OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of a short course of inhaled corticosteroid in the treatment of isolated and persistent nocturnal cough in children. DESIGN Randomised double blind placebo controlled study. SETTING Subjects' homes in east London, England. SUBJECTS Consecutively referred children, 1-10 years old, with persistent nocturnal cough. INTERVENTIONS Placebo or fluticasone pr...

The authors investigated differences in the processes underlying two types of metacomprehension judgments: judgments of difficulty and predictions of performance (JOD vs. POP). An experiment was conducted to assess whether these two types of judgments aligned with different types of processing cues, and whether their accuracy correlated with different factors such as sensitivity to processing e...

The Arabian plate has been converging with Eurasia for 20-30 Ma, currently at 2-3 cm/year. Convergence is manifested differently along strike, with collision and tectonic escape in the west (Anatolia) and subduction of Arabia beneath Eurasia in the east (Iran). The reason for these differences may reflect the greater density of the Arabian lithosphere in the east relative to that in the west. F...

Dynamic scripting is a reinforcement learning algorithm designed specifically to learn appropriate tactics for an agent in a modern computer game, such as Neverwinter Nights. This reinforcement learning algorithm has previously been extended to support the automatic construction of new abstract states to improve its context sensitivity and integrated with a graphical behavior modeling architect...

We introduce the ALeRT (Action-dependent Learning Rates with Trends) algorithm that makes two modifications to the learning rate and one change to the exploration rate of traditional reinforcement learning techniques. Our learning rates are action-dependent and increase or decrease based on trends in reward sequences. Our exploration rate decreases when the agent is learning successfully and in...

BACKGROUND It has previously been reported that short term submental stimulation can reduce the frequency of apnoea and improve sleep architecture in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea. The effects of submental stimulation during consecutive nights on apnoea or on daytime sleepiness have not, however, been studied. METHODS Patients with obstructive sleep apnoea were studied by polysomnogr...