baseband precoder for mm-wave multi-user MIMO systems

For future 5G wireless communication networks, millimeter-wave (mmWave) cellular systems is considered to be the key enabling technology because of its high data rates, low latency, high system capacity, and huge available bandwidths. However, multiuser networks in mmWave frequency bands encounter high path loss and interference, thus degrading the performance. Applying large antenna arrays at the base stations (BS) in order to achieve high beamforming gains with the help of precoding techniques is an efficient way of improving the performance of the system. Although multi-user beamforming can improve spectral efficiencies, full digital beamforming strategies used in the conventional microwave systems increase the hardware cost and consumes high power for large number of antennas in mmW systems. In this paper, a low-complexity multi-user hybrid precoding structure is proposed for mmWave multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels utilizing Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) precoders at the BS with perfect channel knowledge. Simulations show that the achievable rate obtained by the proposed hybrid precoding scheme is very close to the single-user rate and also performs better compared to other hybrid precoding approaches

Prediction of addiction to drugs and alcohol using machine learning: A case study on Bangladeshi population

Nowadays addiction to drugs and alcohol has become a significant threat to the youth of the society as Bangladesh’s population. So, being a conscientious member of society, we must go ahead to prevent these young minds from life-threatening addiction. In this paper, we approach a machinelearning-based way to forecast the risk of becoming addicted to drugs using machine-learning algorithms. First, we find some significant factors for addiction by talking to doctors, drug-addicted people, and read relevant articles and write-ups. Then we collect data from both addicted and nonaddicted people. After preprocessing the data set, we apply nine conspicuous machine learning algorithms, namely k-nearest neighbors, logistic regression, SVM, naïve bayes, classification, and regression trees, random forest, multilayer perception, adaptive boosting, and gradient boosting machine on our processed data set and measure the performances of each of these classifiers in terms of some prominent performance metrics. Logistic regression is found outperforming all other classifiers in terms of all metrics used by attaining an accuracy approaching 97.91%. On the contrary, CART shows poor results of an accuracy approaching 59.37% after applying principal component analysis

User-Generated-Content and Millennial Moms' Birthplace Decision-Making Process

Consumer reviews and experiences on UGC platforms are interoperable decision-making sources. Revolutionized UGC communication platform has changed millennial moms' birthplace decision-making process. They are rising concerns that UGC may lead to unsafe birth practices and risk the safety of the mother and baby. This preliminary qualitative study objective focused on exploring how other birth experiences shared over the UGC platform influence millennial moms' birthplace decisions. Preliminary findings identified two themes: verification and ratification and visibility and trustworthiness. The study provides in-depth information that aids policymakers, service providers, and marketers in understanding the millennial birthplace decision-making process from the consumers' perspective.                                                                                                          Keywords: user-generated-content; decision-making process; experience; information search eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i22.415

An effective feature extraction method for rice leaf disease classification

Our society is getting more and more technology dependent day by day. Nevertheless, agriculture is imperative for our survival. Rice is one of the primary food grains. It provides sustenance to almost fifty percent of the world population and promotes huge amount of employments. Hence, proper mitigation of rice plant diseases is of paramount importance. A model to detect three rice leaf diseases, namely bacterial leaf blight, brown spot, and leaf smut is proposed in this paper. Backgrounds of the images are removed by saturation threshold while disease affected areas are segmented using hue threshold. Distinctive features from color, shape, and texture domain are extracted from affected areas. These features can robustly describe local and global statistics of such images. Trying a couple of classification algorithms, extreme gradient boosting decision tree ensemble is incorporated in this model for its superior performance. Our model achieves 86.58% accuracy on rice leaf diseases dataset from UCI, which is higher than previous works on the same dataset. Class-wise accuracy of the model is also consistent among the classes

Prevalence of Bombay phenotype among Bangladeshi ‘O’ blood group population

Background: The Bombay blood group, a rare type often confused with ‘O’, poses a critical transfusion risk, requiring specific compatibility with Bombay (Oh) blood. With a lack of data in Bangladesh, this study aimed to establish a comprehensive database for the rare Bombay phenotype, crucial for transfusion safety. Objective was to determine the frequency prevalence of Bombay phenotype among ‘O’ blood group individuals. Methods: A cross-sectional study conducted at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University from January 2020 to June 2021 involved, aseptic collection of 3 ml venous blood sample, with forward and reverse blood grouping revealing a ‘O’ phenotype. Utilizing anti-H lectin resolved discrepancies and confirmed the absence of ‘H’ antigen in individuals with Bombay blood groups. Blood samples of Bombay phenotype individuals showed the following reactions: anti-A (-), anti-B (-), anti-AB (-), anti-H (-), A cells 4+, B cells 4+, O cells 4+. Results: Among 10,000 individuals with apparent blood group ‘O’, 99.97% were identified as ‘O’ blood type, while only 0.03% exhibited the rare Bombay blood group. ABO and Rh-D blood group frequencies varied over the study period, with B +ve at the highest (28.31%) and AB -ve at the lowest (0.21% to 0.23%). Overall, O +ve had the highest frequency (97.29%), and Bombay blood group was rare, with ‘O’ dominating at 99.97%. Conclusions: The study identified a 0.03% prevalence of the Bombay phenotype. Due to its potential confusion with ‘O’ blood group, transfusing ‘O’ blood to Bombay individuals carries a substantial risk of severe hemolytic reactions, including fatal consequences

Electrical power generation from the oceanic wave for sustainable advancement in renewable energy technologies

Recently, electrical power generation from oceanic waves is becoming very popular, as it is prospective, predictable, and highly available compared to other conventional renewable energy resources. In this paper, various types of nearshore, onshore, and offshore wave energy devices, including their construction and working principle, are explained explicitly. They include point absorber, overtopping devices, oscillating water column, attenuators, oscillating wave surge converters, submerged pressure differential, rotating mass, and bulge wave converter devices. The encounters and obstacles of electrical power generation from the oceanic wave are discussed in detail. The electrical power generation methods of the generators involved in wave energy devices are depicted. In addition, the vital control technologies in wave energy converters and devices are described for different cases. At present, piezoelectric materials are also being implemented in the design of wave energy converters as they convert mechanical motion directly into electrical power. For this reason, various models of piezoelectric material-based wave energy devices are illustrated. The statistical reports and extensive literature survey presented in this review show that there is huge potential for oceanic wave energy. Therefore, it is a highly prospective branch of renewable energy, which would play a significant role in the near future

Ultrasound-assisted extraction of valuable compounds from winter melon (Benincasa hispida) seeds

Ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) was applied for the extraction of bioactive valuable compounds from winter melon (Benincasa hispida) seeds. Effects of amplitude (25-75%), temperature (40-60°C) and sonication time (20-60 min) on crude extraction yield (CEY) and radical scavenging activities (RSA, % inhibition of DPPH˙ and ABTS˙+ free radicals) of extracts were determined using complete randomised design (CRD). The results showed that the CEY and RSA of extracts significantly affected by independent variables. The maximum value of CEY (97.14±0.36 mgg-1), scavenging of DPPH˙ radicals (32.12 ± 0.38%) and scavenging of ABTS˙+ radicals (40.52±0.73%) were obtained at the combined treatment conditions of 75%, 55°C and 40 min. The UAE results obtained were compared with those achieved by using conventional Soxhlet extraction (CSE) method. It was found UAE allowed extraction at lower temperature and the extracts obtained posses higher quality compare with CSE. UAE is a promising environment friendly technique for the extraction of bioactive compounds from winter melon (Benincasa hispida) seeds