Abstract
Skin temperature regulation is dependent on the autonomic nervous system function, which may be impaired in patients with neuropathy. Literature reporting thermographic assessment of patients with established diagnosis of Diabetic Foot (DF) is scarce, but this information is completely absent in patients suffering from Transthyretin Familial Amyloid Polyneuropathy (TTR-FAP). The aim of this study is to compare skin temperature distribution in patients with DF and TTR-FAP. Thermograms of the dorsal and plantar surfaces of twelve neuropathic patients, six with DF and six with TTR-FAP, were assessed and compared. Skin temperature was significantly higher in the diabetic foot group, in both regions of interest. Thermal symmetry values were high, but similar in both groups. The bias between the right and left foot was smaller, with smaller limits of agreement in TTR-FAP patients, suggesting a lower agreement between the temperature of the right and left feet in DF patients.

Abstract
Firefighting is a hazardous profession commonly exposed to high stress that can interfere with firefighter's health and performance. Nevertheless, on-duty stress levels quantitative evaluations are very rare in the literature. In order to investigate firefighters' occupational health in terms of stress perceptions, symptoms, and quantified physiological reactions under real-world conditions, an ambulatory assessment protocol was developed. Therefore, cardiac signal from firefighters (N =6) was continuously monitored during two shifts within a working week with a medical clinically certified equipment (VitalJacket®), allowing continuous electrocardiogram (ECG) and actigraphy measurement. Psychological data were collected with an android application, collecting potential stressful events, stress symptoms, and stress appraisal. A total of 130 hours of medical-quality ECG were collected, from which heart rate variability (HRV) metrics were extracted and analyzed. Statistical significant differences were found in some HRV metrics - AVNN, RMSSD, pNN50 and LF/HF - between events and non-events, showing higher levels of physiological stress during events (p<0.05). Stress symptoms increase from the beginning to the end of the shift (from 1.54 ± 0.52 to 2.01 ± 0.73), however the mean stress self-perception of events was very low (3.22 ± 2.38 in a scale ranging from 0 to 10). Negative and strong correlations were also found between stress symptoms and some time-domain ECG measures (AVNN, SDNN and pNN50). It can be concluded that stress may not always be detected when using merely self-reports. These results enhance the importance of combining both self-report and ambulatory high-quality physiological stress measures in occupational health settings. Future studies should investigate not only what causes stress but also its impact on health and well-being of these professionals, in order to contribute to the design of efficient stress-management interventions. © 2018 IEEE.

Abstract
Background. Stress at work has been broadly acknowledged as a worldwide problem and has been the focus of concern for many researchers. Firefighting, in particular, is frequently reported as a highly stressful occupation. In order to investigate firefighters' occupational health in terms of stress events, perceptions, symptoms, and physiological reactions under real-world conditions, an ambulatory assessment protocol was developed. Methods. Seventeen firefighters' cardiac signal was continuously monitored during an average of three shifts within a working week with medical clinically certified equipment (VitalJacket (R)), which allows for continuous electrocardiogram (ECG) and actigraphy measurement. Psychological data were collected with a software application running on smartphones, collecting potential stressful events, stress symptoms, and stress appraisal. Results. A total of 450.56 h of medical-quality ECG were collected, and heart rate variability (HRV) analysis was performed. Findings suggest that although 'fire' situations are more common, 'accidents' are more stressful. Additionally, firefighters showed high levels of physiological stress (based on AVNN and LF/HF HRV metrics) when compared to normative healthy population values that may not be diagnosed using merely self-reports. Discussion. The proposed ambulatory study seems to be useful for the monitoring of stress levels and its potential impact on health of first responders. Additionally, it could also be an important tool for the design and implementation of efficient interventions and informed management resolutions in real time. Potential applications of this research include the development of quantified occupational health (qOHealth) devices for real life monitoring of emergency personnel stress reactions.

Abstract
Human gait analysis is of utmost importance in understanding several aspects of human movement. In clinical practice, characterizing movement in order to obtain accurate and reliable information is a major challenge, and physicians usually rely on direct observation in order to evaluate a patient's motor abilities. In this contribution, a system that can objectively analyze the patients gait and generate an on the fly, targeted and optimized gait analysis report is presented. It is an extension to an existing system that could be used without interfering with the healthcare environment, which did not provide any on the fly feedback to physicians. Patient data are acquired using Kinect v2, followed by data processing, gait specific feature extraction, ending with the generation of a quantitative on the fly report. To the best of our knowledge, the complete system fills the gap as a proper gait analysis system, i.e., a low-cost tool that can be applied without interfering with the healthcare environment, provide quantitative gait information and on the fly feedback to physicians through a motion quantification report that can be useful in multiple areas. © 2018 IEEE.

Abstract
Background: Stress is a complex process with an impact on health and performance. The use of wearable sensor-based monitoring systems offers interesting opportunities for advanced health care solutions for stress analysis. Considering the stressful nature of firefighting and its importance for the community’s safety, this study was conducted for firefighters. Objectives: A biomonitoring platform was designed, integrating different biomedical systems to enable the acquisition of real time Electrocardiogram (ECG), computation of linear Heart Rate Variability (HRV) features and collection of perceived stress levels. This platform was tested using an experimental protocol, designed to understand the effect of stress on firefighter’s cognitive performance, and whether this effect is related to the autonomic response to stress. Method: The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was used as a testing platform along with a 2-Choice Reaction Time Task. Linear HRV features from the participants were acquired using an wearable ECG. Self-reports were used to assess perceived stress levels. Results: The TSST produced significant changes in some HRV parameters (AVNN, SDNN and LF/HF) and subjective measures of stress, which recovered after the stress task. Although these short-term changes in HRV showed a tendency to normalize, an impairment on cognitive performance was found after performing the stress event. Conclusion: Current findings suggested that stress compromised cognitive performance and caused a measurable change in autonomic balance. Our wearable biomonitoring platform proved to be a useful tool for stress assessment and quantification. Future studies will implement this biomonitoring platform for the analysis of stress in ecological settings. © 2018 Rodrigues et al.

Abstract
Background: In view of the growing importance of nanotechnologies, the detection/identification of nanoparticles type has been considered of utmost importance. Although the characterization of synthetic/organic nanoparticles is currently considered a priority (eg, drug delivery devices, nanotextiles, theranostic nanoparticles), there are many examples of "naturally" generated nanostructures - for example, extracellular vesicles (EVs), lipoproteins, and virus - that provide useful information about human physiology or clinical conditions. For example, the detection of tumor-related exosomes, a specific type of EVs, in circulating fluids has been contributing to the diagnosis of cancer in an early stage. However, scientists have struggled to find a simple, fast, and low-cost method to accurately detect/identify these nanoparticles, since the majority of them have diameters between 100 and 150 nm, thus being far below the diffraction limit. Methods: This study investigated if, by projecting the information provided from short-term portions of the back-scattered laser light signal collected by a polymeric lensed optical fiber tip dipped into a solution of synthetic nanoparticles into a lower features dimensional space, a discriminant function is able to correctly detect the presence of 100 nm synthetic nanoparticles in distilled water, in different concentration values. Results and discussion: This technique ensured an optimal performance (100% accuracy) in detecting nanoparticles for a concentration above or equal to 3.89 mu g/mL (8.74E+10 particles/mL), and a performance of 90% for concentrations below this value and higher than 1.22E-03 mu g/mL (2.74E+07 particles/mL), values that are compatible with human plasmatic levels of tumor-derived and other types of EVs, as well as lipoproteins currently used as potential biomarkers of cardiovascular diseases. Conclusion: The proposed technique is able to detect synthetic nanoparticles whose dimensions are similar to EVs and other "clinically" relevant nanostructures, and in concentrations equivalent to the majority of cell-derived, platelet-derived EVs and lipoproteins physiological levels. This study can, therefore, provide valuable insights towards the future development of a device for EVs and other biological nanoparticles detection with innovative characteristics.