The results of this study indicate that a variety of individual, family, peer, and school factors were associated with short nocturnal sleep duration and subjective insomnia in adolescents. Furthermore, the correlates of short sleep duration were not identical to those of subjective insomnia. Parents and health professionals should be wary of sleep patterns among adolescents who have the identified correlates of short nocturnal sleep duration and subjective insomnia.

This study presents a systematic design of the fully differential operational transconductance amplifier-C (OTA-C) filter for a heart activities detection apparatus. Since the linearity and noise of the filter is dependent on the building cell, a precise behavioral model for the real OTA circuit is created. To reduce the influence of coefficient sensitivity and maintain an undistorted biosignal, a fifth-order ladder-type lowpass Butterworth is employed. Based on this topology, a chip fabricated in a 0.18- mum CMOS process is simulated and measured to validate the system estimation. Since the battery life and the integration with the low-voltage digital processor are the most critical requirement for the portable diagnosis device, the OTA-based circuit is operated in the subthreshold region to save power under the supply voltage of 1V. Measurement results show that this low-voltage and low-power filter possesses the HD3 of -48.9 dB, dynamic range (DR) of 50 dB, and power consumption of 453 nW. Therefore, the OTA-C filter can be adopted to eliminate the out-of-band interference of the electrocardiogram (ECG) whose signal bandwidth is located within 250 Hz.

To determine whether jugular venous reflux (JVR) is associated with cerebral white matter changes (WMCs) in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD), we studied 12 AD patients 24 mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients, and 17 elderly age- and gender-matched controls. Duplex ultrasonography and 1.5T MRI scanning was applied to quantify cerebral WMCs [T2 white matter (WM) lesion and dirty-appearing-white-matter (DAWM)]. Subjects with severe JVR had more frequently hypertension (p = 0.044), more severe WMC, including increased total (p = 0.047) and periventricular DAWM volumes (p = 0.008), and a trend for increased cerebrospinal fluid volumes (p = 0.067) compared with the other groups. A significantly decreased (65.8%) periventricular DAWM volume (p = 0.01) in the JVR-positive AD individuals compared with their JVR-negative counterparts was detected. There was a trend for increased periventricular and subcortical T2 WMC lesion volumes in the JVR-positive AD individuals compared with their JVR-negative counterparts (p = 0.073). This phenomenon was not observed in either the control or MCI groups. In multiple regression analysis, the increased periventricular WMC lesion volume and decreased DAWM volume resulted in 85.7% sensitivity and 80% specificity for distinguishing between JVR-positive and JVR-negative AD patients. These JVR-WMC association patterns were not seen in the control and MCI groups. Therefore, this pilot study suggests that there may be an association between JVR and WMCs in AD patients, implying that cerebral venous outflow impairment might play a role in the dynamics of WMCs formation in AD patients, particularly in the periventricular regions. Further longitudinal studies are needed to confirm and validate our findings.

The results of the present study indicate that subjects with BD are dissatisfied with their QOL, even when they are in a remitted state. Clinicians must consider the negative influences of insight and adverse effects of medication on QOL of patients with BD and schizophrenia in remission.