IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Advanced Information Sensing and Learning Technologies for Data-Centric Smart Health Applications

Smart health is bringing vast and promising possibilities on the road to comprehensive health management. Smart health applications are strongly data-centric and, thus, empowered by two key factors: information sensing and information learning. In a smart health system, it is crucial to effectively sense individuals’ health information and intelligently learn from its high-level health insights. These two factors are also closely coupled. For example, to enhance the signal quality, a sensing array requires advanced information learning techniques to fuse the information, and to enrich medical insights in mobile health monitoring, we need to combine “multimodal signal processing and machine learning techniques” and “nonintrusive multimodality sensing methods.” In new smart health application exploration, challenges arise in both information sensing and learning, especially their areas of interaction

IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Smart Health Sensing and Computational Intelligence: From Big Data to Big Impacts

Smart health big data is paving a promising way for ubiquitous health management, leveraging exciting advances in biomedical engineering technologies, such as convenient bio-sensing, health monitoring, in-home monitoring, biomedical signal processing, data mining, health trend tracking, and evidence-based medical decision support. To build and utilize the smart health big data, advanced data sensing and data mining technologies are closely coupled key enabling factors. In smart health big data innovations, challenges arise in how to informatively and robustly build the big data with advanced sensing technologies, and how to automatically and effectively decode patterns from the big data with intelligent computational methods. More specifically, advanced sensing techniques should be able to capture more modalities that can reflect rich physiological and behavioral states of humans, and enhance the signal robustness in daily wearable applications. In addition, intelligent computational techniques are required to unveil patterns deeply hidden in the data and nonlinearly convert the patterns to high-level medical insights

A normative spatiotemporal MRI atlas of the fetal brain for automatic segmentation and analysis of early brain growth.

Longitudinal characterization of early brain growth in-utero has been limited by a number of challenges in fetal imaging, the rapid change in size, shape and volume of the developing brain, and the consequent lack of suitable algorithms for fetal brain image analysis. There is a need for an improved digital brain atlas of the spatiotemporal maturation of the fetal brain extending over the key developmental periods. We have developed an algorithm for construction of an unbiased four-dimensional atlas of the developing fetal brain by integrating symmetric diffeomorphic deformable registration in space with kernel regression in age. We applied this new algorithm to construct a spatiotemporal atlas from MRI of 81 normal fetuses scanned between 19 and 39 weeks of gestation and labeled the structures of the developing brain. We evaluated the use of this atlas and additional individual fetal brain MRI atlases for completely automatic multi-atlas segmentation of fetal brain MRI. The atlas is available online as a reference for anatomy and for registration and segmentation, to aid in connectivity analysis, and for groupwise and longitudinal analysis of early brain growth

Recombinant Acid Ceramidase Reduces Inflammation and Infection in Cystic Fibrosis.

Rationale: In cystic fibrosis the major cause of morbidity and mortality is lung disease characterized by inflammation and infection. The influence of sphingolipid metabolism is poorly understood with a lack of studies using human airway model systems. Objectives: To investigate sphingolipid metabolism in cystic fibrosis and the effects of treatment with recombinant human acid ceramidase on inflammation and infection. Methods: Sphingolipids were measured using mass spectrometry in fully-differentiated cultures of primary human airway epithelial cells and co-cultures with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In situ activity assays, Western blotting and quantitative polymerase chain reaction were used to investigate function and expression of ceramidase and sphingomyelinase. Effects of treatment with recombinant human acid ceramidase on sphingolipid profile and inflammatory mediator production were assessed in cell cultures and murine models. Measurements and Main Results: Ceramide is increased in cystic fibrosis airway epithelium due to differential function of enzymes regulating sphingolipid metabolism. Sphingosine, a metabolite of ceramide with antimicrobial properties, is not upregulated in response to Pseudomonas aeruginosa by cystic fibrosis airway epithelia. Tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 is increased in the apical membrane of cystic fibrosis epithelia and activates NF-κB signaling, generating inflammation. Treatment with recombinant human acid ceramidase, to decrease ceramide, reduced both inflammatory mediator production and susceptibility to infection. Conclusions: Sphingolipid metabolism is altered in airway epithelial cells cultured from people with cystic fibrosis. Treatment with recombinant acid ceramidase ameliorates the two pivotal features of cystic fibrosis lung disease, inflammation and infection, and thus represents a therapeutic approach worthy of further exploration. This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Consensus for experimental design in electromyography (CEDE) project:Checklist for reporting and critically appraising studies using EMG (CEDE-Check)

The diversity in electromyography (EMG) techniques and their reporting present significant challenges across multiple disciplines in research and clinical practice, where EMG is commonly used. To address these challenges and augment the reproducibility and interpretation of studies using EMG, the Consensus for Experimental Design in Electromyography (CEDE) project has developed a checklist (CEDE-Check) to assist researchers to thoroughly report their EMG methodologies. Development involved a multi-stage Delphi process with seventeen EMG experts from various disciplines. After two rounds, consensus was achieved. The final CEDE-Check consists of forty items that address four critical areas that demand precise reporting when EMG is employed: the task investigated, electrode placement, recording electrode characteristics, and acquisition and pre-processing of EMG signals. This checklist aims to guide researchers to accurately report and critically appraise EMG studies, thereby promoting a standardised critical evaluation, and greater scientific rigor in research that uses EMG signals. This approach not only aims to facilitate interpretation of study results and comparisons between studies, but it is also expected to contribute to advancing research quality and facilitate clinical and other practical applications of knowledge generated through the use of EMG.</p

The Campbells: lordship, literature and liminality

The Campbells have the potential to offer much to the theme of literature and borders, given that the kindred’s astonishing political success in the late medieval and early modern period depended heavily upon the ability to negotiate multiple frontiers: between Highlands and Lowlands; between Gaelic Scotland and Ireland, and, especially after the Reformation, with England and the matter of Britain. This paper will explore the literary dimension to Campbell expansionism, from the Book of the Dean of Lismore in the earlier sixteenth century, to poetry addressed to dukes of Argyll in the earlier eighteenth century. Particular attention will be paid to the literary proclivities of the household of the Campbells of Glenorchy on either side of what appears to be a major watershed in 1550; and to the agenda of the Campbell protégé John Carswell, first post-Reformation bishop of the Isles, and author of the first printed book in Gaelic in either Scotland or Ireland, Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh (‘The Form of Prayers’), published at Edinburgh in 1567