scholarly journals Estimating the mortality burden of large scale mining projects—Evidence from a prospective mortality surveillance study in Tanzania

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (10) ◽  
pp. e0000008
Author(s):  
Isaac Lyatuu ◽  
Mirko S. Winkler ◽  
Georg Loss ◽  
Andrea Farnham ◽  
Dominik Dietler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mortality Risk ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Risk Difference ◽  
Mining Communities ◽  
Gold Mines ◽  
Mortality Burden ◽  
Mining Projects ◽  
Mortality Surveillance

We set up a mortality surveillance system around two of the largest gold mines in Tanzania between February 2019 and February 2020 to estimate the mortality impact of gold mines. Death circumstances were collected using a standardized verbal autopsy tool, and causes of death were assigned using the InSilicoVA algorithm. We compared cause-specific mortality fractions in mining communities with other subnational data as well as national estimates. Within mining communities, we estimated mortality risks of mining workers relative to other not working at mines. At the population level, mining communities had higher road-traffic injuries (RTI) (risk difference (RD): 3.1%, Confidence Interval (CI): 0.4%, 5.9%) and non-HIV infectious disease mortality (RD: 5.6%, CI: 0.8%, 10.3%), but lower burden of HIV mortality (RD: -5.9%, CI: -10.2%, -1.6%). Relative to non-miners living in the same communities, mining workers had over twice the mortality risk (relative risk (RR): 2.09, CI: 1.57, 2.79), with particularly large increases for death due to RTIs (RR: 14.26, CI: 4.95, 41.10) and other injuries (RR:10.10, CI: 3.40, 30.02). Our results shows that gold mines continue to be associated with a large mortality burden despite major efforts to ensure the safety in mining communities. Given that most of the additional mortality risk appears to be related to injuries programs targeting these specific risks seem most desirable.

The effect of preloading statins prior to primary reperfusion on in-hospital mortality risk in a contemporary large-scale cohort of patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (Supplement_2) ◽  
Author(s):  
R Fu ◽  
C.X Song ◽  
X.D Li ◽  
Y.J Yang
Keyword(s):  
Myocardial Infarction ◽  
Acute Myocardial Infarction ◽  
Hospital Mortality ◽  
Mortality Risk ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Reperfusion Therapy ◽  
St Elevation Myocardial Infarction ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Funding Source ◽  
St Elevation

Abstract Background The benefit of statins in secondary prevention of patients stabilized after acute coronary syndrome (ACS) has been well established. However, the benefit of preloading statins, i.e. high-intensity statins prior to reperfusion therapy remains unclear. Most previous studies included all types of ACS patients, and subgroup analysis indicated the benefit of preloading statins was only seen in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However, the sample size of subgroup population was relatively small and such benefit requires further validation. Objective To investigate the effect of loading dose of statins before primary reperfusion on 30-mortality in patients with STEMI. Methods We enrolled patients in China Acute Myocardial Infarction (CAMI) registry from January 2013 to September 2014. CAMI registry was a prospective multicenter registry of patients with acute acute myocardial infarction in China. Patients were divided into two groups according to statins usage: preloading group and control group. Patients in preloading group received loading does of statins before primary reperfusion and during hospitalization. Patients in control group did not receive statins during hospitalization or at discharge. Primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. Baseline characteristics, angiographic characteristics and outcome were compared between groups. Propensity score (PS) matching was used to mitigate baseline differences between groups and examine the association between preloading statins on in-hospital mortality risk. The following variables were used to establish PS matching score: age, sex, classification of hospitals, clinical presentation (heart failure at presentation, cardiac shock, cardiac arrest, Killip classification), hypertension, diabetes, prior angina, prior myocardial infarction history, prior stroke, initial treatment. Results A total of 1169 patients were enrolled in control group and 6795 in preloading group. A total of 833 patients (334 in control group and 499 in preloading group) died during hospitalization. Compared with control group, preloading group were younger, more likely to be male and present with Killip I classification. The proportion of hypertension and diabetes were higher in preloading group. After PS matching, all the variables used to generate PS score were well balanced. In the PS-matched cohort, 30-day mortality risk was 26.3% (292/1112) in the control group and 11.9% (132/1112) in the preloading group (p<0.0001). Conclusions The current study found preloading statins treatment prior to reperfusion therapy reduced in-hospital mortality risk in a large-scale contemporary cohort of patients with STEMI. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: Public Institution(s). Main funding source(s): Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences

scholarly journals 214 Longitudinal Changes in Sleep Duration, Timing, Variability, and Stages during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Large-Scale Fitbit Data

SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (Supplement_2) ◽  
pp. A86-A86
Author(s):  
Michael Grandner ◽  
Naghmeh Rezaei
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Sleep Duration ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Sleep Stages ◽  
Longitudinal Changes ◽  
Timing Variability

Abstract Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in societal-level changes to sleep and other behavioral patterns. Objective, longitudinal data would allow for a greater understanding of sleep-related changes at the population level. Methods N= 163,524 deidentified active Fitbit users from 6 major US cities contributed data, representing areas particularly hard-hit by the pandemic (Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Miami). Sleep variables extracted include nightly and weekly mean sleep duration and bedtime, variability (standard deviation) of sleep duration and bedtime, and estimated arousals and sleep stages. Deviation from similar timeframes in 2019 were examined. All analyses were performed in Python. Results These data detail how sleep duration and timing changed longitudinally, stratified by age group and gender, relative to previous years’ data. Overall, 2020 represented a significant departure for all age groups and both men and women (P<0.00001). Mean sleep duration increased in nearly all groups (P<0.00001) by 5-11 minutes, compared to a mean decrease of 5-8 minutes seen over the same period in 2019. Categorically, sleep duration increased for some and decreased for others, but more extended than restricted. Sleep phase shifted later for nearly all groups (p<0.00001). Categorically, bedtime was delayed for some and advanced for others, though more delayed than advanced. Duration and bedtime variability decreased, owing largely to decreased weekday-weekend differences. WASO increased, REM% increased, and Deep% decreased. Additional analyses show stratified, longitudinal changes to sleep duration and timing mean and variability distributions by month, as well as effect sizes and correlations to other outcomes. Conclusion The pandemic was associated with increased sleep duration on average, in contrast to 2019 when sleep decreased. The increase was most profound among younger adults, especially women. The youngest adults also experienced the greatest bedtime delay, in line with extensive school-start-times and chronotype data. When given the opportunity, the difference between weekdays and weekends became smaller, with occupational implications. Sleep staging data showed that slightly extending sleep minimally impacted deep sleep but resulted in a proportional increase in REM. Wakefulness during the night also increased, suggesting increased arousal despite greater sleep duration. Support (if any) This research was supported by Fitbit, Inc.

Efficient Vector Partitioning Algorithms for Graph Clustering

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-123
Author(s):  
Hiroaki Shiokawa ◽  
Yasunori Futamura
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
Ground Truth ◽  
Graph Clustering ◽  
Mining Communities ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Efficient Vector ◽  
Public Datasets ◽  
Many Core

This paper addressed the problem of finding clusters included in graph-structured data such as Web graphs, social networks, and others. Graph clustering is one of the fundamental techniques for understanding structures present in the complex graphs such as Web pages, social networks, and others. In the Web and data mining communities, the modularity-based graph clustering algorithm is successfully used in many applications. However, it is difficult for the modularity-based methods to find fine-grained clusters hidden in large-scale graphs; the methods fail to reproduce the ground truth. In this paper, we present a novel modularity-based algorithm, \textit{CAV}, that shows better clustering results than the traditional algorithm. The proposed algorithm employs a cohesiveness-aware vector partitioning into the graph spectral analysis to improve the clustering accuracy. Additionally, this paper also presents a novel efficient algorithm \textit{P-CAV} for further improving the clustering speed of CAV; P-CAV is an extension of CAV that utilizes the thread-based parallelization on a many-core CPU. Our extensive experiments on synthetic and public datasets demonstrate the performance superiority of our approaches over the state-of-the-art approaches.

Towards Intelligent Road Traffic Management over Weighted Large Graphs Hybrid Meta-heuristic-Based Approach

2022 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Management ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Optimization Technique ◽  
Shortest Paths ◽  
Hybrid Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Computation Time ◽  
Exact Algorithm ◽  
On The Road

This paper introduces a new approach of hybrid meta-heuristics based optimization technique for decreasing the computation time of the shortest paths algorithm. The problem of finding the shortest paths is a combinatorial optimization problem which has been well studied from various fields. The number of vehicles on the road has increased incredibly. Therefore, traffic management has become a major problem. We study the traffic network in large scale routing problems as a field of application. The meta-heuristic we propose introduces new hybrid genetic algorithm named IOGA. The problem consists of finding the k optimal paths that minimizes a metric such as distance, time, etc. Testing was performed using an exact algorithm and meta-heuristic algorithm on random generated network instances. Experimental analyses demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed approach in terms of runtime and quality of the result. Empirical results obtained show that the proposed algorithm outperforms some of the existing technique in term of the optimal solution in every generation.

scholarly journals Resistance to Canadian mining projects in Mexico: lessons from the lifecycle of the San Xavier Mine in San Luis Potosí

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darcy Victor Tetreault
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Ecological Distribution ◽  
Political Class ◽  
San Luis ◽  
San Luis Potosi ◽  
Mining Projects ◽  
San Luis Potosí

<p>This article analyses resistance movements to large-scale mining projects in Mexico, particularly the case of sustained organized resistance to the San Xavier Mine, in the central north state of San Luis Potosí. As one of the first struggles in Mexico against Canadian mining projects after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the leaders of this movement pioneered strategies of resistance on the legal front and were instrumental in building anti-mining alliances and networks on the national and international levels. Now that the excavation process has finished and the mine is closing down, this article seeks to draw on the case to illustrate the complementarity of three approaches for interpreting resistance to mining: class struggle, ecological distribution conflicts, and the clash of cultural valuations over territorial vocation. The argument is that these approaches are not mutually exclusive; they can be combined to explain the multiple dimensions of specific struggles, whose shifts in emphasis at different moments of the struggle are conditioned by – and condition – the phase of a mine's development. By contextualizing the case study in a broader analysis of social environmental conflicts around mining in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, the analysis seeks to illustrate the ways in which the struggle against the San Xavier Mine is representative of broader trends, as well as its peculiarities. On the local level, we find the struggle has more to do with defending conditions of social and cultural reproduction than protecting the means of production that sustain traditional livelihoods. This pertains, not just to a non-contaminated living environment and the availability of clean water for human consumption, but also to the conservation of natural and architectural patrimony with historic and cultural significance.</p><p><strong>Key words</strong>: Mining conflicts, Canadian imperialism, political class formation, ecological distribution, cultural valuations</p>

scholarly journals Nonlinear visuoauditory integration in the mouse superior colliculus

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shinya Ito ◽  
Yufei Si ◽  
Alan M. Litke ◽  
David A. Feldheim
Keyword(s):  
Superior Colliculus ◽  
Sensory Integration ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Object Identification ◽  
Response Properties ◽  
The Individual

AbstractSensory information from different modalities is processed in parallel, and then integrated in associative brain areas to improve object identification and the interpretation of sensory experiences. The Superior Colliculus (SC) is a midbrain structure that plays a critical role in integrating visual, auditory, and somatosensory input to assess saliency and promote action. Although the response properties of the individual SC neurons to visuoauditory stimuli have been characterized, little is known about the spatial and temporal dynamics of the integration at the population level. Here we recorded the response properties of SC neurons to spatially restricted visual and auditory stimuli using large-scale electrophysiology. We then created a general, population-level model that explains the spatial, temporal, and intensity requirements of stimuli needed for sensory integration. We found that the mouse SC contains topographically organized visual and auditory neurons that exhibit nonlinear multisensory integration. We show that nonlinear integration depends on properties of auditory but not visual stimuli. We also find that a heuristically derived nonlinear modulation function reveals conditions required for sensory integration that are consistent with previously proposed models of sensory integration such as spatial matching and the principle of inverse effectiveness.

scholarly journals Orientation and color tuning of the human visual gamma rhythm

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ye Li ◽  
William Bosking ◽  
Michael S Beauchamp ◽  
Sameer A Sheth ◽  
Daniel Yoshor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Gamma Oscillations ◽  
Cell Orientation ◽  
Population Activity ◽  
Color Tuning ◽  
Human Visual Cortex ◽  
Gamma Rhythm

Narrowband gamma oscillations (NBG: ~20-60Hz) in visual cortex reflect rhythmic fluctuations in population activity generated by underlying circuits tuned for stimulus location, orientation, and color. Consequently, the amplitude and frequency of induced NBG activity is highly sensitive to these stimulus features. For example, in the non-human primate, NBG displays biases in orientation and color tuning at the population level. Such biases may relate to recent reports describing the large-scale organization of single-cell orientation and color tuning in visual cortex, thus providing a potential bridge between measurements made at different scales. Similar biases in NBG population tuning have been predicted to exist in the human visual cortex, but this has yet to be fully examined. Using intracranial recordings from human visual cortex, we investigated the tuning of NBG to orientation and color, both independently and in conjunction. NBG was shown to display a cardinal orientation bias (horizontal) and also an end- and mid-spectral color bias (red/blue and green). When jointly probed, the cardinal bias for orientation was attenuated and an end-spectral preference for red and blue predominated. These data both elaborate on the close, yet complex, link between the population dynamics driving NBG oscillations and known feature selectivity biases in visual cortex, adding to a growing set of stimulus dependencies associated with the genesis of NBG. Together, these two factors may provide a fruitful testing ground for examining multi-scale models of brain activity, and impose new constraints on the functional significance of the visual gamma rhythm.

scholarly journals Personal Exposure to BC, PM and NO2 in the Paris Region Measured by Portable Sensors Worn by Volunteers

Toxics ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Baptiste Languille ◽  
Valérie Gros ◽  
Bonnaire Nicolas ◽  
Cécile Honoré ◽  
Anne Kaufmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Personal Exposure ◽  
Portable Sensors ◽  
Promising Solution ◽  
Field Campaigns ◽  
Paris Region ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First Time ◽  
Indoor And Outdoor

Portable sensors have emerged as a promising solution for personal exposure (PE) measurement. For the first time in Île-de-France, PE to black carbon (BC), particulate matter (PM), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) was quantified based on three field campaigns involving 37 volunteers from the general public wearing the sensors all day long for a week. This successful deployment demonstrated its ability to quantify PE on a large scale, in various environments (from dense urban to suburban, indoor and outdoor) and in all seasons. The impact of the visited environments was investigated. The proximity to road traffic (for BC and NO2), as well as cooking activities and tobacco smoke (for PM), made significant contributions to total exposure (up to 34%, 26%, and 44%, respectively), even though the time spent in these environments was short. Finally, even if ambient outdoor levels played a role in PE, the prominent impact of the different environments suggests that traditional ambient monitoring stations is not a proper surrogate for PE quantification.

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