Relative Respiratory Syncytial Virus Cytopathogenesis in Upper and Lower Respiratory Tract Epithelium

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a major pathogen that primarily infects airway epithelium. Most infants suffer mild upper respiratory tract (URT) symptoms, while approximately one third progress to lower respiratory tract (LRT) involvement. Despite the ubiquity of URT infection, little is known about the relative cytopathogenesis of RSV infection in infant URT and LRT.

Pigmented paravenous chorioretinal atrophy is associated with a mutation within the crumbs homolog 1 (CRB1) gene

Pigmented paravenous chorioretinal atrophy (PPCRA) is an unusual retinal degeneration characterized by accumulation of pigmentation along retinal veins. The purpose of this study was to describe the phenotype of a family with PPCRA, determine the mode of inheritance, and identify the causal mutation.

Ambiguous Devices

Developed and performed in collaboration with Tom Davis (Bournemouth University), the work explores notions of presence and absence, technologically mediated communication and audience perception through the staging of ambiguous but repeatable performative interactions taking place on a co-located but distributed musical instrument. Public performances and installations include: CCRMA, Stanford University (2012); NIME conference, University of Michigan (2012); SARC, Queen's University Belfast (2013); INTIME symposium, Coventry University (2013); RE-NEW digital arts festival, Copenhagen (2013).

Noise Quartet

Performance at the International Computer Music Conference, University of Huddersfield (with Eric Lyon, Franziska Schroder & Steve Davis).

Real-Time Face Recognition from Surveillance Video

This chapter describes an experimental system for the recognition of human faces from surveillance video. In surveillance applications, the system must be robust to changes in illumination, scale, pose and expression. The system must also be able to perform detection and recognition rapidly in real time. Our system detects faces using the Viola-Jones face detector, then extracts local features to build a shape-based feature vector. The feature vector is constructed from ratios of lengths and differences in tangents of angles, so as to be robust to changes in scale and rotations in-plane and out-of-plane. Consideration was given to improving the performance and accuracy of both the detection and recognition steps.

Using Graphs to Visualise and Detect Anomalies in Access Control System Transactions

Physical Access Control Systems are commonly used to secure doors in buildings such as airports, hospitals, government buildings and offices. These systems are designed primarily to provide an authentication mechanism, but they also log each door access as a transaction in a database. Unsupervised learning techniques can be used to detect inconsistencies or anomalies in the mobility data, such as a cloned or forged Access Badge, or unusual behaviour by staff members. In this paper, we present an overview of our method of inferring directed graphs to represent a physical building network and the flows of mobility within it. We demonstrate how the graphs can be used for Visual Data Exploration, and outline how to apply algorithms based on Information Theory to the graph data in order to detect inconsistent or abnormal behaviour.

AGWAN: A Generative Model for Labelled, Weighted Graphs

Real-world graphs or networks tend to exhibit a well-known set of properties, such as heavy-tailed degree distributions, clustering and community formation. Much effort has been directed into creating realistic and tractable models for unlabelled graphs, which has yielded insights into graph structure and evolution. Recently, attention has moved to creating models for labelled graphs: many real-world graphs are labelled with both discrete and numeric attributes. In this paper, we present AGWAN (Attribute Graphs: Weighted and Numeric), a generative model for random graphs with discrete labels and weighted edges. The model is easily generalised to edges labelled with an arbitrary number of numeric attributes. We include algorithms for fitting the parameters of the AGWAN model to real-world graphs and for generating random graphs from the model. Using the Enron ���who communicates with whom��� social graph, we compare our approach to state-of-the-art random labelled graph generators and draw conclusions about the contribution of discrete vertex labels and edge weights to the structure of real-world graphs.

Statin Use and Risk of Delirium in the Critically Ill

Rationale: Delirium is common in intensive care unit (ICU) patients and is a predictor of worse outcomes and neuroinflammation is a possible mechanism. The antiinflammatory actions of statins may reduce delirium. <br/><br/>Objectives: To determine whether critically ill patients receiving statin therapy had a reduced risk of delirium than those not on statins. <br/><br/>Methods: A prospective cohort analysis of data from consecutive ICU patients admitted to a UK mixed medical and surgical critical care unit between August 2011 and February 2012; the Confusion Assessment Method for ICU was used to determine the days each patient was assessed as being free of delirium during ICU admission. <br/><br/>Measurements and Main Results: Delirium-free days, daily administration of statins, and serum C-reactive protein (CRP) were recorded. Four hundred and seventy consecutive critical care patients were followed, of whom 151 patients received statins. Using randomeffects multivariable logistic regression, statin administration the previous evening was associated with the patient being assessed as free of delirium (odds ratio, 2.28; confidence interval, 1.01-5.13; P , 0.05) and with lower CRP (b = 20.52; P , 0.01) the following day. When the association between statin and being assessed as free of delirium was controlled for CRP, the effect size became nonsignificant (odds ratio, 1.56; confidence interval, 0.64-3.79; P = 0.32). <br/><br/>Conclusions: Ongoing statin therapy is associated with a lower daily risk of delirium in critically ill patients. An ongoing clinical trial, informed by this study, is investigating if statins are a potential therapy for delirium in the critically ill.Copyright �� 2014 by the American Thoracic Society.