Category archives: Review

This study centres on the 2015 “Millennium Development Goals,” (MDGs) a historic United Nations (UN) initiative aimed at bridging many of the world’s inequalities. Since its conclusion, the success of the project has been hotly debated, as progress at the international level was markedly uneven. In order to ensure the success of future initiatives, it is necessary to determine why these goals failed so decisively in some contexts but succeeded in others. Given the innumerable nations involved in the project, the scope of the essay was narrowed to focus on a single country and MDG goal. This study centers on the improbable attainment of the fourth development goal (pertaining to neonatal and newborn health) in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries. Using official UN documents, seminal literature, and consultation with crucial UN actor Uzma Syed herself, this study demonstrates that Bangladesh’s success was a result of efficient programming, data acquisition, and transnational, individual, and domestic cooperation. This allowed a small nation like Bangladesh to significantly reduce its under-five and infant mortality rates, illustrating that it is, in fact, possible to enact meaningful change in difficult circumstances. Following the conclusion of the initiative, the country has decided to maintain child survival as a government health priority, as inequalities between populations persist. According to former secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, a continued, strategic focus on under-fives is imperative, with a particular emphasis on the structural and social determinants of health. Looking, now, toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Bangladesh’s triumph can be used to build a framework for continued progress in the realms of child and neonatal health.

Artificial hearts are designed to eliminate the need for heart transplants, which are in short supply. However, these devices are prone to creating complications such as infections or strokes. The complications occur from the mechanical aspects of the device. Therefore, the devices’ effectiveness is influenced by their design. This paper investigates the advances in technology of different artificial hearts that are being developed. The four devices evaluated in this paper are: the total artificial heart, the left ventricular assist device, the total internal artificial heart, and the HeartWare ventricular assist device. Research shows that the total artificial heart may result in both infections and strokes. The left ventricular assist device lowered the probability of these complications but did not eliminate the risk altogether. While the internal artificial heart was able to eliminate the risk of infections entirely, it introduced new complications. Finally, the HeartWare ventricular assist device decreased the rate of adverse events for the complications occurring over time. Given these results, artificial hearts still require further research to improve the risk of complication before the phasing out of heart transplants can occur.

Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, is the most pervasive form of dementia worldwide. Impairment in face processing is a common trait of the disorder, causing a deficit not only in the processing of emotional expressions, but also causing a deficit in face recognition. Research into the causes of impaired face recognition in Alzheimer’s disease patients has found several factors at play: Abnormal temporal lobe activation in response to familiar faces, a breakdown in holistic processing of faces due to changes in frontal lobe activation, and atrophy of areas of the brain implicated in theory of mind. These neural changes are evident long prior to any alterations of behavior. Due to the progressive nature of Alzheimer’s disease, patients display increasing levels of impairment in face recognition over time. At the final stages of the disorder, patients lose all ability to recognize familiar faces, and most strikingly, lose the ability to self-recognize. Further research on face recognition in Alzheimer’s disease may improve our knowledge both in neurotypical face recognition, as well as aid in discovering novel ways of helping patients cope with their symptoms.

Female juvenile crime is on the rise. In response, some agencies are suggesting a remedy to revise the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act in favour of harsher sentences for youth. This paper delves into the potential negative repercussions of said amendment such as increased involvement in gangs and deteriorating mental health. Furthermore, alternative methods such as after school programs, mentorships, and therapeutic means of rehabilitation are shown to not only be more effective for reducing crime among young women but more cost effective as well. Prisons have been shown to worsen the situations of young women who have grown up in extremely disadvantageous circumstances. Thus, this paper argues that harsher sentences for female youth will not only be ineffective in solving the current problem of female youth crime but may make it worse.

Despite the immense amount of research completed on adult correctional facilities within North America, little is known about the overrepresentation of visible minority youth within the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice system is known for violent juvenile offenders, who become and remain habitual offenders. The juvenile justice system then faces questioning for creating professional criminals instead of focusing on effective rehabilitation. The face of the youth justice system within Canada is rapidly changing. Increasing forms of diversity serve as a principal pattern because the criminalization of minority youth occurs from cultural incompetence, unawareness, and insensitivity. This article recovers the institutional or systemic forms of treatment that minority youth face within the criminal justice system. It also further shows that there is little focus on the experiences of minority youth within juvenile correctional facilities due to a lack of information. Racialized and marginalized youth and young adults are apart of the vulnerable population within Canada. One must ensure that youth and young adults who are vulnerable within society, receive the best possible chance at achieve upward mobility. The youth justice system, from a racial justice lens, reveals slave-era origin within youth prisons, limiting opportunities for racialized youth across Canada. Racial antagonism within the youth justice system leads to the criminalization of minority youth, which serves as a foundation for why culture shapes the identity of racialized youth.

Clozapine is a crucial antipsychotic medication to treat schizophrenia and has shown valuable benefits in doing so. However, there can be rare, but potentially fatal adverse drug reactions to the medication. Therefore, it is essential that there is careful monitoring of the patient while on the medication. A retrospective study was conducted to examine the effects of clozapine on vitals during the first 2 days of initiation. There were 43 (29 male, 16 female) charts analyzed retrospectively, and the average age of the patients was 45 years old. The average dose of clozapine on the first day was 9.3mg and 15.7mg on the second day. Regarding vitals, the temperature peaked 5 hours after administrating clozapine on day 1 and day 2. Furthermore, the respiration rate peaked 4 hours post-dose on the second day and the heart rate increased the most on the second day indicating a dose-related response. There was no trend in blood pressure changes that can be inferred from the data; however, individual variations in blood pressure fluctuated considerably. The study was limited due to a lack of data in patient charts, and it may be of interest to do a prospective study to gain more insight.

Proximity-dependent biotin identification (BioID) is a novel approach to identify protein-protein interactions (PPIs) in a natural cellular environment. BioID exploits a mutant form of a biotin protein ligase found in Escherichia coli, BirA*, that promiscuously catalyses biotinylation of proteins in close-proximity of the enzyme. Biotinylated proteins are then purified with conventional methods. BioID has been shown to overcome many of the limitations faced by traditional PPI techniques, such as co-immunoprecipitation, proximity ligation assays and yeast two-hybrid systems. The main advantages of BioID as compared to these methods include high sensitivity and spatial resolution, preservation of physiologically- relevant conditions, and detection of weak or transient interactions. Despite some inherent limitations, BioID remains a promising PPI technique and has led to more advanced methods, such as BioID2 and split-BioID.

Since its development in 2013, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) Cas9 gene-editing technologies have dramatically impacted the feld of genetics research. CRISPR/Cas9 has received a lot of attention in the news in recent years, and accurate portrayal of this technology by the mainstream media has the potential to shape its perception by the public in a way that is conducive to its possible implementation as a viable tool for genetic engineering. Our aim was to evaluate how the discussion of CRISPR/ Cas9 in the mainstream media reflects and compares to that of the academic literature. We surveyed mainstream news articles (n=60) and scientific review articles (n=30) that discussed CRISPR/Cas9. Using an a priori coding scheme, we found that while the news does not accurately reflect the current state of CRISPR/Cas9 research and development, it provides more perspectives and considers broader social implications compared to the academic literature. h, both news media and academic papers provide valuable contributions to the conversation but news articles in particular have the opportunity to improve the accuracy or thoroughness of their coverage on the topic.

Barriers to conventional treatments for mental health concerns in Canada posit the emergence of information and communications technology (ICT) as a means of providing mental health care; this is widely referred to as e-mental health care. Such platforms currently provide a myriad of mental health services in four broad categories: information dissemination, screening and assessment, intervention and peer support. Coupled with further research, careful consideration of e-mental health models in other countries and current barriers can be used to refine pre-existing e-therapy approaches.

The main objective of this study was to compare the efficiency of various evolutionary systems in maximizing the fitness of the population upon which they act. This was accomplished through the development of a genetic algorithm to optimize the chemical structure of carbon dioxide (CO2), which has a precisely known solution. This allowed for the comparison of efficacy of different versions of the algorithm, each based on a different evolutionary strategy. Each breeding system represents a distinct approach to reproduction, generating unique evolutionary curves; however, the population fitnesses converge toward the optimized solution at approximately the same time. It is concluded that for the given problem all versions are practical, but for more complex problems the path taken to optimization might make one method preferable.