Early life stages are vulnerable to environmental hazards and present important windows of opportunity for lifelong disease prevention. This makes early life a relevant starting point for exposome studies. The Advancing Tools for Human Early Lifecourse Exposome Research and Translation (ATHLETE) project aims to develop a toolbox of exposome tools and a Europe-wide exposome cohort that will be used to systematically quantify the effects of a wide range of community- and individual-level environmental risk factors on mental, cardiometabolic, and respiratory health outcomes and associated biological pathways, longitudinally from early pregnancy through to adolescence. Exposome tool and data development include as follows: (1) a findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable (FAIR) data infrastructure for early life exposome cohort data, including 16 prospective birth cohorts in 11 European countries; (2) targeted and nontargeted approaches to measure a wide range of environmental exposures (urban, chemical, physical, behavioral, social); (3) advanced statistical and toxicological strategies to analyze complex multidimensional exposome data; (4) estimation of associations between the exposome and early organ development, health trajectories, and biological (metagenomic, metabolomic, epigenetic, aging, and stress) pathways; (5) intervention strategies to improve early life urban and chemical exposomes, co-produced with local communities; and (6) child health impacts and associated costs related to the exposome. Data, tools, and results will be assembled in an openly accessible toolbox, which will provide great opportunities for researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders, beyond the duration of the project. ATHLETE’s results will help to better understand and prevent health damage from environmental exposures and their mixtures from the earliest parts of the life course onward.

The paper considers the design of experiments for linear models with misspecification, of the form t ( z ) =Cy=, B ; C i ( z ) + T ( z ) ,where r ( x ) is a n unknown deviation from the regression model. Considering a modeling of this misspecification, the goal is to o b tain robust designs which minimize the integral quadratic risk. A kernel-based representation (Gaussian process) is chosen t o model the misspecification and a new criterion is derived, composed of the classical L-criterion, plus a specific term. Robust designs are then given for polynomial regression, in the particular case of a Gaussian kernel for the Gaussian process. The benefits of this approach are finally demonstrated through comparison of the performance (in terms of integral quadratic error) of such designs versus L-optimal and uniform designs on a simple illustrative example.

The characterisation of population exposure to a 50-Hz magnetic field (MF) is important for assessing health effects of electromagnetic fields. With the aim of estimating and characterising the exposure of the French population to 50-Hz MFs, two representative samples of the population were made. A random selection method based on the distribution of households in different regions of France was used. The samples were carried out starting from a random polling of telephone numbers of households (listed, unlisted fixed phones and cell phones only). A total of 95,362 telephone numbers were dialed to have 2148 volunteers (1060 children and 1088 adults). They all agreed to carrying an EMDEX II meter, measuring and recording MFs, and to filling out a timetable for a 24-hour period. In this article, the methodology of the sample selection and the collection of all necessary information for the realisation of this study are presented.

Purpose: To demonstrate that fast-kz spokes can be used in parallel transmission to homogenize flip angle ramp profiles (known as TONE) in slab selections, and thereby improve Time-Of-Flight angiography of the whole human brain at 7T. Methods: 1 + and 0 maps were measured on seven human brains with a z-segmented coil connected to an 8-channel pTx system. Tailored two-spoke pulses were designed under strict hardware and SAR constraints for uniform slab profile before transforming their subpulse waveforms for linearly-increasing flip-angle ramps. Increasing angulations along the feethead direction were prescribed in 2-slab and 3-slab TOF acquisitions. Excitation patterns were simulated and compared with RF-shimmed (single spoke) ramp pulses. Excitation performances were assessed in ~10-min TOF acquisitions by visually inspecting Maximal Intensity Projections angiograms. Results: The flip-angle ramp fidelity achieved by double spokes inside slabs of interest was improved by 30-40 % compared to RF-shimmed ramps. This allowed better homogenizing signal along arteries, and depicting small vessels in distal areas of the brain, in comparison with RF-shimmed ramp pulses or double-spoke uniform excitation. Conclusion: Ramp double spokes used in conjunction with parallel transmission yield better blood saturation compensation and more finely resolved TOF angiograms than mere double spokes or ramp single spokes at 7 T.