Loneliness among people with severe mental illness during the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from a linked UK population cohort study

Aim/Goal/Purpose Population surveys underrepresent people with severe mental ill health. This paper aims to use multiple regression analyses to explore perceived social support, loneliness and factor associations from self-report survey data collected during the Covid-19 pandemic in a sample of individuals with severe mental ill health. Design/Methodology/Approach We sampled an already existing cohort of people with severe mental ill health. Researchers contacted participants by phone or by post to invite them to take part in a survey about how the pandemic restrictions had impacted health, Covid-19 experiences, perceived social support, employment and loneliness. Loneliness was measured by the three item UCLA loneliness scale. Findings In the pandemic sub-cohort, 367 adults with a severe mental ill health diagnosis completed a remote survey. 29–34% of participants reported being lonely. Loneliness was associated with being younger in age (adjusted OR = -.98, p = .02), living alone (adjusted OR = 2.04, p = .01), high levels of social and economic deprivation (adjusted OR = 2.49, p = .04), and lower perceived social support (B = -5.86, p < .001). Living alone was associated with lower perceived social support. Being lonely was associated with a self-reported deterioration in mental health during the pandemic (adjusted OR = 3.46, 95%CI 2.03–5.91). Practical implications Intervention strategies to tackle loneliness in the severe mental ill health population are needed. Further research is needed to follow-up the severe mental ill health population after pandemic restrictions are lifted to understand perceived social support and loneliness trends. Originality Loneliness was a substantial problem for the severe mental ill health population before the Covid-19 pandemic but there is limited evidence to understand perceived social support and loneliness trends during the pandemic.

Obesity, Inflammation, and Severe Asthma: an Update

Purpose of Review Obesity-associated difficult asthma continues to be a substantial problem and, despite a move to address treatable traits affecting asthma morbidity and mortality, it remains poorly understood with limited phenotype-specific treatments. The complex association between asthma, obesity, and inflammation is highlighted and recent advances in treatment options explored. Recent Findings Obesity negatively impacts asthma outcomes and has a causal link in the pathogenesis of adult-onset asthma. Imbalance in the adipose organ found in obesity favours a pro-inflammatory state both systemically and in airways. Obesity may impact currently available asthma biomarkers, and obesity-associated asthma specific biomarkers are needed. Whilst surgical weight loss interventions are associated with improvements in asthma control and quality of life, evidence for pragmatic conservative options are sparse. Innovative approaches tackling obesity-mediated airway inflammation may provide novel therapies. Summary The immunopathological mechanisms underlying obesity-associated asthma require further research that may lead to novel therapeutic options for this disease. However, weight loss appears to be effective in improving asthma in this cohort and focus is also needed on non-surgical treatments applicable in the real-world setting.

Utopie und Lebenszeit in der Aufklärung

The aim of this article is to outline how Hans Blumenberg’s conception of lifetime and world time (Lebenszeit und Weltzeit, 1986) can help to elucidate a substantial problem of utopian literature and its development from the 16th to the 18th century: utopias always try to illustrate the ways by which the single members of a political community harmonise with the community as a whole. The congruence of private good and common good, private interest and common interest, private will and general will is a main task of 17th and 18th century political philosophy. Blumenberg’s book, however, allows us to focus on the existential dimension of this harmonisation: under which circumstances may the single members become so wise and virtuous within their lifetimes that they always know about and comply with the common good? 18th century utopias seem to find answers to this question in theories of moral sense, common sense and aesthetic education.

Over-Parameterization and Generalization in Audio Classification

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have been dominating classification tasks in various domains, such as machine vision, machine listening, and natural language processing. In machine listening, while generally exhibiting very good generalization capabilities, CNNs are sensitive to the specific audio recording device used, which has been recognized as a substantial problem in the acoustic scene classification (DCASE) community. In this study, we investigate the relationship between over-parameterization of acoustic scene classification models, and their resulting generalization abilities. Our results indicate that increasing width improves generalization to unseen devices, even without an increase in the number of parameters.

Evaluation of Antibody Response in Sows after Vaccination with Senecavirus A Vaccine and the Effect of Maternal Antibody Transfer on Antibody Dynamics in Offspring

Senecavirus A (SVA) is a newly porcine virus that has been detected in many countries since its first detection in pigs in Canada in 2007, and it remains endemic in many countries in Asia and America, which has become a substantial problem for the pig industry. Vaccination is a potentially effective strategy for the prevention and control of SVA infection. Our lab has developed a SVA vaccine candidate previously. In this study, the antibody response to the prepared vaccine in sows and their offspring was evaluated. Vaccination of sows with inactivated SVA vaccines during pregnancy elicited SVA-specific virus-neutralizing antibodies. Vaccination with a high dose of SVA vaccine followed a booster immunization contributed to a long-term duration of the persistence of maternally derived neutralizing antibodies (MDAs) in the milk of the sows (>14 days). In contrast, vaccination with a single low dose of SVA vaccine resulted in a short-term persistence of MDAs in the milk (2–7 days). The MDAs could be efficiently transferred from the sows to their offspring through the colostrum/milk but not the umbilical cord blood. The antibody titers and the duration of the persistence of MDAs in the offspring are highly associated with the antibody levels in the milk from the sows. Vaccination of sows with a booster dose of SVA vaccine resulted in a longer-lasting MDAs in their offspring (persisted for at least 90 days). However, vaccination with the single low dose of vaccine only brought about 42 days of MDAs persistence in their offspring. The effect of MDAs on active immunization with SVA vaccine in offspring was further evaluated, which showed that vaccination of the SVA vaccine in the presence of MDAs at the titer of ≈1:64 or less could overcome the MDAs’ interference and give rise to effective antibody response. This will help for establishing the optimal times and schedules for SVA vaccination in pigs.

Does Concentrated Exposure Treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Improve Insomnia Symptoms? Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial

Insomnia is a substantial problem in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). There is, however, a lack of studies investigating changes in concurrent symptoms of insomnia in OCD after concentrated treatment. A recent randomized controlled trial randomized participants to the Bergen 4-day treatment (B4DT, n = 16), or 12 weeks of unguided self-help (SH, n = 16), or waitlist (WL, n = 16). Patients from the SH- and WL-group who wanted further treatment after the 12 weeks were then offered the B4DT (total of 42 patients treated with the B4DT). There were no significant differences in symptoms of insomnia between the conditions at post-treatment, but a significant moderate improvement at 3-month follow-up for patients who received the B4DT. Insomnia was not associated with OCD-treatment outcome, and change in symptoms of insomnia was mainly related to changes in depressive symptoms. The main conclusion is that concentrated exposure treatment is effective irrespective of comorbid insomnia, and that insomnia problems are moderately reduced following treatment.

A semantic rule based digital fraud detection

Digital fraud has immensely affected ordinary consumers and the finance industry. Our dependence on internet banking has made digital fraud a substantial problem. Financial institutions across the globe are trying to improve their digital fraud detection and deterrence capabilities. Fraud detection is a reactive process, and it usually incurs a cost to save the system from an ongoing malicious activity. Fraud deterrence is the capability of a system to withstand any fraudulent attempts. Fraud deterrence is a challenging task and researchers across the globe are proposing new solutions to improve deterrence capabilities. In this work, we focus on the very important problem of fraud deterrence. Our proposed work uses an Intimation Rule Based (IRB) alert generation algorithm. These IRB alerts are classified based on severity levels. Our proposed solution uses a richer domain knowledge base and rule-based reasoning. In this work, we propose an ontology-based financial fraud detection and deterrence model.

Loneliness among people with severe mental ill health during the COVID-19 pandemic: results from a linked UK population cohort study

Purpose Population surveys underrepresent people with severe mental ill health. This paper aims to explore perceived social support and loneliness and factor associations during the Covid-19 pandemic in a sample of individuals with severe mental ill health. Design/methodology/approach We sampled an already existing cohort of people with severe mental ill health. Researchers contacted participants by phone or by post to invite them to take part in a survey about how the pandemic restrictions had impacted health, Covid-19 experiences, perceived social support, employment and loneliness. Loneliness was measured by the three item UCLA loneliness scale. Findings In the pandemic sub-cohort, 367 adults with a severe mental ill health diagnosis completed a remote survey. 29-34% of participants reported being lonely. Loneliness was associated with being younger in age (adjusted OR = -.98, p = .02), living alone (adjusted OR = 2.04, p = .01), high levels of social and economic deprivation (adjusted OR = 2.49, p = .04), and lower perceived social support (B = -5.86, p < .001). Living alone was associated with lower perceived social support. Being lonely was associated with a self-reported deterioration in mental health during the pandemic (adjusted OR = 3.46, 95%CI 2.03-5.91). Practical implications Intervention strategies to tackle loneliness in the severe mental ill health population are needed. Further research is needed to follow-up the severe mental ill health population after pandemic restrictions are lifted to understand perceived social support and loneliness trends. Originality Loneliness was a substantial problem for the severe mental ill health population before the Covid-19 pandemic but there is limited evidence to understand perceived social support and loneliness trends during the pandemic.

Textronic Solutions Used for Premature Babies: A Review

Premature birth is considered to be a substantial problem in perinatal medicine, which in the vast majority of cases (>60%), concerns African and South Asian countries. Nevertheless, prematurity is a global problem and is faced by both less-developed (where 12% of babies are prematurely born) and well-developed countries (with 9% prematurity rate) [1, 2]. The percentage of children born prematurely, i.e., before the 37th week of pregnancy, was 8.7% in Europe, while, in Poland, it was 7.34% [3]. Care of prematurely born babies is a huge challenge for parents and medical staff in the neonatal intensive care unit. Preterm infants, because of their low weight and gestational age, are prone to health problems and even death. For this reason, continuous monitoring of health parameters plays an important role. It is achieved by the use of various sensors that are inserted in infants’ garments. Sensor systems monitor an infant’s health condition, and then the data are transmitted to doctors or parents. This article is for illustrative purposes, aimed at presenting solutions such as the use of sensors for monitoring infants’ physiological parameters.