Idiopathic chronic cough: a real disease or a failure of diagnosis?

Despite extensive diagnostic evaluation and numerous treatment trials, a number of patients remain troubled by a chronic and uncontrollable cough. Eosinophilic bronchitis, atopic cough and non-acid reflux have been recently added to the diagnostic spectrum for chronic cough. In some cases, failure to consider these conditions may explain treatment failure. However, a subset of patients with persisting symptoms may be regarded as having an idiopathic cough. These individuals are most commonly female, of postmenopausal age and frequently report viral upper respiratory tract infections as an initiating event. This paper seeks to explore the validity of idiopathic cough as a distinct clinical entity

Beam Scraping in the SPS for LHC Injection: Efficiency and Robustness Studies

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will be the world's most powerful accelerator when it is commissioned in fall 2008. Operation of the LHC will require injection of very high intensity beams. Fast transverse beam scrapers have been installed in the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) injector to detect and, if necessary, remove transverse beam tails. This will help to both diagnose and prevent beam quenches in the LHC. Scraping of a high intensity beam at top energy can potentially damage the scraper jaws. This has been studied with Monte Carlo simulations to find energy deposition and limits for hardware damage. Loss maps from scraping have been generated both with machine studies and tracking simulations. Time dependent Beam Loss Monitor (BLM) measurements have shown several interesting details about the beam. An analytical model of time dependent losses is compared with beam measurements and demonstrates that beam scraping can be used to estimate the beam size. Energy deposition simulations also give the time dependence of scraping, and are compatible with measurements in this respect. Several machine studies have been conducted to investigate transverse beam tails and possible uses of the beam scrapers. These have shown that the beam scrapers in combination with BLMs are very sensitive detectors of transverse beam tails. Measurements with coasting beam have shown that tails repopulate after some time. The most recent resul ts from machine studies are discussed, in light of possible sources of tail repopulation

The processing of inflammatory joint pain in the developing spinal cord

Approximately 10 in 100,000 children develop inflammatory arthritis every year and a large proportion of those are diagnosed as having Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). A major cause of suffering in the disease is pain, and indeed it contributes significantly to the morbidity of this condition when assessed by various disability scores. Pain from affected joints causes sleep disturbance, limits normal activities, disrupts school attendance and results in considerable psychosocial stress. Very little is understood about arthritic pain processing in the immature nervous system. Both clinical and neurobiological studies in animal models show that CNS nociceptive connections differ in juveniles and adults and that the normal maturation of these connections depends upon early life stress and pain experience. The immaturity of synaptic connections and integrated circuits means that children’s pain experience is different from that of adults and may impact upon pain in later life. It was our aim to develop and characterise a rodent model of joint inflammation to better understand the neurobiological basis of joint pain in early life and to establish whether joint inflammation in childhood influences joint pain sensitivity as an adult. In the first results chapter (Chapter 2), the normal development of joint evoked and cutaneous reflexes were mapped out over the postnatal period. In the second Results chapter (Chapter 3), monoarthritis of the ankle was induced in Sprague-Dawley rats of different postnatal ages using complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA) and the effect of this inflammation upon spinal circuits was studied using behavioural and electrophysiological measures. Electromyographic (EMG) recordings show that inflammation leads to widespread reflex hypersensitivity to mechanical stimuli in young animals that differs significantly from the effects of adult joint inflammation. In adults, a significant attenuation of reflexes, or ‘protective inhibition’ phase was observed at 24 hours and 4 days post-inflammation, followed by a ‘hypersensitivity phase’ at 10 days when reflexes to pinch were dramatically enhanced. These effects were not detected with simple behavioural observation. In the third results chapter (Chapter 4), the long-term effects of joint inflammation (6 weeks) were investigated and shown to be highly dependent upon the age at which the inflammation occurred. Baseline nociceptive reflexes were enhanced in animals that had experienced joint inflammation when young (postnatal day (P) 8) but slightly reduced if the inflammation had occurred at the same time interval, but in adult life. The effects of a second injury in adulthood also depended on the past history of the animal. Animals first inflamed in early life, displayed a significantly greater ‘protective inhibition’ than adult inflamed controls, while animals first inflamed in adult life displayed enhanced hypersensitivity to joint inflammation. The results here describe previously unknown characteristics and mechanisms of joint pain in early life which will contribute to a better understanding and treatment of pain in JIA

Rabies elimination research: juxtaposing optimism, pragmatism and realism

More than 100 years of research has now been conducted into the prevention, control and elimination of rabies with safe and highly efficacious vaccines developed for use in human and animal populations. Domestic dogs are a major reservoir for rabies, and although considerable advances have been made towards the elimination and control of canine rabies in many parts of the world, the disease continues to kill tens of thousands of people every year in Africa and Asia. Policy efforts are now being directed towards a global target of zero human deaths from dog-mediated rabies by 2030 and the global elimination of canine rabies. Here we demonstrate how research provides a cause for optimism as to the feasibility of these goals through strategies based around mass dog vaccination. We summarize some of the pragmatic insights generated from rabies epidemiology and dog ecology research that can improve the design of dog vaccination strategies in low- and middle-income countries and which should encourage implementation without further delay. We also highlight the need for realism in reaching the feasible, although technically more difficult and longer-term goal of global elimination of canine rabies. Finally, we discuss how research on rabies has broader relevance to the control and elimination of a suite of diseases of current concern to human and animal health, providing an exemplar of the value of a ‘One Health’ approach

Studi Pemanfaatan Sumberdaya Air Permukaan Di Pulau Karimunjawa Dan Pulau Kemujan

Pulau Karimunjawa dan Pulau Kemujan merupakan dua pulau utama yang berada di area Taman Nasional Karimun Jawa. Pulau Karimunjawa memiliki luas 4624 Ha dengan jumlah penduduk 4946 jiwa, sedangkan Pulau Kemujan memiliki luas 1626 Ha dengan jumlah penduduk 3070 jiwa. Untuk keperluan hidup sehari-hari, penduduk di dua pulau ini memanfaatkan air tanah dangkal yang merupakan tangkapan air hujan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bagaimana kondisi pemanfaatan sumberdaya air yang ada di pulau tersebut. Metode yang digunakan adalah wawancara dan pemberian kuisioner terkait penggunaan sumberdaya air permukaan kepada penduduk di kedua pulau. Hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa untuk Pulau Karimunjawa, pemerintah setempat telah menyediakan saluran pipa air berlangganan ke rumah-rumah penduduk. Sedangkan masyarakat di Pulau Kemujan masih mengandalkan air sumur untuk memenuhi kehidupan sehari-harinya

Does computer use pose a hazard for future long-term sickness absence?

The aim of the study was to investigate if weekly duration of computer use predicted sickness absence for more than two weeks at a later time

Speech Emotion Recognition using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks improved by the fast Continuous Wavelet Transform

The fast Continuous Wavelet Transform (fCWT) is used to improve Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN)’s Speech Emotion Recognition (SER). While being computationally efficient, the fCWT’s time-frequency analysis overcomes traditional methods’ resolution limitations (e.g., Short-Term Fourier Transform). fCWT-induced DCNNs are compared to state-of-the-art DCNN SER systems. Comparing different wavelet parameters, we also provide an empirical strategy for balancing temporal and spectral features in speech signals. We suggest that this strategy is of generic interest for non-stationary signal processing where large amounts of data are available. fCWT’s potential for improving SER accuracy in real-time applications is confirmed. In parallel, the variance in the cross-validation folds confirmed deep learning’s vulnerability on non-big data sets