Keynote Address

Keynote Address by Justin Hansfor

Ferguson to Geneva: Using the Human Rights Framework to Push Forward a Vision for Racial Justice in the United States after Ferguson

As demonstrations under the banner of #BlackLivesMatter continue to erupt around the United States against state-sponsored violence, and as state, local, and federal officials continue to eschew fundamental social change, families and protesters have begun to explore alternative international forums in the search for justice. The Ferguson to Geneva delegation represents a significant event in this internationalist turn. The delegation, consisting of the parents of Mike Brown, Jr. and young Black leaders from Ferguson, chose to air their grievances before the United Nations Committee Against Torture in the fall of 2014. This article reproduces the delegation\u27s shadow report, which laid the groundwork for its testimony, and further describes delegation members\u27 subsequent efforts to leverage the outcome of the United Nations Committee review process to bolster domestic advocacy. It concludes finally that international human rights law and its formal accountability mechanisms should not encompass the totality of what people perceive as the potential and depth of the human rights discourse; instead, these should be considered nothing more than tools that can be strategically employed to support a broader process of organizing and grassroots resistance

A study of the temporal relationship between eye actions and facial expressions

A dissertation submitted in ful llment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Faculty of Science August 15, 2017Facial expression recognition is one of the most common means of communication used for complementing spoken word. However, people have grown to master ways of ex- hibiting deceptive expressions. Hence, it is imperative to understand di erences in expressions mostly for security purposes among others. Traditional methods employ machine learning techniques in di erentiating real and fake expressions. However, this approach does not always work as human subjects can easily mimic real expressions with a bit of practice. This study presents an approach that evaluates the time related dis- tance that exists between eye actions and an exhibited expression. The approach gives insights on some of the most fundamental characteristics of expressions. The study fo- cuses on nding and understanding the temporal relationship that exists between eye blinks and smiles. It further looks at the relationship that exits between eye closure and pain expressions. The study incorporates active appearance models (AAM) for feature extraction and support vector machines (SVM) for classi cation. It tests extreme learn- ing machines (ELM) in both smile and pain studies, which in turn, attains excellent results than predominant algorithms like the SVM. The study shows that eye blinks are highly correlated with the beginning of a smile in posed smiles while eye blinks are highly correlated with the end of a smile in spontaneous smiles. A high correlation is observed between eye closure and pain in spontaneous pain expressions. Furthermore, this study brings about ideas that lead to potential applications such as lie detection systems, robust health care monitoring systems and enhanced animation design systems among others.MT 201

Investigation of hospital discharge cases and SARS-CoV-2 introduction into Lothian care homes

Background The first epidemic wave of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Scotland resulted in high case numbers and mortality in care homes. In Lothian, over one-third of care homes reported an outbreak, while there was limited testing of hospital patients discharged to care homes. Aim To investigate patients discharged from hospitals as a source of SARS-CoV-2 introduction into care homes during the first epidemic wave. Methods A clinical review was performed for all patients discharges from hospitals to care homes from 1st March 2020 to 31st May 2020. Episodes were ruled out based on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) test history, clinical assessment at discharge, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data and an infectious period of 14 days. Clinical samples were processed for WGS, and consensus genomes generated were used for analysis using Cluster Investigation and Virus Epidemiological Tool software. Patient timelines were obtained using electronic hospital records. Findings In total, 787 patients discharged from hospitals to care homes were identified. Of these, 776 (99%) were ruled out for subsequent introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into care homes. However, for 10 episodes, the results were inconclusive as there was low genomic diversity in consensus genomes or no sequencing data were available. Only one discharge episode had a genomic, time and location link to positive cases during hospital admission, leading to 10 positive cases in their care home. Conclusion The majority of patients discharged from hospitals were ruled out for introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into care homes, highlighting the importance of screening all new admissions when faced with a novel emerging virus and no available vaccine

SARS-CoV-2 Omicron is an immune escape variant with an altered cell entry pathway

Vaccines based on the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 are a cornerstone of the public health response to COVID-19. The emergence of hypermutated, increasingly transmissible variants of concern (VOCs) threaten this strategy. Omicron (B.1.1.529), the fifth VOC to be described, harbours multiple amino acid mutations in spike, half of which lie within the receptor-binding domain. Here we demonstrate substantial evasion of neutralization by Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants in vitro using sera from individuals vaccinated with ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273. These data were mirrored by a substantial reduction in real-world vaccine effectiveness that was partially restored by booster vaccination. The Omicron variants BA.1 and BA.2 did not induce cell syncytia in vitro and favoured a TMPRSS2-independent endosomal entry pathway, these phenotypes mapping to distinct regions of the spike protein. Impaired cell fusion was determined by the receptor-binding domain, while endosomal entry mapped to the S2 domain. Such marked changes in antigenicity and replicative biology may underlie the rapid global spread and altered pathogenicity of the Omicron variant

Keynote Address

Keynote Address by Justin Hansfor

\u27In Conversation\u27: Members of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent

Established in 2021, the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent builds on at least twenty years of global work from the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action through the Working Group and Decade on People of African Descent. The Permanent Forum was invited by the General Assembly to develop a declaration of rights as a concrete step toward the implementation of the ideas initiated through the Durban process. This session brings together two elected members of the Permanent Forum to share the progress on the draft declaration and discuss the outlook for this new international mechanism