Category Archives: Physiology

Physiology

Researchers use noninvasive imaging to show variations in renal blood flow – News-Medical.Net

Renal blood flow changes throughout the day in tandem with the body's circadian clock, with the increasing flow during daytime hours and decreasing flow in the evening and into the night.

Researchers made the findings using noninvasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques in healthy people, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Physiology-Renal Physiology.

The study also revealed that although circadian variation influenced renal blood flow over the course of the day, it did not affect renal oxygenation in either men or women. The article has been chosen as an APSselect article for December.

Numerous conditions are known to cause renal injury, including diabetes, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, and infections. Until now, imaging diagnostics of renal function were often performed using invasive techniques with methods based on ionizing radiation.

MRI is a non-ionizing imaging modality undergoing fast development. A number of noninvasive MRI techniques now make it possible to study different aspects of renal physiology. MRI scans combining multiple of these noninvasive techniques provide a lot of important information."

Per Eckerbom, MD, Study Corresponding Researcher Uppsala University Hospital

Researchers believe the noninvasive MRI techniques used in this study will be a powerful tool of the future to detect renal disease at an early stage and to develop better treatments. Understanding circadian variations and possible differences between the sexes is one key to do so.

Source:

Journal reference:

Eckerbom, P., et al. (2020) Circadian variation in renal blood flow and kidney function in healthy volunteers monitored with noninvasive magnetic resonance imaging. American Journal of Physiology-Renal Physiology. doi.org/10.1152/ajprenal.00311.2020.

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Researchers use noninvasive imaging to show variations in renal blood flow - News-Medical.Net

Physiology

Joe Harding named a 2020 National Academy Inventors Fellow – WSU News

December 15, 2020Joe Harding

Joe Harding, professor in Washington State Universitys Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience department, was named a 2020 National Academy of Inventors Fellow.

He is one of 175 academic innovators from across the world elected to Fellow status this year. Dr. Hardings research on the causes of dementia led to a start-company named Athira and their lead compound is in clinical trials for a treatment for Alzheimers disease.

The company, which went public in September, is the first WSU faculty-owned start-up company that has been publicly traded.

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Joe Harding named a 2020 National Academy Inventors Fellow - WSU News

Physiology

The pivot to cycling: Pro racing’s new breed of rowers, runners and skiers – VeloNews

First, there was a former runner winning grand tour stages, then there was a ski jumper taking overall victory at the Vuelta a Espaa. Just last week, a rower won the esports world championships.

Whats next? An unknown ski mountaineer signing to the WorldTour?

Oh, wait, that already happened.

Related:

And there could be a lot more athletes pivoting toward cycling from sports such as rowing, running, and skiing in the years to come.

Cycling is a business in a competitive sport, Michael Woods (Israel Start-Up Nation) told VeloNews. Like any sport, youre trying to gain competitive advantage. And you want to try and cast as wide of a net to capture the best talent.

Former world-class middle-distance runner Woods and world junior champion ski jumper Primo Rogli were among the first of the current generation of WorldTour racers to prove you dont need to be winning your local crit aged five to hit the big time in pro cycling.

This past month has seen Jason Osborne, a world champion rower, better a field full of pros to win the world championships on Zwift.

Out on the tarmac, two elite skiers with minimal cycling experience have shown so much physiological potential that theyve been handed deals with Androni Giocattoli Sidermec and Bora-Hansgrohe. Former rowers Kristen Faulkner (Tibco-SVB) and Cameron Wurf (Ineos) have been cycling at the top for a number of years.

Could pro cycling be filled with riders with huge raw power but no racing background in the future?

It could be, and Bora-Hansgrohes move to sign Anton Palzer may be the first of many contracts that see athletes from across the endurance spectrum parachuting into the whirlwind of the WorldTour.

It may look like a daring venture, and a certain risk is definitely involved, but we have been following Toni [Palzer] for quite a long time and are convinced of his physical abilities, said Bora-Hansgrohe manager Ralph Denk when he signed the skier. You can see from examples like Roglic or Woods that such an experiment can be successful, and we have always said that we would scout within different sports.

Woods, who posted a sub-four-minute mile during his running heyday, came to cycling late in life when injuries saw him bin the running shoes and step into some cycling cleats. Those with backgrounds in elite rowing such as Faulkner, Osborne, and Kiwi Olympic boatman turned time trial specialist Hamish Bond have been in the saddle far longer.

Chris Bartley, a former Team GB Olympic rower turned rowing coach and amateur cycling time trial ace, explained that time in a boat and time in the saddle go hand in hand if you want to be the strongest with a set of oars.

Riding is a big part of any high-level rowing program, Bartley told VeloNews.

Rowing training by its very nature is pretty hard on the body, so you can sort of only do maybe 90 minutes per session in a boat or on the rowing machine. Bike training is just a very easy way of getting low-impact, high-volume work to supplement the rowing and build a base. If you want to excel in rowing, you need to spend time on a bike too.

With rowing such a physically uncomfortable and physiologically taxing sport, Bartley explained that sessions on Ergo or on the water are always relatively short, intense, and painful.

Theres always some degree of suffering in a rowing session, he said. Youre not able to row for hours and hours on end so you cant build up your training hours with junk.

Its that requirement to compartmentalize pain, much like Woods efforts on the running track, that adds a further string to the bow of rowers and runners looking to step into the world of road racing, where races play out over four hours but are won over four minutes.

Take German Zwift champ Osbornes worlds winning 10w/kg move as a case in point. He said it himself I know how to hurt myself a lot. And thats what is needed to win in any sport.

No matter what the duration of the races, one thing that does tie rowers, skiers, runners, and riders is their engines. The records for top recorded Vo2 max results a measure of maximal oxygen uptake that defines physiological potential are entirely filled by athletes from the sports.

No surprise then, that when both ski mountaineer Palzer signed for Bora and cross-country skier Marti Vigo del Arco signed for Androni, each of their respective coaches lauded their exceptional values in physical tests, a surefire indication that they have the motor to make a bike move very fast.

But it takes much more than having good physiology to win in the cutthroat racing of the WorldTour, and Palzer acknowledged that developing a certain racing intelligence is top of his list of priorities when he rides with Bora-Hansgrohe next year.

Woods similarly suggested that being able to match the racing savvy and technical proficiency of those that were in the saddle in their childhoods is something that has only recently come to him. Even after five years in the WorldTour, the 34-year-old said that catching up with the racecraft and bike handling that his rivals have spent up to 20 years developing is a constant work in progress.

By far when I first started riding, the biggest things to master were the handling skills and fear factor, Woods said. Theyre both things Im still focusing on learning I still work with a descending coach and I work on my technical skills quite a bit.

Osborne is hoping to get a pro cycling contract in 2022 after seeing out his Olympic ambitions in Tokyo. Rogli, Faulkner, Woods, and Bond have proven the pivot onto the pedals is possible, and Palzer and Vigo del Arco will be next in the spotlight. Behind them, Woods feels there could be plenty more making the pivot into the pedals.

Its a smart move for teams to be looking outside the sport, Woods said. Its important for them to think outside the box.

Cycling is a really tough sport to learn, but its still a sport, and if you have a strong sports background in something else, skills are very transferable. The training is so dialed in, the technology is so good, and the information is so accessible now, theres a lot you can learn about the sport a lot faster than before.

Just because you dont start riding and racing a bike when youre 10 years old, it doesnt mean you cant be a great cyclist.

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The pivot to cycling: Pro racing's new breed of rowers, runners and skiers - VeloNews

Physiology

A tropical fish evolved to endure rising temperatures but it may not be fast enough to survive climate change – The Conversation UK

The climate is changing, and heatwaves are becoming more common and intense as a result. For the Great Barrier Reef, the worlds largest structure of living tissue, the consequences are clear. The reef suffered its third mass coral bleaching event in five years in 2020, caused by prolonged periods with high water temperatures. Conservation scientists recently downgraded the ecosystems condition to critical.

You might expect mobile animals like fish to fare better, but their body temperatures closely match that of the surrounding water. Fish can of course swim and escape high temperatures to an extent and many species have shifted their ranges poleward or into deeper, cooler waters. But migration isnt always possible. Freshwater fish, for instance, are restricted to their native rivers or lakes. Their ability to adapt to high temperatures may decide whether or not they endure.

Whether an organism does survive a heatwave may depend on its upper thermal tolerance the temperature at which the organism can no longer function. Some fish populations are already living in water close to their temperature limits and so only have a small margin of additional warming they can safely tolerate. As heatwaves become more extreme and maximum temperatures increase, those species that cannot evolve fast enough to tolerate them may go extinct.

In a recent study, colleagues at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and I measured the evolution of thermal tolerance using a wild population of zebrafish. Working in a lab, we selectively bred fish which excelled at resisting high temperatures. Over six generations we selected more than 20,000 of these zebrafish in an experiment lasting three years.

Zebrafish are the lab rats of the aquatic world, but in the wild, they can be found in shallow ponds and streams in South Asia, at temperatures very close to their thermal limits. Shallow water can heat up rapidly during heatwaves, so zebrafish are an ideal species to help us understand whether evolution will keep up with rising temperatures.

After breeding zebrafish with the highest levels of thermal tolerance for six generations, we found that this upper limit increased by 0.04C with each new generation. Its encouraging that species can evolve this ability, but the rate of change is likely to be too slow for most fishes. And while evolution helped make this species more tolerant of higher temperatures over time, it hindered how well the fish could acclimate.

Acclimation is how animals exposed to environmental change adjust their physiology to cope better in the new conditions. In our experiment, one group of fish acclimated to raised temperatures over two weeks, allowing their thermal tolerance to increase. Acclimation occurs within individuals, while evolution occurs across generations.

But zebrafish cannot keep raising their thermal tolerance infinitely. We found that fish which had evolved to raise their upper thermal tolerance could only acclimate to a smaller amount of further warming. Eventually, their physiology will probably reach a temperature ceiling which theyre unable to overcome, either by evolving or acclimating, making death likely. Zebrafish in their native habitats in India will struggle to keep increasing their tolerance to match the projected rate of warming.

Its possible that other tropical species living close to their thermal limits will face a similar situation, and be especially vulnerable to climate change. Temperatures are already exceeding these limits for certain species. Mass deaths following heatwaves have been reported not only for fish, but also in warm-blooded animals such as tropical birds and bats.

Climate change is likely outpacing evolution for many tropical species. Unless we dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, its possible that many populations will become extinct over the coming decades.

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A tropical fish evolved to endure rising temperatures but it may not be fast enough to survive climate change - The Conversation UK

Physiology

The Ramayana As The Expression of Human Physiology – http://www.newsgram.com/

Dr. Tony Nader received his MD degree from the American University of Beirut, where he also studied internal medicine and psychiatry. He in his second book talks about how human physiology is associated with the Ramayana.

The book takes one of the most purely subjective and spiritual records of knowledge in our mythological references, the Ramayana, and compares it to one of the most objectively-studied and scientifically-described aspects of life, that is human physiology.

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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was an Indian guru born in 1918, who was also a disciple of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati and the Shankaracharya in the Himalayas. He was the person who introduced Transcendental Meditation in the west.

Ramayana is for full enlightenment; Ramayana is for perfection in every profession; Ramayana is for mastery over Natural Law; Ramayana is for the fulfillment of any desire, one may have. Ramayana is to create a perfect man, a perfect society, and a perfect world.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Here, in this book, the Ramayana is not considered to be any kind of mythological text belonging to any particular religion, race, or belief. It is considered as a Natural Law having events and characters present in it revealing a story of every individuals physiology. The Ramayana is a part of veda, term Veda in Sanskrit refer to knowledge. Vedic literature is considered to be an understanding of life and creating passed on to people from ancient vedic families in India.

The Ramayana revolves around Lord Rama who was an incarnation of lord Vishnu to kill the evil Ravana. Rama belonged to Ikshvaku race of slar dynasty and his parents were Dasharath and Kaushalya. Throughtout the story of Ramayana, Rama performed great deed of destroying negativity and following ethics. Maharishi explains that the story isa description of total Natural Lawits characters and their actions and interactions unfold the story of Natural Law as it expresses itself into all aspects of creation.

Ram Avatar corresponds to the somato-sensory and supplementary sensory-motor cortex in the brain. Unsplash

Ramas arrows always returned to his quiver, which which interprets the mechanism to inform the central nervous system about specific activities that take place around us. There are special sensory spindle fibres that enable information to be sent back to the brain describing how far the muscle has been stretched. On a cellular level, the return of Ramas arrows demonstrates that the nerve cell is capable of renewing itself so that impulses can go out again and again.

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In the ventral view of the brain we see the clear correspondence between Ganesh and the pons, medulla, and cerebellum. The face of Ganesha corresponds to the pons, eyes correspond to the roots of the trigeminal nerves, ears correspond to the cerebellum, trunk corresponds to the medulla, tusks correspond to the nerves at the base of the pons.

ALSO READ:Rudraksh- Setting Up World-Class Convention Centre in Varanasi

The 4 arms of Saraswat correspond to the 4 lobes of the brain. The 4 hands of Lakshm correspond to the4 chambers of the heart. The 8 arms of Durga correspond to the 8 nerves that emanate from the sacral bone.

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The Ramayana As The Expression of Human Physiology - http://www.newsgram.com/

Physiology

Flavours added to vaping devices can damage the heart: Study – The Statesman

Researchers have revealed the appealing array of fruit and candy flavours that entice millions of young people to take up vaping are cardiotoxic and disrupt the hearts normal electrical activity.

Mounting studies indicate that the nicotine and other chemicals delivered by vaping, while generally less toxic than conventional cigarettes, can damage the lungs and heart.

But so far there has been no clear understanding about what happens when the vaporized flavouring molecules in flavoured vaping products, after being inhaled, enter the bloodstream and reach the heart, said study author Sami Noujaim from the University of South Florida in the US.

In the study, published in the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology, the research team reported on a series of experiments assessing the toxicity of vape flavourings in cardiac cells and in young mice.

The flavoured electronic nicotine delivery systems widely popular among teens and young adults are not harm-free.

Altogether, our findings in the cells and mice indicate that vaping does interfere with the normal functioning of the heart and can potentially lead to cardiac rhythm disturbances, Noujaim said.

In mouse cardiac muscle cells (HL-1 cells), the researchers tested the toxicity of three different popular flavours of e-liquid: fruit flavour, cinnamon, and vanilla custard.

All three were toxic to HL-1 cells exposed to e-vapour bubbled into the laboratory dish where the cells were cultured.

Cardiac cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells were exposed to three distinct e-vapours.

The first e-vapour containing the only solvent interfered with the electrical activity and beating rate of cardiac cells in the dish. A second e-vapour with nicotine added to the solvent increased the toxic effects on these cells.

The third e-vapour comprised of nicotine, solvent, and vanilla custard flavouring (the flavour previously identified as most toxic) augmented damage to the spontaneously beating cells even more.

This experiment told us that the flavouring chemicals added to vaping devices can increase harm beyond what the nicotine alone can do, Noujaim said.

The findings showed that mice exposed to vaping were more prone to an abnormal and dangerous heart rhythm disturbance known as ventricular tachycardia compared to control mice.

Our research matters because regulation of the vaping industry is a work in progress, Noujaim noted.

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Flavours added to vaping devices can damage the heart: Study - The Statesman

Physiology

Uncovering the Mind-Body Connection of Touch – Signals AZ

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Humans are born with the language of touch, and physical connection is essential to our development, growth, and survival throughout life.

An infant requires the protective embrace of a parent or caretaker to fully develop, learn trust, and make connections. University of Arizona researcher Dr.Katalin Gothard, born and trained as a medical doctor in Romania, interacted with infants who lacked that physical connection while training at an orphanage during her pediatric clerkship. Due to dictatorial policies in Romania, many orphanages were bursting with unwanted babies while suffering from lack of funds and staff. Because of scarce resources and the goal to keep the children alive, workers prioritized medical needs like preventing malnutrition and infection.

Though she and the staff did their best to keep the children physically healthy, Gothard didnt fully understand the impact that the lack of touch would have on the orphans until she began to study the mind-body connection as a scientist in the United States.

All those antibiotics and all that nutrition did not make them happier adults, said Gothard, a UArizona professor of physiology and member of the universitysBIO5 Institute. Picking them up, holding them and tickling them would have been much more important.

Though initially educated as a medical doctor, Gothard was also trained as a neuroscientist. Observing the toll of mental and emotional hardships caused in part by the oppressive regime in Romania inspired her to change career paths from medicine to science.

I strongly believe that theres no human suffering that compares to the suffering that our own mind can inflict on us, she said. Theres no physical disease that compares to the pain and misery

Dr. Katalin Gothard

and hopelessness of a mental disease.

Gothard now dedicates herself to understanding how physical sensations and experiences affect our emotions. For more than 20 years, the physician-turned-scientist has focused on the amygdala, the almond-shaped mass within the brain, as the critical center of this mind-body dialogue.

In 2019, she and colleaguesdiscovered cells in the amygdalathat responded not just to sights and sounds, but also touch something that had never before been shown.

In the moment of the discovery, Gothard felt a strong pull from her earlier days at the orphanage to investigate those touch-responsive brain cells.

One day we found cells that respond to touch, and it was irresistible. I thought, Does that mean that I could work on something that takes me back to those years at the orphanage when I was ignorant, and I didnt know what these babies really needed?' she said. It was one of those things in life that you cannot say no to. It walks into your life and you know that from that day on your life will change.

Physical Versus Emotional Responses to Touch

Though we know that a handshake forms a connection, a hug brings comfort and a touch from a stranger feels uncomfortable, scientists and physicians have yet to determine the neural mechanisms behind these mind-body processes. With a $2.1 million grant from National Institutes of Health, a team of trainees led by Gothard and her co-investigatorAndrew Fuglevand, a professor of neuroscience and physiology, is seeking to understand how the brain interprets the social, emotional, and physical determinants of touch.

Gothards lab examines the differences in brain activity between gentle grooming on the cheek and a pesky puff of air on the forehead. The researchers observed that the response to the physical aspects of touch when and where occurs much faster than the response to the emotional and social components, like whether the touch was pleasant or from a familiar person.

They also compared the influences of the various touch parameters on emotional state and found that although the objective parameters of touch are processed first, the social aspects were more important in influencing amygdala activity and resulting emotional states.

If you receive a gentle caress from a person that is not welcome even though the pressure on your skin, the sweep speed, the temperature of the hand might be exactly the same as a welcomed touch your amygdala will say, I dont like this,' Gothard said.

With these findings, Gothard realized the emotional and social consequences of touch, combined with our expectations, outrank the physical.

She and her team found that recipient heart rate at the time of touch correlated with emotional response: When the touch was a positive experience, both the heart rate and amygdala activity slowed, but when the touch was negative, heart rate and amygdala activity both increased. She now aims to find the link between touch and changes to markers in the body, including heart rate, as this causal factor might also be the direct link between touch and changes to amygdala circuitry.

The more we understand about the brain, the more humble we become about how little insight we have on whats happening inside that dark cranial box, she said.

COVID-19 Causing Touch Deprivation

Gothard hopes her work will one day inform not only the ways humans normally process touch, but also how these circuits can go awry in people with mental illnesses such as social anxiety or schizophrenia, in which the response to touch is more complex. The research may also help to explain how a lack of touch during infancy such as that experienced by orphans leads to attachment disorders later in life.

Implications for Gothards work further extend to the deprivation of touch during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Gothard stands by the recommendations of social distancing to mitigate the spread of disease, she believes that social isolation during the pandemic will have major, lasting mental health ramifications.

We are in the middle of uncertainty. What you want in the middle of uncertainty is a hug, but you cant do that right now, she said.

Since physical touch is currently scarce, especially for the elderly and for those who live alone, its important to find ways to pacify the brains craving for touch, Gothard said.

She recommends massaging the scalp during hair washing or stimulating the body through physical movement and exercise with the sunshine and breeze. Mind-body scans, such as those often used in yoga and other mindfulness practices, can also help substitute physical touch.

Although these substitutes help to meet the need for physical connection, Gothard said, they cannot fully replace the language of touch we were born to give and receive.

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Uncovering the Mind-Body Connection of Touch - Signals AZ

Physiology

PSC: Focus should be on health, safety – Malaya

RATHER than banning athletes aged 17 and below in combat sports, Philippine Sports Commission chairman Butch Ramirezsaid the countrys sports leaders should instead focus on the strict enforcement of health and safety guidelines in all competitions, particularly in age group play.

In basketball, if a child falls you could suffer a head injury, in baseball you could get hit by a ball in the head. Gymnastics, you could also get hurt playing, Ramirez noted in a wide-ranging virtual press conference last Friday.

This is why my position as a member of the Philippine Sports Commission is that our interest is not in winning buton the safety of our children athletes from injuries, said the PSC chief, who conveyed his stand during the hearing on House Bill 1526 last Wednesday.

TheAct Banning Minors from Full-Contact Competitive Sports is authored by Ako party-list Representatives Alfredo Garbin Jr. and Elizaldy Co. The bill has been opposed by13 National Sports Associations, claiming it could be detrimental to their grassroots programs.

This is why I recommended to the authors of the bill that they amend it to focus on the protocols of play, whether it be combat sports or team sports, Ramirez said. What I am after is the safety conditions of theequipment andvenue and the technical knowledge of those running the event.

When we were the athletic director of a school in the south we all had that, said Ramirez, who was the former athletic director of Ateneo de Davao.

He also shared his thoughts on the qualifications of sports coaches and safety guidelines of sports events.

He pointed out that being a former national athlete is not an assurancethat you will be a good coach. That is why I believe that a coach should have a bachelors degree in physical education so he will have a better understanding of human physiology, the muscle development of a child athlete.

Ramirez stressed that technical knowledge is essential as a coach because if you have achild who should only have 10 hours of training weekly and you have him doing 20 hours this will lead to burnout and he might get injured.

Kung wala kang alam sa human physiology and technical knowledge, you might destroy the child. So the qualifications of coaches are important.

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PSC: Focus should be on health, safety - Malaya

Physiology

Unique wearable helps researchers study dementia patients and familial caregivers – Healthcare IT News

Couples with higher relationship satisfactions showed greater linkage in their physiological responses (for example, heart rate and skin conductance) during face-to-face interactions, which suggests a greater biological connection between the couples.

This is according to a variety of studies, including a recently published paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Dr. Robert Levenson and Dr. Kuan-Hua Chen at the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition, there has been emerging evidence further suggesting that being physically linked with a partners physiological response may even have important implications to individuals mental and physical health.

HIMSS20 Digital

For example, findings from Levenson and Chens group suggested that a couples physiological linkage can predict their mental and physical health in both healthy married couples and couples in which one person is the spousal caregiver of the other who is diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease.

Dr. Robert Levenson, University of California, Berkeley

Building upon this, researchers wanted to better understand whether synchronicity of objective physiology indicators between dementia patients and their caregivers also correlates to the influences between each other outside the laboratory, in real life.

In one recent study, Levenson and Chen had 22 patients, and their spousal caregivers wear a wrist-mounted actigraphy-monitor in their homes for seven days. They found that the more linked (particularly more synchronized) the patients and the caregivers activity was, the less anxiety the caregiver reported.

THE PROBLEM

In all of the above studies, the linkage and relationship/health data were collected around the same time, and therefore the researchers could not know whether greater linkage produced better relationship/health outcome, or vice versa, or both at the same time.

In addition, research participants in these previous studies were mostly living in the San Francisco/Northern California areas.Therefore the researchers could not know whether the effects that they found could be generalized to couples living in other, more rural areas in the United States.

PROPOSAL

To address these issues, Levenson and Chen launched a research project that recruited 300 patients and their familial caregivers (with the total number of participants at600) to study their activity linkage in their homes for six months.

Over the study period, both the patients and caregivers wear the Tracmo CareActive Watch continuously for thosesix months, and caregivers are monitored periodically for mental and physical health changes.

Researchers are eager to conduct studies in the field for example, in peoples homes and collect real-world behavioral data in complement to laboratory studies, said Levenson, director and principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley.

In the past, our tools were limited to consumer wearable watches, which are typically expensive, need to be charged frequently, have restricted rules of data access, and do not provide accurate location data that are necessary for us to give a meaningful interpretation of the observed behaviors.

Compared with consumer wearable watches, the Tracmo CareActive solution is more affordable and overcomes the battery-life limitation, he added. It provides accurate room-to-room location information for research participants, and allows the team to access high-quality actigraphy data sampled with high temporal resolution (that is, in seconds), he explained.

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

The Berkeley research team provided two CareActive watches and three stations to each household, which included one participant with dementia or mild cognitive impairment and one familial caregiver. Participants install these devices at home through a CareActive App.

The CareActive watch can be worn for more than three months without battery replacement, said Chen, post-doctoral research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Our study is extremely benefited by CareActive watchs long battery life, because any single battery charging could interrupt our data collection.

Dr. Kuan-Hua Chen, University of California, Berkeley

More important,remembering to charge the watch routinely and put the watch back on after charging could be stressful and burdensome for research participants, particularly for those who are older and/or with age-related neurological conditions, he added.

Besides, unlike typical consumer watches that use GPS to localize the users, [and] therefore can only provide approximate user locations on a map, the CareActive system uses Bluetooth signal strength that allows precise room-to-room mapping of our research participants when they are in their homes, he said.

The room-to-room locations are important for us to better understand and interpret our participants daily behaviors, including behaviors occurring at both the individual level.For example, a person may stay in the bedroom when he feels sick, or the dyadic level, ... couples who feel happier with their relationships may spend more time being in the same room.

RESULTS

In the ongoing research project that started in mid-March 2020, the Berkeley team has successfully collected CareActive data from more than 90 homes, distributed across 33 states in the U.S. All participants self-installed the systems with minimal assistance from the research team.

ADVICE FOR OTHERS

All technology designed to be used in healthcare needs to consider the users backgrounds and needs, Levenson advised. When we study people with dementia and their familial caregivers, we put essential effort to simplify the steps for device installation, minimize the amount of work for maintenance, and maximize research participants motivation and benefit from using the device.

Social-contextual factors and individual differences need to be considered when interpreting any information collected from the users, he added.

For example, a fall-like behavior occurring in the bedroom may have different meanings than [one] occurring in the bathroom, he said. In addition, all homes have different sizes and layouts, [so] therefore we should be careful when generalizing patterns learned from one home to another.

The Berkeley team would recommend, if possible, collecting additional information from other sources to cross-validate and improve interpretation/prediction accuracyfor example, integrating motion sensor data with Bluetooth proximityhe concluded.

Twitter:@SiwickiHealthITEmail the writer:bsiwicki@himss.orgHealthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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Unique wearable helps researchers study dementia patients and familial caregivers - Healthcare IT News

Physiology

What dolphins can teach us about surviving COVID-19 – University of California

When Terrie Williams began hearing about the wide range of symptoms experienced by patients with COVID-19, she saw a connection between the various ways the disease is affecting people and the many physiological adaptations that have enabled marine mammals to tolerate low oxygen levels during dives.

Williams, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, has spent decades studying the physiology of marine mammals and their extraordinary ability to perform strenuous activities while holding their breath for long periods under water.

Diving marine mammals experience a lifetime of rapid physiological transitions between normal oxygenation and hypoxia [low oxygen levels], Williams said. Theyve got ways to protect themselves and allow their organs to keep functioning while holding their breath for hours at a time, but theres a whole suite of biological adaptations that had to happen for them to be able to do that.

Lacking those adaptations, humans are vulnerable to rapid damage in a wide range of tissues when oxygen levels drop due to the effects on the lungs and cardiovascular system of infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In a review articlepublished December 3 inComparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Williams explores how the diving physiology of marine mammals can help us understand the effects of COVID-19.

It really highlights why it is so important for people to protect themselves from infection with this virus, she said. Damage to oxygen-deprived tissues happens fast and can be irreversible, which may account for the long-term effects we are beginning to see in people after coronavirus infections.

The heart and brain are especially sensitive to oxygen deprivation, and marine mammals have multiple mechanisms to protect these and other critical organs. In the first place, marine mammals have much higher oxygen carrying capacity than humans due to their greater blood volume and hemoglobin concentrations. In addition, some marine mammals contract their spleen during dives to release a store of oxygen-rich blood cells into the circulation. To avoid blood clots resulting from such high concentrations of red blood cells, many species lack a key clotting factor found in other mammals.

Other adaptations include greatly increased concentrations of oxygen-carrying proteins such as myoglobin in heart and skeletal muscles and neuroglobin and cytoglobin in the brain. In addition, numerous safety factors and biochemical buffers enable even the most oxygen-dependent tissues in marine mammals to withstand not only low oxygen but also the subsequent reperfusion of tissues with oxygenated blood. In humans, reperfusion after a heart attack or stroke often leads to additional tissue damage.

According to Williams, the solutions that marine mammals have evolved for tolerating hypoxia provide a natural template for understanding the potential for damage to oxygen-deprived tissues in humans.

Studying marine mammals allowed me to understand what it takes to protect the body when the availability of oxygen is low, she said. There are so many ramifications of shutting down the oxygen pathway, and I think thats what were seeing in these COVID patients.

Williams is particularly concerned about the so-called long-haulers who continue to have symptoms long after they were infected with the coronavirus.

You hear people say its just like the flu, but COVID scares the heck out of me because of the potential for long-term damage to the heart and brain, she said. When you think about oxygen deprivation and the tissue repair process, it makes sense that many people are having a hard time getting back to normal life, even after a mild infection.

Williams urges people to do all they can to avoid becoming infected. Our heart and brain cells are meant to last a lifetime, and we cannot replace them once they are damaged, she said. Dolphins and whales have natural protections that humans lack, so we are highly vulnerable to hypoxia.

Randall Davis, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University, coauthored the paper with Williams. This work was funded by the Office of Naval Research.

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What dolphins can teach us about surviving COVID-19 - University of California