Sleep apnea, "the Ugly Duckling of the Cinderellas" in cardiovascular prevention and rehabilitation.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death and account for the largest share of health expenditure worldwide, mainly invested in hospital and secondary care. Prevention and rehabilitation strategies are nearly neglected, therefore "the Cinderellas," in the health-care budget. The World Health Organization has proposed cost-effective interventions to reduce the impact of cardiovascular diseases that include polydrug treatment for hypertension and diabetes, counselling, diet, exercise, and others. Obstructive sleep apnea is not even mentioned among these interventions; consequently, it could be "the Ugly Duckling of the Cinderellas." Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is characterized by the presence of obstructive apneas or hypopneas during sleep, accompanied by hypoxia; and it is a highly prevalent but under-diagnosed condition. Although awareness of sleep apnea has recently increased most facts about it remains ignored by many. Robust evidence suggests that OSA is associated with, or is an independent risk factor for, hypertension, cerebrovascular disease, ischemic heart disease, heart failure and arrhythmias and that its prevalence among some of these cardiovascular diseases is higher than 80%. The efficacy of continuous positive airway pressure treatment for obstructive sleep apnea has been established. If obstructive sleep apnea plays a significant role in cardiovascular diseases, then screening and timely appropriate treatment could reduce morbidity and mortality. Thus, the public health and economic impact of these conditions could be included in the "best buy" list of interventions. This narrative review discusses the relationship between OSA and cardiovascular diseases and how neglected the link is.

Merit overrules theory of mind when young children share resources with others.

Non-windfall approaches to sharing demonstrate pre-schoolers' sensitivity to merit-based distributions of resources. However, such studies have not considered (1) whether epistemic aspects of task performance, such as the relative accuracy of a co-worker, influences pre-schoolers' rates of sharing; and (2) how children's emerging social understanding may impact resource allocations in high- and low-merit situations. These issues are of theoretical importance as they may provide new information about the scope of pre-schooler's merit-based sharing behaviours. Moreover, as social understanding has been related to both increases and decreases in pre-schoolers' levels of sharing, providing a merit-based assessment of this relationship would allow for a concurrent assessment of recent conflicting findings. In this study, three- and four-year-olds (N = 131) participated in an unexpected transfer task which was followed by a resource generation picture card naming task with a reliable or unreliable (high- or low-merit) co-worker (a hand puppet). The results showed that children engage in more generous rates of sharing with a high-merit co-worker. This suggests that merit-based sharing is apparent in young children and extends to epistemic aspects of task performance. However, such sharing was constrained by a self-serving bias. Finally, we were not able to detect an effect of children's performance on the false belief task on sharing behaviours in the high- or low-merit trials, suggesting that these behaviours may not be modulated by social understanding during early childhood.

Establishment of toxicity thresholds in subpopulations of coelomocytes (amoebocytes vs. eleocytes) of Eisenia fetida exposed in vitro to a variety of metals: implications for biomarker measurements.

Coelomocytes comprise the immune system of earthworms and due to their sensitivity responding to a wide range of pollutants have been widely used as target cells in soil ecotoxicology. Recently, in vitro assays with primary cultures of coelomocytes based in the neutral red uptake (NRU) assay have been developed as promising tools for toxicity assessment chemical in a reproducible and cost-effective manner. However, NRU showed a bimodal dose-response curve previously described after in vivo and in vitro exposure of earthworm coelomocytes to pollutants. This response could be related with alterations in the relative proportion of coelomocyte subpopulations, amoebocytes and eleocytes. Thus, the aims of the present work were, first, to establish the toxicity thresholds that could be governed by different cell-specific sensitivities of coelomocytes subpopulations against a series of metals (Cu, Cd, Pb, Ni), and second to understand the implication that coelomocyte population dynamics (eleocytes vs. amoebocytes) after exposure to pollutants can have on the viability of coelomocytes (measured by NRU assay) as biomarker of general stress in soil health assessment. Complementarily flow cytometric analyses were applied to obtain correlative information about single cells (amoebocytes and eleocytes) in terms of size and complexity, changes in their relative proportion and mortality rates. The results indicated a clear difference in sensitivity of eleocytes and amoebocytes against metal exposure, being eleocytes more sensitive. The bimodal dose-response curve of NRU after in vitro exposure of primary cultures of coelomocytes to metals revealed an initial mortality of eleocytes (decreased NRU), followed by an increased complexity of amoebocytes (enhanced phagocytosis) and massive mortality of eleocytes (increased NRU), to give raise to a massive mortality of amoebocytes (decrease NRU). A synergistic effect on NRU was exerted by the exposure to high Cu concentrations and acidic pH (elicited by the metal itself), whereas the effects on NRU produced after exposure to Cd, Ni and Pb were due solely to the presence of metals, being the acidification of culture medium meaningless.

An open platform to support home healthcare services using interactive TV.

This paper presents an open platform to support the development and deployment of healthcare services at home using the TV as the main gateway. Unlike previous systems based on proprietary and closed solutions, our proposal is completely open allowing the easy integration of new services or the integration with external platforms. This is possible thanks to the use of a PC-based Set Top Box called Home Theater Personal (HTPC) that can be easily connected to the TV and Internet. This solution is not tight to particular Software and Hardware providers. It allows an easy integration of different telemedicine devices through Bluetooth and USB standard protocols. Additionally, any software developer/provider can include new services and healthcare modules through a simple to use add/on platform.