A High-Density EEG Investigation into Steady State Binaural Beat Stimulation

Binaural beats are an auditory phenomenon that has been suggested to alter physiological and cognitive processes including vigilance and brainwave entrainment. Some personality traits measured by the NEO Five Factor Model have been found to alter entrainment using pulsing light stimuli, but as yet no studies have examined if this occurs using steady state presentation of binaural beats for a relatively short presentation of two minutes. This study aimed to examine if binaural beat stimulation altered vigilance or cortical frequencies and if personality traits were involved. Thirty-one participants were played binaural beat stimuli designed to elicit a response at either the Theta (7 Hz) or Beta (16 Hz) frequency bands while undertaking a zero-back vigilance task. EEG was recorded from a high-density electrode cap. No significant differences were found in vigilance or cortical frequency power during binaural beat stimulation compared to a white noise control period. Furthermore, no significant relationships were detected between the above and the Big Five personality traits. This suggests a short presentation of steady state binaural beats are not sufficient to alter vigilance or entrain cortical frequencies at the two bands examined and that certain personality traits were not more susceptible than others

Prevalence of 2009 Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Antibodies, Tampa Bay Florida — November–December, 2009

BACKGROUND: In 2009, a novel influenza virus (2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus (pH1N1)) caused significant disease in the United States. Most states, including Florida, experienced a large fall wave of disease from September through November, after which disease activity decreased substantially. We determined the prevalence of antibodies due to the pH1N1 virus in Florida after influenza activity had peaked and estimated the proportion of the population infected with pH1N1 virus during the pandemic. METHODS: During November-December 2009, we collected leftover serum from a blood bank, a pediatric children's hospital and a pediatric outpatient clinic in Tampa Bay Florida. Serum was tested for pH1N1 virus antibodies using the hemagglutination-inhibition (HI) assay. HI titers ≥40 were considered seropositive. We adjusted seroprevalence results to account for previously established HI assay specificity and sensitivity and employed a simple statistical model to estimate the proportion of seropositivity due to pH1N1 virus infection and vaccination. RESULTS: During the study time period, the overall seroprevalence in Tampa Bay, Florida was 25%, increasing to 30% after adjusting for HI assay sensitivity and specificity. We estimated that 5.9% of the population had vaccine-induced seropositivity while 25% had seropositivity secondary to pH1N1 virus infection. The highest cumulative incidence of pH1N1 virus infection was among children aged 5-17 years (53%) and young adults aged 18-24 years (47%), while adults aged ≥50 years had the lowest cumulative incidence (11-13%) of pH1N1 virus infection. CONCLUSIONS: After the peak of the fall wave of the pandemic, an estimated one quarter of the Tampa Bay population had been infected with the pH1N1 virus. Consistent with epidemiologic trends observed during the pandemic, the highest burdens of disease were among school-aged children and young adults

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Patterns and Correlates of Public Health Informatics Capacity Among Local Health Departments

Objective: Little is known about the nationwide patterns in the use of public health informatics systems by local health departments (LHDs) and whether LHDs tend to possess informatics capacity across a broad range of information functionalities or for a narrower range. This study examined patterns and correlates of the presence of public health informatics functionalities within LHDs through the creation of a typology of LHD informatics capacities.Methods: Data was available for 459 LHDs from the 2013 National Association of County and City Health Officials Profile survey. An empirical typology was created through cluster analysis of six public health informatics functionalities: immunization registry, electronic disease registry, electronic lab reporting, electronic health records, health information exchange, electronic syndromic surveillance system. Three-categories of usage emerged (Low, Mid, High). LHD financial, workforce, organization, governance, and leadership characteristics, and types of services provided were explored across categories.Results: Low-informatics capacity LHDs had lower levels of use of each informatics functionalities than high-informatics capacity LHDs. Mid-informatics capacity LHDs had usage levels equivalent to high-capacity LHDs for the three most common functionalities and equivalent to low-capacity LHDs for the three least common functionalities. Informatics capacity was positively associated with service provision, especially for population-focused services.Conclusion: Informatics capacity is clustered within LHDs. Increasing LHD informatics capacity may require LHDs with low levels of informatics capacity to expand capacity across a range of functionalities, taking into account their narrower service portfolio. LHDs with mid-level informatics capacity may need specialized support in enhancing capacity for less common technologies

Enhancing Syndromic Surveillance at a Local Public Health Department

In an effort to enhance situational awareness, Maricopa County Department of Public Health (Arizona) dedicated resources to begin developing a robust syndromic surveillance program. This abstract shares how the CDC Framework for Program Evaluation and a logic model were used to enhance syndromic surveillance at a local public health department

Enhancing Syndromic Surveillance at a Local Public Health Department

In an effort to enhance situational awareness, Maricopa County Department of Public Health (Arizona) dedicated resources to begin developing a robust syndromic surveillance program. This abstract shares how the CDC Framework for Program Evaluation and a logic model were used to enhance syndromic surveillance at a local public health department

Surveillance for Mass Gatherings: Super Bowl XLIX in Maricopa County, Arizona, 2015

Super Bowl XLIX took place on February 1st, 2015 in Glendale, Arizona. In preparation for this large scale public event and related activities, the Maricopa County Department of Public Health developed methods for enhanced surveillance, situational awareness and early detection of public health emergencies. This presentation describes enhanced epidemiologic surveillance efforts in place during Super Bowl XLIX and associated events. A summary of surveillance result highlights will be presented. Lessons learned from surveillance strategies implemented during mass gatherings will be reviewed and novel approaches for near real-time surveillance for situational awareness and early event detection will be examined

Evaluating the BioSense Syndrome for Heat-Related Illness in Maricopa County, Arizona

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the pre-defined "Heat, excessive" query in BioSense 2.0 using data from Maricopa County, Arizona. BioSense was used to produce a line list of 539 patient records from the period between 1/1/15 and 8/15/15. Records with a clinical diagnosis for heat-related illness (HRI) were classified as confirmed HRI cases (N = 268). The chief complaints of the remaining 271 records were reviewed manually; 148 records were probable HRI cases and 91 records were ruled out for HRI. To make the query more specific, a list of potential exclusion terms was created and evaluated

Evaluating the BioSense Syndrome for Heat-Related Illness in Maricopa County, Arizona

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the pre-defined "Heat, excessive" query in BioSense 2.0 using data from Maricopa County, Arizona. BioSense was used to produce a line list of 539 patient records from the period between 1/1/15 and 8/15/15. Records with a clinical diagnosis for heat-related illness (HRI) were classified as confirmed HRI cases (N = 268). The chief complaints of the remaining 271 records were reviewed manually; 148 records were probable HRI cases and 91 records were ruled out for HRI. To make the query more specific, a list of potential exclusion terms was created and evaluated

Maternal and neonatal outcomes among pregnant women with 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) illness in Florida, 2009-2010: a population-based cohort study.

INTRODUCTION:Pregnant women have been identified as a high risk group for severe illness with 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) virus infection (pH1N1). Obesity has also been identified as a risk factor for severe illness, though this has not been thoroughly assessed among pregnant women. The objectives of this study were to provide risk estimates for adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes associated with pH1N1 illness during pregnancy and to assess the role of obesity in these outcomes. METHODS:We established a retrospective population-based cohort of all live births occurring in Florida during the first 15 months of the pandemic. Illness with pH1N1 during pregnancy was ascertained through record linkage with the Florida state notifiable disease surveillance database. Data from the birth record, including pre-pregnancy body mass index, were analyzed to assess risk of adverse outcomes associated with pH1N1 illness. RESULTS:A total of 194 women were identified through surveillance with pH1N1 illness during pregnancy. Children born to women with pH1N1 illness during pregnancy were at increased risk for low birth weight [OR (95%CI): 1.78 (1.11-2.860)], premature birth [2.21 (1.47-3.330)], and infant death [4.46 (1.80-11.00)], after adjusting for other factors. Women with pH1N1 illness during pregnancy were at increased risk for severe outcomes including admission to an intensive care unit. Obesity was an observed risk factor, both for the more severe pH1N1 illness detected through surveillance, and for severe maternal outcomes. CONCLUSIONS:Case-patients in this analysis likely represent the most severely ill subset of all women infected with pH1N1 during pregnancy, limiting the generalizability of these findings to more severely ill patients rather than influenza infection in general. Nevertheless, these results suggest that more severe pH1N1 illness during pregnancy is associated with adverse neonatal outcomes and that pregnant women should continue to be targeted for appropriate prophylaxis and early treatment