Publications by Year: 2024

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is considered a prodromal stage of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease. It is characterized by behavioral changes and decreased cognitive function, while individuals can still maintain their independence. Early detection of MCI is critical, as it allows for timely intervention, enrichment of clinical trial cohorts, and the development of therapeutic approaches. Recently, language markers have been shown to be a promising approach to identifying MCI in a non-intrusive, affordable, and accessible fashion. In the InterSpeech 2024 TAUKADIAL Challenge, we study language markers from spontaneous speech in English and Chinese and use the bilingual language markers to identify MCI cases and predict the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) scores. Our proposed framework combines the power from 1) feature extraction of a comprehensive set of bilingual acoustic features, and semantic and syntactic features from language models; 2) careful treatment of model complexity for small sample size; 3) consideration of imbalanced demographic structure, potential outlier removal, and a multi-task treatment that uses the prediction of clinical classification as prior for MMSE prediction. The proposed approach delivers an average of 78.2% Balanced Accuracy in MCI detection and an averaged RMSE of 2.705 in predicting MMSE. Our empirical evaluation shows that translingual language markers can improve the detection of MCI from spontaneous speech. Our codes are provided in https://github.com/illidanlab/translingual-language-markers.

Self-transcendence (ST) is a state of consciousness associated with feelings of ego-dissolution, connectedness, and moral elevation, which mediates well-being, meaning-making, and prosociality. Conventional paths to ST, like religious practice, meditation, and psychedelics, pose nontrivial barriers to entry, limiting ST's study and application. Aesthetic chills (henceforth "chills") are a psychophysiological response characterized by a pleasurable, cold sensation, with subjective qualities and downstream effects similar to ST. However, evidence is lacking directly relating chills and ST. In the summer of 2023, we exposed a diverse sample of 2937 participants in Southern California to chills-eliciting stimuli, then assayed chills, mood and ST. Even after controlling for differences in demographics, traits, and prior affective state, both chills likelihood and intensity were positively associated with measures ST. Parametric and non-parametric analyses of variance, mutual information, and correlation structure found that chills occurrence and intensity, and ST measures are reliably interrelated across a variety of audiovisual stimuli. These findings suggest aesthetic chills may denote sufficiently intense feelings of self-transcendence. Further study is necessary to demonstrate the generalizability of these results to non-WEIRD populations, and the precise direction of causal relationships between self-transcendent feelings and aesthetic chills.

HIV/AIDS continues to be one of the leading global health challenges, having claimed over 40 million lives so far. People infected with HIV are more likely to develop depression, leading to several negative behavioural and clinical outcomes. Studies have reported exceptionally high prevalence of depressive symptoms among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), making a case for integrating mental healthcare in routine HIV care. The HIV+D program was implemented in Uganda as an intervention model for integrating the management of depression in HIV care. Process evaluation was carried out to understand the contextual factors and explain the outcomes of the intervention. This was a qualitative study, conducted in 28 out of the 40 public health facilities in 3 districts, where the intervention was undertaken. A total of 82 participants, including the implementers and beneficiaries of the intervention were purposively selected for key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Conventional content analysis was done focusing on 6 aspects including reach, effectiveness, acceptability, implementation fidelity, maintenance (sustainability) and contextual factors that affected the intervention. The intervention was well received and believed to address a real need of the intended beneficiaries; many of whom described it as a program for helping the depressed PLWHA to deal with their depression. The implementers were said to have adhered to the intervention protocol, without major program adaptations, suggesting strong implementation fidelity. The respondents cited several positive health outcomes that resulted from the intervention, for both the beneficiaries and the implementers. Several contextual factors affected the implementation. Although it met the beneficiaries' approval, and was considered relevant and acceptable, they expressed uncertainty over sustainability of the intervention in a health system characterized by understaffing, resource constraints and several other challenges. The intervention was generally implemented as intended, resulting in several positive health outcomes.

INTRODUCTION: Increased greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial age have led to higher global temperatures and frequency and severity of climate events, such as heat waves, wildfires, floods, and storms. These changes are adversely affecting human health and increasing disease risk, including risk of allergic diseases. Further understanding of the environmental factors and the cellular and molecular mechanisms mediating these increases can assist in developing strategies to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a scoping review of the literature from 2010 through 2024 using PubMed and Scopus.

RESULTS: Thunderstorms, dust storms, wildfires, and other climate change factors increase allergies both directly and indirectly through increases in particulate matter, pollen, migration of disease vectors and decreases in biodiversity. The epithelial barrier, hygiene, "old friends," and biodiversity hypotheses have been put forward to explain the underlying mechanism mediating these increases.

CONCLUSION: There is an urgent need to reduce the use of fossil fuels to mitigate climate change and protect planetary and human health. While international accords such as the 2015 Paris Agreement have been signed with the aim of lowering greenhouse gases and limiting future global temperature increases, it is clear that increased efforts are needed to meet these goals. Evidence-based solutions for adapting to the increased prevalence of allergic diseases and cost-benefit analysis of current mitigation strategies for lowering allergic diseases are also needed.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Delayed bleeding (DB) is a common adverse event after endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD). We evaluated a novel hemostatic powder (UI-EWD, Nexpowder; Medtronic, Minneapolis, Minn, USA) to prevent DB after ESD.

METHODS: This was a multicenter retrospective analysis of ESDs performed between January 2023 and March 2024 in which UI-EWD was applied to prevent DB. Cases in which endoscopic closure of the post-ESD mucosal defect was performed were excluded. DB was defined as a bleeding event requiring hospitalization, blood transfusion, or any intervention within 30 days after the procedure. Technical success of UI-EWD was defined as successful delivery and application of the hemostatic powder over the entire mucosal defect.

RESULTS: Eighty-three patients (median age, 66 years) underwent ESD in the esophagus (n = 18), stomach (n = 15), colon (n = 38), and rectum (n = 12). The median lesion size was 50 mm (interquartile range, 41-70 mm). UI-EWD was successfully applied in all defects, although in 2 cases (2.4%) a second delivery catheter had to be used to complete the procedure. DB occurred in 3 patients (3.6%): 2 after gastric ESD and 1 after colonic ESD within 24 hours of the index procedure. None required intervention on repeat endoscopy. There were no cases of perforation. En bloc and R0 resection rates were 96.2% and 88.7%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS: UI-EWD can be easily applied to mucosal defects after ESD throughout the GI tract. Initial data from this multicenter study demonstrate that the use of UI-EWD was associated with a relatively low rate of DB after ESD. Additional comparative studies are needed to corroborate these preliminary findings.