Respiratory and cardiac monitoring at night using a wrist wearable optical system

Sleep monitoring provides valuable insights into the general health of an individual and helps in the diagnostic of sleep-derived illnesses. Polysomnography, is considered the gold standard for such task. However, it is very unwieldy and therefore not suitable for long-term analysis. Here, we present a non-intrusive wearable system that, by using photoplethysmography, it can estimate beat-to-beat intervals, pulse rate, and breathing rate reliably during the night. The performance of the proposed approach was evaluated empirically in the Department of Psychology at the University of Fribourg. Each participant was wearing two smart-bracelets from Ava as well as a complete polysomnographic setup as reference. The resulting mean absolute errors are 17.4 ms (MAPE 1.8%) for the beat-to-beat intervals, 0.13 beats-per-minute (MAPE 0.20%) for the pulse rate, and 0.9 breaths-per-minute (MAPE 6.7%) for the breath rate.Comment: Submitted to the 40th International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC

Multiparametric Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Discriminate Endomyocardial Biopsy-Proven Chronic Myocarditis From Healed Myocarditis.

BACKGROUND Detecting ongoing inflammation in myocarditis patients has prognostic relevance, but there are limited data on the detection of chronic myocarditis and its differentiation from healed myocarditis. OBJECTIVES This study sought to assess the performance of cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) for the detection of ongoing inflammation and the discrimination of chronic myocarditis from healed myocarditis. METHODS Consecutive patients with persistent symptoms (>30 days) suggestive of myocarditis were prospectively enrolled from a single tertiary center. All patients underwent a multiparametric 1.5-T CMR protocol including biventricular strain, T1/T2 mapping, and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE). Endomyocardial biopsy was chosen for the reference standard diagnosis. RESULTS Among 452 consecutive patients, 103 (median age: 50 years; 66 men) had evaluable CMR and cardiopathologic reference diagnosis: 53 (51%) with chronic lymphocytic myocarditis and 50 (49%) with healed myocarditis. T2 mapping as a single parameter showed the best accuracy in detecting chronic myocarditis, if abnormal in ≥3 segments (92%; 95% CI: 85-97), and provided the best discrimination from healed myocarditis, as defined by the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (0.87 [95% CI: 0.79-0.93]; P < 0.001), followed by radial peak systolic strain rate of the left ventricle (0.86) and the right ventricle (0.84); T1 mapping (0.64), extracellular volume fraction (0.62), and LGE (0.57). Specificity increased when T2 mapping was combined with elevation of either troponin or C-reactive protein. CONCLUSIONS A multiparametric CMR protocol allows detection of ongoing myocardial inflammation and discrimination of chronic myocarditis from healed myocarditis, with segmental T2 mapping and biventricular strain analysis showing higher diagnostic accuracy compared with T1 mapping, extracellular volume fraction, and LGE. The use of biomarkers (troponin or C-reactive protein) may improve specificity

Collisional shift and broadening of Rydberg states in nitric oxide at room temperature

We report on the collisional shift and line broadening of Rydberg states in nitric oxide (NO) with increasing density of a background gas at room temperature. As a background gas we either use NO itself or nitrogen (N$_{2}$). The precision spectroscopy is performed by a sub-Doppler three-photon excitation scheme with a subsequent readout of the Rydberg states realized by the amplification of a current generated by free charges due to collisions. The shift shows a dependence on the rotational quantum state of the ionic core and no dependence on the principle quantum number of the orbiting Rydberg electron. The experiment was performed in the context of developing a trace-gas sensor for breath-gas analysis in a medical application

Self-related consequences of death fear and death denial

This study explores self-related outcomes (e.g., esteem, self-concept clarity, existential well-being) as a function of the interaction between self-reported levels of death fear and death denial. Consistent with the idea that positive existential growth can come from individuals facing, rather than denying, their mortality (Cozzolino, 2006), the authors observed that not fearing and denying death can bolster important positive components of the self. That is, individuals low in death denial and death fear evidenced an enhanced self that is valued, clearly conceived, efficacious, and that has meaning and purpose

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts