Are depression, anxiety, body mass index, and types of surgery predictive of weight loss and psychological outcomes after bariatric surgery?

Background: The primary goal of bariatric surgery is to not only lose weight but also resolve comorbidities and improve quality of life. It is crucial to identify predictors of surgical outcomes. The current study investigates pre-surgical depression, pre-surgical anxiety, and demographic factors (age, gender, education, race, and baseline body mass index) as predictors of post-surgical outcomes as well as examines difference in the effect of laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass versus laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding on post-surgical surgical outcomes. Methods: The study is a retrospective one-group pre-test-post-test design study that examined 88 (Females = 81, Males = 7) bariatric surgery participants at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital. Data collected at baseline (three weeks prior to surgery) and 1 year post-surgery from participants administered the Zung Self-rating Depression Scale, the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale - Self-Report Version, and Quality of Life - Lite Scale were analyzed. Participants underwent either laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery or laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding surgery. Results: Age (F = 4.0, p = 0.05) and baseline body mass index (F = 5.8, p = 0.02) were significant predictors of % excess weight loss. Age (F = 4.2, p = 0.04) and baseline body mass index (F = 33.6, p < 0.001) were significant predictors of absolute weight loss (kg). Baseline body mass index (F = 4.2, p = 0.046) was also a significant predictor of total quality of life. The effect of laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass versus laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding differed in changes in pre- to post-surgical total quality of life (F = 12.5, p = 0.001), % weight loss (F = 126.3, p < 0.001), % excess weight loss (F = 124.8, p < 0.001), and absolute weight loss (F = 87.7, p < 0.001). Baseline depression and baseline anxiety were not predictive of weight loss (% excess weight loss, % weight loss, or absolute weight loss), but baseline anxiety was predictive of post-surgical depression (F = 13.0, p = 0.001), post-surgical anxiety (F = 43.8, p < 0.001), and post-surgical total quality of life (F = 8.6, p = 0.005). Conclusion: The data show that younger age and lower baseline body mass index are positive predictors of weight loss, lower baseline body mass index and lower baseline anxiety are positive predictors of quality of life, and lower baseline anxiety is a positive predictor of post-surgical depression and anxiety. The data also show that baseline depression and baseline anxiety are not predictors of post-surgical weight loss. Hence, the data suggest that younger adults have a bigger chance to succeed at greater weight loss after surgery. In addition, treating baseline anxiety disorder might result in better quality of life after surgery. Interventions that are effective in lowering baseline body mass index might help with greater post-surgical weight loss and better post-surgical quality of life. Those with better scores on the baseline depression and anxiety assessment do not necessarily have greater weight loss after surgery, so denial of surgery to those with psychopathology should be further examined. Long-term follow-up is necessary

Singing beyond boundaries : indigeneity, hybridity and voices of aborigines in contemporary Taiwan

textWhile Taiwanese Aboriginal culture has become essential for Taiwanese to construct a new national identity, this report examines the uses, makings, and transmissions of Taiwanese Aboriginal music in contemporary society, illuminating power dynamics of how Aboriginal music has been presented and perceived among different groups. The shifting Taiwanese identity within the contemporary political context opens up the discourses of indigeneity that have interpreted the Aboriginal culture as a site either for forming the new Taiwanese identity or claiming indigenous rights and subjectivity. Through the analysis of these discourses, I deconstruct how Taiwanese Aboriginal music has been exoticized and folklorized as Other by the Han-centric perspective. Further, by examining Aboriginal song-and-dance at intra-village rituals, at a Pan-Aboriginal festival, and at international cultural performances, I seek to argue that Aborigines are neither simply implementing the “otherness” imposed by the Han majority nor are they completely in conflict with it. By using Homi Bhabha’s concept of the Third space that resists the binary of the dominant ideology and counter-hegemonic discourses of a minority, I particularly consider the Aboriginal vocable singing as a site within which Aborigines strategically adopt different identities depending upon the performative context. Through this theoretical perspective, I argue that the multiplicity of identity and the interconnectedness of Aboriginal musical practices across different groups and regions challenge the rhetoric of multiculturalism and diversity of cultures in the sense of neo-liberal ideology.Musi

Reviving musical indigeneity : institutionalization, transmission, and revival of Taiwan’s aboriginal music

This dissertation studies the revival of Taiwan’s Aboriginal music motivated by the emergence of a strong Aboriginal consciousness during the last three decades. This revivalism has been stimulated in part by government initiatives to foster diversity in the national arts, by the changing economies of Aboriginal musical performance, and by the Aboriginal communities’ emerging commitment to musical-cultural preservation. Instead of framing revival as a mere counterhegemonic move of returning to an “authentic tradition” with a long history, this research argues that Aboriginal music revival is a contemporary phenomenon of constructing or reimagining the musical past enacted in discursive, performative, and institutional efforts. By emphasizing the articulation of musical indigeneity, this dissertation teases out the processes and multiple ways practitioners respond to the state and engage in the specific aspects of revived music in relation to their adaptations, interpretations, and cultural choices. My dissertation links the study of Aboriginal music revival to recent literature related to affect, critical organology, and language revitalization, focusing on several essential phenomena of Aboriginal music revival: (1) the institutionalization and the state’s heritage projects of Paiwan nose flutes (lalingedan) and mouth flutes (pakulalu) that have reinforced a particular thoughtful sorrow as a core aesthetic symbol of the Paiwan; (2) the craftsmanship of Paiwan flute making and playing that are central to the transformation of the Paiwan soundscape and changing state’s heritage projects, and; (3) the emerging movement of Aboriginal mother-tongue songwriting that participated in a wider revalorization of the “local” in Taiwan’s music industry, with a particular focus on Paiwan songwriters. Through a close examination of affective, material, and vocal dimensions of Aboriginal Paiwan music, this study aims to provide an alternative mode to reexamine the naturalized connections to the ancient past and bounded reification of identities occurring in music revival. I argue that the examination of these dimensions of music contributes to the understanding of diverse manifestations of Aboriginal music and how certain aspects of local musical practices attain new importance as core values for revival.Musi

Dynamic gain and frequency comb formation in exceptional-point lasers

Exceptional points (EPs)--singularities in the parameter space of non-Hermitian systems where two nearby eigenmodes coalesce--feature unique properties with applications for microcavity lasers such as sensitivity enhancement and chiral emission. Present EP lasers operate with static populations in the gain medium. Here, we show theoretically that a laser operating sufficiently close to an EP will spontaneously induce a multi-spectral multi-modal instability that creates an oscillating population inversion and generates a frequency comb. The comb formation is enhanced by the non-orthogonality of modes via the Petermann factor. Such an "EP comb" features an ultra-compact size and a widely tunable repetition rate, without requiring external modulators or a continuous-wave pump. We develop an exact ab initio dynamic solution of the space-dependent Maxwell-Bloch equations, describing all steady-state properties of the EP comb. We illustrate this phenomenon in a realistic parity-time-symmetric 5-{\mu}m-long AlGaAs cavity and validate our prediction with finite-difference time-domain simulations. This work reveals the rich physics that connect non-Hermitian degeneracies and the nonlinear dynamics of gain media to fundamentally alter the laser behavior

Project RISE: Recognizing Industrial Smoke Emissions

Industrial smoke emissions pose a significant concern to human health. Prior works have shown that using Computer Vision (CV) techniques to identify smoke as visual evidence can influence the attitude of regulators and empower citizens to pursue environmental justice. However, existing datasets are not of sufficient quality nor quantity to train the robust CV models needed to support air quality advocacy. We introduce RISE, the first large-scale video dataset for Recognizing Industrial Smoke Emissions. We adopted a citizen science approach to collaborate with local community members to annotate whether a video clip has smoke emissions. Our dataset contains 12,567 clips from 19 distinct views from cameras that monitored three industrial facilities. These daytime clips span 30 days over two years, including all four seasons. We ran experiments using deep neural networks to establish a strong performance baseline and reveal smoke recognition challenges. Our survey study discussed community feedback, and our data analysis displayed opportunities for integrating citizen scientists and crowd workers into the application of Artificial Intelligence for social good.Comment: Technical repor

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Field of Orthopedics

During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries all over the world suffered from different kinds of service disruption or reduction in the field of orthopedics with or without lockdowns. The consequences include no restriction, partial disruption, overburden of medical services and complete shutdown of clinical practices. This chapter systematically reviews the current published literature on the global impact of COVID-19 on the field of orthopedics through multiple aspects, including educational impact, service volume impact, workload impact, personal practice change, psychological impact, and impact on orthopedic research. The rates of all surgeries and elective surgeries decreased by 15.6%–49.4% and 43.5–100%, respectively. The overall impact was attributable to the staff redeployment in response to the pandemic. Therefore, it is important to maintain a flexible allocation of manpower and more sufficient and reservable staffing measures in case of emergency staff shortages. Orthopedic surgeons are suggested to prepare proper preventive strategies and set up special equipment and places for regular telemedicine for virtual consultations or virtual teaching. It can be expected that the integration of the different experiences of global countries from the impact of COVID-19 may help us to face possible similar impacts in the future

Disordered Fe vacancies and superconductivity in potassium-intercalated iron selenide (K2-xFe4+ySe5)

The parent compound of an unconventional superconductor must contain unusual correlated electronic and magnetic properties of its own. In the high-Tc potassium intercalated FeSe, there has been significant debate regarding what the exact parent compound is. Our studies unambiguously show that the Fe-vacancy ordered K2Fe4Se5 is the magnetic, Mott insulating parent compound of the superconducting state. Non-superconducting K2Fe4Se5 becomes a superconductor after high temperature annealing, and the overall picture indicates that superconductivity in K2-xFe4+ySe5 originates from the Fe-vacancy order to disorder transition. Thus, the long pending question whether magnetic and superconducting state are competing or cooperating for cuprate superconductors may also apply to the Fe-chalcogenide superconductors. It is believed that the iron selenides and related compounds will provide essential information to understand the origin of superconductivity in the iron-based superconductors, and possibly to the superconducting cuprates