The influence of duration of rheumatoid arthritis on the temperature of inflammed joints

Reumatoidalne Zapalenie Stawów (RZS) jest przewlekłą, zapalną chorobą układową tkanki łącznej. Celem niniejszej pracy była ocena wpływu czasu trwania choroby, od momentu postawienia diagnozy RZS, na temperaturę stawów objętych procesem zapalnym. Za pomocą kamery termowizyjnej przebadano następujące stawy: stawy nadgarstka, stawy śródręczno-paliczkowe, stawy międzypaliczkowe bliższe, stawy międzypaliczkowe dalsze dłoni prawej i lewej oraz stawy: skokowo goleniowy i śródstopno-paliczkowy stopy prawej i lewej. Zaobserwowano istotnie niższą temperaturę stawu skokowo-goleniowego stopy prawej u pacjentów chorujących dłużej niż 10 lat w porównaniu z osobami zdrowymi.Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease of human connective tissue. The aim of the study was to assess the impact of RA duration on the temperature of inflamed joints. Temperatures of the following joints were measured: wrist joints, metacarophalangeal joints, proximal interphalangeal joints, distal interphalangeal joints of left and right hand as well as ankle joints and metatarsophalangeal joints of right and left foot. Significantly lower right ankle joint temperature was observed for patients of more than 10 years’ disease duration compared to healthy subject

Spectral line-shapes investigation with Pound-Drever-Hall-locked frequency-stabilized cavity ring-down spectroscopy

A review of recent experiments involving a newly developed Pound-Drever-Hall-locked frequency-stabilized cavity ring-down spectroscopy (PDH-locked FS-CRDS) system is presented. By comparison to standard FS-CRDS, the PDH lock of the probe laser to the ring-down cavity optimized coupling into the cavity, thus increasing the ring-down signal acquisition rate nearly 300-fold to 14 kHz and reducing the noise-equivalent absorption coefficient by more than an order of magnitude to 7 × 10−11 cm−1. We discuss how averaging approximately 1000 spectra yielded a signal-to-noise ratio of 220000. We also discuss how the spectrum frequency axis was linked to an optical frequency comb, thus enabling absolute frequency measurements of molecular optical transitions at sub-MHz levels. Applications of the spectrometer to molecular line-shape studies are also presented. For these investigations, we use semi-classical line-shape models that consider the influence of Dicke narrowing as well as the speed dependence of the pressure broadening and shifting to fit spectra. We show that the improved precision and spectrum fidelity of the spectrometer enable precise determinations of line-shape parameters. We also discuss the importance of line-shape analysis with regard to the development of new spectroscopic databases as well as in the optical determination of the Boltzmann constant