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63 records · Page 4

Comparison of venous and pooled capillary hemoglobin levels for the detection of anemia among adolescent girls

Introduction: Blood source is a known preanalytical factor affecting hemoglobin (Hb) concentrations, and there is evidence that capillary and venous blood may yield disparate Hb levels and anemia prevalence. However, data from adolescents are scarce. Objective: To compare Hb and anemia prevalence measured by venous and individual pooled capillary blood among a sample of girls aged 10–19 years from 232 schools in four regions of Ghana in 2022. Methods: Among girls who had venous blood draws, a random subsample was selected for capillary blood. Hb was measured using HemoCue® Hb-301. We used Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) to quantify the strength of the bivariate relationship between venous and capillary Hb and a paired t-test for difference in means. We used McNemar’s test for discordance in anemia cases by blood source and weighted Kappa to quantify agreement by anemia severity. A multivariate generalized estimating equation was used to quantify adjusted population anemia prevalence and assess the association between blood source and predicted anemia risk. Results: We found strong concordance between Hb measures (CCC = 0.86). The difference between mean venous Hb (12.8 g/dL, ± 1.1) and capillary Hb (12.9 g/dL, ± 1.2) was not significant (p = 0.26). Crude anemia prevalence by venous and capillary blood was 20.6% and 19.5%, respectively. Adjusted population anemia prevalence was 23.5% for venous blood and 22.5% for capillary ( = 0.45). Blood source was not associated with predicted anemia risk (risk ratio: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.96, 1.02). Discordance in anemia cases by blood source was not significant (McNemar p = 0.46). Weighted Kappa demonstrated moderate agreement by severity (k =0.67). Among those with anemia by either blood source (n = 111), 59% were identified by both sources. Conclusion: In Ghanaian adolescent girls, there was no difference in mean Hb, anemia prevalence, or predicted anemia risk by blood source. However, only 59% of girls with anemia by either blood source were identified as having anemia by both sources. These findings suggest that pooled capillary blood may be useful for estimating Hb and anemia at the population level, but that caution is needed when interpreting individual-level data.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

Trade Study of DEM Software

Review of Open-source Discrete Element Method Softwares: Three open-source solutions have been investigated for integration into OceanWATERS: Yade, EsysParticle, and ProjectChrono.

DEM

Idaho Wildfires II: Assessing the Relationship Between Drought Indicators and Wildfire Risk to Enhance Hazard Modeling and Inform Mitigation Planning

The western United States has experienced twenty years of increased and prolonged drought which have exacerbated wildfire hazards. These jeopardize population centers through increased risks to ecosystem services, local economies, and livelihoods. The Idaho Office of Emergency Management, Water Resources, and Department of Lands are seeking methods to dynamically monitor these conditions and update models that inform hazard mitigation planning and resource allocation. Towards this, these agencies partnered with NASA DEVELOP to produce drought-enhanced wildfire hazard models. Part of a two-term project, the two teams revised the state’s static wildfire hazard model with refined data layers and remotely-sensed data to reflect dynamic ecosystem responses to drought conditions and wildfire potential. Our team distinguished between rangeland and forestland ecosystems, and investigated relationships between drought metrics and vegetation condition using TerrSet Earth Trends Modeler. This analysis determined that total precipitation at a 5-month lag interval (r 2 = 0.72) along with the Evaporative Stress Index (r 2 = 0.69); and precipitation at a 5-month interval (r 2 = 0.42) were important drivers in rangeland and forestland, respectively. These driver variables were incorporated into a temporally dynamic wildfire hazard map. Our team used linear regression to correlate hazard ratings with wildfire frequency. For the year 2020, neither the enhanced hazard model (p < 0.10, r 2 = 0.01) nor the state’s static model (p < 0.05, r 2 = 0.03) were strongly correlated with actual wildfire frequency as they expressed an inverse relationship between wildfire hazard and frequency. This suggests wildfire occurrence is complex and not necessarily driven by the variables used.

Wildfire

Low-Cost Sensor Performance Intercomparison, Correction Factor Development, and 2+ Years of Ambient PM2.5 Monitoring in Accra, Ghana

Particulate matter air pollution is a leading cause of global mortality, particularly in Asia and Africa. Addressing the high and wide-ranging air pollution levels requires ambient monitoring, but many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remain scarcely monitored. To address these data gaps, recent studies have utilized low-cost sensors. These sensors have varied performance, and little literature exists about sensor intercomparison in Africa. By colocating 2 QuantAQ Modulair-PM, 2 PurpleAir PA-II SD, and 16 Clarity Node-S Generation II monitors with a reference-grade Teledyne monitor in Accra, Ghana, we present the first intercomparisons of different brands of low-cost sensors in Africa, demonstrating that each type of low-cost sensor PM2.5 is strongly correlated with reference PM2.5, but biased high for ambient mixture of sources found in Accra. When compared to a reference monitor, the QuantAQ Modulair-PM has the lowest mean absolute error at 3.04 μg/m3, followed by PurpleAir PA-II (4.54 μg/m3) and Clarity Node-S (13.68 μg/m3). We also compare the usage of 4 statistical or machine learning models (Multiple Linear Regression, Random Forest, Gaussian Mixture Regression, and XGBoost) to correct low-cost sensors data, and find that XGBoost performs the best in testing (R2: 0.97, 0.94, 0.96; mean absolute error: 0.56, 0.80, and 0.68 μg/m3 for PurpleAir PA-II, Clarity Node-S, and Modulair-PM, respectively), but tree-based models do not perform well when correcting data outside the range of the colocation training. Therefore, we used Gaussian Mixture Regression to correct data from the network of 17 Clarity Node-S monitors deployed around Accra, Ghana, from 2018 to 2021. We find that the network daily average PM2.5 concentration in Accra is 23.4 μg/m3, which is 1.6 times the World Health Organization Daily PM2.5 guideline of 15 μg/m3. While this level is lower than those seen in some larger African cities (such as Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo), mitigation strategies should be developed soon to prevent further impairment to air quality as Accra, and Ghana as a whole, rapidly grow.

Humidity

Urban Air Quality Management at Low-Cost Using Micro Air Sensors: A Case Study From Accra, Ghana

Urban air quality management is dependent on the availability of local air pollution data. In many major urban centers of Africa, there is limited to non-existent information on air quality. This is gradually changing in part due to the increasing use of micro air sensors which have the potential to enable the generation of ground-based air quality data at fine scales for understanding local emission trends. Regional literature on the application of the high-resolution data for emission source identification in this region is limited. In this study a micro air sensor was co-located at the Physics Department, University of Ghana with a reference grade instrument to evaluate its performance for estimating PM2.5 pollution accurately at fine scales and the value of this data in identification of local sources and their behavior over time. For this study 15 weeks of data at hourly resolution with approximately 2500 data pairs are generated and analyzed (June 01, 2023, to September 15, 2023). For this time period a coefficient of determination (r 2 ) of 0.83 was generated with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 5.44 μgm -3 between the pre local calibration micro air sensor (i.e. out of box) and the reference-grade instrument. Following currently accepted best practice methods (see e.g., PAS4023) a domain specific (i.e. local) calibration factor was generated using a multi-linear regression model and when this factor is applied to the micro air sensor data, a reduction i.e., improvement in MAE to 1.43 μgm -3 was found. Daily variation was calculated, a receptor model was applied, and time series plots as a function of wind direction were generated, including PM2.5/PM10 ratio scatter and count plots to explore the utility of this observational approach for local source identification. The 3 data sets were compared (out of box, domain calibrated and reference-grade) and it was found that although there were variations in the data reported, source areas highlighted based on these data were similar, with input from local sources such as traffic emissions and biomass burning. As the temporal resolution of observational data associated with these micro air sensors is higher than for reference grade instruments (primarily due to costs and logistics limitations), they have the potential to provide insight into the complex, often hyper localized sources associated with urban areas, such as those found in major African cities.

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