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Chiefs terrorising subjects: Report – NewsDay

In its latest report titled Traditional Leaders in Zimbabwe Balancing Culture, Development and Democracy, HZT said chiefs were deviating from their mandate.

A LEADING peace and reconciliation organisation has called for the alignment of the Traditional Leaders Act to the Constitution to whip chiefs into line after they were flagged for corruption and human rights violations, among other misdemeanours.

In its latest report titled Traditional Leaders in Zimbabwe Balancing Culture, Development and Democracy, Heal Zimbabwe Trust (HZT) said chiefs were deviating from their mandate.

“Some traditional leaders have been accused of accepting bribes, abusing their power, violating the rights of their subjects and discriminating against women and youths in their roles and activities,” the report noted.

“For example, some traditional leaders have been reported to demand payment from villagers for accessing basic services, such as water, health and education. Some have also been implicated in cases of forced evictions, torture and murder of suspected opposition supporters or dissenters.”

HZT said laws governing and monitoring the conduct of traditional leaders should be strengthened.

“Aligning the Traditional Leaders Act to the Constitution as a way of strengthening the constitutional and legal framework for regulating and monitoring the conduct of traditional leaders, and ensuring that they adhere to the principles of impartiality, transparency and respect for human rights,” the policy brief said.

Last year, police in Masvingo opened an indecent assault charge against Chiefs’ Council vice-president Fortune Charumbira after he allegedly sexually abused his 27-year-old married niece on two occasions.

Gender activist Nancy Mupeki said there had been cases of traditional leaders abusing their position to gain sexual favours from women.

“At one point, my organisation had to intervene after we came across a case of a headman who was abusing his powers asking for sexual favours from women in exchange for farming inputs in Chihota,” she said.

“There are many cases across the country where traditional leaders operate like Sabhuku Vharazipi.”

Sabhuku Vharazipi is a popular local comedy character depicting some of the shenanigans of the country’s traditional leaders.

HZT advocacy officer Tapiwanashe Chiriga said traditional leaders accounted for 40% of the country’s human rights violations thus far.

“In the run-up to the 2023 elections, village heads were illegally appointed Zanu PF cell chairs and became the epicentre of a litany of human rights abuses,” Chiriga told NewsDay in an interview.

Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum acting director Wilbert Mandinde also expressed concern over the increasing politicisation of traditional leaders.

“Our concern is that during the course of the year, we have continued seeing traditional leaders taking a partisan approach,” Mandinde said.

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Patients With HIV at Increased Risk of Pneumonia, Readmission After Cardiac Surgery – AJMC.com Managed Markets Network

Pneumonia and readmission were higher in patients who were living with HIV who needed cardiac surgery, according to a study published by JTCVS Open.¹ Patients with HIV also had lower rates of cardiac surgery, which could imply limited access to the surgeries.

Cardiovascular disease has a higher risk of occurring in people who are living with HIV compared with those without the disease, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.² The study found that patients with HIV are at a greater risk of myocardial infarction, heart failure, and stroke, among other cardiovascular diseases. However, the risk of cardiac surgery for those with HIV has not been as thoroughly studied, including those whose viral load has been suppressed using antiretroviral therapy (ART). This study aimed to assess the primary risks of cardiac surgery for patients living with HIV who needed the operation.

Hands holding red ribbon for HIV awareness | Image credit: SewcreamStudio – stock.adobe.com

The retrospective cohort study used the PearlDiver Database to collect data on patients with HIV living in the US. The database included data for 91 million patients spanning from 2010 to 2020. The researchers identified patients who had risk factors for heart disease. These patients were separated into 2 groups based on reports of hospitalizations due to HIV. Patients were also classified into the type of cardiac surgery that they had if a surgery was performed. Patients were included in study outcomes if they had active records and were enrolled with their insurance carrier at the follow-up.

Outcome variables that were assessed in this study included the length of stay (LOS), stroke, myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia, renal injury, and 30-day all-cause readmission. Outcomes were assessed using 30-day follow-up records. Only the first admission for an ailment was included in this study.

There were 59,695 patients living with HIV who were a part of the PearlDiver Database out of 14,714,743 patients who had data on hospital admissions. Patients with HIV were younger, more often male, more often smokers, were obese, were sicker, and had greater rates of hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), among other ailments. These differences were most pronounced in the rates of tobacco use (40.17% vs 17.06%), polysubstance abuse (35.17% vs 7.06%), cerebrovascular disease (18.25% vs 2.71%), and chronic liver disease (28.82% vs 7.25%) in people living with HIV vs those not living with HIV.

Patients who were living with HIV and were undergoing cardiac surgery were more often younger, had more comorbidities, had a history of smoking or substance use, were more often male, and were less often insured; greater rates of hypertension, COPD, chronic lung disease, chronic kidney disease, and heart failure were also found in this cohort.

Pneumonia (2.67% vs 1.54%; relative risk, 1.7) and 30-day readmission (15.69% vs 12.05%; relative risk, 1.28) had higher rates of occurrence after cardiac surgery in patients who were living with HIV compared with those who were not. LOS, stroke, heart failure, myocardial infarction, and renal injury were not significantly different between the 2 groups. Patients who were using highly active ART were found to have lower rates of readmission compared with other patients living with HIV (14.58% vs 18.10%) but no other differences were found.

There were some limitations to this study. Only a small percentage of the patients living with HIV who were included in the database had undergone cardiac surgery, which limited the results. Selection bias was possible due to only including inpatient data where patients with HIV were sicker.

The researchers concluded that patients living with HIV were at increased risk of pneumonia and 30-day readmission when having cardiac surgery. Future studies should focus on a larger clinical datasets to confirm these results are upheld in different cohorts.

References

Zadeh AV, Justicz A, Plate J, Cortelli M, Wang I, Melvan JN. Human immunodeficiency virus infection is associated with greater risk of pneumonia and readmission after cardiac surgery. JTCVS Open. 2024;18:145-155. doi:10.1016/j.xjon.2024.01.002
Alonso A, Barnes AE, Guest JL, Shao IY, Marconi V. HIV infection and incidence of cardiovascular diseases: an analysis of a large healthcare database. J Am Heart Assoc. 2019;8:e01224. doi:10.1161/JAHA.119012241

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Healthy Lifestyle Choices Slash Genetic Risk Of Early Death By 62%: Study – NDTV

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Healthy Lifestyle Choices Slash Genetic Risk Of Early Death By 62%: Study

The study involves over 350,000 participants.

New research suggests that healthy lifestyle choices can significantly reduce the risk of early death, even for people with a genetic predisposition to it. The study, involving over 350,000 participants, found that healthy habits like regular exercise, a good diet, and enough sleep can offset the genetic risk by up to 62%. While genetics do play a role, it appears lifestyle choices can have a much larger impact on lifespan.

In the study that was published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, researchers investigated the associations between lifestyle, genetic factors, and human longevity.

The study shows you can dramatically increase your lifespan by ditching bad habits. Binge drinking, smoking, being a couch potato, and unhealthy eating are linked to early death. Research suggests these lifestyle choices can outweigh your genetic predisposition for a shorter life. Even if your genes aren’t stacked in your favour, staying active, eating well, and getting enough sleep can significantly improve your odds of living a long life. Scientists are still figuring out the exact link between genes and lifestyle, but for now, the message is clear: healthy choices are a powerful weapon against early death.

The research involved 353,742 European adults who were enlisted between 2006 and 2010 and then tracked until 2021. The study examined factors such as the longevity PRS in the highest quintile categories and the healthy lifestyle score (HLS).

Adopting healthy lifestyle habits has the potential to decrease the hereditary risk by 62%. Individuals who possess a genetic predisposition towards a shorter lifespan and lead an unhealthy lifestyle face a mortality risk 2.04 times higher than those with healthier habits.

Implementing healthy lifestyle behaviours could substantially mitigate premature mortality in individuals with a genetic predisposition towards shorter lifespans. Future studies should aim to incorporate participants from non-European backgrounds to enhance the applicability of their findings.

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Ultra-peripheral conference debuts in Mexico – CERN Courier – CERN Courier

UPC23 conference in Playa del Carmen — **Ultra peripheral** The UPC23 conference took place in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Credit: M Rennells

Ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) involving heavy ions and protons represent the energy frontier for photon-induced reactions. These high-energy photons can be used to study unique features of quarks and gluons inside nuclei, and can probe electromagnetic and electroweak interactions without the usual backgrounds associated with quantum-chromodynamic processes. The first edition of the international workshop on this subject took place from 10 to 15 December 2023 in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, bringing together about 90 participants, more than a third of whom were early-career researchers. This is the first time that the international UPC community has gathered together, establishing a new international conference series on this active and expanding area of research.

The conference highlighted the impressive progress and diversity of UPC physics, which goes far beyond the initial studies of exclusive pro-cesses. UPC23 covered the latest results from experiments at RHIC and the LHC, and prospects for the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Discussions delved into the intricacies of inelastic photo-nuclear events, including the exciting programme of open charm that is yet to be explored, and examined how UPCs serve as a novel lens for investigating the quark–gluon plasma and other final-state nuclear effects. Lots of attention was devoted to the physics of low-x parton densities – a fundamental aspect of protons and nuclei that photons can probe in a unique way.

Enriched understanding

Among the conference’s theoretical highlights, Farid Salazar (UCLA) showed how vector–meson photoproduction could be a powerful method to detect gluon saturation across different collision systems, from proton–nucleus to electron–nucleus to UPCs. Zaki Panjsheeri (Virginia) put forth innovative ideas to study double-parton correlations, linking UPC vector–meson studies to generalised parton distributions, enhancing our understanding of the proton’s structure. Ashik Ikbal (Kent State), meanwhile, introduced exciting proposals to investigate quantum entanglement through exclusive J/ψ photoproduction at RHIC.

The conference also provided a platform for discussing the active exploration of light-by-light scattering and two-photon processes for probing fundamental physics and searches for axion-like particles, and for putting constraints on the anomalous magnetic moment of the tau lepton (see CMS closes in on tau g–2).

Energy exploration

Physicists at the LHC have effectively repurposed the world’s most powerful particle accelerator into a high-energy photon collider. This innovative approach, traditionally the domain of electron beams in colliders like LEP and HERA, and anticipated at the EIC, allows the LHC to explore photon-induced interactions at energies never before achieved. David Grund (Czech Technical University in Prague), Georgios Krintiras (Kansas) and Cesar Luiz Da Silva (Los Alamos) shared the latest LHC findings on the energy dependence of UPC J/ψ events. These results are crucial for understanding the onset of gluon saturation – a state where gluons become so dense reaching saturation, the dynamical equilibrium where the emission and recombination occurs. However, the data also align with the nuclear phenomenon known as gluon shadowing, which arises from multiple-scattering processes. David Tlusty (Creighton) presented the latest findings from the STAR Collaboration, which has recently expanded its UPC programme, complementing the energy exploration at the LHC.

Delegates discussed the future opportunities for UPC physics with the large integrated luminosity expected for Runs 3 and 4 at the LHC

Carlos Bertulani (Texas A&M) paid tribute to Gerhard Baur, who passed away on June 16 last year. Bertulani and Baur co-authored “Electromagnetic processes in relativistic heavy ion collisions” – a seminal paper with more than 1000 citations. Bertulani invited delegates to consider the untapped potential of UPCs in the study of anti-atoms and exotic atoms.

Delegates also discussed the future opportunities for UPC physics with the large integrated luminosity expected for Run 3 and Run 4 at the LHC, with the planned detector upgrades for Run 4 such as FoCal, the recent upgrades by STAR, the sPHENIX programme and at the EIC. Delegates are expecting event selection and instrumentation close to the beam line, for example using “zero degree” calorimeters, to offer the greatest experimental opportunities in the coming years.

The next edition of the UPC conference will take place in Saariselka, Finland in June 2025.