Alvarez waves in pregnancy: a comprehensive review

A Preliminary Exploration of the Placental Position Influence on Uterine Electromyography Using Fractional Modelling

“…The selection criteria for this electrode arrangement can be found in Esgalhado et al (2020) [46]. A uterine contraction detector, previously developed under the Uterine Explorer project [46][47][48][49], [50] processed the mentioned database. The obtained contraction data pool was, subsequently, the input for an unsupervised clustering classifier.…”

Biophysical reviews—providing an effective critique

“…Contributed by a team of medical and physical scientists based in Portugal, the final review article of Issue 4 deals with a particularly important aspect of life, the ability to predict the initiation of labor among pregnant women-a situation with extraordinarily dramatic consequences when it leads to pre-term birth of the baby (Russo et al 2021). Concentrating on the diagnostic signature of the Alvarez wave (a specific type of local rhythmic contraction of the myometrium displaying high frequency and low-intensity characteristics), the authors review literature examining the potential predictive power of Alvarez wave analysis in the assessment of the onset of labor among extremely large cohorts of pregnant women.…”

“…Concentrating on the diagnostic signature of the Alvarez wave (a specific type of local rhythmic contraction of the myometrium displaying high frequency and low-intensity characteristics), the authors review literature examining the potential predictive power of Alvarez wave analysis in the assessment of the onset of labor among extremely large cohorts of pregnant women. Based on sheer weight of numbers, the authors conclude that Alvarez wave analysis is likely an effective indicator of the onset of labor, and they set out helpful analytical parameters for the practical utilization of this information stream in making decisions at the point of patient care (Russo et al 2021)…”

Biophysical Reviews— 2021, the year that was

“…The second feature article, submitted by Prof. Toshio Ando of Japan, was the first example of a new type of invited commentary featured by the journal known as the “Biophysical Reviews – Top Five” which describes five canonical scientific articles in the biophysical field in which the author is designated as an expert (in this case – high-speed atomic force microscopy) (Ando 2021 ). Other highlights of Issue 4 include a submission, by scientists based in Portugal, on a large-scale meta-analysis of a characteristic waveform of electrical contractions preceding childbirth (Russo et al 2021 ), a review article by scientists based in Israel and the USA, on computational modeling of Ras-like protein regulation (Nussinov et al 2021 ) and an experimental-oriented review article from a scientist located in Japan, exploring Ras-like proteins involvement in endocytotic vesicle capture (Mima 2021 ).…”