Automated Cough Analysis with Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network.

Chronic cough is associated with several respiratory diseases and is a significant burden on physical, social, and psychological health. Non-invasive, real-time, continuous, and quantitative monitoring tools are highly desired to assess cough severity, the effectiveness of treatment, and monitor disease progression in clinical practice and research. There are currently limited tools to quantitatively measure spontaneous coughs in daily living settings in clinical trials and in clinical practice.

Management of adult mechanically ventilated patients: A UK-wide survey.

Background: Mechanical ventilation is a common and often lifesaving intervention that is utilised in intensive care. However, the practices can vary between centres. Through this national survey we aim to gain more information about different strategies adopted across the UK.

Auditory areas are recruited for naturalistic visual meaning in early deaf people.

Congenital deafness enhances responses of auditory cortices to non-auditory tasks, yet the nature of the reorganization is not well understood. Here, naturalistic stimuli are used to induce neural synchrony across early deaf and hearing individuals. Participants watch a silent animated film in an intact version and three versions with gradually distorted meaning.

Effect of benralizumab on inflammation in skin after intradermal allergen challenge in patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis.

Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a skin barrier dysfunction characterized by tissue eosinophilia.

Objective: In patients with AD, we evaluated the effect of eosinophil depletion with benralizumab on markers of inflammation in skin after intradermal allergen challenge.

Methods: A total of 20 patients with moderate-to-severe AD completed a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled parallel-group study comparing 3 doses of benralizumab (30 mg each) administered subcutaneously every 4 weeks (n = 9) with placebo (n = 11).

Benralizumab for allergic asthma: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Background: Benralizumab induces rapid and near-complete depletion of eosinophils from blood and lung tissue. We investigated whether benralizumab could attenuate the allergen-induced late asthmatic response (LAR) in participants with allergic asthma.

Methods: Participants with allergic asthma who demonstrated increased sputum eosinophils and LAR at screening were randomised to benralizumab 30 mg or matched placebo given every 4 weeks for 8 weeks (3 doses).

Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing for survivors of life-threatening medical events.

Objectives: This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (intervention). The objectives are as follows: To assess the effects of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR), a psychological intervention programme, on symptoms related to traumatic stress in survivors of life-threatening medical events.

Secondary Objectives: to evaluate whether the effects of EMDR differ according to the nature of the medical event (associated diagnosis or setting), measured outcome (post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, or quality of life), or intervention (online, face-to-face, group or individual sessions).

Helpless infants are learning a foundation model.

Humans have a protracted postnatal helplessness period, typically attributed to human-specific maternal constraints causing an early birth when the brain is highly immature. By aligning neurodevelopmental events across species, however, it has been found that humans are not born with especially immature brains compared with animal species with a shorter helpless period. Consistent with this, the rapidly growing field of infant neuroimaging has found that brain connectivity and functional activation at birth share many similarities with the mature brain.

Exploration of factors affecting webcam-based automated gaze coding.

Online experiments have been transforming the field of behavioral research, enabling researchers to increase sample sizes, access diverse populations, lower the costs of data collection, and promote reproducibility. The field of developmental psychology increasingly exploits such online testing approaches. Since infants cannot give explicit behavioral responses, one key outcome measure is infants' gaze behavior.

The limitations of automatically generated curricula for continual learning.

In many applications, artificial neural networks are best trained for a task by following a curriculum, in which simpler concepts are learned before more complex ones. This curriculum can be hand-crafted by the engineer or optimised like other hyperparameters, by evaluating many curricula. However, this is computationally intensive and the hyperparameters are unlikely to generalise to new datasets.

Neuromedin-U Mediates Rapid Activation of Airway Group 2 Innate Lymphoid Cells in Mild Asthma.

In asthma, sputum group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) are activated within 7 hours after allergen challenge. Neuroimmune interactions mediate rapid host responses at mucosal interfaces. In murine models of asthma, lung ILC2s colocalize to sensory neuronal termini expressing the neuropeptide neuromedin U (NMU), which stimulates type 2 (T2) cytokine secretion by ILC2s, with additive effects to alarmins .

In Vivo Cellular Phosphatidylcholine Kinetics of CD15+ Leucocytes and CD3+ T-Lymphocytes in Adults with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.

Mammalian cell membranes composed of a mixture of glycerophospholipids, the relative composition of individual phospholipids and the dynamic flux vary between cells. In addition to their structural role, membrane phospholipids are involved in cellular signalling and immunomodulatory functions. In this study, we investigate the molecular membrane composition and dynamic flux of phosphatidylcholines in CD15+ leucocytes and CD3+ lymphocytes extracted from patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

Alveolar Hyperoxia and Exacerbation of Lung Injury in Critically Ill SARS-CoV-2 Pneumonia.

Acute hypoxic respiratory failure (AHRF) is a prominent feature of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) critical illness. The severity of gas exchange impairment correlates with worse prognosis, and AHRF requiring mechanical ventilation is associated with substantial mortality. Persistent impaired gas exchange leading to hypoxemia often warrants the prolonged administration of a high fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO).

Consciousness in the cradle: on the emergence of infant experience.

Although each of us was once a baby, infant consciousness remains mysterious and there is no received view about when, and in what form, consciousness first emerges. Some theorists defend a 'late-onset' view, suggesting that consciousness requires cognitive capacities which are unlikely to be in place before the child's first birthday at the very earliest. Other theorists defend an 'early-onset' account, suggesting that consciousness is likely to be in place at birth (or shortly after) and may even arise during the third trimester.

Evaluation of the reproducibility of responses to nasal allergen challenge and effects of inhaled nasal corticosteroids.

Background: Similar immune responses in the nasal and bronchial mucosa implies that nasal allergen challenge (NAC) is a suitable early phase experimental model for drug development targeting allergic rhinitis (AR) and asthma. We assessed NAC reproducibility and the effects of intranasal corticosteroids (INCS) on symptoms, physiology, and inflammatory mediators.

Methods: 20 participants with mild atopic asthma and AR underwent three single blinded nasal challenges each separated by three weeks (NCT03431961).

A randomised pilot feasibility study of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing recent traumatic episode protocol, to improve psychological recovery following intensive care admission for COVID-19.

Background: Approximately 50% of intensive care survivors experience persistent psychological symptoms. Eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) is a widely recommended trauma-focussed psychological therapy, which has not been investigated systematically in a cohort of intensive care survivors: We therefore conducted a randomised pilot feasibility study of EMDR, using the Recent Traumatic Episode Protocol (R-TEP), to prevent psychological distress in intensive care survivors. Findings will determine whether it would be possible to conduct a fully-powered clinical effectiveness trial and inform trial design.

Transcriptomics reveals shared immunosuppressive landscapes in ventilator-associated lower respiratory tract infections (VA-LRTI) patients.

Background: Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) represents a transitory status of immunoparalysis, and we hypothesized that ventilator-associated tracheobronchitis (VAT) could share also some degree of immune response to a respiratory infection.

Research Design And Methods: A prospective observational study in five medical ICUs to evaluate immunological alterations of patients with VA-LRTI. Immunological gene expression profiles in the blood using whole transcriptome microarrays in the first 24 hours following diagnosis.