A high-speed circuit architecture for IR-UWB transmission of fast-scan cyclic voltammetry in 0.35 εm CMOS.

This paper reports on the design of a high-speed circuit for impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) transmission of 16-channel neurochemical activity recorded using 300-V/s fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV). Simulated in a low-cost 0.35-εm standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, the circuit generates 3(rd)-derivative Gaussian pulses with sub-nanosecond duration, which are highpass filtered externally using a 4(th)-order Butterworth filter before feeding to an off-chip UWB antenna. The power spectral density (PSD) achieves a peak emission frequency of 4.6 GHz with a 2.3-GHz bandwidth (-10 dB), and is fully compliant with the UWB emission mask. The energy efficiency in pulse generation is 161.7 pJ/pulse that leads to a power consumption of 4.85 mW from 3.3 V for a data rate of 15 Mbps, when two pulses are used to transmit a single data bit.

Chronic pain after spinal cord injury: results of a long-term study.

OBJECTIVE: Chronic pain after spinal cord injury (SCI) is a common and considerable complication and may continue for a long time. DESIGN: During a 2-year survey, 13.9 +/- 3.0 years after injury, a total of 1,295 war-related spinal cord injury survivors were thoroughly examined by physical and rehabilitation specialists and all relevant data, consisting of type and site of pain as well as exacerbating or palliative factors, were recorded. PATIENTS: The mean age of the survivors was 35.9 +/- 7.2; 98.5% were male and 1.5% were female. The level of injury was cervical in 9.3%, thoracic in 67%, and lumbosacral in 23.7%, with 8.1% tetraplegic and 89.1% paraplegic. About 89.8% had complete spinal cord injuries and 10.2% had incomplete spinal cord injuries, based on sensory and motor testing. RESULTS: Spinal cord related pain was reported in 64.9% of the subjects; 8.8% reported a history of pain but had no complaint at the time of examination, and 26.3% had never suffered from any pain. Patients suffering from lumbar spinal cord injury reported the highest percent of pain perception, with pain detected in 83.5% of these patients. Common sites of reported pain were the distal lower extremities (46.5%), proximal lower extremities (40.9%), pelvic girdle (24.5%), and upper limbs (5.7%). CONCLUSION: Spinal cord injury-related pain interferes with daily activities of patients and significantly influences their quality of life.