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Motion Sickness is associated with a variety of symptoms, which differ in occurrence rate and intensity between individuals. In order to research the cause of car sickness and develop countermeasures, it is important to determine symptoms and their severity objectively. A tool for this purpose could be the assessment of physiological reactions due to motion sickness. This paper describes and discusses a methodology to identify changes in facial skin temperatures in a real-driving study. Common techniques had to be adjusted in order to meet the requirements given by the challenges of in-car-recording. The examined data was generated in a previous study, which was designed to research motion sickness in a driving environment. A pre-processing technique had to be developed to magnify features on the face and subsequently improve the tracking in thermal imagery. After the pre-processing, regions of interest (ROI) were manually marked and tracked in thermal images. The thereby assessed facial skin temperatures were compared to tympanic temperatures. Derived temperatures from the forehead as well as from the 20 hottest pixels within the face indicated a better tracking, while the nose tip was more affected by detection errors. The correlation of the three features with the tympanic temperature showed remarkable differences between a baseline measurement and the actual driving. Less than 10% of the data derived during the driving and up to 30% of the data during the baseline measurement correlated highly. It is concluded that detecting changes in facial skin temperature using thermal infrared imaging in a moving car is challenging and results are hardly comparable to tympanic temperatures. Future research should aim at the different influencing factors of skin and tympanic temperature, while enhancing tracking or detection of ROI could be achieved by reducing the passengers’ movements or choosing the target area more carefully.

OBJECTIVE To assess the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the T-cadherin (CDH13) gene with metabolic syndrome (MS) among ethnic Han Chinese.METHODS Genotypes of 6 SNPs(rs11646213, rs12596316, rs3865188, rs12444338, rs12051272, and rs7195409) of the CDH13 gene among 453 patients with MS and 526 controls were determined with a TaqMan method, and their association with MS was assessed. RESULTS For 5 SNPs (rs11646213, rs3865188, rs12444338, rs12051272, and rs7195409), no difference was found in allelic and genotypic frequencies of the CDH13 gene between the two groups. Comparing with rs12596316 (AA+GG) genotype, rs12596316 AG genotype has significantly increased the risk of MS(P = 0.01,OR = 1.38,95%CI: 1.07-1.78), though no association was found between particular alleles of the rs12596316 with MS.There was no difference in the frequencies of rs11646213-rs12596316-rs3865188-rs12444338-rs12051272 haplotype between the two groups(P0.05). CONCLUSION No association was found between the five SNPs (rs11646213, rs3865188, rs12444338, rs12051272 and rs7195409) of the CDH13 gene with the MS, while the rs12596316AG genotype of the CDH13 gene is associated with the susceptibility to MS among ethnic Han Chinese.

Several studies indicate that plasma adiponectin levels are associated with the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) or T2DM risk factors in diverse populations. In addition to the adiponectin gene, several other genes have been postulated to influence plasma adiponectin levels. In this study, we investigated two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), rs4311394 and rs4783244, located intronically in the ADP-ribosylation factor-like protein 15 (ARL15) and the T-cadherin (CDH13) genes, respectively. These SNPs were detected in a Han Chinese population using a TaqMan assay and evaluated for association with T2DM as well as with individual metabolic traits. Allele frequencies for rs4311394 were significantly different in T2DM and nondiabetes (NDM) groups (χ² = 4.49, P = 0.034). However, neither allele nor genotype frequencies for rs4783244 were associated with T2DM (χ² = 0.33, P = 0.56 and χ² = 2.35, P = 0.31 respectively). The SNPs did not exhibit significant association with individual metabolic traits in the T2DM and NDM groups. Our results indicated that the G allele of the rs4311394 might be a susceptibility factor for T2DM in the Han Chinese population (odds ratio: 1.20; 95% confidence interval: 1.01-1.41).

Recently, many studies have reported that the SNP+45(T>G) and SNP+276(G>T) polymorphisms in the adiponectin gene are associated with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in the Chinese Han population. However, the previous studies yielded many conflicting results. Thus, a meta-analysis of the association of the adiponectin gene with T2DM in the Chinese Han population is required. In the current study, we first determined the distribution of the adiponectin SNP+276 polymorphism in T2DM and nondiabetes (NDM) control groups. Our results suggested that the genotype and allele frequencies for SNP+276 did not differ significantly between the T2DM and NDM groups. Then, a meta-analysis of 23 case-control studies of SNP+45, with a total of 4161 T2DM patients and 3709 controls, and 11 case-control studies of SNP+276, with 2533 T2DM patients and 2212 controls, was performed. All subjects were Han Chinese. The fixed-effects model and random-effects model were applied for dichotomous outcomes to combine the results of the included studies. The results revealed a trend towards an increased risk of T2DM for the SNP+45G allele as compared with the SNP+45T allele (OR = 1.34; 95% CI, 1.11-1.62; P