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Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic skin condition that millions of people around the world live with each day. Performing research into identifying the causes and treatment for this disease has great potential to provide benefits for these individuals. However, AD clinical trial recruitment is not a trivial task due to the variance in diagnostic precision and phenotypic definitions leveraged by different clinicians, as well as the time spent finding, recruiting, and enrolling patients by clinicians to become study participants. Thus, there is a need for automatic and effective patient phenotyping for cohort recruitment. This study aims to present an approach for identifying patients whose electronic health records suggest that they may have AD. We created a vectorized representation of each patient and trained various supervised machine learning methods to classify when a patient has AD. Each patient is represented by a vector of either probabilities or binary values, where each value indicates whether they meet a different criteria for AD diagnosis. The most accurate AD classifier performed with a class-balanced accuracy of 0.8036, a precision of 0.8400, and a recall of 0.7500 when using XGBoost (Extreme Gradient Boosting). Creating an automated approach for identifying patient cohorts has the potential to accelerate, standardize, and automate the process of patient recruitment for AD studies; therefore, reducing clinician burden and informing the discovery of better treatment options for AD.

Background The incidence of obesity is increasing worldwide. In selected individuals, bariatric surgery may offer a means of achieving long-term weight loss, improved health, and healthcare cost reduction. Physiological changes that occur because of obesity and general anaesthesia predispose to respiratory complications following bariatric surgery. The aim of this study is to determine whether post-operative high flow nasal oxygen therapy (HFNO 2 ) improves respiratory function and reduces the incidence of post-operative pulmonary complications (PPCs) in comparison to conventional oxygen therapy in these patients. Method The OXYBAR study is a prospective, un-blinded, single centre, randomised, controlled pilot study. Patients with body mass index (BMI) > 30 kg/m 2 , undergoing laparoscopic bariatric surgery, will be randomised to receive either standard low flow oxygen therapy or HFNO 2 in the post-operative period. The primary outcome measure is the change in end expiratory lung impedance (∆EELI) as measured by electrical impedance tomography (EIT). Secondary outcome measures include change in tidal volume (∆Vt), partial arterial pressure of oxygen/fraction of inspired oxygen (PaO 2 /FiO 2 ) ratio, incidence of PPCs, hospital length of stay and measures of patient comfort. Discussion We hypothesise that the post-operative administration of HFNO 2 will increase EELI and therefore end expiratory lung volume (EELV) in obese patients. To our knowledge this is the first trial designed to assess the effects of HFNO 2 on EELV in this population. We anticipate that data collected during this pilot study will inform a larger multicentre trial. Trial registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR), ACTRN12617000694314 . Registered on 15 May 2017.

In this groundbreaking collection, twenty-one prominent medievalists discuss continuity and change in ideas of personhood and community and argue for the viability of the comic mode in the study and recovery of history. These scholars approach their sources not from a particular ideological viewpoint but with an understanding that all topics, questions, and explanations are viable. They draw on a variety of sources in Latin, Arabic, French, German, Middle English, and more, and employ a range of theories and methodologies, always keeping in mind that environments are inseparable from the making of the people who inhabit them and that these people are in part constituted by and understood in terms of their communities. Essays feature close readings of both familiar and lesser known materials, offering provocative interpretations of John of Rupescissa's alchemy; the relationship between the living and the saintly dead in Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons; the nomenclature of heresy in the early eleventh century; the apocalyptic visions of Robert of Uzès; Machiavelli's De principatibus; the role of \"demotic religiosity\" in economic development; and the visions of Elizabeth of Schönau. Contributors write as historians of religion, art, literature, culture, and society, approaching their subjects through the particular and the singular rather than through the thematic and the theoretical. Playing with the wild possibilities of the historical fragments at their disposal, the scholars in this collection advance a new and exciting approach to writing medieval history.

“It is quite true,” Martin Luther assured readers of his Grosser Katechismus, “that the kind of babbling and bellowing that used to pass for prayers in the church was not really prayer. Such external repetition … while it may be called singing or reading exercise … is not real prayer.” What is prayer? This is a question that historians of religion, particularly historians of medieval Christianity, have been asking themselves a lot lately, with, as yet, somewhat limited success. Perhaps the greatest hurdle is a methodological one: historians are by training, if not also by temperament, more inclined to ask questions of their sources as to origin, function, and influence than they are of experience, including physical or psychological effect. From this perspective, that prayers were said daily—indeed, “hourly”—in the monasteries, churches, and private chapels of medieval Europe is of interest primarily for what this practice can tell us about the way in which medieval Christians conceptualized their relationships with each other and the social, political, and material objects of their desire (food, property, relief from sickness, victory in war, protection against enemies, political favor, and so forth). And yet, throughout the medieval literature on prayer, how to pray—at what times, with what words, with what spiritual and mental disposition—is as much, if not more, a concern for both critics and practitioners as for what or for whom to pray.

Fulton evaluates what perceptual metaphors--perspective and taste--entails. She suggests that there is rather more at stake than social politics or even health in the current American campaigns against obesity and sweets. Rather, it is an attack upon God for fear of the sweet: for fear of being transformed.

BackgroundPatients with obesity are predisposed to a reduction in end-expiratory lung volume (EELV) and atelectasis after anaesthesia. High flow nasal oxygen (HFNO) may increase EELV, reducing the likelihood of postoperative pulmonary complications (PPC). We conducted a pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT) of conventional oxygen therapy versus HFNO after bariatric surgery. The aim was to investigate the feasibility of using electrical impedance tomography (EIT) as a means of assessing respiratory mechanics and to inform the design of a definitive RCT.MethodsWe performed a single-centre, parallel-group, pilot RCT. Adult patients with obesity undergoing elective bariatric surgery were eligible for inclusion. We excluded patients with a known contraindication to HFNO or with chronic lung disease.ResultsFifty patients were randomised in equal proportions. One patient crossed over from conventional O2 to HFNO. Delta EELI was higher at 1 hour in patients receiving HFNO (mean difference = 831 Au (95% CI − 1636–3298), p = 0.5). Continuous EIT beyond 1 hour was poorly tolerated. At 6 hours, there were no differences in PaO2/FiO2 ratio or PaCO2. Only one patient developed a PPC (in the HFNO group) by 6 weeks.ConclusionsThese data suggest that a large-scale RCT of HFNO after bariatric surgery in an ‘all-comers’ population is likely infeasible. While EIT was an effective means of assessing respiratory mechanics, it was impractical over time. Similarly, the infrequency of PPC precludes its use as a primary outcome. Future studies should focus on identifying patients at the greatest risk of PPC.