A large-scale and PCR-referenced vocal audio dataset for COVID-19.

The UK COVID-19 Vocal Audio Dataset is designed for the training and evaluation of machine learning models that classify SARS-CoV-2 infection status or associated respiratory symptoms using vocal audio. The UK Health Security Agency recruited voluntary participants through the national Test and Trace programme and the REACT-1 survey in England from March 2021 to March 2022, during dominant transmission of the Alpha and Delta SARS-CoV-2 variants and some Omicron variant sublineages. Audio recordings of volitional coughs, exhalations, and speech were collected in the 'Speak up and help beat coronavirus' digital survey alongside demographic, symptom and self-reported respiratory condition data. Digital survey submissions were linked to SARS-CoV-2 test results. The UK COVID-19 Vocal Audio Dataset represents the largest collection of SARS-CoV-2 PCR-referenced audio recordings to date. PCR results were linked to 70,565 of 72,999 participants and 24,105 of 25,706 positive cases. Respiratory symptoms were reported by 45.6% of participants. This dataset has additional potential uses for bioacoustics research, with 11.3% participants self-reporting asthma, and 27.2% with linked influenza PCR test results.

Bradyphrenia and Tachyphrenia in Idiopathic Parkinsonism Appear, in Part, Iatrogenic: An Observational Study with Systematic Review Background.

We question whether bradyphrenia, slowing of cognitive processing not explained by depression or a global cognitive assessment, is a nosological entity in idiopathic parkinsonism (IP). The time taken to break contact of an index finger with a touch-sensitive plate was measured, with and without a warning in the alerting signal as to which side the imperative would indicate, in 77 people diagnosed with IP and in 124 people without an IP diagnosis. The ability to utilise a warning, measured by the difference between loge-transformed reaction times (unwarned minus warned), was termed 'cognitive efficiency'. It was approximately normally distributed. A questionnaire on self- and partner perception of proband's bradyphrenia was applied. A multivariable model showed that those prescribed levodopa were less cognitively efficient (mean -5.2 (CI -9.5, -1.0)% per 300 mg/day, p = 0.02), but those prescribed the anti-muscarinic trihexyphenidyl were more efficient (14.7 (0.2, 31.3)% per 4 mg/day, p < 0.05) and those prescribed monoamine oxidase-B inhibitor (MAOBI) tended to be more efficient (8.3 (0.0, 17.4)%, p = 0.07). The variance in efficiency was greater within IP (F-test, p = 0.01 adjusted for any demographic covariates: coefficient of variation, with and without IP, 0.68 and 0.46, respectively), but not so after adjustment for anti-parkinsonian medication (p = 0.13: coefficient of variation 0.62). The within-participant follow-up time, a median of 4.8 (interquartile range 3.1, 5.5) years (101 participants), did not influence efficiency, irrespective of IP status. Perception of bradyphrenia did not usefully predict efficiency. We conclude that both bradyphrenia and 'tachyphrenia' in IP appear to have iatrogenic components, of clinically important size, related to the dose of antiparkinsonian medication. Levodopa is the most commonly prescribed first-line medication: co-prescribing a MAOBI may circumvent its associated bradyphrenia. The previously reported greater efficiency associated with (low-dose) anti-muscarinic was confirmed.

Group screening for rare events based on incomplete block designs.

Fields such as, diagnostic testing, biotherapeutics, drug development, and toxicology among others, center on the premise of searching through many specimens for a rare event. Scientists in the business of "searching for a needle in a haystack" may greatly benefit from the use of group screening design strategies. Group screening, where specimens are composited into pools with each pool being tested for the presence of the event, can be much more cost-efficient than testing each individual specimen. A number of group screening designs have been proposed in the literature. Incomplete block screening designs are described here and compared with other group screening designs. It is shown under certain conditions, that incomplete block screening designs can provide nearly a 90% cost saving compared to other group screening designs such as when prevalence is 0.001 and screening 3876 specimens with an ICB-sequential design vs. a Dorfman design. In other cases, previous group screening designs are shown to be most efficient. Overall, when prevalence is small (≤0.05) group screening designs are shown to be quite cost effective at screening a large number of specimens and in general there is no one design that is best in all situations. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol Progress, 35: e2770, 2019.

Optimum designs for non-linear mixed effects models in the presence of covariates.

In this article, we present a new method for optimizing designs of experiments for non-linear mixed effects models, where a categorical factor with covariate information is a design variable combined with another design factor. The work is motivated by the need to efficiently design preclinical experiments in enzyme kinetics for a set of Human Liver Microsomes. However, the results are general and can be applied to other experimental situations where the variation in the response due to a categorical factor can be partially accounted for by a covariate. The covariate included in the model explains some systematic variability in a random model parameter. This approach allows better understanding of the population variation as well as estimation of the model parameters with higher precision.

Transform-both-sides nonlinear models for in vitro pharmacokinetic experiments.

Transform-both-sides nonlinear models have proved useful in many experimental applications including those in pharmaceutical sciences and biochemistry. The maximum likelihood method is commonly used to fit transform-both-sides nonlinear models, where the regression and transformation parameters are estimated simultaneously. In this paper, an analysis of variance-based method is described in detail for estimating transform-both-sides nonlinear models from randomized experiments. It estimates the transformation parameter from the full treatment model and then the regression parameters are estimated conditionally on this estimate of the transformation parameter. The analysis of variance method is computationally simpler compared with the maximum likelihood method of estimation and allows a more natural separation of different sources of lack of fit. Simulation studies show that the analysis of variance method can provide unbiased estimators of complex transform-both-sides nonlinear models, such as transform-both-sides random coefficient nonlinear regression models and transform-both-sides fixed coefficient nonlinear regression models with random block effects.

Response surface designs for experiments in bioprocessing.

Many processes in the biological industries are studied using response surface methodology. The use of biological materials, however, means that run-to-run variation is typically much greater than that in many experiments in mechanical or chemical engineering and so the designs used require greater replication. The data analysis which is performed may involve some variable selection, as well as fitting polynomial response surface models. This implies that designs should allow the parameters of the model to be estimated nearly orthogonally. A class of three-level response surface designs is introduced which allows all except the quadratic parameters to be estimated orthogonally, as well as having a number of other useful properties. These subset designs are obtained by using two-level factorial designs in subsets of the factors, with the other factors being held at their middle level. This allows their properties to be easily explored. Replacing some of the two-level designs with fractional replicates broadens the class of useful designs, especially with five or more factors, and sometimes incomplete subsets can be used. It is very simple to include a few two- and four-level factors in these designs by excluding subsets with these factors at the middle level. Subset designs can be easily modified to include factors with five or more levels by allowing a different pair of levels to be used in different subsets.

Design of microarray experiments for genetical genomics studies.

Microarray experiments have been used recently in genetical genomics studies, as an additional tool to understand the genetic mechanisms governing variation in complex traits, such as for estimating heritabilities of mRNA transcript abundances, for mapping expression quantitative trait loci, and for inferring regulatory networks controlling gene expression. Several articles on the design of microarray experiments discuss situations in which treatment effects are assumed fixed and without any structure. In the case of two-color microarray platforms, several authors have studied reference and circular designs. Here, we discuss the optimal design of microarray experiments whose goals refer to specific genetic questions. Some examples are used to illustrate the choice of a design for comparing fixed, structured treatments, such as genotypic groups. Experiments targeting single genes or chromosomic regions (such as with transgene research) or multiple epistatic loci (such as within a selective phenotyping context) are discussed. In addition, microarray experiments in which treatments refer to families or to subjects (within family structures or complex pedigrees) are presented. In these cases treatments are more appropriately considered to be random effects, with specific covariance structures, in which the genetic goals relate to the estimation of genetic variances and the heritability of transcriptional abundances.

Novel experimental design for steady-state processes: a systematic Bayesian approach for enzymes, drug transport, receptor binding, continuous culture and cell transport kinetics.

We demonstrate that a Bayesian approach (the use of prior knowledge) to the design of steady-state experiments can produce major gains quantifiable in terms of information, productivity and accuracy of each experiment. Developing the use of Bayesian utility functions, we have used a systematic method to identify the optimum experimental designs for a number of kinetic model data sets. This has enabled the identification of trends between kinetic model types, sets of design rules and the key conclusion that such designs should be based on some prior knowledge of the kinetic model. We suggest an optimal and iterative method for selecting features of the design such as the substrate range, number of measurements and choice of intermediate points. The final design collects data suitable for accurate modelling and analysis and minimises the error in the parameters estimated. It is equally applicable to enzymes, drug transport, receptor binding, microbial culture and cell transport kinetics.

Efficient and cost-effective experimental determination of kinetic constants and data: the success of a Bayesian systematic approach to drug transport, receptor binding, continuous culture and cell transport kinetics.

Details about the parameters of kinetic systems are crucial for progress in both medical and industrial research, including drug development, clinical diagnosis and biotechnology applications. Such details must be collected by a series of kinetic experiments and investigations. The correct design of the experiment is essential to collecting data suitable for analysis, modelling and deriving the correct information. We have developed a systematic and iterative Bayesian method and sets of rules for the design of enzyme kinetic experiments. Our method selects the optimum design to collect data suitable for accurate modelling and analysis and minimises the error in the parameters estimated. The rules select features of the design such as the substrate range and the number of measurements. We show here that this method can be directly applied to the study of other important kinetic systems, including drug transport, receptor binding, microbial culture and cell transport kinetics. It is possible to reduce the errors in the estimated parameters and, most importantly, increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness by reducing the necessary amount of experiments and data points measured.

Planning incomplete block experiments when treatments are genetically related.

Selection trials in plant and animal breeding, in incomplete blocks, are described by linear models with random effect parameters associated with treatments with known genetic covariance structure. It is now well known that the information on relatives can improve the analysis and many extensions of this model have been proposed, but no studies have been done on the consequences of this genetical relatedness among treatments for the optimality of block designs. Using a suitable optimality criterion, we show that the knowledge on relatedness may imply that the optimal design is not in the class of designs which are optimal for unrelated treatments. Implications for practical applications are discussed.

Efficient and accurate experimental design for enzyme kinetics: Bayesian studies reveal a systematic approach.

In areas such as drug development, clinical diagnosis and biotechnology research, acquiring details about the kinetic parameters of enzymes is crucial. The correct design of an experiment is critical to collecting data suitable for analysis, modelling and deriving the correct information. As classical design methods are not targeted to the more complex kinetics being frequently studied, attention is needed to estimate parameters of such models with low variance. We demonstrate that a Bayesian approach (the use of prior knowledge) can produce major gains quantifiable in terms of information, productivity and accuracy of each experiment. Developing the use of Bayesian Utility functions, we have used a systematic method to identify the optimum experimental designs for a number of kinetic model data sets. This has enabled the identification of trends between kinetic model types, sets of design rules and the key conclusion that such designs should be based on some prior knowledge of K(M) and/or the kinetic model. We suggest an optimal and iterative method for selecting features of the design such as the substrate range, number of measurements and choice of intermediate points. The final design collects data suitable for accurate modelling and analysis and minimises the error in the parameters estimated.

Effective experimental design: enzyme kinetics in the bioinformatics era.

Acquiring details about the kinetic parameters of enzymes is crucial to both drug development and clinical diagnosis. The correct design of an experiment is crucial to collecting data suitable for analysis, modelling and deriving the correct information. As classical design methods are not targeted to the more complex kinetics now frequently studied, further work is required to estimate parameters of such models with low variance. This review examines the different options available to produce major gains in information, productivity and the accuracy of each experiment.