A 58 nW ECG ASIC With Motion-Tolerant Heartbeat Timing Extraction for Wearable Cardiovascular Monitoring

An ASIC for wearable cardiovascular monitoring is implemented using a topology that takes advantage of the electrocardiogram's (ECG) waveform to replace the traditional ECG instrumentation amplifier, ADC, and signal processor with a single chip solution. The ASIC can extract heartbeat timings in the presence of baseline drift, muscle artifact, and signal clipping. The circuit can operate with ECGs ranging from the chest location to remote locations where the ECG magnitude is as low as 30 μV. Besides heartbeat detection, a midpoint estimation method can accurately extract the ECG R-wave timing, enabling the calculations of heart rate variability. With 58 nW of power consumption at 0.8 V supply voltage and 0.76 mm[superscript 2] of active die area in standard 0.18 μm CMOS technology, the ECG ASIC is sufficiently low power and compact to be suitable for long term and wearable cardiovascular monitoring applications under stringent battery and size constraints.MIT Medical Electronic Device Realization Cente

An organic thin-film transistor circuit for large-area temperature-sensing

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-84).This thesis explores the application of organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) for temperature-sensing. The goal of this work is twofold: the understanding of the OTFT's electrical characteristics' temperature dependence, and the creation of OTFT temperature-sensing circuits. We find that OTFTs have temperature-dependent current-voltage (I-V) characteristics that are determined by trap states inside the bandgap. Based on this understanding, a DC OTFT circuit model is developed which accurately fits the measured I-V data in all regions of device operation and at different temperatures. Using this model, we design and fabricate two OTFT temperature-sensing circuits. The first circuit achieves a responsivity of 22mV/°C with 12nW of power dissipation, but has a nonlinear temperature response that is dependent on threshold voltage shifts. The second circuit achieves a responsivity of 5.9mV/°C with 88nW of power dissipation, and has a highly linear temperature response that is tolerant of threshold voltage shifts. Both circuits exceed silicon temperature sensors' typical temperature responsivity of 0.5 - 4mrV/C while dissipating less power. These traits, along with the OTFT's ability to be fabricated on large-area and flexible substrates, allow OTFT temperature sensors to be used in both existing and new application environments.by David Da He.S.M

A wearable heart monitor at the ear using ballistocardiogram (BCG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) with a nanowatt ECG heartbeat detection circuit

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 132-137).This work presents a wearable heart monitor at the ear that uses the ballistocardiogram (BCG) and the electrocardiogram (ECG) to extract heart rate, stroke volume, and pre-ejection period (PEP) for the application of continuous heart monitoring. Being a natural anchoring point, the ear is demonstrated as a viable location for the integrated sensing of physiological signals. The source of periodic head movements is identified as a type of BCG, which is measured using an accelerometer. The head BCG's principal peaks (J-waves) are synchronized to heartbeats. Ensemble averaging is used to obtain consistent J-wave amplitudes, which are related to stroke volume. The ECG is sensed locally near the ear using a single-lead configuration. When the BCG and the ECG are used together, an electromechanical duration called the RJ interval can be obtained. Because both head BCG and ECG have low signal-to-noise ratios, cross-correlation is used to statistically extract the RJ interval. The ear-worn device is wirelessly connected to a computer for real time data recording. A clinical test involving hemodynamic maneuvers is performed on 13 subjects. The results demonstrate a linear relationship between the J-wave amplitude and stroke volume, and a linear relationship between the RJ interval and PEP. While the clinical device uses commercial components, a custom integrated circuit for ECG heartbeat detection is designed with the goal of reducing power consumption and device size. With 58nW of power consumption, the ECG circuit replaces the traditional instrumentation amplifier, analog-to-digital converter, and signal processor with a single chip solution. The circuit demonstrates a topology that takes advantage of the ECG's characteristics to extract R-wave timings at the chest and the ear in the presence of baseline drift, muscle artifact, and signal clipping.by David Da He.Ph.D

Prokineticin 2 Is a Target Gene of Proneural Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Factors for Olfactory Bulb Neurogenesis

Prokineticin 2, a cysteine-rich secreted protein, regulates diverse biological functions including the neurogenesis of olfactory bulb. Here we show that the PK2 gene is a functional target gene of proneural basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) factors. Neurogenin 1 and MASH1 activate PK2 transcription by binding to E-box motifs on the PK2 promoter with the same set of E-boxes critical for another pair of bHLH factors, CLOCK and BMAL1, in the regulation of circadian clock. Our results establish PK2 as a common functional target gene for different bHLH transcriptional factors in mediating their respective functions

A study of the static yield stress in a binary Lennard-Jones glass

The stress-strain relations and the yield behavior of model glass (a 80:20 binary Lennard-Jones mixture) is studied by means of MD simulations. First, a thorough analysis of the static yield stress is presented via simulations under imposed stress. Furthermore, using steady shear simulations, the effect of physical aging, shear rate and temperature on the stress-strain relation is investigated. In particular, we find that the stress at the yield point (the ``peak''-value of the stress-strain curve) exhibits a logarithmic dependence both on the imposed shear rate and on the ``age'' of the system in qualitative agreement with experiments on amorphous polymers and on metallic glasses. In addition to the very observation of the yield stress which is an important feature seen in experiments on complex systems like pastes, dense colloidal suspensions and foams, further links between our model and soft glassy materials are found. An example are hysteresis loops in the system response to a varying imposed stress. Finally, we measure the static yield stress for our model and study its dependence on temperature. We find that for temperatures far below the mode coupling critical temperature of the model ($Tc = 0.435$), \sigmay decreases slowly upon heating followed by a stronger decrease as \Tc is approached. We discuss the reliability of results on the static yield stress and give a criterion for its validity in terms of the time scales relevant to the problem.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figure

Differentiation in stem and leaf traits among sympatric lianas, scandent shrubs and trees in a subalpine cold temperate forest

The scandent shrub plant form is a variant of liana that has upright and self-supporting stems when young but later becomes a climber. We aimed to explore the associations of stem and leaf traits among sympatric lianas, scandent shrubs and trees, and the effects of growth form and leaf habit on variation in stem or leaf traits. We measured 16 functional traits related to stem xylem anatomy, leaf morphology and nutrient stoichiometry in eight liana, eight scandent shrub and 21 tree species co-occurring in a subalpine cold temperate forest at an elevation of 2600–3200 m in Southwest China. Overall, lianas, scandent shrubs and trees were ordered along a fast-slow continuum of stem and leaf functional traits, with some traits overlapping. We found a consistent pattern of lianas > scandent shrubs > trees for hydraulically weighted vessel diameter, maximum vessel diameter and theoretical hydraulic conductivity. Vessel density and sapwood density showed a pattern of lianas = scandent shrubs < trees, and lianas < scandent shrubs = trees, respectively. Lianas had significantly higher specific leaf area and lower carbon concentration than co-occurring trees, with scandent shrubs showing intermediate values that overlapped with lianas and trees. The differentiation among lianas, scandent shrubs and trees was mainly explained by variation in stem traits. Additionally, deciduous lianas were positioned at the fast end of the trait spectrum, and evergreen trees at the slow end of the spectrum. Our results showed for the first time clear differentiation in stem and leaf traits among sympatric liana, scandent shrub and tree species in a subalpine cold temperate forest. This work will contribute to understanding the mechanisms responsible for variation in ecological strategies of different growth forms of woody plants

New Physics Signals in Longitudinal Gauge Boson Scattering at the LHC

We introduce a novel technique designed to look for signatures of new physics in vector boson fusion processes at the TeV scale. This functions by measuring the polarization of the vector bosons to determine the relative longitudinal to transverse production. In studying this ratio we can directly probe the high energy E^2-growth of longitudinal vector boson scattering amplitudes characteristic of models with non-Standard Model (SM) interactions. We will focus on studying models parameterized by an effective Lagrangian that include a light Higgs with non-SM couplings arising from TeV scale new physics associated with the electroweak symmetry breaking, although our technique can be used in more general scenarios. We will show that this technique is stable against the large uncertainties that can result from variations in the factorization scale, improving upon previous studies that measure cross section alone

Off-Shell Interactions for Closed-String Tachyons

Off-shell interactions for localized closed-string tachyons in C/Z_N superstring backgrounds are analyzed and a conjecture for the effective height of the tachyon potential is elaborated. At large N, some of the relevant tachyons are nearly massless and their interactions can be deduced from the S-matrix. The cubic interactions between these tachyons and the massless fields are computed in a closed form using orbifold CFT techniques. The cubic interaction between nearly-massless tachyons with different charges is shown to vanish and thus condensation of one tachyon does not source the others. It is shown that to leading order in N, the quartic contact interaction vanishes and the massless exchanges completely account for the four point scattering amplitude. This indicates that it is necessary to go beyond quartic interactions or to include other fields to test the conjecture for the height of the tachyon potential.Comment: 37 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, JHEP class. Typos corrected, references added, published versio

Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis for diabetic nephropathy in type 1 diabetes mellitus

BACKGROUND: Diabetic nephropathy is a serious complication of diabetes mellitus and is associated with considerable morbidity and high mortality. There is increasing evidence to suggest that dysregulation of the epigenome is involved in diabetic nephropathy. We assessed whether epigenetic modification of DNA methylation is associated with diabetic nephropathy in a case-control study of 192 Irish patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D). Cases had T1D and nephropathy whereas controls had T1D but no evidence of renal disease. METHODS: We performed DNA methylation profiling in bisulphite converted DNA from cases and controls using the recently developed Illumina Infinium(R) HumanMethylation27 BeadChip, that enables the direct investigation of 27,578 individual cytosines at CpG loci throughout the genome, which are focused on the promoter regions of 14,495 genes. RESULTS: Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) analysis indicated that significant components of DNA methylation variation correlated with patient age, time to onset of diabetic nephropathy, and sex. Adjusting for confounding factors using multivariate Cox-regression analyses, and with a false discovery rate (FDR) of 0.05, we observed 19 CpG sites that demonstrated correlations with time to development of diabetic nephropathy. Of note, this included one CpG site located 18 bp upstream of the transcription start site of UNC13B, a gene in which the first intronic SNP rs13293564 has recently been reported to be associated with diabetic nephropathy. CONCLUSION: This high throughput platform was able to successfully interrogate the methylation state of individual cytosines and identified 19 prospective CpG sites associated with risk of diabetic nephropathy. These differences in DNA methylation are worthy of further follow-up in replication studies using larger cohorts of diabetic patients with and without nephropathy

Local quenches and quantum chaos from higher spin perturbations

We study local quenches in 1+1 dimensional conformal field theories at large-c by operators carrying higher spin charge. Viewing such states as solutions in Chern-Simons theory, representing infalling massive particles with spin-three charge in the BTZ back- ground, we use the Wilson line prescription to compute the single-interval entanglement entropy (EE) and scrambling time following the quench. We find that the change in EE is finite (and real) only if the spin-three charge q is bounded by the energy of the perturbation E, as |q|/c &#60; E^2/c^2. We show that the Wilson line/EE correlator deep in the quenched regime and its expansion for small quench widths overlaps with the Regge limit for chaos of the out-of-time-ordered correlator. We further find that the scrambling time for the two- sided mutual information between two intervals in the thermofield double state increases with increasing spin-three charge, diverging when the bound is saturated. For larger values of the charge, the scrambling time is shorter than for pure gravity and controlled by the spin-three Lyapunov exponent 4π/β. In a CFT with higher spin chemical potential, dual to a higher spin black hole, we find that the chemical potential must be bounded to ensure that the mutual information is a concave function of time and entanglement speed is less than the speed of light. In this case, a quench with zero higher spin charge yields the same Lyapunov exponent as pure Einstein gravity