Compared with the general population, patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) typically have substantially reduced life expectancies. It is unclear whether SCD patients who acquire COVID-19 have ...higher rates of complications and mortality than the general population. We sought to elucidate COVID-19 presentation and outcomes in patients with SCD.
Using retrospective chart review, we evaluated demographic characteristics, presenting symptoms, chest imaging findings, blood transfusion requirements, need for mechanical ventilation or pressor support, medication administration (including remdesivir and dexamethasone), and survival among individuals with SCD hospitalized with COVID-19 from March 2020 to December 2021.
Among 72 SCD patients, increased pain was the most common presenting symptom followed by cough, fever, and dyspnea. Thirty-seven (44%) received simple transfusion and 14 (17%) underwent exchange transfusion. Lung imaging findings suggestive of COVID-19 were observed in 27 (37%) patients; 21 (29%) patients were treated with remdesivir and 26 (35%) received dexamethasone. Three patients (4%) required mechanical ventilation and pressor support; all three died from COVID complications.
Pain is the most common presenting symptom in SCD patients with COVID-19. We observed a mortality rate higher than that among the general population among patients who required mechanical ventilation and pressor support.
Among the primary contributors to cardiovascular diseases are inflammation and oxidative imbalance within the vessel walls as well as the fibrosis of rat aortic smooth muscle cell (RASMC). Bradykinin ...(BK) and leptin are inflammatory modulators that are linked to vascular injury. In this study, we employed tandem LC-MS/MS to identify protein signatures that encompass protein abundance in RASMC treated with BK or leptin followed by systems biology analyses to gain insight into the biological pathways and processes linked to vascular remodeling. In the study, 1837 proteins were identified in control untreated RASMC. BK altered the expression of 72 (4%) and 120 (6.5%) proteins, whereas leptin altered the expression of 189 (10.2%) and 127 (6.5%) proteins after 24 and 48 h, respectively, compared to control RASMC. BK increased the protein abundance of leptin receptor, transforming growth factor-β. On the other hand, leptin increased the protein abundance of plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 but decreased the protein abundance of cofilin. BK and leptin induced the expression of inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and pathway analysis revealed the activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) and AKT pathways. The proteome profile in response to BK and leptin revealed mechanistic interplay of multiple processes that modulate inflammation and oxidative stress signals in the vasculature.
PurposeThe purpose of this study was to pilot an undergraduate teaching assistantship for Emirati students, an area of scholarship underexplored in the Middle East. The teaching assistantship was ...developed to better prepare students for the workforce, amidst the push for Emiratization.Design/methodology/approachOver the course of one semester, four undergraduate teaching assistants documented their experience through reflexive journals that were analysed using a reflexive thematic analysis.FindingsUndergraduate teaching assistants characterised their experience as providing professional development and learning to connect with student learners. Findings suggest that relationality may be an important factor in student engagement and learning.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the experience of undergraduate teaching assistants can help develop targeted opportunities to enhance career readiness. Exploring the role of relationality could be important in the training and development of the Emirati workforce and help address some of the gaps in skills. Understanding the way in which undergraduate teaching assistants perceive their teaching experience can also provide faculty with insight into their teaching practices.Originality/valueThis exploratory study shows that students are able to acquire skills that may be applied in a variety of work settings (e.g. balancing multiple responsibilities). However, undergraduate teaching assistants expressed wanting to connect with student learners; this may be more culturally rooted and is less explored within the Emirati context. Given the socio-cultural context of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), female Emiratis may benefit from work-type opportunities, which to the authors’ knowledge has not been explored previously.
A neural network-based parking system with real-time license plate detection and vacant space detection using hyper parameter optimization is presented. When number of epochs increased from 30, 50 to ...80 and learning rate tuned to 0.001, the validation loss improved to 0.017 and training object loss improved to 0.040. The model mean average precision mAP_0.5 is improved to 0.988 and the precision is improved to 99%. The proposed neural network-based parking system also uses a regularization technique for effective predictive modeling. The proposed modified lasso ridge elastic (LRE) regularization technique provides a 5.21 root mean square error (RMSE) and an R-square of 0.71 with a 4.22 mean absolute error (MAE) indicative of higher accuracy performance compared to other regularization regression models. The advantage of the proposed modified LRE is that it enables effective regularization via modified penalty with the feature selection characteristics of both lasso and ridge.
A term baby had cyanosis 2 hours after delivery; echocardiography showed hypoplastic left heart syndrome HLHS and valvular pulmonary stenosis PS. The opinions of the cardiac centers in Saudi Arabia ...were taken; however, the baby was not accepted probably because the associated PS made him a poor candidate for a Norwood procedure and because cardiac transplant is not available for infants in Saudi Arabia. He died after 15 days. This mother should have fetal echocardiography in future pregnancies, and if HLHS is suspected she might be advised to seek medical advice antenatally at highly specialized cardiac centers abroad, as delivery there may increase the chance of surgical intervention.
This paper presents a Lora-enabled GPU-based CubeSat Neural-Network Real-Time Object Detection with hyperparameter optimization is presented. When number of epochs increased from 10 to 50 and ...learning rate tuned to 0.00104, the validation loss improved to 0.018 and training object loss improved to 0.042. Model mean average precision mAP_0.5 is improved to 0.986 and the precision is improved to 98.9%. Epoch and learning rate are traded-off to optimize model accuracy performance. The Lora-enabled CubeSat onboard transceiver provides long range onboard sensors readings providing spaced-based IoT application capability.
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