Mandible movement recording and its dedicated signal processing for sleep/wake recognition improve sleep disorder index accuracy by assessing the total sleep time. Such a feature is welcome in home screening methods.

We describe a circuit-element model for the electric detection of biomolecules in translocation through a nanopore in a SOS semiconductor membrane. The biomolecules are simulated as a superposition of individual charges moving through the nanopore and inducing a charge variation on the membrane electrodes that is modeled as a current source. The SOS membrane is discretized into interconnected elementary circuit elements. The model is tested on the translocation of 11 base single-stranded C3AC7 DNA molecule, for which the electric signal shows good qualitative agreement with the multi-scale device approach of Gracheva et al., while quantifying the low-pass filtering in the membrane. Overall, the model confirms the possibility of identifying electrically the sequence of the DNA bases.

Aim: To investigate whether obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patients present different behaviors of mandible movements before and under CPAP therapy. Materials and Methodology:In this retrospective study, patients were selected according to inclusion criteria: both the diagnostic polysomnography recording showing an OSA with an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) greater than 25 (n/h) and the related CPAP therapy control recordings were available, presence of mandible movement and mask pressure signals in the recordings, and tolerance to the applied positive pressure. Statistical analysis on four parameters, namely the apneahypopnea index (AHI), the arousal index (ArI), the average of the mandible lowering during sleep (aLOW), and the average amplitude of the oscillations of the mandible movement signal (aAMPL), was performed on two sets of recordings: OSA and CPAP therapy.Results: Thirty-four patients satisfied the inclusion criteria, thus both OSA and CPAP groups included thirty-four recordings each. Significant difference (p < 0.001) was found in the OSA group compared with the CPAP group when considering either the four parameters or only the two ones related to mandible movements. Conclusions:When an efficient CPAP pressure is applied, the mouth is less open and presents fewer broad sharp closure movements, and oscillating mandible movements are absent or very small.

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