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Hierarchical modulation of auditory prediction error signaling is independent of attention
No full textThe auditory system is tuned to detect rhythmic regularities in the environment which can occur on different timescales. Event-related potentials such as mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3b are thought to index local and global deviance, respectively. However, it is not clear how these hierarchical levels interact and to what extent attention modulates this interaction. In this EEG study with 17 healthy young adults, we used a hierarchical oddball paradigm with local (sequence-level) and global (block-level) violations in attended and unattended conditions. Amplitude of N2 and P3b were analyzed in a 2*2*2 factorial model (local status, global status, attention condition). We found a significant interaction between the local and global status on the N2 amplitude, while there was no significant three-way interaction with attention, together demonstrating that lower-level prediction error is modulated by detection of higher-order regularity but expressed independently of attention. By contrast, higher-level prediction error, indexed by P3b, was sensitive to global regularity violations if the auditory stream was attended. The results demonstrate the capacity of our auditory perception to preattentively resolve conflicts between different levels of predictive hierarchy even across longer time intervals as indexed by MMN modulation, while P3b represents a different, attention-dependent system
The relative lethal toxicity of pharmaceutical and illicit substances: a 16-year study of the Greater Newcastle Hunter Area, Australia
No full textAims: We aim to calculate 2 metrics of relative lethal toxicity; the fatal toxicity index (FTI; number of deaths per year of a daily dose) and the case fatality (CF; number of deaths per overdose) with a focus on opioids, antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and illicit drugs. Methods: This descriptive cohort study used the Australian National Coronial Information System (NCIS) to identify a population of individuals with drug-associated deaths in the Greater Newcastle Hunter Area between January 2002 and December 2016. This was combined with Australian medicine dispensing data and corresponding data from the Hunter Area Toxicology Service to calculate FTI and CF. Results: There were 444 drug-related deaths and 21,296 overdoses during the study period. FTI and CF were well correlated (Spearman's rho 0.64, P <.001). Of the classes of interest, opioids had the highest FTI (40.3 95% confidence interval [CI] 35.2-45.4 deaths per 100 years of use at the defined daily dose or deaths/DDD/100 years) and CF (12.4% 95%CI 11.0-13.9). Fentanyl, methadone and morphine had the highest relative fatal toxicity within this class. Tricyclic antidepressants had the highest relative fatal toxicity of all antidepressants (FTI 14.5 95%CI 9.7-19.3 deaths/DDD/100 years and CF 7.1% [95%CI 4.8-9.3]) and benzodiazepines appeared to be more associated with multiple agent deaths than single. Of the illicit drugs, heroin had the highest CF (26.4%, 95%CI 19.1-33.7). Conclusion: Knowledge of relative lethal toxicity is useful to prescribers and medicines and public health policy makers in restricting access to more toxic drugs and may also assist coroners in determining cause of death
Astrological medicine and the medieval English folded almanac
No full textAn earlier study (see Social History of Medicine, 16.3 (2003), 481–509) has provided an analysis of twenty-nine surviving examples of the folded almanac, a group of small, late medieval manuscripts which have been of considerable interest to medical historians. It has been demonstrated that the folded almanac was an English innovation designed in part to cater to the needs of medical practitioners and other professionals with an interest in astrological medicine. This article extends the discussion by considering the date, provenance, and audience of the folded almanac and analyses what these manuscripts can reveal about the role of astrology, medicine, and the calendar in the worldviews of their owners and users. It is argued that astrological medicine, as reflected in the folded almanac, is likely to have been a key force in the wider dissemination of astrology in late medieval English society. The folded almanac can be seen as the progenitor of all later compact-format diaries, calendars, and electronic organizers
CASA-Crowd: a Context-Aware Scale Aggregation CNN-based crowd counting technique
No full textThe accuracy of object-based computer vision techniques declines due to major challenges originating from large scale variation, varying shape, perspective variation, and lack of side information. To handle these challenges most of the crowd counting methods use multi-columns (restrict themselves to a set of specific density scenes), deploying a deeper and multi-networks for density estimation. However, these techniques suffer a lot of drawbacks such as extraction of identical features from multi-column, computationally complex architecture, overestimate the density estimation in sparse areas, underestimating in dense areas and averaging of feature maps result in reduced quality of density map. To overcome these drawbacks and to provide a state-of-the-art counting accuracy with comparable computational cost, we therefore propose a deeper and wider network: a Context-aware Scale Aggregation CNN-based Crowd Counting method (CASA-Crowd) to obtain the deep, varying scale and perspective varying features. Further, we include a dilated convolution with varying filter size to obtain contextual information. In addition, due to different dilation rates, a variation in receptive field size is more useful to overcome the perspective distortion. The quality of density map is enhanced while preserving the spatial dimension by obtaining a comparable computational complexity. We further evaluate our method on three well-known datasets: UCF_CC_50, ShanghaiTech Part_A, ShanghaiTech Part_B.rable computational cost, we therefore propose a deeper and wider network: a Context-aware Scale Aggregation CNN-based Crowd Counting method (CASA-Crowd) to obtain the deep, varying scale and perspective varying features. Further, we include a dilated convolution with varying filter size to obtain contextual information. In addition, due to different dilation rates, a variation in receptive field size is more useful to overcome the perspective distortion. The quality of density map is enhanced while preserving the spatial dimension by obtaining a comparable computational complexity. We further evaluate our method on three well-known datasets: UCF-CC-50, ShanghaiTech Part-A, ShanghaiTech Part-B
How maternal BMI modifies the impact of personalized asthma management in pregnancy
No full textBackground: Maternal asthma is associated with perinatal complications and respiratory illness in offspring. Obesity increases asthma exacerbation risk in pregnancy and risk of wheeze in offspring.
Objectives: In this secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial, we investigated the influence of maternal body mass index, gestational weight gain (GWG), and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO)-based management on asthma exacerbations in pregnancy and offspring wheeze. Methods: A total of 220 women were randomized to asthma treatment adjustment according to symptoms (control group), or FENO and symptoms (FENO group). Exacerbations were recorded prospectively. Height and weight were measured at baseline, and in late pregnancy. GWG was categorized according to Institute of Medicine guidelines. A validated parent-completed questionnaire assessed infant wheeze-related outcomes. Results: FENO-based management was associated with a significantly lower incidence rate ratio for maternal exacerbations in nonobese mothers (0.52, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.31-0.88, P = .015, n = 129), and women with GWG within recommendations (0.35, 95% CI, 0.12-0.96, P = .042, n = 43), but not for obese mothers (0.59, 95% CI, 0.32-1.08, P = .089, n = 88), or women with excess GWG (0.58, 95% CI, 0.32-1.04, P = .07, n = 104). Recurrent bronchiolitis occurred in 5.3% (n = 1) of infants born to non-overweight mothers, 16.7% (n = 3) of infants of overweight mothers, and 21.7% (n = 5) of infants of obese mothers in the control group. In the FENO group, 2 infants of obese mothers had recurrent bronchiolitis (7.1%, P = .031).
Conclusions: The benefits of FENO-based management are attenuated among obese mothers and those with excess GWG, indicating the importance of weight management in contributing to improved asthma management in pregnancy
Development of an online secondary prevention programme for stroke survivors: Prevent 2nd Stroke
No full textBackground Stroke events often result in long-term negative health outcomes. People who experience a first stroke event are 30%-40% more likely to experience a second stroke event within 5 years. An online secondary prevention programme for stroke survivors may help stroke survivors improve their health risk behaviours and lower their risk of a second stroke. Objectives This paper describes the development and early iteration testing of the usability and acceptability of an online secondary prevention programme for stroke survivors (Prevent 2nd Stroke, P2S). P2S aims to address six modifiable health risk behaviours of stroke: blood pressure, physical activity, nutrition, depression and anxiety, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Methods P2S was developed as an eight-module online secondary prevention programme for stroke survivors. Modelled on the DoTTI (Design and development, Testing early iterations, Testing for effectiveness, Integration and implementation) framework for the development of online programmes, the following stages were followed during programme development: (1) content development and design; and (2) testing early iteration. The programme was pilot-tested with 15 stroke survivors who assessed P2S on usability and acceptability. Results In stage 1, experts provided input for the content development of P2S. In stage 2, 15 stroke survivors were recruited for usability testing of P2S. They reported high ratings of usability and acceptability of P2S. P2S was generally regarded as easy to use' and relevant to stroke survivors'. Participants also largely agreed that it was appropriate to offer lifestyle advice to stroke survivors through the internet. Conclusions The study found that an online secondary prevention programme was acceptable and easily usable by stroke survivors. The next step is to conduct a randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of the programme regarding behaviour change and determine the cost-effectiveness of the intervention
Lions at the gates: trans-disciplinary design of an early warning system to improve human-lion coexistence
No full textAcross Africa, lions (Panthera leo) are heavily persecuted in anthropogenic landscapes. Trans-disciplinary research and virtual boundaries (geofences) programmed into GPS-tracking transmitters offer new opportunities to improve coexistence. During a 24-month pilot study (2016–2018), we alerted communities about approaching lions, issuing 1,017 alerts to four villages and 19 cattle posts. Alerts reflected geofence breaches of nine lions (2,941 monitoring days) moving between Botswana's Okavango Delta and adjacent agro-pastoral communities. Daily alert system costs per lion were US5,460.24 per GPS deployment (n = 13). Alert-responsive livestock owners mainly responded by night-kraaling of cattle (68.9%), significantly reducing their losses (by 317.93 annually). Community satisfaction with alerts (91.8%) was higher than for compensation of losses (24.3%). Study lions spent 26.3% of time monitored in geofenced community areas, but accounted for 31.0% of conflict. Manual alert distribution proved challenging, static geofences did not appropriately reflect human safety or the environment's strong seasonality that influenced cattle predation risk, and tracking units with on-board alert functions often failed or under-recorded geofence breaches by 27.9%. These insufficiencies prompted the design of a versatile and autonomous lion alert platform with automated, dynamic geofencing. We co-designed this prototype platform with community input, thereby incorporating user feedback. We outline a flexible approach that recognizes conflict complexity and user community heterogeneity. Here, we describe the evolution of an innovative Information and Communication Technologies-based (ICT) alert system that enables instant data processing and community participation through interactive interfaces on different devices. We highlight the importance of a trans-disciplinary co-design and development process focussing on community engagement while synthesizing expertise from ethnography, ecology, and socio-informatics. We discuss the bio-geographic, social, and technological variables that influence alert system efficacy and outline opportunities for wider application in promoting coexistence and conservation
Are the claims to blame? A qualitative study to understand the effects of nutrition and health claims on perceptions and consumption of food
No full textNutrition and Health Claims (NHCs) have been found to influence perceptions of food and consumption behaviour. While previous quantitative research has identified factors that may explain these effects, the current study aimed to address the dearth of in-depth exploration as to the underlying reasons why and how claims may impact upon perceptions and behaviour and the relationships between key factors. Seventy-eight participants took part in 10 focus groups. Discussions were transcribed verbatim and Nvivo 11 was used for thematic analysis. Six themes were developed from the data: 1. Target populations for NHCs; 2. Influence of NHCs on purchasing behaviour; 3. Characteristics/perceptions of products displaying NHCs; 4. Believability of NHCs; 5. Superior yet superficial knowledge; 6. Consumption of products displaying NHCs. Knowledge was a key factor influencing how much individuals believe claims (Believability of NHCs) and their perceptions (Characteristics/perceptions of products displaying NHCs). These perceptions and the characteristics of products displaying claims also impacted believability, as well as purchasing behaviour and consumption. Future research should be cognisant of the role of knowledge and characteristics or perceptions of products in the relationship between NHCs and consumer behaviour, and modelling of these relationships would allow their relative strength to be identified
“Wild Humours of the Common People”: violence and sympathy in The Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1639- 1653
No full textThroughout the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639-1653), acts of interpersonal violence and sympathy were enacted by and against civilians and were given expression in popular print literature as well as more personalised accounts. Consideration of violence during the wars has often focused on whether violence happened in the way sources said that it did. This approach, while valuable, undercuts the significance of textual and pictorial depictions in their own right and as a means of evoking specific emotions and reactions in audiences. It also negates their use in better understanding civilians’ experiences of violence in the wars. This thesis seeks to address this shortfall by focusing on the use and meaning of depictions, rather than their accuracy in representing events, in part through the prism of sympathy
The properties of carbons derived through the electrolytic reduction of molten carbonates under varied conditions: Part I. A study based on step potential electrochemical spectroscopy
No full textCarbons have been produced through the electrolytic reduction of molten alkali metal carbonate salts under a range of conditions. The resultant carbons consist of both graphitized and amorphous phases. The carbon surface has also been shown to be heavily functionalized with oxygen containing groups. Their charge storage capabilities as electrochemical capacitor materials have been investigated using cyclic voltammetry and step potential electrochemical spectroscopy (SPECS). Trends in carbon performance with electrodeposition conditions have been identified, and carbons with a specific capacitance as high as 375 F.g−1 have been obtained at scan rates of 10 mV.s−1. With respect to temperature of carbon deposition, carbon electrodeposited at 500°C has been identified as the best electrical double layer capacitor type material, and as a superior material for pseudocapacitive applications. The performance of a control activated carbon has been compared with the electrodeposited carbons, and it has been shown that, when electrodeposited at low current densities, the resultant carbon performance is superior to the activated carbon