Machine Learning Algorithms for Detecting and Analyzing Social Bots Using a Novel Dataset

Social media is internet-based technology and an electronic form of communication that facilitates sharing of ideas, documents, and personal information. Twitter is a microblogging platform and is the most effective social service for posting microblogs and likings, commenting, sharing, and communicating with others. The problem we are shedding light on in this paper is the misuse of bots on Twitter. The purpose of bots is to automate specific repetitive tasks instead of human interaction. However, bots are misused to influence people’s minds by spreading rumors and conspiracy related to controversial topics. In this paper, we initiate a new benchmark created on a 1.5M Twitter profile. We train different supervised machine learning on our benchmark to detect bots on Twitter. In addition to increasing benchmark scalability, various autofeature selections are utilized to identify the most influential features and remove the less influential ones. Furthermore, over-under-sampling is applied to reduce the imbalance effect on the benchmark. Finally, our benchmark compared with other stateof-the-art benchmarks and achieved a 6% higher area under the curve than other datasets in the case of generalization, improving the model performance by at least 2% by applying over-/undersampling

South Asians living in the UK and adherence to coronary heart disease medication: a mixed- method study

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of coronary heart disease amongst South Asian population in the UK is higher compared to the general population. OBJECTIVE: This study sought to investigate beliefs and experiences of South Asian patients regarding coronary heart disease and medication taking behaviour. SETTING: A London Heart Attack Centre. METHODS: This mixed method study is part of an original pilot randomised study on 71 patients involving a pharmacy-led intervention to improve medication adherence in coronary heart disease patients. South Asian patients from the randomised study took part in qualitative semi-structured telephone interviews. Both South Asian and non-South Asian patients completed the questionnaire about adherence and beliefs regarding medicines using Morisky Scale and the Belief About Medicines Questionnaire-Specific at 2 weeks, 3 and 6 months. OUTCOME: Patients’ beliefs about coronary heart disease and medication adherence. RESULTS: Seventeen South Asian patients and 54 non-South Asian patients took part. Qualitative data from 14 South Asian patients showed that while some attributed coronary heart disease to genetic, family history for their illness, others attributed it to their dietary patterns and ‘god’s will’ and that little could be done to prevent further episodes of coronary heart disease. On the Belief About Medicines Questionnaire-Specific in South Asian patients, beliefs about necessity of medicines outweighed concerns. South Asian patients (n = 17) showed a similar pattern of adherence compared to non-Asian patients (n = 54). Adherence decreased with time in both populations, adherence measured by Morisky Scale. CONCLUSION: South Asian patients in this study often attributed coronary heart disease to additional causes besides the known risk factors. Future studies on their understanding of the importance of cultural context in their attitudes to prevention and lived experience of the disease is warranted

Hospital admission trends due to respiratory diseases in England and Wales between 1999 and 2019: an ecologic study

BACKGROUND: Identifying trends of hospital admissions for respiratory diseases is crucial for public health and research to guide future clinical improvements for better outcomes. This study aims to define the trends of respiratory disease-related hospital admissions (RRHA) in England and Wales between 1999 and 2019. METHODS: An ecological study was conducted using hospital admission data taken from the Hospital Episode Statistics database in England and the Patient Episode Database for Wales. Hospital admissions data for respiratory diseases were extracted for the period between April 1999 and March 2019. The trend in hospital admissions was assessed using a Poisson model. RESULTS: Hospital admission rate increased by 104.7% [from 1535.05 (95% CI 1531.71–1538.38) in 1999 to 3142.83 (95% CI 3138.39–3147.26) in 2019 per 100,000 persons, trend test, p < 0.01]. The most common causes were influenza and pneumonia, chronic lower respiratory diseases, other acute lower respiratory infections, which accounted for 26.6%, 26.4%, and 14.9%, respectively. The age group 75 years and above accounted for 34.1% of the total number of hospital admissions. Males contributed to 50.5% of the total number of hospital admissions. Hospital admission rate in females increased by 119.8% [from 1442.18 (95% CI 1437.66–1446.70) in 1999 to 3169.38 (95% CI 3163.11–3175.64) in 2019 per 100,000 persons, trend test, p < 0.001]. Hospital admission rate increased by 92.9% in males [from 1633.25 (95% CI 1628.32–1638.17) in 1999 to 3149.78 (95% CI 3143.46–3156.09) in 2019 per 100,000 persons, trend test, p < 0.001]. CONCLUSION: During the study period, hospital admissions rate due to respiratory diseases increased sharply. The rates of hospital admissions were higher among males for the vast majority of respiratory diseases. Further observational studies are warranted to identify risk factors for these hospital admissions and to offer relevant interventions to mitigate the risk

Stents in pediatric and adult congenital cardiac catheterization in France in 2013

Stents have contributed to the development of the interventional catheterization for congenital heart diseases (CHD). The aim of this study was to describe indications, results and adverse events in current practice.MethodsThe participation to this study was proposed to all catheterization laboratories specialized in CHD in France (M3C network). All cases with stents implantation in 2013 in pediatric and adult CHD were retrospectively included. Adverse events were assessed using the Bergersen classification.Results174 stents were implanted during 132 procedures in 127 patients by 6 main operators in 9 centers. Patients were aged 15.7±15.1years old (min 5day-old - max 70years old). Sixteen types of procedures were identified. Main indications were transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement (29 patients, 23.0%), pulmonary artery branches angioplasty (34 patients, 27.0%), aortic (re)coarctation stenting (37 patients, 29.4%) and ductus arteriosus stenting (11 patients, 8.7%). 18 patients (14.3%) were under one y.o and 35 (27.8%) were over 18y.o. Main pathologies were tetralogy of Fallot and variants (ACC-CHD 8.3, n=45, 35.7%), and aortic coarctation (ACC-CHD 9.2, n=36, 28.6%). More than 1 stent was implanted in 32 procedures (24.4%, max. 5 stents). Main stents implanted were the CP stent (33.0%), EV3 LD max (22.0%), Valeo (16.2%) and valved stents (15.0%). 98.5% procedures were considered as successful. Serious adverse events were observed in 12.9%. After multivariate adjustment, only procedure type was related to the risk of total adverse events (OR: 3.0, 95%CI 1.1–7.9) but not to stent related adverse events. Age, weight, center, operator, type of stents, stent diameter, genetic disorder and type of CHD were not significantly related to the risk of adverse events.ConclusionStents are used in various CHD catheterization procedures, from infancy to adult age. Adverse events rate is significant and seems related to the type of procedure

Investigation of pilot scale manufacturing of polysulfone (PSf) membranes by wet phase inversion method

Membranes are used as a support layer for the fabrication of thin film composite membranes. Sup- port layer properties can affect many performance parameters of TFC membranes such as flux, rejection, morphology and stability against pressure. Although studies in lab scale fabrication exist, investigation the pilot scale polysulfone membrane fabrication has not been done. In this study, opti- mization of polysulfone support membranes fabrication was conducted in pilot scale. Coagulation bath temperature; casting speed and solution content were selected as main parameters for the opti- mization. Membrane surface properties were investigated in details with SEM and pore size dis- tribution. Membrane performance were determined with permeability experiments. Differences in pilot scale and lab scale membrane manufacturing were observed and compared with literature. On the contrary to literature it was found that, coagulation bath temperature has exact opposite effect in pilot scale membrane formation compared to lab scale studies. 10°C drop (from 25°C to 15°C) in coagulation bath temperature decreased mean pore size of membranes from 27 nm to 8 nm and per- meability from 464 l/m2h to 100 l/m2h while everything else was kept constant

Hospital Admissions Due to Ischemic Heart Diseases and Prescriptions of Cardiovascular Diseases Medications in England and Wales in the Past Two Decades

Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore the trend of ischemic heart disease (IHD) admission and the prescriptions of IHD medications in England and Wales. Methods: A secular trends study was conducted during the period of 1999 to 2019. We extracted hospital admission data for patients from all age groups from the Hospital Episode Statistics database in England and the Patient Episode Database for Wales. Prescriptions of IHD medications were extracted from the Prescription Cost Analysis database from 2004 to 2019. The chi-squared test was used to assess the difference between the admission rates and the difference between IHD medication prescription rates. The trends in IHD-related hospital admission and IHD-related medication prescription were assessed using a Poisson model. The correlation between hospital admissions for IHD and its IHD medication-related prescriptions was assessed using the Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: Our study detected a significant increase in the rate of cardiovascular disease (CVD) medication prescriptions in England and Wales, representing a rise in the CVD medications prescription rate of 41.8% (from 539,334.95 (95% CI = 539,286.30–539,383.59) in 2004 to 764,584.55 (95% CI = 764,545.55–764,623.56) in 2019 prescriptions per 100,000 persons), with a mean increase of 2.8% per year during the past 15 years. This increase was connected with a reduction in the IHD hospital admission rate by 15.4% (from 838.50 (95% CI = 836.05–840.94) in 2004 to 709.78 (95% CI = 707.65–711.92) in 2019 per 100,000 persons, trend test, p < 0.01), with a mean decrease of 1.02% per year during the past 15 years and by 5% (from 747.43 (95% CI = 745.09–749.77) in 1999 to 709.78 (95% CI = 707.65–711.92) in 2019 per 100,000 persons, trend test, p < 0.01) with a mean decrease of 0.25% per year during the past two decades in England and Wales. Conclusion: The rate of hospitalisation due to IHD has decreased in England and Wales during the past two decades. Hospitalisation due to IHD was strongly and negatively correlated with the increase in the rates of dispensing of IHD-related medications. Other factors contributing to this decline could be the increase in controlling IHD risk factors during the past few years. Future studies exploring other risk factors that are associated with IHD hospitalisation are warranted

Massive mortality associated with Streptococcus agalactiae Infection in Cage-cultured Red Hybrid Tilapia Oreochromis niloticus in Como River, Kenyir Lake, Malaysia

Massive mortality of cage-cultured red hybrid tilapia Oreochromis niloticus in Como River, Kenyir Lake, Malaysia was investigated. Moribund fish showing erratic swimming, sluggishness and hemorrhagic eyes were collected for the study. Water quality parameters were measured on-site. The highest temperature was 32.70°C at the surface while lower temperature was 30.85°C at 6 m. Dissolved Oxygen (DO) was highest 7.05 mg L-1 at 4 m while lowest 6.15 mg L-1 at 10 m. The pH value was highest 8.28 at 6 m and lowest 7.52 at surface. The result has shown that un-ionized ammonia levels ranged from 0.00046-0.01 ppm within the optimum range. While Nitrite (0.003 ppm) and Nitrate values (0.1-0.7 ppm). The water quality parameters were showed their values within the accepted range of water quality for aquaculture. Bacteria were isolated from diseased fish using blood and nutrient agars, and identified using BBL Crystal™ Enteric/Non-fermenter ID and Gram Positive ID Systems and subjected to antibiotic susceptibility analysis. Results showed the presence of Streptococcus agalactiae, Burkholderia cepacia in the fish liver and Staphylococcus aureus in the fish eyes, suggesting a possible case of warm-water streptococcosis associated with S. agalactiae with multiple bacterial complications. Nevertheless, a continuous long term monitoring is essential for the sustainable development of cage aquaculture in Como river of Lake Kenyir Malaysia