BMC Research Notes最新文献

Soundscape is the perception of an acoustic environment. This perception includes thoughts and feelings of the human being owing to the environment interaction, and physical properties of such environment. Soundscape recordings involve the human perception usually captured by questionnaires. However, human perception is inherently subjective, and questionnaires are tools to gather information with several bias (e.g., design, response, sampling, event recall, and management). To move towards the study of the soundscape effects in terms of not only involving questionnaire-based information, but also the neurophysiological reaction, this works aims to provide a database of 30 individuals, who experienced four types of soundscapes in Monterrey, N. L., Mexico (ecological park, riverwalk, music avenue, and traffic) in two audio formats (stereo and binaural). The sense of being in the auditory environment was gathered by applying the Usoh and Steed questionnaire and recording the electroencephalographic activity (brain electrical reaction) of the individuals. This database could be useful to study stress level and cognitive load induced by traffic, to measure whether ecological park or riverwalk reduce stress, to evaluate the engagement and excitedness level arisen in music venues, and to improve user-experiences in immersive environments such virtual reality and augmented reality.

Objective: Semi-automated tools used during the preliminary screening of articles in systematic reviews can start with a small set of seed articles and actively learn from human decisions to prioritise more relevant articles for subsequent screening. However, given that these tools are vulnerable to biases and lack clear stopping criteria, their performance in large-scale systematic reviews remains uncertain, especially in reviews covering broad subject areas that require a substantial number of representative seed articles. This article presents a hybrid approach that uses text-mining techniques combined with a semi-automated tool to effectively reduce, screen, and validate a large cohort of articles (N = 90,871).

Result: A preliminary evaluation using simulations indicated that this approach has the potential to craft a comprehensive collection of seed articles that covers broad subject areas for semi-automated tools in a large-scale systematic review. The strengths and limitations of using a semi-automated tool alone in such a context are discussed. Our approach increases the efficiency of automated tools by providing a larger and more focused selection of articles to start with, optimising the learning process for those tools and reducing biases. Additionally, our approach could increase the transparency and reusability of keywords for future review updates.

Objectives: This dataset was generated as part of a study aimed at developing a video expert panel (VEP) to serve as a reference standard for respiratory rate assessment in children under five years of age. The overarching goal was to improve the accuracy of diagnosing respiratory illnesses and to support the advancement of automated video-based methods for respiratory rate measurement. Children aged 0-59 months presenting with cough and/or difficulty breathing at different levels of healthcare facilities in Bangladesh were enrolled during 2021-2022.

Data description: The dataset comprises 332 video recordings, each approximately 60 s in duration, documenting chest wall movements of participating children. All recordings were independently reviewed by members of a trained VEP, who determined respiratory rate using a standardized multi-reviewer process. Alongside the video files, a Stata (.dta) file provides structured metadata, including demographic information (age, sex), clinical variables (history and observation of cough and difficult breathing), and respiratory rate counts. This dataset is intended to support the development and validation of automated video-based diagnostic tools, training and standardization of health workers, and quality assurance initiatives. Its open-access availability fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and international research in pediatric respiratory diagnostics.

Objective: Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), is spread through the air. Although extensive data has shown that TB case notifications decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is little known about the extent to which these reductions were due to a decrease in transmission, rather than delays in healthcare seeking and diagnosis. We used data from CONTEXT, a population-based cross-sectional study which enrolled newly diagnosed cases of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) or pre-extensively drug resistant (pre-XDR) TB in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa from 2019 to 2023 and recorded information on their contacts.

Results: We found that close contacts declined by 36% from 2019 to 2020 (p = 0.005). Casual contacts at locations where participants routinely spent time declined by 30% (p = 0.16). Based on our findings, substantially lower population-level risk of transmission could be expected between 2020 and 2022 in this region of South Africa. These data are useful for understanding the extent of the reduction in Mtb transmission during the pandemic.