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patients with diabetes after hospitalization for HF.The composites based on basalt fibres and poly(lactic acid) (PLA) show promising applications in biomedical and automotive fields, but their mechanical performance is still largely hindered by poor interfacial properties. Zinc oxide nanorods have been successfully used to tune the PLA/basalt fibre interface by growing them on commercially available basalt fabrics. The hierarchical fibres significantly enhanced the mechanical properties of PLA-based composites, especially their flexural strength and stiffness. These values are 26% and 22% higher than those of unmodified basalt/PLA composites, and 24% and 34% higher than those of glass/PLA composites used as a baseline. The increase in tensile and flexural properties hinges on the mechanical interlocking action promoted by ZnO nanorods and on the creation of a compact transcrystallinity structure. A degradation of PLA matrix was detected but it was positively counteracted by the better interfacial stress transfer. This study offers a novel approach for modifying the fibre-matrix interface of biocomposites intended for high-performance applications.Sleep disruption from causes, such as changes in lifestyle, stress from aging, family issues, or life pressures are a growing phenomenon that can lead to serious health problems. As such, sleep disorders need to be identified and addressed early on. In recent years, studies have investigated sleep patterns through body movement information collected by wristwatch-type devices or cameras. However, these methods capture only the individual’s awake and sleep states and lack sufficient information to identify specific sleep stages. The aim of this study was to use a 3-axis accelerometer attached to an individual’s head to capture information that can identify three specific sleep stages rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, light sleep, and deep sleep. These stages are measured by heart rate features captured by a ballistocardiogram and body movement. The sleep experiment was conducted for two nights among eight healthy adult men. According to the leave-one-out cross-validation results, the F-scores were awake 76.6%, REM sleep 52.7%, light sleep 78.2%, and deep sleep 67.8%. The accuracy was 74.6% for the four estimates. This proposed measurement system was able to estimate the sleep stages with high accuracy simply by using the acceleration in the individual’s head.When a wireless sensor node’s wireless communication fails after being deployed in an inaccessible area, the lost node cannot be repaired through a debugging interaction that relies on that communication. Visible light communication (VLC) as a supplement of radio wave communication can improve the transmission security at the physical layer due to its unidirectional propagation characteristic. Therefore, we implemented a VLC-based hybrid communication debugging system (HCDS) based on VLC using smartphone and sensor node. For the system’s downlink, the smartphone is taken as the VLC gateway and sends the debugging codes to the sensor node by the flashlight. To improve the transmission efficiency of the downlink, we also propose a new coding method for source coding and channel coding, respectively. For the source coding, we analyze the binary instructions and compress the operands using bitmask techniques. The average compression rate of the binary structure reaches 84.11%. For the channel coding, we optimize dual-header pulse interval (DH-PIM) and propose overlapped DH-PIM (ODH-PIM) by introducing a flashlight half-on state. The flashlight half-on state can improve the representation capability of individual symbols. For the uplink of HCDS, we use the onboard LED of the sensor node to transmit feedback debugging information to the smartphone. At the same time, we design a novel encoding format of DH-PIM to optimize uplink transmission. Experimental results show that the optimized uplink transmission time and BER are reduced by 10.71% and 22%, compared with the original DH-PIM.Left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC) is defined by an increase of trabeculations in left ventricular (LV) endomyocardium. Although LVNC can be in isolation, an increase in hypertrabeculation often accompanies genetic cardiomyopathies. Current methods for quantification of LV trabeculae have limitations. Several improvements are proposed and implemented to enhance a software tool to quantify the trabeculae degree in the LV myocardium in an accurate and automatic way for a population of patients with genetic cardiomyopathies (QLVTHCI). The software tool is developed and evaluated for a population of 59 patients (470 end-diastole cardiac magnetic resonance images). This tool produces volumes of the compact sector and the trabecular area, the proportion between these volumes, and the left ventricular and trabeculated masses. Substantial enhancements are obtained over the manual process performed by cardiologists, so saving important diagnosis time. The parallelization of the detection of the external layer is proposed to ensure real-time processing of a patient, obtaining speed-ups from 7.5 to 1500 with regard to QLVTHCI and the manual process used traditionally by cardiologists. Comparing the method proposed with the fractal proposal to differentiate LVNC and non-LVNC patients among 27 subjects with previously diagnosed cardiomyopathies, QLVTHCI presents a full diagnostic accuracy, while the fractal criteria achieve 78%. Moreover, QLTVHCI can be installed and integrated in hospitals on request, whereas the high cost of the license of the fractal method per year of this tool has prevented reproducibility by other medical centers.This longitudinal study aimed to clarify the relationship of oral health in infancy with that in adulthood among participants who were the subjects of the oral health promotion project (OHPP) conducted in Miyako Island, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, since 1984. Twenty-seven subjects, around 35 years of age, were examined for dental caries, periodontal diseases (community periodontal index), dental plaque, occlusion, and bite-force and compared with those at 4 and 13-15 years of age. selleck kinase inhibitor The dental caries status and maximum bite force in adulthood was significantly reflected for those at 4 and 13-15 years of age (p 0.05). Most of the normal occlusion at 4 years of age became normal permanent occlusion in adulthood (88.9%). Most of the cases involving the discrepancy factor retained the same condition in both the deciduous and permanent dentitions (83.3%) (p less then 0.001). Those who participated in the OHPP soon after birth showed significantly fewer DMFT (p less then 0.05) compared with those who did not. This study revealed that oral health at 4 years of age was related to that in adulthood, suggesting that fostering good oral health soon after birth is of great importance.