Water is essential for survival, but one in three individuals worldwide (2.2 billion people) lacks access to safe drinking water. Water intake requirements largely reflect water turnover (WT), the water used by the body each day. We investigated the determinants of human WT in 5604 people from the ages of 8 days to 96 years from 23 countries using isotope-tracking ( ² H) methods. Age, body size, and composition were significantly associated with WT, as were physical activity, athletic status, pregnancy, socioeconomic status, and environmental characteristics (latitude, altitude, air temperature, and humidity). People who lived in countries with a low human development index (HDI) had higher WT than people in high-HDI countries. On the basis of this extensive dataset, we provide equations to predict human WT in relation to anthropometric, economic, and environmental factors.

Background: Long‐term continuous cardiac monitoring would aid in the early diagnosis and management of atrial fibrillation ( AF ). This study examined the accuracy of a novel approach for AF detection using photo‐plethysmography signals measured from a wrist‐based wearable device. Methods and Results: ECG and contemporaneous pulse data were collected from 2 cohorts of AF patients: AF patients (n=20) undergoing electrical cardioversion ( ECV ) and AF patients (n=40) that were prescribed for 24 hours ECG Holter in outpatient settings ( HOL ). Photo‐plethysmography and acceleration data were collected at the wrist and processed to determine the inter‐pulse interval and discard inter‐pulse intervals in presence of motion artifacts. A Markov model was deployed to assess the probability of AF given irregular pattern in inter‐pulse interval sequences. The AF detection algorithm was evaluated against clinical rhythm annotations of AF based on ECG interpretation. Photo‐plethysmography recordings from apparently healthy volunteers (n=120) were used to establish the false positive AF detection rate of the algorithm. A total of 42 and 855 hours (AF: 21 and 323 hours) of photo‐plethysmography data were recorded in the ECV and HOL cohorts, respectively. AF was detected with >96% accuracy ( ECV, sensitivity=97%; HOL , sensitivity=93%; both with specificity=100%). Because of motion artifacts, the algorithm did not provide AF classification for 44±16% of the monitoring period in the HOL group. In healthy controls, the algorithm demonstrated a <0.2% false positive AF detection rate. Conclusions: A novel AF detection algorithm using pulse data from a wrist‐wearable device can accurately discriminate rhythm irregularities caused by AF from normal rhythm.

The objective of this study was to investigate the accuracy of a Deep Neural Network (DNN) in recognizing activities typical for hospitalized patients. A data collection study was conducted with 20 healthy volunteers (10 males and 10 females, age = 43 ± 13 years) in a simulated hospital environment. A single triaxial accelerometer mounted on the trunk was used to measure body movement and recognize six activity types: lying in bed, upright posture, walking, wheelchair transport, stair ascent and stair descent. A DNN consisting of a three-layer convolutional neural network followed by a long short-term memory layer was developed for this classification problem. Additionally, features were extracted from the accelerometer data to train a support vector machine (SVM) classifier for comparison. The DNN reached 94.52% overall accuracy on the holdout dataset compared to 83.35% of the SVM classifier. In conclusion, a DNN is capable of recognizing types of physical activity in simulated hospital conditions using data captured by a single tri-axial accelerometer. The method described may be used for continuous monitoring of patient activities during hospitalization to provide additional insights into the recovery process.

Mobile and tablet apps, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, wearable computing and domotics for health.

Clinical informatics, decision support for health professionals, electronic health records, and ehealth infrastructures.

Mobile and tablet apps, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, wearable computing and domotics for health.