Fatigue failure testing of human hair: Weibull-analysis for constant strain experiments.

Fatigue failure testing of materials is an important aspect of assessing their strength and resilience under long-term, oscillatory stresses and/or strains. This also applies to human hair. For this investigation, we decided to complement existing experience on cyclic tests at various levels of constant stress with those at various constant strains (4-30%).

Effectiveness of high efficiency particulate (HEPA) air condition combined with the antifungal prophylaxis on incidence, morbidity and mortality of invasive fungal infections in patients with acute myeloid leukemia: a retrospective single-center study.

Introduction: Our monocentric and retrospective study aimed to investigate the clinical effectivity of HEPA filters in combination with the antifungal drug prophylaxis in patients with AML undergoing intensive chemotherapy and allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT).

Methods/results: We included 177 patients between 2005 and 2015 representing a total of 372 in-hospital stays, 179 in the HEPA cohort (+HEPA) and 193 in the cohort without HEPA filters (-HEPA). No significant additional benefit of HEPA filtration on the risk reduction of IFI was observed.

Hope for motherhood: pregnancy after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (a national multicenter study).

Improved long-term survival rates after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT) make family planning for young adult cancer survivors an important topic. However, treatment-related infertility risk poses challenges. To assess pregnancy and birth rates in a contemporary cohort, we conducted a national multicenter study using data from the German Transplant Registry, focusing on adult women aged 18 to 40 years who underwent alloHCT between 2003 and 2018.

Multimodal In-Vehicle Hypoglycemia Warning for Drivers With Type 1 Diabetes: Design and Evaluation in Simulated and Real-World Driving.

Background: Hypoglycemia threatens cognitive function and driving safety. Previous research investigated in-vehicle voice assistants as hypoglycemia warnings. However, they could startle drivers.

Avapritinib versus Placebo in Indolent Systemic Mastocytosis.

BACKGROUND: Indolent systemic mastocytosis (ISM) is a clonal mast-cell disease driven by the KIT D816V mutation. We assessed the efficacy and safety of avapritinib versus placebo, both with best supportive care, in patients with ISM. METHODS: We randomized patients with moderate to severe ISM (total symptom score [TSS] of ≥28; scores range from 0 to 110, with higher numbers indicating more severe symptoms) two to one to avapritinib 25 mg once daily (n=141) or placebo (n=71).

The Clinical Features of Hereditary Alpha-Tryptasemia—Implications for Interdisciplinary Practice.

Background: Hereditary alpha-tryptasemia (HAT) is a genetic predisposition of autosomal dominant inheritance that leads to a high normal (≥ 8-11.4 μg/L) or pathologically elevated (>11.4 μg/L) basal serum tryptase (BST) concentration.

Effectiveness and User Perception of an In-Vehicle Voice Warning for Hypoglycemia: Development and Feasibility Trial.

Background: Hypoglycemia is a frequent and acute complication in type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and is associated with a higher risk of car mishaps. Currently, hypoglycemia can be detected and signaled through flash glucose monitoring or continuous glucose monitoring devices, which require manual and visual interaction, thereby removing the focus of attention from the driving task. Hypoglycemia causes a decrease in attention, thereby challenging the safety of using such devices behind the wheel.

Glycaemic patterns of male professional athletes with type 1 diabetes during exercise, recovery and sleep: Retrospective, observational study over an entire competitive season.

Aims: To analyse glycaemic patterns of professional athletes with type 1 diabetes during a competitive season.

Materials And Methods: We analysed continuous glucose monitoring data of 12 professional male cyclists with type 1 diabetes during exercise, recovery and sleep on days with competitive exercise (CE) and non-competitive exercise (NCE). We assessed whether differences exist between CE and NCE days and analysed associations between exercise and dysglycaemia.

pH-equilibration of human hair: Kinetics and pH-dependence of the partition ratios for H - and OH -ions based on a Freundlich isotherm.

Hair is an insoluble, fibrous, α-keratinous, protein composite material, providing outer coverage, e.g., for mammals.

Noninvasive Hypoglycemia Detection in People With Diabetes Using Smartwatch Data.

Objective: To develop a noninvasive hypoglycemia detection approach using smartwatch data.

Research Design And Methods: We prospectively collected data from two wrist-worn wearables (Garmin vivoactive 4S, Empatica E4) and continuous glucose monitoring values in adults with diabetes on insulin treatment. Using these data, we developed a machine learning (ML) approach to detect hypoglycemia (<3.

Increase of PEth after Single Consumption of Alcohol and Evaluation of a Volumetric DBS Filter Paper Device.

Direct alcohol biomarkers are of growing interest for the assessment of alcohol consumption, with particular interest in phosphatidylethanol (PEth) in recent years. PEth is only formed when alcohol is present in the body. However, there is no statement about how much the PEth concentration increases after single moderate alcohol consumption.

Machine learning for non-invasive sensing of hypoglycaemia while driving in people with diabetes.

Aim: To develop and evaluate the concept of a non-invasive machine learning (ML) approach for detecting hypoglycaemia based exclusively on combined driving (CAN) and eye tracking (ET) data.

Materials And Methods: We first developed and tested our ML approach in pronounced hypoglycaemia, and then we applied it to mild hypoglycaemia to evaluate its early warning potential. For this, we conducted two consecutive, interventional studies in individuals with type 1 diabetes.

Mast cell leukemia: clinical and molecular features and survival outcomes of patients in the ECNM Registry.

Mast cell leukemia (MCL) is a rare subtype of systemic mastocytosis defined by ≥20% mast cells (MC) on a bone marrow aspirate. We evaluated 92 patients with MCL from the European Competence Network on Mastocytosis registry. Thirty-one (34%) patients had a diagnosis of MCL with an associated hematologic neoplasm (MCL-AHN).

Understanding the Interactions Between Driving Behavior and Well-being in Daily Driving: Causal Analysis of a Field Study.

Background: Investigating ways to improve well-being in everyday situations as a means of fostering mental health has gained substantial interest in recent years. For many people, the daily commute by car is a particularly straining situation of the day, and thus researchers have already designed various in-vehicle well-being interventions for a better commuting experience. Current research has validated such interventions but is limited to isolating effects in controlled experiments that are generally not representative of real-world driving conditions.

Comparing hair tensile testing in the wet and the dry state: Possibilities and limitations for detecting changes of hair properties due to chemical and physical treatments.

Objectives: This investigation focuses, first, on the question to which extent wet and dry tensile tests on human hair may be considered as leading to independent results. Second, we try to assess the sensitivities of wet and dry-testing to detect changes of mechanical properties. Specifically, we were interested in separating changes, which were induced by a combination of a chemical (oxidation/bleach) and a physical treatment (heat).

A Scalable Risk-Scoring System Based on Consumer-Grade Wearables for Inpatients With COVID-19: Statistical Analysis and Model Development.

Background: To provide effective care for inpatients with COVID-19, clinical practitioners need systems that monitor patient health and subsequently allow for risk scoring. Existing approaches for risk scoring in patients with COVID-19 focus primarily on intensive care units (ICUs) with specialized medical measurement devices but not on hospital general wards.

Objective: In this paper, we aim to develop a risk score for inpatients with COVID-19 in general wards based on consumer-grade wearables (smartwatches).

The information content of tensile tests of human hair (wet) is limited: Variables mainly cluster in just two principal components.

Tensile testing of keratin fibres, such as wool and hair, in the wet state is a well established tool in the academic as well as applied portfolio of mechanical analyses. For the tensile curve of a hair fibre, fourteen material-specific stress-, strain, and work-related variables were identified. Analysing twelve samples of cosmetically untreated hair, we show that the variables show good precision and a satisfactory degree of homogeneity across samples.

When Do Drivers Interact with In-Vehicle Well-being Interventions? An Exploratory Analysis of a Longitudinal Study on Public Roads.

Recent developments of novel in-vehicle interventions show the potential to transform the otherwise routine and mundane task of commuting into opportunities to improve the drivers' health and well-being. Prior research has explored the effectiveness of various in-vehicle interventions and has identified moments in which drivers could be interruptible to interventions. All the previous studies, however, were conducted in either simulated or constrained real-world driving scenarios on a pre-determined route.

FLIRT: A feature generation toolkit for wearable data.

Background And Objective: Researchers use wearable sensing data and machine learning (ML) models to predict various health and behavioral outcomes. However, sensor data from commercial wearables are prone to noise, missing, or artifacts. Even with the recent interest in deploying commercial wearables for long-term studies, there does not exist a standardized way to process the raw sensor data and researchers often use highly specific functions to preprocess, clean, normalize, and compute features.

Refined diagnostic criteria for bone marrow mastocytosis: a proposal of the European competence network on mastocytosis.

In the current classification of the World Health Organization (WHO), bone marrow mastocytosis (BMM) is a provisional variant of indolent systemic mastocytosis (ISM) defined by bone marrow involvement and absence of skin lesions. However, no additional diagnostic criteria for BMM have been proposed. Within the registry dataset of the European Competence Network on Mastocytosis, we compared characteristics and outcomes of 390 patients with BMM and 1175 patients with typical ISM.

Perm-waved human hair: a thermorheologically complex shape memory composite.

A "permanent" bent shape can be imposed on a straight human hair by a two-stage reduction/oxidation (perm-waving) process. The process relies on the molecular level on sulfhydryl/disulfide interchange as bond exchange reaction (BER). We expected a well-documented transition temperature around 60°C to be the trigger for the shape memory (SM) process of perm-waved hair.