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1. ARSteth: Enabling Home Self-Screening with AR-Assisted Intelligent Stethoscopes

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3583120.3586962  

   Hou, Kaiyuan; Xia, Stephen; Bejerano, Emily; Wu, Junyi; Jiang, Xiaofan (May 2023, Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks)

   The stethoscope is one of the most important diagnostic tools used by healthcare professionals, through a process called auscultation, to screen patients for abnormalities of the heart and lungs. While there are digital stethoscopes on the market which ease this process, it still takes years of training to properly use these devices to listen for abnormal sounds within the body. We present ARSteth, an intelligent stethoscope platform that improves the accessibility of stethoscopes for the general population, allowing anyone to perform auscultation in the comfort of their own homes. Our platform utilizes a combination of augmented reality (AR), acoustic intelligence, and human-machine interaction to dynamically guide users on where to place the stethoscope on different parts of the body (auscultation points), through visual and audio cues. Through user studies, we show that ARSteth, on average, can guide users within 13.2 mm from optimal auscultation points marked by licensed physicians in 13.09 seconds for each auscultation point. By guiding users towards more effective auscultation points, make preventative health screening more accessible and effective for everyone we are able to achieve higher confidence on classifying heart murmurs. 

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2. Global Medicinal Use of Bats: A Systematic Literature and Social Media Review

   https://doi.org/10.3390/d14030179  

   Tackett, Elaine S.; Kingston, Tigga; Sadeghmoghaddam, Narges; Rutrough, Abigail L. (March 2022, Diversity)

   The hunting of bats for food and medicine is one of the greatest threats to bat conservation. While hunting for consumption is the focus of increased attention, the specific medicinal uses of bats are poorly documented, limiting mitigation efforts. Here, we determine the distribution of bat hunting for food and medicinal use and characterize medicinal use practices. We systematically surveyed English-language scientific literature and social media platforms utilizing keywords and hashtags in 27 languages. We found 198 papers and 1063 social media posts from 83 countries and territories. Although use for food was more common, with 1284 unique reports from 71 countries, bats were used to treat 42 ailments of 11 human body systems across 37 countries (453 reports). Asthma was the most common ailment, distantly followed by kidney conditions. Ten organs or body parts of bats were used medicinally, with bat meat (flesh) and fluids (blood, bile, and oil) the most common. Understanding the effects and drivers of specific bat hunting practices will help guide conservation and public health efforts in the communities where bats are hunted. By pinpointing the ailments bats are being used for, outreach and alternative treatments can be introduced to replace the use of bats. 

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3. Toward Automated Analysis of Fetal Phonocardiograms: Comparing Heartbeat Detection from Fetal Doppler and Digital Stethoscope Signals

   https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9629814  

   Chen, Yuhan; Wilkins, Michael D.; Barahona, Jeffrey; Rosenbaum, Alan J.; Daniele, Michael; Lobaton, Edgar (December 2021, International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC))

   Longitudinal fetal health monitoring is essential for high-risk pregnancies. Heart rate and heart rate variability are prime indicators of fetal health. In this work, we implemented two neural network architectures for heartbeat detection on a set of fetal phonocardiogram signals captured using fetal Doppler and a digital stethoscope. We test the efficacy of these networks using the raw signals and the hand-crafted energy from the signal. The results show a Convolutional Neural Network is the most efficient at identifying the S1 waveforms in a heartbeat, and its performance is improved when using the energy of the Doppler signals. We further discuss issues, such as low Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNR), present in the training of a model based on the stethoscope signals. Finally, we show that we can improve the SNR, and subsequently the performance of the stethoscope, by matching the energy from the stethoscope to that of the Doppler signal. 

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4. Election worry, political identity, and subsequent physical health in the United States

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2025.100476  

   Relihan, Daniel P; Estes, Kayley D; Jovanovic, Branislav; Garfin, Dana Rose; Silver, Roxane Cohen; Holman, E Alison (December 2025, SSM - Mental Health)

   Political polarization surrounding elections may have population-level physical health consequences over time. Given that psychological distress is associated with worse physical health, heightened election-related worry (a.k.a. election worry) may have negative physical health implications for the U.S. population. We assessed the prospective association between worry about the 2020 presidential election and new onset physical health ailments over the subsequent 3 years in a nationally representative U.S. sample (N = 4,311) and examined differences by political identity. Our longitudinal cohort study used the probability-based NORC AmeriSpeak Panel. Baseline physician-diagnosed mental and physical health conditions, smoking, political identity, and demographics were assessed pre-2020, with new-onset physical health ailments (e.g., heart problems, cancer, stroke) reassessed in Spring 2022 and Summer 2023. Election worry was measured in September–October 2020; political identity and demographics were updated Fall 2021. Adjusting for demographics, baseline health conditions, smoking, health insurance coverage, and prior mental health diagnosis, each one-unit increase in 2020 election worry was associated with 12% higher odds of developing any new-onset physical health ailments (OR = 1.12, 95% CI[1.01, 1.24], p = .026) over the subsequent 3 years. This association was significantly stronger for Republicans compared to Democrats (OR = 1.28, 95% CI[1.01, 1.62], p = .038). These findings suggest that election worry may be a social determinant of health with measurable physical health consequences, particularly among those whose political party loses the election. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for developing interventions to mitigate the health impacts of political stress in an increasingly polarized society. 

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5. A minimal sequence motif drives selective tRNA dihydrouridylation by hDUS2

   https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.04.565616  

   Ji, Jingwei; Yu, Nathan J; Kleiner, Ralph E (November 2023, bioRxiv)

   ABSTRACT The post-transcriptional reduction of uridine to dihydrouridine (D) by dihydrouridine synthase (DUS) enzymes is among the most ubiquitous transformations in RNA biology. D is found at multiple sites in tRNAs and studies in yeast have proposed that each of the four eukaryotic DUS enzymes modifies a different site, however the molecular basis for this exquisite selectivity is unknown and human DUS enzymes have remained largely uncharacterized. Here we investigate the substrate specificity of human dihydrouridine synthase 2 (hDUS2) using mechanism-based crosslinking with 5-bromouridine (5-BrUrd)-modified oligonucleotide probes andin vitrodihydrouridylation assays. We find that hDUS2 modifies U20 in the D loop of diverse tRNA substrates and identify a minimal GU motif within the tRNA tertiary fold required for directing its activity. Further, we use our mechanism-based platform to screen small molecule inhibitors of hDUS2, a potential anti-cancer target. Our work elucidates the principles of substrate modification by a conserved DUS and provides a general platform to studying RNA modifying enzymes with sequence-defined activity-based probes. 

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