About the Authors

Liyan Chen

Affiliations Department of Respiratory Diseases, The 1st Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College, Guangzhou, China, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China, State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Medical College, Guangzhou, China

Kefang Lai

Affiliations Department of Respiratory Diseases, The 1st Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College, Guangzhou, China, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China, State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Medical College, Guangzhou, China

Joseph Mark Lomask

Affiliation Buxco Electronics, Inc, Wilmington, North Carolina, United States of America

Bert Jiang

Affiliation Buxco Electronics, Inc, Wilmington, North Carolina, United States of America

Nanshan Zhong

13316024379@189.cn

Affiliations Department of Respiratory Diseases, The 1st Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College, Guangzhou, China, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou, China, State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Medical College, Guangzhou, China

Competing Interests

The Whole Body Plethysmography System (Buxco Company) is used for several years in our lab for detecting mouse lung function. Joseph Mark Lomask and Bert Jiang are employed technicians of Buxco Electronics, Inc, Wilmington, NC, USA. The authors have good communication with them in instrumentation and maintenance. The authors found suspicious mouse cough respiratory waveforms in the anterior experiments and conceived mouse cough detection method. The two gentlemen gratuitously participated in software design, development and software mechanism writing, so that the authors decided to have them both on the authorship of this article. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the Plos One policies on sharing data and materials. Linked to this study, a patent named “The development of mouse cough model and the detection method of mouse cough” has been authorized by State Intellectual property office of the People’s Republic of China in July 31th, 2012. The co-holders of this patent are: (1) First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College, (2) Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, (3) State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, and (4) Buxco Electronics, Inc, USA. The main contents of the patent comprise: 1. 10-week old specific-pathogen free female Balb/c mice with 22–25 grams; 2. A set of Buxco non-invasive Whole Body Plethysmography System where mice could be put in for free moving, attached with sonic audiomonitor and signal converter. 3. Mice coughs elicited by capsaicin aerosol were manually monitored by observers and automatedly recorded and analyzed by Finepointe software. If the manual and automated cough counts were coincident, the mouse cough could be verified. This patent is about the establishment of new method of mice cough detection process, not concerning with software development. The authors confirm adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the PLOS ONE guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Designed the Finepointe software used in analysis: LC JML BJ. Conceived and designed the experiments: LC KL NZ. Performed the experiments: LC. Analyzed the data: LC BJ. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: LC KL JML BJ NZ. Wrote the paper: LC KL JML NZ.