Exposure, Occurrence, and Chemistry of Fumonisins and their Cryptic Derivatives.

Fumonisins are mycotoxins mainly produced by Fusarium proliferatum and Fusarium verticillioides. Because of their wide distribution, the potential health hazard, and economic significance, they are considered one of the most important mycotoxin classes. Epidemiological evidence suggests a relationship between the Fusarium load in corn, exposure to fumonisins, and esophageal cancer.

Characterizing Consumer Health Informatics in Low and Middle Income Countries.

Consumer Health Informatics (ConsHI) involves patients in health care through ICT, with Low and Middle Income Countries recently entering the field. Compelling successes and complete failures call for the identification of success factors. Of 1092 automatically retrieved articles, 85 were classified as ConsHI.

Multivariate Data Analysis Using Persistence-Based Filtering and Topological Signatures.

The extraction of significant structures in arbitrary high-dimensional data sets is a challenging task. Moreover, classifying data points as noise in order to reduce a data set bears special relevance for many application domains. Standard methods such as clustering serve to reduce problem complexity by providing the user with classes of similar entities.

Experimental approach to extend the range for counting fluorescent molecules based on photon-antibunching.

In single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy photon-antibunching is frequently used to prove the occurrence of single fluorophores. Furthermore, the relative frequency of coincident photon pairs was also used to determine the number of fluorophores in the diffraction limited observation volume of a confocal microscope. However, the ability to count fluorophores is so far limited to approximately 3 molecules due to saturation of the calibration curve with increasing number of fluorophores.

Acoustic wave-based sensors using mode conversion in periodic gratings.

Using periodic gratings etched into the surface of a piezoelectric plate, surface acoustic waves (SAW) can be converted into bulk waves and vice versa with high efficiency. If parallel grating structures are fabricated on opposite surfaces of a piezoelectric plate, a SAW also can be directed from one surface to the other. Using such structures, acoustic wave-based sensors can be designed that utilize SAW for the detection of chemical analytes on an electrode-free surface, i.

Inductively coupled surface acoustic wave device for sensor application.

We present a new type of surface acoustic wave device for sensor applications where the need for bonding wires is eliminated. Instead the device is coupled inductively to the RF circuitry. The impedance of such devices and the necessary matching have been investigated both theoretically and experimentally.

Short-term heart rate variability response to head-up tilt in young syncope patients and controls with respect to age.

This study aims at characterizing the short-term time-courses of time- and frequency-domain heart rate variability (HRV) parameters during head-up tilt test (HUTT). Data from 44 young patients with a history of syncope and 34 age-matched controls was analysed in two age-groups related to puberty (< or =13 and > or =14 years), and separately for gender, by extracting minute-by-minute progression of mean RR-interval, standard deviation of RR-intervals (SDNN) and their first difference (SDSD) as well as low-frequency (LF, 0.05-0.

Responsiveness of the PHQ-9 to Psychopharmacological Depression Treatment.

This is the first study that investigates the responsiveness of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a standard 9-item self-report depression scale, to antidepressant medication. Authors analyzed data from 1,788 depressed outpatients (66.8% women; mean age, 50.

Identification of metal ion solutions using acoustic plate mode devices and pattern recognition.

The temperature dependence of acoustic plate mode (APM) devices used as probes for dilute electrolytes is described. Specifically, the probe responses that consist of the frequency change and device loss were studied for dilute aqueous solutions of alkali metal ions. It is shown that by integrating the temperature dependence of the APM probe responses with pattern recognition techniques, valuable information about the solutions can be obtained that include identification and quantification.