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Technology innovation to reduce health inequality in skin diagnosis and to improve patient outcomes for people of color: a thematic literature review and future research agenda
Get PDFThe health inequalities experienced by ethnic minorities have been a persistent and global phenomenon. The diagnosis of different types of skin conditions, e.g., melanoma, among people of color is one of such health domains where misdiagnosis can take place, potentially leading to life-threatening consequences. Although Caucasians are more likely to be diagnosed with melanoma, African Americans are four times more likely to present stage IV melanoma due to delayed diagnosis. It is essential to recognize that additional factors such as socioeconomic status and limited access to healthcare services can be contributing factors. African Americans are also 1.5 times more likely to die from melanoma than Caucasians, with 5-year survival rates for African Americans significantly lower than for Caucasians (72.2% vs. 89.6%). This is a complex problem compounded by several factors: ill-prepared medical practitioners, lack of awareness of melanoma and other skin conditions among people of colour, lack of information and medical resources for practitioners’ continuous development, under-representation of people of colour in research, POC being a notoriously hard to reach group, and ‘whitewashed’ medical school curricula. Whilst digital technology can bring new hope for the reduction of health inequality, the deployment of artificial intelligence in healthcare carries risks that may amplify the health disparities experienced by people of color, whilst digital technology may provide a false sense of participation. For instance, Derm Assist, a skin diagnosis phone application which is under development, has already been criticized for relying on data from a limited number of people of color. This paper focuses on understanding the problem of misdiagnosing skin conditions in people of color and exploring the progress and innovations that have been experimented with, to pave the way to the possible application of big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and user-centred technology to reduce health inequalities among people of color
Search for Scalar Leptoquarks Produced via τ-Lepton–Quark Scattering in pp Collisions at √s = 13 TeV
No full textA preprint of this artiicle is available at arXiv:2308.06143v2 [hep-ex], https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.06143v2 . Comments: Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables, including additional supplementary figures, can be found at https://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/EXO-22-018 (CMS Public Pages)The first search for scalar leptoquarks produced in τ-lepton-quark collisions is presented. It is based on a set of proton-proton collision data recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb^{-1}. The reconstructed final state consists of a jet, significant missing transverse momentum, and a τ lepton reconstructed through its hadronic or leptonic decays. Limits are set on the product of the leptoquark production cross section and branching fraction and interpreted as exclusions in the plane of the leptoquark mass and the leptoquark-τ-quark coupling strength.SCOAP3
Annexins-a family of proteins with distinctive tastes for cell signaling and membrane dynamics
Get PDFAnnexins are cytosolic proteins with conserved three-dimensional structures that bind acidic phospholipids in cellular membranes at elevated Ca2+ levels. Through this they act as Ca2+-regulated membrane binding modules that organize membrane lipids, facilitating cellular membrane transport but also displaying extracellular activities. Recent discoveries highlight annexins as sensors and regulators of cellular and organismal stress, controlling inflammatory reactions in mammals, environmental stress in plants, and cellular responses to plasma membrane rupture. Here, we describe the role of annexins as Ca2+-regulated membrane binding modules that sense and respond to cellular stress and share our view on future research directions in the field.Work in our laboratories was supported by grants from the German Research Foundation to V.G. (CRC1348/A04, GE514/6-3) and U.R. (CRC1009/A06, CRC1348/A11); the Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research of the Münster Medical School to U.R. (Re2/022/20); the Danish Council for Independent Research (6108-00378A, 9040-00252B), Scientific Committee Danish Cancer Society (R90-A5847-14-S2, R269-A15812), and the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF18OC0034936) to J.N.; the Royal Society and Wolfson Foundation (RSWF\R3\183001) to F.N.E.G.; the National Institute of Health (NIH R01AR055686) to J.K.J.; the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Fund (G217137) to T.G
From Here to Net Zero: Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Sustainable Transportation
Get PDFInternet publication / Online URL : https://eiexchange.com/content/from-here-to-net-zero-entrepreneurial-opportunities-in-sustainabThe transportation industry, and the shift to renewable energy, is ripe with opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators who yearn to help shape a more sustainable future and boost their own fortunes.
In late 2023, more than 200 countries met in Dubai for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28). They made commitments to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and triple capacity in renewable energy by 2030, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43% and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Despite this monumental worldwide commitment and a growing political will to let go of fossil fuels, significant and complex challenges stand in the way. In this article we outline the opportunities for visionary entrepreneurs and innovators who can find ways to get past those challenges. In particular, we focus on the transportation industry, a significant contributor to CO2 emissions, heavily dependent on fossil fuels
Privacy-Preserving Distributed Economic Dispatch of Microgrids Using Edge-Based Additive Perturbations: An Accelerated Consensus Algorithm
Get PDFThis article investigates the privacy-preserving distributed economic dispatch (DED) problem of islanded microgrids. To improve the convergence rate of the DED algorithm, an accelerated consensus scheme is adopted by utilizing a short memory. Then, a privacy-preserving strategy is introduced to prevent sensitive information leakage by adding well-designed perturbations into the proposed consensus algorithm at the initial time instant. The primary objective of this article is to design a privacy-preserving accelerated consensus scheme to achieve a balance between supply and demand at the globally minimized cost while preserving the initial local demand information. By virtue of rigorous algebra manipulation and mathematical induction, a unified framework is established under which the convergence, the optimal convergence rate, and the optimality of the proposed DED algorithm are simultaneously analyzed, and the main results are extended to satisfy the privacy-preserving needs. Furthermore, the proposed privacy-preserving DED algorithm is shown to be resilient against both internal (honest-but-curious) and external eavesdroppers. Finally, the effectiveness of the developed privacy-preserving accelerated consensus algorithm is validated on the IEEE 39-bus power systems.10.13039/501100001809-National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 62303210, 62173255, 62188101 and 12171124);
Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation of China (Grant Number: 2022A1515110459);
Shenzhen Science and Technology Program of China (Grant Number: RCBS20221008093348109);
Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Control Theory and Intelligent Systems (Grant Number: ZDSYS20220330161800001);
Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province of China (Grant Number: ZD2022F003)
Anomaly-Resistant Decentralized State Estimation Under Minimum Error Entropy With Fiducial Points for Wide-Area Power Systems
Get PDFThis paper investigates the anomaly-resistant decentralized state estimation (SE) problem for a class of wide-area power systems which are divided into several non-overlapping areas connected through transmission lines. Two classes of measurements (i.e., local measurements and edge measurements) are obtained, respectively, from the individual area and the transmission lines. A decentralized state estimator, whose performance is resistant against measurement with anomalies, is designed based on the minimum error entropy with fiducial points (MEEF) criterion. Specifically, 1) An augmented model, which incorporates the local prediction and local measurement, is developed by resorting to the unscented transformation approach and the statistical linearization approach; 2) Using the augmented model, an MEEF-based cost function is designed that reflects the local prediction errors of the state and the measurement; and 3) The local estimate is first obtained by minimizing the MEEF-based cost function through a fixed-point iteration and then updated by using the edge measuring information. Finally, simulation experiments with three scenarios are carried out on the IEEE 14-bus system to illustrate the validity of the proposed anomaly-resistant decentralized SE scheme.10.13039/501100001809-National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 61933007,U21A2019,62273005,62273088,62303301);
10.13039/501100003995-Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (Grant Number: 2108085MA07);
10.13039/100005156-Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Metal recovery from spent lithium-ion batteries cathode materials: Comparative study of sugar-based reductants
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Data will be made available on request.Supplementary material is available online at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666911024000030?via%3Dihub#sec0070 .Sugars and sugar-rich agricultural by-products are cheaper and eco-friendly alternatives to conventional reductants used in recovering metals from spent lithium-ion batteries. Still, they are rarely used due to a poor understanding of their performance and reaction chemistry. In this study, two hypotheses bearing on the role of chemistry and influence of non-sugary organic compounds (impurities) on the performance of sugars, namely: glucose, fructose and sucrose, and a parent sugar-rich agro-industrial by-product – molasses, as reductants in the leaching of Li, Co, Mn and Ni from spent lithium-ion battery cathode material were tested. Statistical analysis using ANOVA revealed that the performance of the sugars and molasses are similar with >85% Mn, >88% Ni, >88%Co and >98% Li leached at 90 °C and 60 min. This shows that the presence of non-sugar organic compounds does not hamper the performance of the sugars-based reductants. The performance of the sugars relies more on temperature than chemistry. Furthermore, evaluation of the oxidation pathway hints at a potential inhibition of secondary oxidation reactions at lower temperatures. This study provides statistically validated proof that the performance of sugarcane molasses, even at lower concentration, is equipollent to the pure sugars in the leaching of critical metals from spent lithium-ion batteries.There is no funding information to declare
Self-reflexivity, Class Consciousness and Social Change in Mass Observation Narratives
Get PDFThe original Mass Observation (MO) movement (1937–49) has a well-established position in British history as both the primary archival source for social history of the Second World War and part of a wider political constellation that paved the way to the post-war Labour Government. These two contexts for MO were established during the course of the PhD research of Angus Calder and Paul Addison at the University of Sussex, where the MO Archive was to be established, and contributed respectively to Calder’s The People’s War (1969) and Addison’s The Road to 1945 (1975). Since 2000, attention to this period of MO’s history has leaned more towards the wartime diaries MO asked observers to keep, of which there are around 400, with nearly 100 written for the duration of the war, many by women. In Nine Wartime Lives (2010), James Hinton argues that the historical significance of these diaries lies in the unique way in which they combine private and public spheres: ‘Mass-Observation offered a discipline and a context which transcended the purely private, meeting a need to frame individual quests in relation to larger public purposes.’...British Academy (ref: SRG18R1\180033) Understanding social change through autobiographical narrative
Assessing salinity hazards in coastal aquifers: implications of temperature boundary conditions on aquifer–ocean interaction
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Upon request.Code availability:
Upon request.Investigating the repercussions of climate change and irrigation timing on groundwater contamination necessitates thorough examination of the fluctuations in seawater and groundwater recharge temperature. This study introduces an innovative numerical approach to analyze groundwater salinity and temperature dynamics across three distinct scenarios using the SEAWAT code based on Henry's problem. The first scenario delves into the impact of seawater temperature, the second focuses on the consequences of aquifer freshwater recharge temperature, and the third amalgamates the effects of both scenarios. Remarkably, the study reveals that saltwater intrusion (SWI) experiences a decline attributable to the aquifer's heightened seawater temperature and the diminished inland freshwater temperature. Furthermore, combining these two scenarios has a more pronounced effect on aquifer pollution; the temperature-induced changes in SWI for this third scanrio reach + 8.10%, + 12.70%, + 16.20%, + 24.90%, + 28.30%, and + 31.80% compared to the case without considering the temperature effect. Notably, our results propose a potential strategy to mitigate SWI by introducing cold freshwater recharge into aquifers, such as irrigation at night time when water temperature is low. This innovative approach underscores the interconnectedness of various environmental factors. It provides a practical avenue for proactive intervention in safeguarding groundwater quality against the adverse impacts of climate change and irrigation practices.This study did not receive any funding. Alban Kuriqi acknowledges the Foundation for Science and Technology's support through funding UIDB/04625/2020 from the research unit CERIS
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