More than smell - COVID-19 is associated with severe impairment of smell, taste, and chemesthesis

Recent anecdotal and scientific reports have provided evidence of a link between COVID-19 and chemosensory impairments, such as anosmia. However, these reports have downplayed or failed to distinguish potential effects on taste, ignored chemesthesis, and generally lacked quantitative measurements. Here, we report the development, implementation, and initial results of a multilingual, international questionnaire to assess self-reported quantity and quality of perception in 3 distinct chemosensory modalities (smell, taste, and chemesthesis) before and during COVID-19. In the first 11 days after questionnaire launch, 4039 participants (2913 women, 1118 men, and 8 others, aged 19-79) reported a COVID-19 diagnosis either via laboratory tests or clinical assessment. Importantly, smell, taste, and chemesthetic function were each significantly reduced compared to their status before the disease. Difference scores (maximum possible change ±100) revealed a mean reduction of smell (-79.7 ± 28.7, mean ± standard deviation), taste (-69.0 ± 32.6), and chemesthetic (-37.3 ± 36.2) function during COVID-19. Qualitative changes in olfactory ability (parosmia and phantosmia) were relatively rare and correlated with smell loss. Importantly, perceived nasal obstruction did not account for smell loss. Furthermore, chemosensory impairments were similar between participants in the laboratory test and clinical assessment groups. These results show that COVID-19-associated chemosensory impairment is not limited to smell but also affects taste and chemesthesis. The multimodal impact of COVID-19 and the lack of perceived nasal obstruction suggest that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus strain 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection may disrupt sensory-neural mechanisms. © 2020 The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved

Het zwichtverschijnsel in PVC

Zowel als om praktische als om theoretische redenen is men geinteresserd in het zwichtverschijnsel bij polymeren. Doel van het onderzoek is, de mogelijkheden te onderzoeken om bij het zwichten optredende volume-effekten te meten. Het onderzoek valt uiteen in: Het zwichtverschijnsel in rigid PVC juist beneden de glasovergangstemperatuur; + Pure afschuiving in rigid PVC bij kamertemperatuur; + Zwichten in weekgemaakte doorzichtige PVC-folies; + invloed van de kristalliniteit in rigid PVC op de zwichtspanning (79 °C). Beneden de glasovergangstemperatuur blijkt er een temperatuursgebied te bestaan waarbinnen het rigid PVC zwicht. {Onderzoek naar pure afschuiving in rigid PVC is niet mogelijk gebleken.} In de PVC-folies nemen we een scheve zwichtzone waar. De hoek, waaronder het folie zwicht is reproduceerbaar. Er bestaat een lineair verband tussen de hoeveelheid kristalliniteit in rigid PVC en de zwichtspanning.Applied Science

Handboek Hydromorfologie 2.0: Afleiding en beoordeling hydromorfologische parameters Kaderrichtlijn Water

Dit handboek beschrijft met eenduidige factsheets en uitgewerkte voorbeelden hoe de afleiding en beoordeling van hydromorfologische parameters kunnen worden uitgevoerd. Het handboek is bedoeld voor waterbeheerders en overige geïnteresseerden die belast zijn met de hydromorfologische opgave, zowel hydrologen, ecologen, als GIS-specialisten. Dit handboek is een update van de versie uit 2007. Ervaringen van de afgelopen jaren hebben geleid tot nieuwe inzichten en verbeterpunten die zijn verwerkt in dit handboek. Het handboek behandeld alle watersystemen van de Kaderrichtlijn water (rivieren, beken, getijderivieren, meren, sloten en kanalen alsmede de kustwateren

Local Activation Time Estimation in Atrial Electrograms Using Cross-Correlation over Higher-Order Neighbors

Atrial electrograms are often used to gain understanding on the development of atrial fibrillation (AF). Using such electrograms, cardiologists can reconstruct how the depolarization wave-front propagates across the atrium. Knowing the exact moment at which the depolarization wavefront in the tissue reaches each electrode is an important aspect of such reconstruction. A common way to determine the LAT is based on the steepest deflection (SD) of the individual electrograms. However, the SD annotates each electrogram individually and is expected to be more prone to errors compared to approaches that would employ the data from the surrounding electrodes to estimate the LAT. As electrograms from neighboring electrodes tend to have rather similar morphology up to a delay, we propose in this paper to use the cross-correlation to find the pair-wise relative delays between electrograms. Instead of only using the direct neighbors we consider the array as a graph and involve higher order neighbors as well. Using a least-squares method, the absolute LATs can then be estimated from the calculated pair-wise relative delays. Simulated and clinically recorded electrograms are used to evaluate the proposed approach. From the simulated data it follows that the proposed approach outperforms the SD approach.Circuits and System

Overstromingsrisico Maasdal Limburg

Het project Veiligheid Nederland in Kaart (VNK2) heeft voor 58 dijkringgebieden het overstromingsrisico, uitgedrukt in economische schade en aantallen slachtoffers, geanalyseerd. Na deze afzonderlijke dijkringringgebieden worden in dit rapport de resultaten gepresenteerd van de uitgevoerde risicoanalyse voor het gehele Maasdal in de provincie Limburg. Hiermee is het landsdekkende risicobeeld in Nederland afgerond. Het detailniveau van deze analyses is afgestemd op de primaire doelstelling van VNK2: het verschaffen van een beeld van het overstromingsrisico.VNK

Tensor-based Detection of Paroxysmal and Persistent Atrial Fibrillation from Multi-channel ECG

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia in the heart. Two main types of AF are defined as paroxysmal and persistent. In this paper, we present a method to discriminate between the characteristics of paroxysmal and persistent using tensor decompositions of a multi-channel electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. For this purpose, ECG signals are segmented by applying a Hilbert transform on the thresholded signal. Dynamic time warping is used to align the separated segments of each channel and then a tensor is constructed with three dimensions as time, heartbeats and channels. A Canonical polyadic decomposition with rank 2 is computed from this tensor and the resulting loading vectors describe the characteristics of paroxysmal and persistent AF in these three dimensions. The time loading vector reveals the pattern of a single P wave or abnormal AF patterns. The heartbeat loading vector shows whether the pattern is present or absent in a specific beat. The results can be used to distinguish between the patterns in paroxysmal AF and persistent AF.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Circuits and System

Classification of De novo post-operative and persistent atrial fibrillation using multi-channel ECG recordings

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most sustained arrhythmia in the heart and also the most common complication developed after cardiac surgery. Due to its progressive nature, timely detection of AF is important. Currently, physicians use a surface electrocardiogram (ECG) for AF diagnosis. However, when the patient develops AF, its various development stages are not distinguishable for cardiologists based on visual inspection of the surface ECG signals. Therefore, severity detection of AF could start from differentiating between short-lasting AF and long-lasting AF. Here, de novo post-operative AF (POAF) is a good model for short-lasting AF while long-lasting AF can be represented by persistent AF. Therefore, we address in this paper a binary severity detection of AF for two specific types of AF. We focus on the differentiation of these two types as de novo POAF is the first time that a patient develops AF. Hence, comparing its development to a more severe stage of AF (e.g., persistent AF) could be beneficial in unveiling the electrical changes in the atrium. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that aims to differentiate these different AF stages. We propose a method that consists of three sets of discriminative features based on fundamentally different aspects of the multi-channel ECG data, namely based on the analysis of RR intervals, a greyscale image representation of the vectorcardiogram, and the frequency domain representation of the ECG. Due to the nature of AF, these features are able to capture both morphological and rhythmic changes in the ECGs. Our classification system consists of a random forest classifier, after a feature selection stage using the ReliefF method. The detection efficiency is tested on 151 patients using 5-fold cross-validation. We achieved 89.07% accuracy in the classification of de novo POAF and persistent AF. The results show that the features are discriminative to reveal the severity of AF. Moreover, inspection of the most important features sheds light on the different characteristics of de novo post-operative and persistent AF.Circuits and System

Public Realm: Rotterdam Lijnbaan : Research Booklet MSC3 Studio Public Realm 2011

Public RealmPublic BuildingArchitecture and The Built Environmen

Corrigendum to: More Than Smell-COVID-19 Is Associated With Severe Impairment of Smell, Taste, and Chemesthesis.

This is a correction notice for article bjaa041 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/chemse/bjaa041), published 20 June 2020. An incorrect version of the caption to Figure 5 was mistakenly included in the published paper. An updated version is given below. Neither the data nor the paper’s conclusions were affected by this correction. The authors sincerely apologize for the error