Hearing care in low-resourced and humanitarian settings: findings from a pilot study in South Sudan.

Objectives: This longitudinal experimental study aimed to profile audiometric hearing loss, explore the feasibility and efficacy of low-cost hearing devices, and examine their social and emotional impact on participants in South Sudan, a low-resource humanitarian setting.

Design: We performed pure tone hearing screenings on adults with self-reported hearing disability, randomly providing eligible participants with one of two inexpensive devices-Asana Pro 800, a non-customizable hearing device fit unilaterally, or the Super Ear SE9000, a hand-held amplifier with headphones given one per individual.

Study Sample: Between October 2022 and January 2023, 142 adults underwent hearing screening at the Juba Teaching Hospital ENT clinic, of whom 19 eligible individuals were provided with hearing devices.

Brain Age as a New Measure of Disease Stratification in Huntington's Disease.

Background: Despite advancements in understanding Huntington's disease (HD) over the past two decades, absence of disease-modifying treatments remains a challenge. Accurately characterizing progression states is crucial for developing effective therapeutic interventions. Various factors contribute to this challenge, including the need for precise methods that can account for the complex nature of HD progression.

Investigation into the effect of phenylalanine gating on anaerobic haem breakdown using the energy landscape approach.

We have recently demonstrated a novel anaerobic NADH-dependent haem breakdown reaction, which is carried out by a range of haemoproteins. The Yersinia enterocolitica protein, HemS, is the focus of further research presented in the current paper. Using conventional experimental methods, bioinformatics, and energy landscape theory (ELT), we provide new insight into the mechanism of the novel breakdown process.

Explainable artificial intelligence for neuroimaging-based dementia diagnosis and prognosis.

Introduction: Artificial intelligence and neuroimaging enable accurate dementia prediction, but 'black box' models can be difficult to trust. Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) describes techniques to understand model behaviour and the influence of features, however deciding which method is most appropriate is non-trivial. Vision transformers (ViT) have also gained popularity, providing a self-explainable, alternative to traditional convolutional neural networks (CNN).

Cardiometabolic benefits of a non-industrialized-type diet are linked to gut microbiome modulation.

Industrialization adversely affects the gut microbiome and predisposes individuals to chronic non-communicable diseases. We tested a microbiome restoration strategy comprising a diet that recapitulated key characteristics of non-industrialized dietary patterns (restore diet) and a bacterium rarely found in industrialized microbiomes (Limosilactobacillus reuteri) in a randomized controlled feeding trial in healthy Canadian adults. The restore diet, despite reducing gut microbiome diversity, enhanced the persistence of L.