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Innovation at the forefront

For the United Arab Emirates to continue to be the leader in its region and beyond in information and communications technology, it needs to invest in advanced intelligence ICT, next-generation networks (NGN) and NGN-enabled ICT applications and services.

This is why Khalifa University, with partners e& and BT Plc, created the Emirates ICT Innovation Center (EBTIC), supported by the Telecommunication & Digital Government Authority’s (TDRA) ICT Fund.

IMAGE: Khalifa University
Nawaf Almoosa

Nawaf Almoosa is an EECS faculty member at Khalifa University with a joint appointment as the director of the Emirates ICT Innovate Center (EBTIC). His research interests include high-performance heterogeneous computing and distributed optimization and control with applications to computing, telecommunication and robotic systems.

EBTIC aims to be an international center of excellence for applied artificial intelligence and intelligent ICT systems research and innovation, driven by strong industry-academia and government partnership promoting world-class research, technology transfer, research training and open innovation in areas of strategic importance for its founding partners and the UAE.

BENEFITS TO THE COMMUNITY

EBTIC collaborates with its partners and other UAE government entities, delivering more than 40 strategically important projects each year. EBTIC has strong capabilities in machine learning, optimization, natural language processing, cooperative intelligence and big data analytics, as well as network architectures and cybersecurity.

Much of what it delivers drives new revenue or cost-savings opportunities for its partners. For instance, more recent leading-edge projects provide intelligent building solutions, such as machinery-fault prediction, smart-metering analytics and Wi-Fi sensing. Also, power-usage forecasting and optimization helps companies significantly reduce their energy requirements, reducing costs and their carbon footprints.

Recently, EBTIC has been working closely with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA) to predict food-import levels and forecast local food-production quantities. This work helps give ADAFSA a clear understanding of food supply in and out of the UAE and helps them maintain a robust and safe food market.

EYES ON COMMERCE

EBTIC also aims to commercially exploit the most promising of its research projects by looking to spin out start-ups into the UAE and global economy. Among projects in development is 10Folds.

10Folds will be the region’s first machine-learning data-labeling solution provider for the Arabic market.

There is no Arabic-language labeling solution that considers the different dialects in the marketplace, creating a real problem for the development of AI solutions in the region.

To train a machine learning-based model to correctly identify Arabic requires humans to examine data and manually assign labels for the model to learn from. Arabic words take different meanings based on the dialect. With data tagging completed by Arabic speakers, 10Folds aims to guarantee quality assurance of tagging, leading to a more accurate machine-learning model being trained.

RESPONSE TO COVID

EBTIC leveraged its capabilities in machine learning to support the response to the COVID pandemic through the development of COVID spread models driven by digital infrastructure data, and applying accurate multilingual text analytics and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to social media to gauge the public discussion and sentiment about the ensuing pandemic.

Recently honored as the UAEs most inventive center at the Department of Economic Development’s Abu Dhabi Awards for Intellectual Property, EBTIC has more than 80 inventions patented or being filed, and 64 patents already granted. One major facet of EBTIC’s continued success is in its knowledge-transfer ambitions. EBTIC has so far trained more than 400 UAE students, including supervising 50 Ph.D. or Master of Science students, and trained over 300 UAE-based professionals in big data-related competencies.

This mix of achieving scientific excellence; tackling national and societal challenges; and building core AI skills in the UAE is central to EBTIC’s mission, and there is much more to come from our collaboration with industry, universities and governmental organizations that will further help the UAE cement its place as an ICT leader in the global economy.

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What we know about long COVID

Long COVID is a catch-all term for a wide range of symptoms that can include brain fog, fatigue and shortness of breath months or even years after a COVID-19 infection. But why do some people get it and others don’t?

Definitions are fuzzy, with some organizations saying long COVID, also called post-COVID syndrome, is the presence of symptoms four weeks after infection and others defining it as symptoms seen after three or more months post-infection.

IMAGE: Abjad

But researchers are beginning to peel back the layers to fully understand the phenomenon.

Women more affected

The U.S. government in August 2022 launched its National Research Action Plan on Long COVID to research the syndrome and support the people affected. And in October 2022 the U.S. Census Bureau and National Center for Health Statistics published a survey that illustrates the broad reach long COVID – defined in the survey as having symptoms three months or more after infection  – can have.

Among the survey findings:

Women are more likely to get long COVID than men are, perhaps due to hormonal and immunological differences between men and women. They are also more likely to experience severe symptoms.

During the pandemic, 17 percent of U.S. women had long COVID, compared with 11 percent of U.S. men.

Among all women, 2.4 percent had symptoms severe enough to significantly limit their daily activities. Of all men, 1.3 percent reported experiencing symptoms that reduced their ability to perform day-to-day activities, according to the survey.

By early 2023, 15 percent of all U.S. adults had reported symptoms of long COVID; 6 percent reported current symptoms. 

Are you vaxxed?

Meanwhile, a study published in October 2022 in JAMA finds that vaccination may reduce your chances of getting long COVID. But there are no points for half measures.

The study finds that completing the vaccination series before contracting the virus seems to reduce the risk of long COVID. Partial vaccination, however, such as taking one jab in a series of two, did not show any reduction in risk.

Claire J. Steves, one of the authors of a 2022 Lancet paper, tells KUST Review that one of the takeaways of her study is how important it is to get vaccinated.

“Back in October 2021 we showed how vaccination reduces the risk of long Covid. That’s mainly because still the strongest driver of risk of long Covid is the severity of initial illness. Vaccination really reduces this.”

In the JAMA study, fatigue is listed as the most common symptom, followed by loss of smell, “brain fog” and shortness of breath. The frequency of symptoms was also associated with sex, with women being more likely to report loss of smell, cognitive symptoms, anxiety and sleep disruptions.

Researchers from Kings College London, who published their results in July 2022, found three groups in the long COVID cohort based on people who reported their symptoms via an app:

The largest group reported “brain fog,” headache and fatigue.

IMAGE: Abjad

A second group reported symptoms most common in the early stage of the pandemic, before vaccinations were available. These were respiratory symptoms such as severe shortness of breath and chest pain.

And a smaller third group reported a range of symptoms including heart palpitations, changes in skin and hair and muscle pain.

IMAGE: Abjad Design
The variant and severity of illness

The variant contracted and severity of initial illness also make a difference.

A study presented to the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in April reported that those who were infected during the Omicron waves were as likely as people who’d never been infected with COVID-19 to experience lingering symptoms.

Those infected by the original variant were 67 percent more likely to experience lingering symptoms than those who never had a COVID infection.

And as Steves previously noted, the severity of initial illness is a factor. So preventing a severe infection is important. Why? Again, still a mystery. But Mayoclinic.org suggests that inflammation and organ damage from a severe illness could be a driver of long COVID.

Other factors

As with many illnesses, it’s complicated by many other factors. A study published in Nature Medicine finds other risks for long COVID include ethnicity, socioeconomic deprivation, smoking, obesity and other comorbidities.

Previous studies had indicated that age was an issue, but in a February paper for Gerontology & Geriatrics, Columbia University’s Ray Marks says there just isn’t any evidence. “Age alone cannot be a factor because the condition appears to randomly affect older as well as younger COVID survivors, regardless of vaccination or health status,” he writes. 

Mental health link

Long COVID might also have a link to mental health, although there is still some question about whether it is a cause or effect. Patients with long COVID were about twice as likely to get a prescription for an antidepressant for the first time within 90 days of their initial diagnosis, according to an analysis for Reuters conducted by health-data company Truveta.

Researchers are now asking whether changes in brain chemistry are causing the issue or if patients are experiencing distress as a result of a loss of function.

Things are looking up

The good news, however: The percentage of people who have had COVID and have long COVID symptoms has declined. It was 19 percent in June 2022 but was 11 percent in January 2023, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.