783 research outputs found
Rural, urban and migrant differences in noncommunicable disease risk-factors in middle income countries: a cross-sectional study of WHO-SAGE Data
Understanding how urbanisation and rural-urban migration influence risk-factors for non-communicable disease (NCD) is crucial for developing effective preventative strategies globally. This study compares NCD risk-factor prevalence in urban, rural and migrant populations in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia and South Africa.Study participants were 39,436 adults within the WHO Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE), surveyed 2007-2010. Risk ratios (RR) for each risk-factor were calculated using logistic regression in country-specific and all country pooled analyses, adjusted for age, sex and survey design. Fully adjusted models included income quintile, marital status and education.Regular alcohol consumption was lower in migrant and urban groups than in rural groups (pooled RR and 95%CI: 0.47 (0.31-0.68); 0.58, (0.46-0.72), respectively). Occupational physical activity was lower (0.86 (0.72-0.98); 0.76 (0.65-0.85)) while active travel and recreational physical activity were higher (pooled RRs for urban groups; 1.05 (1.00-1.09), 2.36 (1.95-2.83), respectively; for migrant groups: 1.07 (1.0 -1.12), 1.71 (1.11-2.53), respectively). Overweight, raised waist circumference and diagnosed diabetes were higher in urban groups (1.19 (1.04-1.35), 1.24 (1.07-1.42), 1.69 (1.15-2.47), respectively). Exceptions to these trends exist: obesity indicators were higher in rural Russia; active travel was lower in urban groups in Ghana and India; and in South Africa, urban groups had the highest alcohol consumption.Migrants and urban dwellers had similar NCD risk-factor profiles. These were not consistently worse than those seen in rural dwellers. The variable impact of urbanisation on NCD risk must be considered in the design and evaluation of strategies to reduce the growing burden of NCDs globally
Do uHear? Validation of uHear App for Preliminary Screening of Hearing Ability in Soundscape Studies
Studies involving soundscape perception often exclude participants with
hearing loss to prevent impaired perception from affecting experimental
results. Participants are typically screened with pure tone audiometry, the
"gold standard" for identifying and quantifying hearing loss at specific
frequencies, and excluded if a study-dependent threshold is not met. However,
procuring professional audiometric equipment for soundscape studies may be
cost-ineffective, and manually performing audiometric tests is
labour-intensive. Moreover, testing requirements for soundscape studies may not
require sensitivities and specificities as high as that in a medical diagnosis
setting. Hence, in this study, we investigate the effectiveness of the uHear
app, an iOS application, as an affordable and automatic alternative to a
conventional audiometer in screening participants for hearing loss for the
purpose of soundscape studies or listening tests in general. Based on
audiometric comparisons with the audiometer of 163 participants, the uHear app
was found to have high precision (98.04%) when using the World Health
Organization (WHO) grading scheme for assessing normal hearing. Precision is
further improved (98.69%) when all frequencies assessed with the uHear app is
considered in the grading, which lends further support to this cost-effective,
automated alternative to screen for normal hearing.Comment: Full paper submitted to 24th International Congress on Acoustic
Assessment of a cost-effective headphone calibration procedure for soundscape evaluations
To increase the availability and adoption of the soundscape standard, a
low-cost calibration procedure for reproduction of audio stimuli over
headphones was proposed as part of the global ``Soundscape Attributes
Translation Project'' (SATP) for validating ISO/TS~12913-2:2018 perceived
affective quality (PAQ) attribute translations. A previous preliminary study
revealed significant deviations from the intended equivalent continuous
A-weighted sound pressure levels () using the open-circuit
voltage (OCV) calibration procedure. For a more holistic human-centric
perspective, the OCV method is further investigated here in terms of
psychoacoustic parameters, including relevant exceedance levels to account for
temporal effects on the same 27 stimuli from the SATP. Moreover, a
within-subjects experiment with 36 participants was conducted to examine the
effects of OCV calibration on the PAQ attributes in ISO/TS~12913-2:2018.
Bland-Altman analysis of the objective indicators revealed large biases in the
OCV method across all weighted sound level and loudness indicators; and
roughness indicators at \SI{5}{\%} and \SI{10}{\%} exceedance levels.
Significant perceptual differences due to the OCV method were observed in about
\SI{20}{\%} of the stimuli, which did not correspond clearly with the biased
acoustic indicators. A cautioned interpretation of the objective and perceptual
differences due to small and unpaired samples nevertheless provide grounds for
further investigation.Comment: For 24th International Congress on Acoustic
Reconstruction of Network Evolutionary History from Extant Network Topology and Duplication History
Genome-wide protein-protein interaction (PPI) data are readily available
thanks to recent breakthroughs in biotechnology. However, PPI networks of
extant organisms are only snapshots of the network evolution. How to infer the
whole evolution history becomes a challenging problem in computational biology.
In this paper, we present a likelihood-based approach to inferring network
evolution history from the topology of PPI networks and the duplication
relationship among the paralogs. Simulations show that our approach outperforms
the existing ones in terms of the accuracy of reconstruction. Moreover, the
growth parameters of several real PPI networks estimated by our method are more
consistent with the ones predicted in literature.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, submitted to ISBRA 201
Cooperative Interactions between TLR4 and TLR9 Regulate Interleukin 23 and 17 Production in a Murine Model of Gram Negative Bacterial Pneumonia
Toll like receptors play an important role in lung host defense against bacterial pathogens. In this study, we investigated independent and cooperative functions of TLR4 and TLR9 in microbial clearance and systemic dissemination during Gram-negative bacterial pneumonia. To access these responses, wildtype Balb/c mice, mice with defective TLR4 signaling (TLR4lps-d), mice deficient in TLR9 (TLR9−/−) and TLR4/9 double mutant mice (TLR4lps-d/TLR9−/−) were challenged with K. pneumoniae, then time-dependent lung bacterial clearance and systemic dissemination determined. We found impaired lung bacterial clearance in TLR4 and TLR9 single mutant mice, whereas the greatest impairment in clearance was observed in TLR4lps-d/TLR9−/− double mutant mice. Early lung expression of TNF-α, IL-12, and chemokines was TLR4 dependent, while IFN-γ production and the later expression of TNF-α and IL-12 was dependent on TLR9. Classical activation of lung macrophages and maximal induction of IL-23 and IL-17 required both TLR4 and TLR9. Finally, the i.t. instillation of IL-17 partially restored anti-bacterial immunity in TLR4lps-d/TLR9−/− double mutant mice. In conclusion, our studies indicate that TLR4 and TLR9 have both non-redundant and cooperative roles in lung innate responses during Gram-negative bacterial pneumonia and are both critical for IL-17 driven antibacterial host response
Preliminary investigation of the short-term in situ performance of an automatic masker selection system
Soundscape augmentation or "masking" introduces wanted sounds into the
acoustic environment to improve acoustic comfort. Usually, the masker selection
and playback strategies are either arbitrary or based on simple rules (e.g. -3
dBA), which may lead to sub-optimal increment or even reduction in acoustic
comfort for dynamic acoustic environments. To reduce ambiguity in the selection
of maskers, an automatic masker selection system (AMSS) was recently developed.
The AMSS uses a deep-learning model trained on a large-scale dataset of
subjective responses to maximize the derived ISO pleasantness (ISO 12913-2).
Hence, this study investigates the short-term in situ performance of the AMSS
implemented in a gazebo in an urban park. Firstly, the predicted ISO
pleasantness from the AMSS is evaluated in comparison to the in situ subjective
evaluation scores. Secondly, the effect of various masker selection schemes on
the perceived affective quality and appropriateness would be evaluated. In
total, each participant evaluated 6 conditions: (1) ambient environment with no
maskers; (2) AMSS; (3) bird and (4) water masker from prior art; (5) random
selection from same pool of maskers used to train the AMSS; and (6) selection
of best-performing maskers based on the analysis of the dataset used to train
the AMSS.Comment: paper submitted to the 52nd International Congress and Exposition on
Noise Control Engineering held in Chiba, Greater Tokyo, Japan, on 20-23
August 2023 (Inter-Noise 2023
Crossing the Linguistic Causeway: Ethnonational Differences on Soundscape Attributes in Bahasa Melayu
Despite being neighbouring countries and sharing the language of Bahasa
Melayu (ISO 639-3:ZSM), cultural and language education policy differences
between Singapore and Malaysia led to differences in the translation of the
"annoying" perceived affective quality (PAQ) attribute from English (ISO
639-3:ENG) to ZSM. This study expands upon the translation of the PAQ
attributes from eng to ZSM in Stage 1 of the Soundscapes Attributes Translation
Project (SATP) initiative, and presents the findings of Stage 2 listening tests
that investigated ethnonational differences in the translated ZSM PAQ
attributes and explored their circumplexity. A cross-cultural listening test
was conducted with 100 ZSM speakers from Malaysia and Singapore using the
common SATP protocol. The analysis revealed that Malaysian participants from
non-native ethnicities (my:o) showed PAQ perceptions more similar to Singapore
(sg) participants than native ethnic Malays (MY:M) in Malaysia. Differences
between Singapore and Malaysian groups were primarily observed in stimuli
related to water features, reflecting cultural and geographical variations.
Besides variations in water source-dominant stimuli perception, disparities
between MY:M and SG could be mainly attributed to vibrant scores. The findings
also suggest that the adoption of region-specific translations, such as
membingitkan in Singapore and menjengkelkan in Malaysia, adequately addressed
differences in the annoying attribute, as significant differences were observed
in one or fewer stimuli across ethnonational groups The circumplexity analysis
indicated that the quasi-circumplex model better fit the data compared to the
assumed equal angle quasi-circumplex model in ISO/TS 12913-3, although
deviations were observed possibly due to respondents' unfamiliarity with the
United Kingdom-centric context of the stimulus dataset...Comment: Preprint submitted to Elsevier for revie
The Farmer’s Perspective: Bridging the Last Mile to Market
The Kenyan ‘farmer’ value chain was not just a neat box in the formal structure of a value chain, but a flexible, multipurpose node in the rural economy’s complex web of human interaction and exchange of goods, services and knowledge. Therefore we have called it the agricultural value web. This is the main conclusion from the inquiry on adoption of information and technology services with farmers in their rural communities. LEI Wageningen UR has executed this inquiry on behalf of the Dutch Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economic Affairs
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Induction with Rabbit Antithymocyte Globulin following Orthotopic Liver Transplantation for Hepatitis C
Background: Hepatitis C (HCV) is the most common indication for liver transplantation in the US. Objective: Since steroids are the major stimulus of viral replication, we postulated that steroid-free immunosuppression might be a safer approach. Methods: From January 1995 to October 2002, we used steroid plus calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) immunosuppression after liver transplantation for HCV (steroid group, n=81). From October 2002 to June 2007, rabbit antithymocyte globulin (RATG) induction, followed by CNI and azathioprine (RATG group, n=73) was utilized. Results: There were no differences in 1- and 3-year patient/allograft survival rates. The incidence of acute rejection rate (19% vs. 28%), of biopsy-proven HCV recurrence (70% vs. 75%), and chronic rejection (6% vs. 9%) were comparable. The mean time to develop recurrent HCV was significantly longer in the RATG group (16.2 vs. 9.2 months, p=0.008). The incidence of severe portal fibrosis appears to be lower in RATG group compared to the steroid group; 14% vs. 4% (p=0.07). Conclusions: RATG induction is safe and effective after liver transplantation for HCV, but has no impact on the incidence of HCV recurrence and patient/allograft survival. However, a significant delay in time to HCV recurrence and a trend toward less rejection and portal fibrosis was observed
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