Miscarriage

• The ISN World Congress of Nephrology will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina April 13-16, 2024.
• Presentations will highlight the eGFR results found in patients on Nefecon as well as the data on quality of life during the trial.
• There will also be a presentation on the subanalysis evaluating benefits of Nefecon for patients with lower levels of UPCR.
• The congress will include a symposium, Evolving Landscape of eFGR and Proteinuria Surrogate Markers in IgA Nephropathy, moderated by KOL Richard Lafayette, M.D., F.A.C.P.

• When I ask my menstrual health workshop participants – including clinicians – there’s usually a lot of shrugging and shaking of heads.
• If given multiple choice options, most think that periods either “clean the womb” or somehow “help prepare for pregnancy”.
• Yes, the blood part can stain clothing, but there is nothing pathological, contaminating, or dangerous about periods.

So, why do we have periods?

• Periods likely evolved as a kind of preemptive abortion, to protect women from unviable or dangerous pregnancies.
• As a result, we have low rates of conception, high rates of miscarriage, and extremely high rates of maternal mortality in comparison to other mammals.
• The menstrual cycle is critical for facilitation of the initial steps of this raison d’être of the female reproductive system.
• The menstrual cycle is critical for facilitation of the initial steps of this raison d’être of the female reproductive system.

What else don’t we know?

• Perhaps with the fact that the second phase of the cycle from ovulation to menstruation is a series of highly inflammatory processes.
• This was only very briefly mentioned in three out of 16 textbooks.
• We really ought to be taught from puberty how to reduce period pain and blood loss – this is not difficult science.

Why aren’t we taught this stuff?

• My research shows that the exclusive focus on the female sex hormones in menstrual education is informed by societal influences, such as the myth of the hysterical or hormonal female.
• This gender myth is still alive and well, although now we tend to blame the (female sex) hormones.

• Again, there was no scientific reason for this change in focus, although it reflected existing societal beliefs about the inherently irrational behaviour of women.
• Unfortunately, menstrual health literacy has not yet recovered from this shift in physiological models.

So what?

• It also becomes much easier to differentiate premenstrual changes from underlying health conditions, since the latter will not be substantially alleviated by anti-inflammatory interventions alone.
• Teaching the reductive hormonal model of the menstrual cycle unintentionally provides pseudo-scientific evidence for the damaging hormonal or hysterical female gender myth.

Sally King is the founder of Menstrual Matters- the world's first evidence-based info hub on menstrual health and rights www.menstrual-matters.com. Her doctoral research and current research fellowship were funded by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council).

• Between Nov. 1, 2023, and Jan. 11, 2024, alone, the Port violated its permit at least 395 times, the lawsuit states.
• Attorneys say the Port of Morrow, commercial farms, and CAFOs have allegedly contributed to “soaring” levels of nitrates in local groundwater.
• “The Port and these commercial farms have placed us and hundreds of other families in an impossible position.
• The lawsuit states that in 1990, the Oregon DEQ declared the Lower Umatilla Basin a groundwater management area (GMA).

• The proliferation of technology for everyday living can be seen through ChatGPT writing term papers or robots serving meals at a restaurant.
• Technology can also be used towards less utilitarian ends.

Technology and policing

• Footage from his body camera will provide evidence during the trial of his accused killers.
• Police investigations have also been aided by private citizen sleuths via technology, who gather evidence to help police identify criminals.
• Another use of technology can be for public surveillance for crime prevention through the application of facial recognition software.

Finding faces

• Captured faces are compared to a database, often for the purposes of crime prevention.
• Later, it was determined that Soika was misidentified by the artificial intelligence (AI) used by Canadian Tire for facial recognition.
• In 2023, Canadian Tire Corporation and its dealers have since agreed to no longer use facial recognition technology.
• Read more:
  AI technologies — like police facial recognition — discriminate against people of colour

Discrimination and AI

• Facial recognition software is documented to misidentify women, racialized people and those between the ages of 18-30 years, with accuracy reduced to 35 per cent.
• Police used AI that had run an image of a carjacker caught on video through a mugshot database that contained Woodruff’s photo, and incorrectly matched it.

Consequences of misidentification

• The Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions finds approximately a third of their cases involved false identification.
• People can show what is known as “own-race bias” when identifying faces; people are more accurate when identifying faces of their own race than other races.
• The misidentification of a perpetrator — whether by a human or an AI program — can lead to the same consequences: being charged, prosecuted or wrongfully convicted.

Joanna Pozzulo receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.