Anemia and heart failure: a cause of progression or only a consequence?

Anemia is one of the most frequent co-morbidities in the patients with heart failure. Its prevalence increases from 4–7% in the subjects with asymptomatic left ventricular dysfunction to >30% in the patients with severe heart failure. Renal insufficiency, activation of inflammatory mediators, and treatment with renin-angiotensin antagonists seem to be its main determinants. The results of many studies agree in showing that anemia is a powerful independent determinant of survival in patients with heart failure. However, the mechanisms of this relation are still incompletely understood. Moreover a favourable effect on prognosis of the correction of anemia has not been shown, yet, and also controlled studies assessing its effects on exercise tolerance have yielded controversial results

Bisoprolol in the treatment of chronic heart failure: from pathophysiology to clinical pharmacology and trial results

Clinical trials have consistently shown the benefits of beta-blocker treatment in patients with chronic heart failure (HF). As a result, bisoprolol, carvedilol, and metoprolol succinate are now indicated for the treatment of all patients with chronic HF who do not have major contraindications. Bisoprolol is the first beta-blocker shown to improve survival in an outcome trial. In the Cardiac Insufficiency Bisoprolol Study II (CIBIS-II), all-cause mortality and sudden death were reduced in patients treated with bisoprolol compared with those on placebo (11.8% vs 17.3%; p < 0.0001 and 3.6% vs 6.3%, p < 0.002; respectively) regardless of age, NYHA functional class, and co-morbidities. Further studies have shown both the efficacy of bisoprolol on secondary endpoints and patients subgroups as well its high cost effectiveness. More recently, CIBIS-III has shown similar efficacy and safety of the initiation of HF treatment with either bisoprolol or enalapril, with a tendency to a survival advantage with bisoprolol. Nowadays, the role of bisoprolol, as well as that of carvedilol and metoprolol succinate, in HF treatment is firmly established and research is mainly focused on implementation of treatment and better dosing. This article will summarize evidence for the efficacy of bisoprolol in the treatment of HF

A 65 nm Data Concentration ASIC for the CMS Outer Tracker Detector Upgrade at HL-LHC

International audienc

Miniaturized Blood Pressure Telemetry System with RFID Interface

This work deals with the development and characterization of a potentially implantable blood pressure telemetry system, based on an active Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) tag, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 15693 compliant. This approach aims to continuously measure the average, systolic and diastolic blood pressure of the small/medium animals. The measured pressure wave undergoes embedded processing and results are stored onboard in a non-volatile memory, providing the data under interrogation by an external RFID reader. In order to extend battery lifetime, RFID energy harvesting has been investigated. The paper presents the experimental characterization in a laboratory and preliminary in-vivo tests. The device is a prototype mainly intended, in a future engineered version, for monitoring freely moving test animals for pharmaceutical research and drug safety assessment purposes, but it could have multiple uses in environmental and industrial applications

A 65 nm Data Concentration ASIC for the CMS Outer Tracker Detector Upgrade at HL-LHC

International audienceThe Concentrator Integrated Circuit (CIC) ASIC is a front-end chip for both Pixel-Strip (PS) andStrip-Strip (2S) modules of the future Phase-II CMS Outer Tracker upgrade at the HighLuminosity LHC (HL-LHC). It collects the digital data coming from eight upstream front-endchips (either MPAs or CBCs, depending on the module type), formats the signal in data packetscontaining the trigger information from eight bunch crossings and the raw data from eventspassing the first trigger level, and finally transmits them to the LpGBT unit. The design and itsimplementation in a 65 nm CMOS technology of the first prototype that integrates allfunctionalities for system level operation are presented in this contribution

A System-Verilog Verification Environment for the CIC Data Concentrator ASIC of the CMS Outer Tracker Phase-2 Upgrades

International audienceThe foreseen Phase-2 upgrades at the LHC present very challenging requirements for the front-end readout electronics of the CMS Outer Tracker detector. High data rates in combination with the employment of a novel technique for rejecting locally low transverse momentum particles as well as the strict low power consumption constraints require the implementation of an optimized readout architecture and specific interconnect synchronization schemes for its components. This work focuses on the development and the verification of the Concentrator IC (CIC) ASIC, a 65 nm digital chip featuring high input and output data rates, in the context of the readout chains incorporating all front-end ASICs: namely the Macro Pixel ASIC (MPA), Short Strip ASIC (SSA) for the Pixel-Strip (PS) modules and the CMS Binary Chip (CBC) for Strip-Strip (2S) Modules. The CIC ASIC receives high data rate (320 MHz) digital streams from eight Front-end ASICs via a total of 48 differential lines and transmits them through seven differential lines operating at 320 MHz or 640 MHz, depending on the occupancy of the detector module. A complex system level simulation environment based on the System-Verilog hardware description language and on the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) platform has been adapted and extended to help the CIC development and verification simulating the complete readout chains from the particle event to the output of the modules. The paper is composed of four sections: the first one describes the pT module concept, the second presents the UVM environment for MPA/SSA ASICs adapted and extended to include the CIC, the third one shows the readout-chain forecasted performances and show some examples of usage of this framework. The last section presents the PS module efficiency as a function of the stub occupancy for different CIC output frequencies

Study of a Triggered, Full Event Zero-Suppressed Front-End Readout Chain operating up to 1 MHz Trigger Rate and Pileup of 300 for CMS Outer Tracker upgrade at HL-LHC

International audienceThe CMS Outer Tracker at HL-LHC will have to cope with pileup of 300 events per bunch cross-ing and a trigger rate of up to 1 MHz. The front-end electronics readout chain consists of read-out ASICs connected to a data concentrator ASIC featuring zero-suppression. This contributionpresents the methodology and the analysis work for the buffer sizing and exception handling fea-turing a robust data readout synchronization, with an event loss probability lower than 0.1 % atthe highest pileup condition and a power density lower than 100 mW/cm$^2$