Evaluation of automated airway morphological quantification for assessing fibrosing lung disease

Abnormal airway dilatation, termed traction bronchiectasis, is a typical feature of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Volumetric computed tomography (CT) imaging captures the loss of normal airway tapering in IPF. We postulated that automated quantification of airway abnormalities could provide estimates of IPF disease extent and severity. We propose AirQuant, an automated computational pipeline that takes an airway segmentation and CT image as input and systematically parcellates the airway tree into its lobes and generational branches, deriving airway structural measures from chest CT. Importantly, AirQuant prevents the occurrence of spurious airway branches by thick wave propagation and removes loops in the airway-tree by graph search, overcoming limitations of existing airway skeletonisation algorithms. Tapering between airway segments (intertapering) and airway tortuosity computed by AirQuant were compared between 14 healthy participants and 14 IPF patients. Airway intertapering was significantly reduced in IPF patients, and airway tortuosity was significantly increased when compared to healthy controls. Differences were most marked in the lower lobes, conforming to the typical distribution of IPF-related damage. AirQuant is an open-source pipeline that avoids limitations of existing airway quantification algorithms and has clinical interpretability. Automated airway measurements may have potential as novel imaging biomarkers of IPF severity and disease extent

Individual Differences in the Ability to Recognise Facial Identity Are Associated with Social Anxiety

Previous research has been concerned with the relationship between social anxiety and the recognition of face expression but the question of whether there is a relationship between social anxiety and the recognition of face identity has been neglected. Here, we report the first evidence that social anxiety is associated with recognition of face identity, across the population range of individual differences in recognition abilities. Results showed poorer face identity recognition (on the Cambridge Face Memory Test) was correlated with a small but significant increase in social anxiety (Social Interaction Anxiety Scale) but not general anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). The correlation was also independent of general visual memory (Cambridge Car Memory Test) and IQ. Theoretically, the correlation could arise because correct identification of people, typically achieved via faces, is important for successful social interactions, extending evidence that individuals with clinical-level deficits in face identity recognition (prosopagnosia) often report social stress due to their inability to recognise others. Equally, the relationship could arise if social anxiety causes reduced exposure or attention to people's faces, and thus to poor development of face recognition mechanisms

Objective Structured Clinical Skills Evaluation (OSCE) in Undergraduate Advanced Nursing Critical Care Education to assess their performance of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR): Chinese students’ experience

Conference Theme: Resuscitation Systems of Care - A Team Effor

Objective Structured Clinical Skills Assessment (OSCA) in Undergraduate Advanced Nursing Education to assess their performance of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR): Chinese students’ experience

Conference Theme: Resuscitation Systems of Care: A Team Effor

Testing for the mediating role of endophenotypes using molecular genetic data in a twin study of ADHD traits

Family and twin studies have identified endophenotypes that capture familial and genetic risk in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but it remains unclear if they lie on the causal pathway. Here, we illustrate a stepwise approach to identifying intermediate phenotypes. First, we use previous quantitative genetic findings to delineate the expected pattern of genetically correlated phenotypes. Second, we identify overlapping genetic associations with ADHD-related quantitative traits. Finally, we test for the mediating role of associated endophenotypes. We applied this approach to a sample of 1,312 twins aged 7-10. Based on previous twin model-fitting analyses, we selected hyperactivity-impulsivity, inattention, reading difficulties (RD), reaction time variability (RTV) and commission errors (CE), and tested for association with selected ADHD risk alleles. For nominally significant associations with both a symptom and a cognitive variable, matching the expected pattern based on previous genetic correlations, we performed mediation analysis to distinguish pleiotropic from mediating effects. The strongest association was observed for the rs7984966 SNP in the serotonin receptor gene (HTR2A), and RTV (P = 0.007; unadjusted for multiple testing). Mediation analysis suggested that CE (38%) and RTV (44%) substantially mediated the association between inattention and the T-allele of SNP rs3785157 in the norepinephrine transporter gene (SLC6A2) and the T-allele of SNP rs7984966 in HTR2A, respectively. The SNPs tag risk-haplotypes but are not thought to be functionally significant. While these exploratory findings are preliminary, requiring replication, this study demonstrates the value of this approach that can be adapted to the investigation of multiple genetic markers and polygenic risk scores. © 2016 The Authors. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc

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Inventor name used in this publication: 陈炳泉, Chen BingquanInventor name used in this publication: 黄君华, Huang JunhuaInventor name used in this publication: Ren ZhihaoInventor name used in this publication: 陈炜明, Chen WeimingInventor name used in this publication: 林伟明, Lin WeimingInventor name used in this publication: 张泳沁, Zhang YongqingChinaVersion of Recor

Construction safety involving working at height for residential building repair and maintenance : final report of the CII-HK research project

Author name used in this publication: Michael C. H. YamAuthor name used in this publication: Albert W. K. KwokAuthor name used in this publication: Edward C. Y. YiuAuthor name used in this publication: Edmond W. M. LamConstruction Industry Institute-Hong Kong Report, no. 92006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Research book or monograph (author)Other Versio