Functional assessment of bidirectional cortical and peripheral neural control on heartbeat dynamics: A brain-heart study on thermal stress

The study of functional Brain-Heart Interplay (BHI) from non-invasive recordings has gained much interest in recent years. Previous endeavors aimed at understanding how the two dynamical systems exchange information, providing novel holistic biomarkers and important insights on essential cognitive aspects and neural system functioning. However, the interplay between cardiac sympathovagal and cortical oscillations still has much room for further investigation. In this study, we introduce a new computational framework for a functional BHI assessment, namely the Sympatho-Vagal Synthetic Data Generation Model, combining cortical (electroencephalography, EEG) and peripheral (cardiac sympathovagal) neural dynamics. The causal, bidirectional neural control on heartbeat dynamics was quantified on data gathered from 26 human volunteers undergoing a cold-pressor test. Results show that thermal stress induces heart-to-brain functional interplay sustained by EEG oscillations in the delta and gamma bands, primarily originating from sympathetic activity, whereas brain-to-heart interplay originates over central brain regions through sympathovagal control. The proposed methodology provides a viable computational tool for the functional assessment of the causal interplay between cortical and cardiac neural control

Photodiodes based in La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/single layer MoS2 hybrid vertical heterostructures

The fabrication of artificial materials by stacking of individual two-dimensional (2D) materials is amongst one of the most promising research avenues in the field of 2D materials. Moreover, this strategy to fabricate new man-made materials can be further extended by fabricating hybrid stacks between 2D materials and other functional materials with different dimensionality making the potential number of combinations almost infinite. Among all these possible combinations, mixing 2D materials with transition metal oxides can result especially useful because of the large amount of interesting physical phenomena displayed separately by these two material families. We present a hybrid device based on the stacking of a single layer MoS2 onto a lanthanum strontium manganite (La0.7Sr0.3MnO3) thin film, creating an atomically thin device. It shows a rectifying electrical transport with a ratio of 103, and a photovoltaic effect with Voc up to 0.4 V. The photodiode behaviour arises as a consequence of the different doping character of these two materials. This result paves the way towards combining the efforts of these two large materials science communities.Comment: 1 table, 4 figures (+9 supp. info. figures

Efficacy of Six Different SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines during a Six-Month Follow-Up and Five COVID-19 Waves in Brazil and Mexico

: Comparisons among the different vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are important to understand which type of vaccine provides more protection. This study aimed to evaluate the real-life efficacy through symptomatic infection and the humoral response of six different vaccines against SARS-CoV-2-BNT162b2, mRNA-1273, ChAdOx1-S, CoronaVac, Ad26.COV2, and Ad5-nCoV. This multicentric observational longitudinal study involved hospitals from Mexico and Brazil in which volunteers who received complete vaccination schemes were followed for 210 days after the last dose. SARS-CoV-2 Spike 1-2 IgG levels were taken before receiving the first vaccine, 21 days after each dose, and the last sample at six months (+/-1 month) after the last dose. A total of 1132 individuals exposed to five COVID-19 waves were included. All vaccines induced humoral responses, and mRNA vaccines had the highest antibody levels during follow-up. At six months, there was a decline in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike 1-2 IgG antibody titers of 69.5% and 36.4% in subjects with negative and positive history of infection respectively. Infection before vaccination and after complete vaccination scheme correlated with higher antibody titers. The predictors of infection were vaccination with CoronaVac compared to BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1-S. In the presence of comorbidities such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, or dyslipidemia, CoronaVac lowered the risk of infection

Squeezing and multimode entanglement of surface acoustic wave phonons

Exploiting multiple modes in a quantum acoustic device could enable applications in quantum information in a hardware-efficient setup, including quantum simulation in a synthetic dimension and continuous-variable quantum computing with cluster states.We develop a multimode surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonator with a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) integrated in one of the Bragg reflectors. The interaction with the SQUID-shunted mirror gives rise to coupling between the more than 20 accessible resonator modes. We exploit this coupling to demonstrate two-mode squeezing of SAW phonons, as well as four-mode multipartite entanglement. Our results open avenues for continuous-variable quantum computing in a compact hybrid quantum system