In the U.S., MENA People Are Legally White. But Their Lived Experiences Say Otherwise

The U.S. Government classifies people whose origins are from the Middle East and North Africa as racially “white.” This is reflected in the decennial census, as well as in other questionnaires and forms, even as many among those groups prefer to have their own categorization. In this feature article, we explore the history of the issue, how individuals from those backgrounds would prefer to identify, and whether their lived experiences in a post-9/11 United States reflect their current categorization

The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit: a consolidated design for the system requirement review of the preliminary definition phase

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Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

Fall detection using body geometry in video sequences

Abstract According to the World Health Organization, falling of the elderly is a major health problem that causes many injuries and thousands of deaths every year. This increases pressure on health authorities to provide daily health care, reliable medical assistance, reduce fall damages and improve the elderly quality of life. For that, it is a priority to detect or predict falls accurately. In this paper, we present a fall detection approach based on human body geometry inferred from video sequence frames. We calculate the angular information between the vector formed by the head centroid of the identified facial image and the center hip of the body and the vector aligned with the horizontal axis of the center hip. Similarly, we calculate the distance between the vector formed by the head and the body center hip and the vector formed on its horizontal axis; we then construct distinctive image features. These angles and distances are then used to train a two-class SVM classifier and a Long Short-Term Memory network (LSTM) on the calculated angle sequences to classify falls and no-falls activities. We perform experiments on the Le2i fall detection dataset. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the developed approach

Vision-based fall detection using body geometry?

Abstract Falling is a major health problem that causes thousands of deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization. Fall detection and fall prediction are both important tasks that should be performed efficiently to enable accurate medical assistance to vulnerable population whenever required. This allows local authorities to predict daily health care resources and reduce fall damages accordingly. We present in this paper a fall detection approach that explores human body geometry available at different frames of the video sequence. Especially, the angular information and the distance between the vector formed by the head -centroid of the identified facial image- and the center hip of the body, and the vector aligned with the horizontal axis of the center hip, are then used to construct distinctive image features. A two-class SVM classifier is trained on the newly constructed feature images, while a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network is trained on the calculated angle and distance sequences to classify falls and non-falls activities. We perform experiments on the Le2i fall detection dataset and the UR FD dataset. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the developed approach

Insight from Nigerian banking customers discussions:a study of contextual semantic search and Twitter sentiment analysis

Abstract Globally, the bank is a significant financial institution that engages customers in millions daily. This financial institution helps its customers in saving their money, with withdrawals, and money transfer electronically. Despite the inevitability of these financial institutions, they are still struggling to improve their customer’s satisfaction index scores. The intervention of the Central Bank and Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission are yielding positive results whenever the local bank failed, but the response time to the customer grievances is quite challenging. The literature reviewed for this study indicates the cruciality of the sentiment analysis technique. This study utilized Twitter Crawler API called the Twitter Scraper for data collection and Textblob, Vader and SentiStrength for the data analyses. The result shows the sentiments in the International Authorization Banking group as against the National Authorization group and a slight difference between the polarities of their customer’s tweets. This study gives new insights internationally and nationally to banking managers and proposes future research directions

Rosiglitazone Reverses Inflammation in Epididymal White Adipose Tissue in Hormone-Sensitive Lipase-Knockout Mice

Hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) plays a crucial role in intracellular lipolysis, and loss of HSL leads to diacylglycerol (DAG) accumulation, reduced FA mobilization, and impaired PPARγ signaling. Hsl knockout mice exhibit adipose tissue inflammation, but the underlying mechanisms are still not clear. Here, we investigated if and to what extent HSL loss contributes to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and adipose tissue inflammation in Hsl knockout mice. Furthermore, we were interested in how impaired PPARγ signaling affects the development of inflammation in epididymal white adipose tissue (eWAT) and inguinal white adipose tissue (iWAT) of Hsl knockout mice and if DAG and ceramide accumulation contribute to adipose tissue inflammation and ER stress. Ultrastructural analysis showed a markedly dilated ER in both eWAT and iWAT upon loss of HSL. In addition, Hsl knockout mice exhibited macrophage infiltration and increased F4/80 mRNA expression, a marker of macrophage activation, in eWAT, but not in iWAT. We show that treatment with rosiglitazone, a PPARγ agonist, attenuated macrophage infiltration and ameliorated inflammation of eWAT, but expression of ER stress markers remained unchanged, as did DAG and ceramide levels in eWAT. Taken together, we show that HSL loss promoted ER stress in both eWAT and iWAT of Hsl knockout mice, but inflammation and macrophage infiltration occurred mainly in eWAT. Also, PPARγ activation reversed inflammation but not ER stress and DAG accumulation. These data indicate that neither reduction of DAG levels nor ER stress contribute to the reversal of eWAT inflammation in Hsl knockout mice