scholarly journals Acoustic surveillance for respiratory diseases: a prospective analysis of cough trends using artificial intelligence.

Author(s):  
Juan Gabaldon-Figueira ◽  
Eric Keen ◽  
Gerard Giménez ◽  
Virginia Orrillo ◽  
Isabel Blavia ◽  
...  

Abstract Syndromic surveillance for respiratory disease is limited by an inability to monitor its protean manifestation, cough. Advances in artificial intelligence provide the ability to passively monitor cough at individual and community levels. We hypothesized that changes in the aggregate number of coughs recorded among a sample could serve as a lead indicator for population incidence of respiratory diseases, particularly that of COVID-19. We enrolled over 900 people from the city of Pamplona (Spain) between 2020 and 2021 and used artificial intelligence cough detection software to monitor their cough. We collected nine person-years of cough aggregated data. Coughs per hour surged around the time cohort subjects sought medical care. There was a weak temporal correlation between aggregated coughs and the incidence of COVID-19 in the local population. We propose that a clearer correlation with COVID-19 incidence could be achieved with better penetration and compliance with cough monitoring.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayda Alrige ◽  
Hind Bitar Bitar ◽  
Maram Meccawi ◽  
Balakrishnan Mullachery

BACKGROUND Designing a health promotion campaign is never an easy task, especially during a pandemic of a highly infectious disease, such as Covid-19. In Saudi Arabia, many attempts have been made toward raising the public awareness about Covid-19 infection-level and its precautionary health measures that have to be taken. Although this is useful, most of the health information delivered through the national dashboard and the awareness campaign are very generic and not necessarily make the impact we like to see on individuals’ behavior. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to build and validate a customized awareness campaign to promote precautionary health behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. The customization is realized by utilizing a geospatial artificial intelligence technique called Space-Time Cube (STC) technique. METHODS This research has been conducted in two sequential phases. In the first phase, an initial library of thirty-two messages was developed and validated to promote precautionary messages during the COVID-19 pandemic. This phase was guided by the Fogg Behavior Model (FBM) for behavior change. In phase 2, we applied STC as a Geospatial Artificial Intelligence technique to create a local map for one city representing three different profiles for the city districts. The model was built using COVID-19 clinical data. RESULTS Thirty-two messages were developed based on resources from the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia. The enumerated content validity of the messages was established through the utilization of Content Validity Index (CVI). Thirty-two messages were found to have acceptable content validity (I-CVI=.87). The geospatial intelligence technique that we used showed three profiles for the districts of Jeddah city: one for high infection, another for moderate infection, and the third for low infection. Combining the results from the first and second phases, a customized awareness campaign was created. This awareness campaign would be used to educate the public regarding the precautionary health behaviors that should be taken, and hence help in reducing the number of positive cases in the city of Jeddah. CONCLUSIONS This research delineates the two main phases to developing a health awareness messaging campaign. The messaging campaign, grounded in FBM, was customized by utilizing Geospatial Artificial Intelligence to create a local map with three district profiles: high-infection, moderate-infection, and low-infection. Locals of each district will be targeted by the campaign based on the level of infection in their district as well as other shared characteristics. Customizing health messages is very prominent in health communication research. This research provides a legitimate approach to customize health messages during the pandemic of COVID-19.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110140
Author(s):  
Sarah Barns

This commentary interrogates what it means for routine urban behaviours to now be replicating themselves computationally. The emergence of autonomous or artificial intelligence points to the powerful role of big data in the city, as increasingly powerful computational models are now capable of replicating and reproducing existing spatial patterns and activities. I discuss these emergent urban systems of learned or trained intelligence as being at once radical and routine. Just as the material and behavioural conditions that give rise to urban big data demand attention, so do the generative design principles of data-driven models of urban behaviour, as they are increasingly put to use in the production of replicable, autonomous urban futures.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Karl

Abstract. This paper describes the City-scale Chemistry (CityChem) extension of the urban dispersion model EPISODE with the aim to enable chemistry/transport simulations of multiple reactive pollutants on urban scales. The new model is called CityChem-EPISODE. The primary focus is on the simulation of urban ozone concentrations. Ozone is produced in photochemical reaction cycles involving nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) emitted by various anthropogenic activities in the urban area. The performance of the new model was evaluated with a series of synthetic tests and with a first application to the air quality situation in the city of Hamburg, Germany. The model performs fairly well for ozone in terms of temporal correlation and bias at the air quality monitoring stations in Hamburg. In summer afternoons, when photochemical activity is highest, modelled median ozone at an inner-city urban background station was about 30 % lower than the observed median ozone. Inaccuracy of the computed photolysis frequency of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is the most probable explanation for this. CityChem-EPISODE reproduces the spatial variation of annual mean NO2 concentrations between urban background, traffic and industrial stations. However, the temporal correlation between modelled and observed hourly NO2 concentrations is weak for some of the stations. For daily mean PM10, the performance of CityChem-EPISODE is moderate due to low temporal correlation. The low correlation is linked to uncertainties in the seasonal cycle of the anthropogenic particulate matter (PM) emissions within the urban area. Missing emissions from domestic heating might be an explanation for the too low modelled PM10 in winter months. Four areas of need for improvement have been identified: (1) dry and wet deposition fluxes; (2) treatment of photochemistry in the urban atmosphere; (3) formation of secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA); and (4) formation of biogenic and anthropogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA). The inclusion of secondary aerosol formation will allow for a better sectorial attribution of observed PM levels. Envisaged applications of the CityChem-EPISODE model are urban air quality studies, environmental impact assessment, sensitivity analysis of sector-specific emission and the assessment of local and regional emission abatement policy options.


2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Cabrini Mauro ◽  
Vera Lúcia Silveira Bota Ferrante ◽  
Marcos Abdo Arbex ◽  
Maria Lúcia Ribeiro ◽  
Romeu Magnani

The objective of this study was to investigate an association between pre-harvest sugarcane burning and respiratory diseases in children under five years of age. The following data were collected in five schools in the city of Araraquara, SP, Southeastern Brazil, between March and June 2009: daily records of absences and the reasons stated for these absences, total concentration of suspended particulate matter (µg/m3), and air humidity. The relationship between the percentage of school absences due to respiratory problems and the concentration of particulate matter in March and from April to June presented a distinct behavior: absences increased alongside the increase in particulate matter concentration. The use of school absences as indicators of this relationship is an innovative approach.


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Elmantas Meilus

This article deals with the situation of the Jews in 1654 at the beginning of the Muscovite invasion of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is maintained that that was the main reason to the disasters that befell the Jewry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The extant sources (mainly relating to Vilnius) show that in the occupied western lands of the GDL the attitude of the Russian authorities towards the Jews was more relaxed than in the eastern lands inhabited by the Orthodox. Seeking to win the favour of the population of the occupied territory, the Russians tried the Jews and the Christians by the same laws at least in areas where their jurisdiction was introduced. That could mean that Muscovy had no definite programme concerning the Jews at least in the western part of the GDL, inhabited mainly by the Catholics. Meanwhile, the Jews, despite the hostile attitude of the local population – that was attested by the plea of Vilnius authorities to the tsar to evict the Jews from the city – managed to find a way of coexistence both with the locals and the authorities of the occupiers. The sources show that even after the tsar’s indication to remove the Jews they continued to reside in the city.


Author(s):  
N.D. Borshchik ◽  

The article deals with the problems of post-war reconstruction of Yalta – one of the most popular resorts of the Soviet Union. During the great Patriotic war, this all-Union health resort was subjected to barbaric destruction and looting. The fascist occupation regime (1941-1944) caused enormous damage to the health resort Fund of Yalta, the city economy and the entire infrastructure of the southern coast of Crimea. The rapid return to the pre-war structure and the commissioning of social facilities has become a priority for the regional authorities and the population. In addition to traditional methods, the Patriotic «Сherkassov» movement, which began in the liberated Stalingrad in 1943 and spread throughout the country, was widely used. A solid Foundation was laid for the interaction of the city administration of Yalta and the local population with the commanders and soldiers of the red Army. Based on the analysis of archival documents of the State archive of the Republic of Crimea, it was possible to trace the course of restoration work in the fi rst months after the liberation of the Crimean Peninsula from fascism. It is established that for the rapid restoration and functioning of the Yalta resorts, public activists launched a socialist competition on «Сherkassov» methods


2021 ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
Anna Tikhonova ◽  
◽  
Anna Kholodenko ◽  

This paper examines the existing in the Russian Federation approaches to assessing the quality of the urban environment, the concept of the quality index of the urban environment; the analysis of indicators for calculating the quality index of the urban environment and the factors that form the ecological well-being of the urban environment for the local population has been carried out. The territory of the northern industrial hub of Volgograd was chosen as the object of research, in particular, the zone of influence of the ferrous metallurgy enterprise AO “VMK ‘Krasny Oktyabr’”, which has a historically specific location relative to the functional zones of the city. The analysis of the results of monitoring the content of mobile forms of heavy metals in the soil cover, carried out by the method of atomic absorption spectrometry, and the assessment of the general life state of tree green plantations in the territory of the sanitary protection zone of the enterprise based on the enumeration of trees is presented. The identified zone of influence of the enterprise, taking into account the presence of additional sources of pollution of the soil cover and MPC of metals, instead of their background concentrations, extends for 3.5–3.7 km from the border of the enterprise in the form of elongated areas of increased concentrations. Cartographic visualization reveals the presence of two clearly pronounced foci of pollution located to the west of the existing SOC of the enterprise. When assessing the general condition of trees, it is also possible to recognize the worst territory of the test plots located to the west of the operating TWCs in accordance with the directions of the prevailing winds. The data obtained confirm the feasibility of organizing regular monitoring of the soil cover and the state of green forests in the city as one of the directions for assessing the quality of the environment and taking these indicators into account when calculating the quality index of the urban environment.


2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
Tamara Leonidovna Kuraeva ◽  
M N Kashenin ◽  
M N Boldyreva, ◽  
N M Tsitlidze ◽  
A N Nikitin ◽  
...  

Aim. To consider association of type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1) with polymorphous alleles of HLA-DRB1 HLA-DQB1, and DQA1 genes in two Russian populations of Moscow (MP) and Vologda (VP) regions. Materials and methods. Identification of alleles of HLA-DRB1 HLA-DQB1, and DQA1 genes in 138 patients with type 1 diabetes and a random sample of 242 subjects from the local population (residents in at least three successive generations) of the Vologda region, 204 patients and a random sample of 300 subjects from the city of Moscow and Moscow region. Results. MP and VP exhibited identical predisposing alleles. The occurrence of DRB1*4 (RR=5.96 and 3.93 in MP and VP respectively), DRB1*17 (RR=4.33 and 4.23), DQA1*0301 (RR=5.70 and 3.66), DQB1*0201, (RR=2.06 and 1.77), DQB1* 0302 (RR=7.10 and 3.95), DQB1* 0304 (RR=8.94 and 19.98) alleles was significantly higher in DM1 patients. The following protective alleles were identified in MP and VP respectively: DRB1*7 (RR=0.37 and 0.18), DRB1*11 (RR=0.12 and 0.21), DRB1*13 (RR=0.09 and 0.26), DRB1*15 (RR=0.23 and 0.04), DQA1*0102 (RR=0.29 and 0.23), DQA1*0103 (RR=0.13 and 0.23), DQA1*0201 (RR=0.37 and 0.17), DQb1*0301 (RR=0.16 and 0.24), and DQB1*0602/8 (RR=0.10 and 0.13). Conclusion. ?New? associations unknown in other populations (e.g. DQB1*0304) were revealed, besides the majority of classical predisposing and protective alleles characteristic of European populations. DQB1*0304 proved the strongest predisposing allele in MP and especially in VP. These data suggest different contribution of predisposing alleles to the development of DM1 in individual populations.


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