articles+ search results

In a world grappling with environmental challenges and the need for sustainable manufacturing practices, the convergence of 3D printing and recycling emerges as a promising solution. This research paper explores the potential of combining these two technologies and comprehensively analyses their synergistic effects. The study delves into the printability of recycled materials, evaluating their suitability for 3D printing and comparing their performance with conventional materials. The environmental impact of 3D printing with recycled materials is examined through a sustainability analysis and a life cycle assessment of recycled 3D printed objects. The findings reveal significant benefits, including enhanced resource efficiency, waste reduction, and customisation possibilities. The research also identifies challenges and opportunities for scaling up the use of recycled materials in 3D printing, highlighting the importance of collaboration, innovation, and regulations. With potential applications spanning various industries, from prototyping to construction and healthcare, the implications of this research are far-reaching. By embracing sustainable practices, industry collaboration, and innovation, the integration of 3D printing and recycling can pave the way for a more sustainable future, where resource conservation, circularity, and customised production are at the forefront of manufacturing.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing for financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: The reproducibility of scientific reports is crucial to advancing human knowledge. This paper is a summary of our experience in replicating a balanced SSFP half-radial dual-echo imaging technique (bSTAR) using open-source frameworks as a response to the 2023 ISMRM "repeat it with me" Challenge.
Methods: We replicated the bSTAR technique for thoracic imaging at 0.55T. The bSTAR pulse sequence is implemented in Pulseq, a vendor neutral open-source rapid sequence prototyping environment. Image reconstruction is performed with the open-source Berkeley Advanced Reconstruction Toolbox (BART). The replication of bSTAR, termed open-source bSTAR, is tested by replicating several figures from the published literature. Original bSTAR, using the pulse sequence and image reconstruction developed by the original authors, and open-source bSTAR, with pulse sequence and image reconstruction developed in this work, were performed in healthy volunteers.
Results: Both echo images obtained from open-source bSTAR contain no visible artifacts and show identical spatial resolution and image quality to those in the published literature. A direct head-to-head comparison between open-source bSTAR and original bSTAR on a healthy volunteer indicates that open-source bSTAR provides adequate SNR, spatial resolution, level of artifacts, and conspicuity of pulmonary vessels comparable to original bSTAR.
Conclusion: We have successfully replicated bSTAR lung imaging at 0.55T using two open-source frameworks. Full replication of a research method solely relying on information on a research paper is unfortunately rare in research, but our success gives greater confidence that a research methodology can be indeed replicated as described.
(© 2023 The Authors. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.)

Reactive Oxygen Species, Printing, Three-Dimensional, Polyesters, Acrylates, Methacrylates, and Chlorella vulgaris

3D printing represents a key enabling technology in designing photobioreactors. It allows rapid prototyping of complex geometries at an affordable price. Yet, no study dealt with the biocompatibility of 3D printing material with microalgae. Thus microalga Chlorella vulgaris was cultivated in contact with different 3D printing materials (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styren - ABS, PolyCarbonate Blend - PC-Blend, PolyLactic acid - PLA, and acrylate methacrylate resin). Cell status was analyzed using flow cytometry, fluorometry, and pigment profiling. Results revealed that acrylate methacrylate resin material inhibits growth, a constant rise in intracellular reactive oxygen species, and a decrease in photosynthetic apparatus functioning. On the contrary, ABS, PC-Blend, and PLA led to nominal perfromances. Nevertheless, PLA was the only material that did not induce an early onset of intracellular reactive oxygen species. Therefore, resin can be ruled out as photobioreactor material, ABS and PC-Blend could be used after a curation period, and PLA induces no detectable perturbations by the means used in this study.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Humans, Cemeteries, and Cremation history

The cremation has been documented since prehistoric times and it was a common funerary custom until the advent of Catholicism. Falling into disuse, during XVII-XVIII centuries there were new movements to bring it back according to modern criteria, mainly due to hygienic reasons and cemeteries overcrowding. This also led to the prototyping of new crematory ovens to improve the ancient open-air pyre. Lodovico Brunetti was the first to carry out a crematory experimental research in the modern countries. Since Brunetti's studies were based on the study of ancient cremations, a comparison with a modern experience of reconstruction of archaeological cremation is presented to evaluate the validity of his crematorium oven. Furthermore, the social and religious aspects related to Brunetti's inventions and the revitalization of cremation shows how tools and technologies and also the cultural environment have evolved over the years, effectively accepting the cremation practice as an alternative to inhumation.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Humans, Child, Child, Preschool, Carbon Dioxide, Ventilators, Mechanical, Monitoring, Physiologic methods, Respiration, Artificial methods, and Home Care Services

Introduction: Outpatient monitoring of children using invasive home mechanical ventilation (IHMV) is recommended, but access to care can be difficult. This study tested if remote (home-based) data collection was feasible and acceptable in chronic IHMV management.
Methods: A codesign study was conducted with an IHMV program, home nurses, and English- and Spanish-speaking parent-guardians of children using IHMV (0-17 years; n = 19). After prototyping, parents used a remote patient monitoring (RPM) bundle to collect patient heart rate, respiratory rate (RR), oxygen saturation, end-tidal carbon dioxide (EtCO 2 ), and ventilator pressure/volume over 8 weeks. User feedback was analyzed using qualitative methods and the System Usability Scale (SUS). Expected marginal mean differences within patient measures when awake, asleep, or after a break were calculated using mixed effects models.
Results: Patients were a median 2.9 years old and 11 (58%) took breaks off the ventilator. RPM data were entered on a mean of 83.7% (SD ± 29.1%) weeks. SUS scores were 84.8 (SD ± 10.5) for nurses and 91.8 (SD ± 10.1) for parents. Over 90% of parents agreed/strongly agreed that RPM data collection was feasible and relevant to their child's care. Within-patient comparisons revealed that EtCO 2 (break-vs-asleep 2.55 mmHg, d = 0.79 [0.42-1.15], p < .001; awake-vs-break 1.48, d = -0.49 [0.13-0.84], p = .02) and RR (break-vs-asleep 16.14, d = 2.12 [1.71-2.53], p < .001; awake-vs-break 3.44, d = 0.45 [0.10-0.04], p = .03) were significantly higher during ventilator breaks.
Conclusions: RPM data collection in children with IHMV was feasible, acceptable, and captured clinically meaningful vital sign changes during ventilator breaks, supporting the clinical utility of RPM in IHMV management.
(© 2023 The Authors. Pediatric Pulmonology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Humans, Feasibility Studies, Sports, Exercise, Sedentary Behavior, and Health Promotion

Aim: This paper describes the design of the 'Move More' study, which aims to develop and assess the feasibility of a social-prescribing intervention to increase physical activity among physically inactive Danes.
Background: Physical inactivity constitutes a public-health challenge in Denmark. Social prescribing may be a promising tool to tackle physical inactivity by linking physical activity support from general practitioners with community-based activities in sports clubs, as this may help physically inactive citizens become more physically active. Given the range of stakeholders and behaviours required for social prescribing of physical activity, an intervention that harnesses this approach may constitute a complex intervention. The methods and decisions made in the stages of developing complex interventions are seldom reported. The present study enabled us to describe how co-creation can be used in a pragmatic development process for a complex intervention that considers the needs of stakeholders and the conditions of the delivery context.
Methods: The study is based on the core elements of the development and feasibility phases of the Medical Research Council Framework for Developing and Evaluating Complex Interventions. Additionally, it is informed by a framework for the co-creation and prototyping of public-health interventions, drawing from a scoping review, stakeholder consultations and co-creation workshops. Ultimately, a feasibility study will be conducted to refine the programme theory by introducing the proposed intervention in case studies.
Perspectives: The study will result in a prototype intervention manual and recommendations for implementation of an adapted social-prescribing intervention targeting physical inactivity in Denmark.
Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Female, Humans, Pilot Projects, Endoscopes, Fallopian Tubes, Ovarian Neoplasms diagnostic imaging, and Ovarian Neoplasms pathology

Significance: High grade serous ovarian cancer is the most deadly gynecological cancer, and it is now believed that most cases originate in the fallopian tubes (FTs). Early detection of ovarian cancer could double the 5-year survival rate compared with late-stage diagnosis. Autofluorescence imaging can detect serous-origin precancerous and cancerous lesions in ex vivo FT and ovaries with good sensitivity and specificity. Multispectral fluorescence imaging (MFI) can differentiate healthy, benign, and malignant ovarian and FT tissues. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) reveals subsurface microstructural information and can distinguish normal and cancerous structure in ovaries and FTs.
Aim: We developed an FT endoscope, the falloposcope, as a method for detecting ovarian cancer with MFI and OCT. The falloposcope clinical prototype was tested in a pilot study with 12 volunteers to date to evaluate the safety and feasibility of FT imaging prior to standard of care salpingectomy in normal-risk volunteers. In this manuscript, we describe the multiple modifications made to the falloposcope to enhance robustness, usability, and image quality based on lessons learned in the clinical setting.
Approach: The ∼ 0.8    mm diameter falloposcope was introduced via a minimally invasive approach through a commercially available hysteroscope and introducing a catheter. A navigation video, MFI, and OCT of human FTs were obtained. Feedback from stakeholders on image quality and procedural difficulty was obtained.
Results: The falloposcope successfully obtained images in vivo . Considerable feedback was obtained, motivating iterative improvements, including accommodating the operating room environment, modifying the hysteroscope accessories, decreasing endoscope fragility and fiber breaks, optimizing software, improving fiber bundle images, decreasing gradient-index lens stray light, optimizing the proximal imaging system, and improving the illumination.
Conclusions: The initial clinical prototype falloposcope was able to image the FTs, and iterative prototyping has increased its robustness, functionality, and ease of use for future trials.
(© 2023 The Authors.)

Humans, Computer Simulation, User-Computer Interface, Clinical Competence, Spinal Puncture, and Students, Medical

Background: Lumbar puncture is an essential medical procedure whose objective is to obtain cerebrospinal fluid. Lumbar puncture is considered a complex procedure, mainly for novice residents who suffer from stress and low confidence, which may result in harm to the patient.
Methods: The LPVirSim, has been developed in four stages: i) requirements analysis through user-centred design; ii) prototyping of the virtual environment and the haptic component; iii) preliminary tests with Ph.D. students and physicians using two haptic devices (Omega.7 and Sigma.7); iv) a user study where physicians evaluated the usability and user experience.
Results: The LPVirSim integrates non-technical skills and the possibility of representing different patients for training. Usability increased from 61.76 to 68.75 in the preliminary tests to 71.43 in the user study.
Conclusions: All the results showed good usability and demonstrated that the simulator arouses interest and realistically represents a Lumbar puncture, through the force and visual feedback.
(© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Caregivers play a critical role in the treatment and recovery of youth and young adults at risk for psychosis. Caregivers often report feeling isolated, overwhelmed, and lacking in resources. Mobile health (mHealth) has the potential to provide scalable, accessible, and in-the-moment support to caregivers. To date, few if any mHealth resources have been developed specifically for this population.
Objective: The aim of this study was to conduct user-centered design and testing of an mHealth intervention to support early psychosis caregivers.
Methods: We conducted a multiphase user-centered development process to develop the Bolster mobile app. In phase 1, a total of 21 caregivers were recruited to participate in a qualitative needs assessment and respond to an initial prototype of the Bolster platform. Content analysis was used to identify key needs and design objectives, which guided the development of the Bolster mobile app. In phase 2, a total of 11 caregivers were recruited to participate in a 1-week field trial wherein they provided qualitative and quantitative feedback regarding the usability and acceptability of Bolster; in addition, they provided baseline and posttest assessments of the measures of distress, illness appraisals, and family communication.
Results: In phase 1, participants identified psychoeducation, communication coaching, a guide to seeking services, and support for coping as areas to address. Live prototype interaction sessions led to multiple design objectives, including ensuring that messages from the platform were actionable and tailored to the caregiver experience, delivering messages in multiple modalities (eg, video and text), and eliminating a messaging-style interface. These conclusions were used to develop the final version of Bolster tested in the field trial. In phase 2, of the 11 caregivers, 10 (91%) reported that they would use Bolster if they had access to it and would recommend it to another caregiver. They also reported marked changes in their appraisals of illness (Cohen d=0.55-0.68), distress (Cohen d=1.77), and expressed emotion (Cohen d=0.52).
Conclusions: To our knowledge, this study is the first to design an mHealth intervention specifically for early psychosis caregivers. Preliminary data suggest that Bolster is usable, acceptable, and promising to improve key targets and outcomes. A future fully powered clinical trial will help determine whether mHealth can reduce caregiver burdens and increase engagement in services among individuals affected by psychosis.
(©Benjamin Buck, Mary Wingerson, Erica Whiting, Jaime Snyder, Maria Monroe-DeVita, Dror Ben-Zeev. Originally published in JMIR Mental Health (https://mental.jmir.org), 30.11.2023.)

Background: Medical three-dimensional (3D) printing has demonstrated utility and value in anatomic models for vascular conditions. A writing group composed of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) Special Interest Group on 3D Printing (3DPSIG) provides appropriateness recommendations for vascular 3D printing indications.
Methods: A structured literature search was conducted to identify all relevant articles using 3D printing technology associated with vascular indications. Each study was vetted by the authors and strength of evidence was assessed according to published appropriateness ratings.
Results: Evidence-based recommendations for when 3D printing is appropriate are provided for the following areas: aneurysm, dissection, extremity vascular disease, other arterial diseases, acute venous thromboembolic disease, venous disorders, lymphedema, congenital vascular malformations, vascular trauma, vascular tumors, visceral vasculature for surgical planning, dialysis access, vascular research/development and modeling, and other vasculopathy. Recommendations are provided in accordance with strength of evidence of publications corresponding to each vascular condition combined with expert opinion from members of the 3DPSIG.
Conclusion: This consensus appropriateness ratings document, created by the members of the 3DPSIG, provides an updated reference for clinical standards of 3D printing for the care of patients with vascular conditions.
(© 2023. The Author(s).)

Microfluidic 3D cell culture devices that enable the recapitulation of key aspects of organ structures and functions in vivo represent a promising preclinical platform to improve translational success during drug discovery. Essential to these engineered devices is the spatial patterning of cells from different tissue types within a confined microenvironment. Traditional fabrication strategies lack the scalability, cost-effectiveness, and rapid prototyping capabilities required for industrial applications, especially for processes involving thermoplastic materials. Here, an approach to pattern fluid guides inside microchannels is introduced by establishing differential hydrophilicity using pressure-sensitive adhesives as masks and a subsequent selective coating with a biocompatible polymer. Optimal coating conditions are identified using polyvinylpyrrolidone, which resulted in rapid and consistent hydrogel flow in both the open-chip prototype and the fully bonded device containing additional features for medium perfusion. The suitability of the device for dynamic 3D cell culture is tested by growing human hepatocytes in the device under controlled fluid flow for a 14-day period. Additionally, the study demonstrated the potential of using the device for pharmaceutical high-throughput screening applications, such as predicting drug-induced liver injury. The approach offers a facile strategy of rapid prototyping thermoplastic microfluidic organ chips with varying geometries, microstructures, and substrate materials.
(© 2023 The Authors. Advanced Science published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Serious games are an emerging tool for teaching and learning within medical education. These games can be used to facilitate learning or to demonstrate complex concepts in short bursts of interactive learning. This educator's blueprint will provide 10 strategies for creating a serious game, focusing on card and board games. These strategies include creating a project charter; determining the nature of the game; establishing game mechanics; selecting the best medium; prototyping and playtesting; reviewing sensitivity to equity, diversity, and inclusion; reviewing and refining content; funding game development, manufacture, and distribution; marketing and publicizing the game; and future-proofing the game. This blueprint hopes to help aspiring serious game designers and educators to conceptualize the steps for successfully creating a new serious game for medical education.
(© 2023 The Authors. AEM Education and Training published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.)

3D printing allows for moldless fabrication of continuous fiber composites with high design freedom and low manufacturing cost per part, which makes it particularly well-suited for rapid prototyping and composite product development. Compared to thermal-curable resins, UV-curable resins enable the 3D printing of composites with high fiber content and faster manufacturing speeds. However, the printed composites exhibit low mechanical strength and weak interfacial bonding for high-performance engineering applications. In addition, they are typically not reprocessable or repairable; if they could be, it would dramatically benefit the rapid prototyping of composite products with improved durability, reliability, cost savings, and streamlined workflow. In this study, we demonstrate that the recently emerged two-stage UV-curable resin is an ideal material candidate to tackle these grand challenges in 3D printing of thermoset composites with continuous carbon fiber. The resin consists primarily of acrylate monomers and crosslinkers with exchangeable covalent bonds. During the printing process, composite filaments containing up to 30.9% carbon fiber can be rapidly deposited and solidified through UV irradiation. After printing, the printed composites are subjected to post-heating. Their mechanical stiffness, strength, and inter-filament bonding are significantly enhanced due to the bond exchange reactions within the thermoset matrix. Furthermore, the utilization of the two-stage curable resin enables the repair, reshaping, and recycling of 3D printed thermosetting composites. This study represents the first detailed study to explore the benefits of using two-stage UV curable resins for composite printing. The fundamental understanding could potentially be extended to other types of two-stage curable resins with different molecular mechanisms.

Background: Clinicians often report that their own anxiety and low self-efficacy inhibit their use of evidence-based suicide prevention practices, including gold-standard screening and brief interventions. Exposure therapy to reduce clinician maladaptive anxiety and bolster self-efficacy use is a compelling but untested approach to improving the implementation of suicide prevention evidence-based practices (EBPs). This project brings together an interdisciplinary team to leverage decades of research on behavior change from exposure theory to design and pilot test an exposure-based implementation strategy (EBIS) to target clinician anxiety to improve suicide prevention EBP implementation.
Methods: We will develop, iteratively refine, and pilot test an EBIS paired with implementation as usual (IAU; didactic training and consultation) in preparation for a larger study of the effect of this strategy on reducing clinician anxiety, improving self-efficacy, and increasing use of the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale and the Safety Planning Intervention in outpatient mental health settings. Aim 1 of this study is to use participatory design methods to develop and refine the EBIS in collaboration with a stakeholder advisory board. Aim 2 is to iteratively refine the EBIS with up to 15 clinicians in a pilot field test using rapid cycle prototyping. Aim 3 is to test the refined EBIS in a pilot implementation trial. Forty community mental health clinicians will be randomized 1:1 to receive either IAU or IAU + EBIS for 12 weeks. Our primary outcomes are EBIS acceptability and feasibility, measured through questionnaires, interviews, and recruitment and retention statistics. Secondary outcomes are the engagement of target implementation mechanisms (clinician anxiety and self-efficacy related to implementation) and preliminary effectiveness of EBIS on implementation outcomes (adoption and fidelity) assessed via mixed methods (questionnaires, chart-stimulated recall, observer-coded role plays, and interviews).
Discussion: Outcomes from this study will yield insight into the feasibility and utility of directly targeting clinician anxiety and self-efficacy as mechanistic processes informing the implementation of suicide prevention EBPs. Results will inform a fully powered hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial to test EBIS' effect on implementation and patient outcomes.
Trial Registration: Clinical Trials Registration Number: NCT05172609 . Registered on 12/29/2021.
(© 2023. The Author(s).)

A revolutionary shift in healthcare has been sparked by the development of 3D printing, propelling us into an era replete with boundless opportunities for personalized DDS (Drug Delivery Systems). Precise control of the kinetics of drug release can be achieved through 3D printing, improving treatment efficacy and patient compliance. Additionally, 3D printing facilitates the co-administration of multiple drugs, simplifying treatment regimens. The technology offers rapid prototyping and manufacturing capabilities, reducing development timelines and costs. The seamless integration of advanced algorithms and artificial neural networks (ANN) augments the precision and efficacy of 3D printing, propelling us toward the forefront of personalized medicine. This comprehensive review delves into the regulatory frontiers governing 3D printable drug delivery systems, with an emphasis on adhering to rigorous safety protocols to ensure the well-being of patients by leveraging the latest advancements in 3D printing technologies powered by artificial intelligence. The paradigm promises superior therapeutic outcomes and optimized medication experiences and sets the stage for an immersive future within the Metaverse, wherein healthcare seamlessly converges with virtual environments to unlock unparalleled possibilities for personalized treatments.
(Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)

Droplet generation is a fundamental component of droplet microfluidics, compartmentalizing biological or chemical systems within a water-in-oil emulsion. As adoption of droplet microfluidics expands beyond expert labs or integrated devices, quality metrics are needed to contextualize the performance capabilities, improving the reproducibility and efficiency of operation. Here, we present two quality metrics for droplet generation: performance versatility, the operating range of a single device, and stability, the distance of a single operating point from a regime change. Both metrics were characterized in silico and validated experimentally using machine learning and rapid prototyping. These metrics were integrated into a design automation workflow, DAFD 2.0, which provides users with droplet generators of a desired performance that are versatile or flow stable. Versatile droplet generators with stable operating points accelerate the development of sophisticated devices by facilitating integration of other microfluidic components and improving the accuracy of design automation tools.

This study combines machine learning (ML) and high-throughput calculations to uncover new ternary electrides in the A 2 BC 2 phases, density functional theory calculations were used to compute the maximum value of the electron localization function, indicating that 42 are potential electrides. A model was then trained on this data set and used to predict the electride behavior of 14,437 hypothetical compounds generated by structural prototyping. Then, the stability and electride features of the 1254 electride candidates predicted by the model were carefully checked by high-throughput calculations. Through this tiered approach, 41 stable and 104 metastable new P 4/ mbm space group. Starting from a library of 214 known A 2 BC 2 phases, density functional theory calculations were used to compute the maximum value of the electron localization function, indicating that 42 are potential electrides. A model was then trained on this data set and used to predict the electride behavior of 14,437 hypothetical compounds generated by structural prototyping. Then, the stability and electride features of the 1254 electride candidates predicted by the model were carefully checked by high-throughput calculations. Through this tiered approach, 41 stable and 104 metastable new A 2 BC 2 electrides were predicted. Interestingly, all three kinds of electrides, i.e., electron-deficient, electron-neutral, and electron-rich electrides, are present in the set of predicted compounds. Three of the most promising new electrides (two electron-rich, Nd 2 ScSi 2 and La 2 YbGe 2 , and one electron-deficient Y 2 LiSi 2 ) were then successfully synthesized and characterized experimentally. Furthermore, the synthesized electrides were found to exhibit high catalytic activities for NH 3 synthesis under mild conditions when Ru-loaded. The electron-deficient Y 2 LiSi 2 , in particular, was seen to exhibit a good balance of catalytic activity and chemical stability, suggesting its future application in catalysis.

Surgical site infections (SSIs) may result from surgical procedures requiring a secondary administration of drugs at site or systemically in treating the infection. Drug-eluting sutures containing antimicrobial agents symbolise a latent strategy that precludes a secondary drug administration. It also offers the possibility of delivering a myriad of therapeutic agents to a localised wound site to effect analgesia, anti-inflammation, or the deployment of proteins useful for wound healing. Further, the use of biodegradable drug-eluting sutures eliminates the need for implanting foreign material into the wound, which needs to be removed after healing. In this review, we expound on recent trends in the manufacture of drug-eluting sutures with a focus on the hot-melt extrusion (HME) technique. HME provides a solvent-free, continuous one-step manufacturing conduit for drug-eluting sutures, hence, there is no drying step, which can be detrimental to the drug or suture threads and, thus, environmentally friendly. There is the possibility of combining the technology with additive manufacturing platforms to generate personalised drug-loaded implantable devices through prototyping and scalability. The review also highlights key material requirements for fabricating drug-eluting sutures by HME, as well as quality attributes. Finally, a preview of emerging drug-eluting sutures and advocacy for harmonisation of quality assurance by regulatory authorities that permits quality evaluation of novelty sutures is presented.

Genetic component assembly is key in the simulation and implementation of genetic circuits. Automating this process, thus accelerating prototyping, is a necessity. We present pyBrick-DNA, a software written in Python, that assembles components for the construction of genetic circuits. pyBrick-DNA (colab.pyBrick.com) is a user-friendly environment where scientists can select genetic sequences or input custom sequences to build genetic assemblies. All components are modularly fused to generate a ready-to-go single DNA fragment. It includes Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and plant gene-editing components. Hence, pyBrick-DNA can generate a functional CRISPR construct composed of a single-guided RNA integrated with Cas9, promoters, and terminator elements. The outcome is a DNA sequence, along with a graphical representation, composed of user-selected genetic parts, ready to be synthesized and cloned in vivo. Moreover, the sequence can be exported as a GenBank file allowing its use with other synthetic biology tools.

Bone regeneration is a critical and intricate process vital for healing fractures, defects, and injuries. Although conventional bone grafts are commonly used, they may fall short of optimal outcomes, thereby driving the need for alternative therapies. This research endeavors to explore synergistically designed Hyalo Glass Gel (HGG), and its explicitly for bone tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The HGG composite comprises a modifiable calcium-based bioactive phosphosilicates-incorporated/crosslinked gelatin-hyaluronic scaffold showcasing promising functional characteristics. The study underscores the distinct attributes of each constituent (gelatin (Gel), hyaluronic acid (HA), and 45S5 calcium sodium phosphosilicates (BG)), and their cooperative influences on the scaffold's performance. Careful manipulation of crosslinking methods facilitates customization of HGG's mechanical attributes, degradation kinetics, and structural features, aligning them with the requisites of bone tissue engineering applications. Moreover, the integration of BG augments the scaffold's bioactivity, thereby expediting tissue regenerative processes. This comprehensive evaluation encompasses HGG's physicochemical aspects, mechanical traits rooted in viscoelasticity, as well as its biodegradability, in-vitro bioactivity, and interactions with stem cells. The result obtained underscores the viscoelastic nature of HGG, substantiating its capacity to foster mesenchymal stem cell viability, proliferation, and differentiation. Significantly, HGG manifests biocompatibility and adjustable attributes, exhibits pronounced drug (vancomycin) retention abilities, rendering it apt for wound healing, drug delivery, and bone regeneration. Its distinctive composition, tailored attributes, and mimicry of bone tissue's extracellular matrix (ECM) due to its bioactive nature, collectively situate its potential as a versatile biomaterial for subsequent research and development endeavors with compelling prospects in bone tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

A focused ion beam scanning electron microscope (FIB-SEM) is a powerful tool that is routinely used for scale imaging from the micro- to nanometer scales, micromachining, prototyping, and metrology. In spite of the significant capabilities of a FIB-SEM, there are inherent artefacts (e.g., structural defects, chemical interactions and phase changes, ion implantation, and material redeposition) that are produced due to the interaction of Ga + or other types of ions (e.g., Xe + , Ar + , O + , etc.) with the sample. In this study, we analyzed lattice distortion and ion implantation and subsequent material redeposition in metallic micropillars which were prepared using plasma focus ion beam (PFIB) milling. We utilized non-destructive synchrotron techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray nanodiffraction to examine the micropillars prepared using Xe + ion energies of 10 keV and 30 keV. Our results demonstrate that higher Xe ion energy leads to higher density of implanted ions within the redeposited and milled material. The mixing of ions in the redeposited material significantly influences the lattice structure, causing deformation in regions with higher ion concentrations. Through an X-ray nanodiffraction analysis, we obtained numerical measurements of the strain fields induced in the regions, which revealed up to 0.2% lattice distortion in the ion bombardment direction.

Background: Risk identification and communication tools have the potential to improve health care by supporting clinician-patient or family discussion of treatment risks and benefits and helping patients make more informed decisions; however, they have yet to be tailored to pediatric surgery. User-centered design principles can help to ensure the successful development and uptake of health care tools.
Objective: We aimed to develop and evaluate the usability of an easy-to-use tool to communicate a child's risk of postoperative pain to improve informed and collaborative preoperative decision-making between clinicians and families.
Methods: With research ethics board approval, we conducted web-based co-design sessions with clinicians and family participants (people with lived surgical experience and parents of children who had recently undergone a surgical or medical procedure) at a tertiary pediatric hospital. Qualitative data from these sessions were analyzed thematically using NVivo (Lumivero) to identify design requirements to inform the iterative redesign of an existing prototype. We then evaluated the usability of our final prototype in one-to-one sessions with a new group of participants, in which we measured mental workload with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Task Load Index (TLX) and user satisfaction with the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ).
Results: A total of 12 participants (8 clinicians and 4 family participants) attended 5 co-design sessions. The 5 requirements were identified: (A) present risk severity descriptively and visually; (B) ensure appearance and navigation are user-friendly; (C) frame risk identification and mitigation strategies in positive terms; (D) categorize and describe risks clearly; and (E) emphasize collaboration and effective communication. A total of 12 new participants (7 clinicians and 5 family participants) completed a usability evaluation. Tasks were completed quickly (range 5-17 s) and accurately (range 11/12, 92% to 12/12, 100%), needing only 2 requests for assistance. The median (IQR) NASA TLX performance score of 78 (66-89) indicated that participants felt able to perform the required tasks, and an overall PSSUQ score of 2.1 (IQR 1.5-2.7) suggested acceptable user satisfaction with the tool.
Conclusions: The key design requirements were identified, and that guided the prototype redesign, which was positively evaluated during usability testing. Implementing a personalized risk communication tool into pediatric surgery can enhance the care process and improve informed and collaborative presurgical preparation and decision-making between clinicians and families of pediatric patients.
(©Michael D Wood, Nicholas C West, Christina Fokkens, Ying Chen, Kent C Loftsgard, Krystal Cardinal, Simon D Whyte, Elodie Portales-Casamar, Matthias Görges. Originally published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting (https://pediatrics.jmir.org), 17.11.2023.)

Developing practical quantum technologies will require the exquisite manipulation of fragile systems in a robust and repeatable way. As quantum technologies move toward real world applications, from biological sensing to communication in space, increasing experimental complexity introduces constraints that can be alleviated by the introduction of new technologies. Robotics has shown tremendous progress in realizing increasingly smart, autonomous, and highly dexterous machines. Here, a robotic arm equipped with a magnet is demonstrated to sensitize an NV center quantum magnetometer in challenging conditions unachievable with standard techniques. Vector magnetic fields are generated with 1° angular and 0.1 mT amplitude accuracy and determine the orientation of a single stochastically-aligned spin-based sensor in a constrained physical environment. This work opens up the prospect of integrating robotics across many quantum degrees of freedom in constrained settings, allowing for increased prototyping speed, control, and robustness in quantum technology applications.
(© 2023 The Authors. Advanced Science published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Humans, Gold chemistry, Silk chemistry, and Nanostructures chemistry

Precise patterning of metallic micro/nanostructures enables application of silk protein in biomedical devices with a seamless human-machine interface. However, high-quality, expensive equipment and facilities involved in micro/nanofabrication hinder rapid prototyping for explorative laboratory-based research. Here, we report cost-effective and high-resolution light-emitting diode-based projection lithography methods for fabricating a Cr photomask and metallic microstructures on a silk protein layer. After two-step photolithography performed using a commercial camera and microscopic objective lens, inkjet-printed patterns are successfully projected on the silk layers with 100× and 500× demagnification ratios. A lift-off process is conducted to integrate Au patterns on the lithographic-patterned resist/silk layer, and various Au microstructures with sizes <2 μm are generated. In all the processes, the silk protein exhibits a high resistance to chemicals for resist solvent, development, resist strip, and lift-off, as well as a strong adhesion to gold, along with low cytotoxicity. Dopamine sensing and transistor operating capabilities are proved by measuring the changes in the electrical signals through the Au patterns. The proposed method is a cost-effective and simple approach for rapid prototyping of silk-based biomedical devices.

Humans, Information Systems, Pilot Projects, Software, and User-Computer Interface

This article presents the Network Empower and Prototyping Platform (NEP+), a flexible framework purposefully crafted to simplify the process of interactive application development, catering to both technical and non-technical users. The name "NEP+" encapsulates the platform's dual mission: to empower the network-related capabilities of ZeroMQ and to provide software tools and interfaces for prototyping and integration. NEP+ accomplishes this through a comprehensive quality model and an integrated software ecosystem encompassing middleware, user-friendly graphical interfaces, a command-line tool, and an accessible end-user programming interface. This article primarily focuses on presenting the proposed quality model and software architecture, illustrating how they can empower developers to craft cross-platform, accessible, and user-friendly interfaces for various applications, with a particular emphasis on robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT). Additionally, we provide practical insights into the applicability of NEP+ by briefly presenting real-world user cases where human-centered projects have successfully utilized NEP+ to develop robotics systems. To further emphasize the suitability of NEP+ tools and interfaces for developer use, we conduct a pilot study that delves into usability and workload assessment. The outcomes of this study highlight the user-friendly features of NEP+ tools, along with their ease of adoption and cross-platform capabilities. The novelty of NEP+ fundamentally lies in its holistic approach, acting as a bridge across diverse user groups, fostering inclusivity, and promoting collaboration.

Humans, Research Design, Masks, Smoke adverse effects, Smoke prevention control, and Occupational Exposure prevention control

Objectives: to describe a technological innovation in the development of an individual, ergonomic, sustainable and effective occupational respiratory protection mask for workers exposed to surgical smoke.
Methods: applied, exploratory, quantitative research, using design methods and tools: Sense Intent, Know Context, Know People, Frame Insights, Explore Concepts, Frame Solutions, Realize Offerings, in addition to the Product Development Process tools. It was developed from March 2019 to December 2021.
Results: from the prototyping mold, it became possible to represent the abstract to the physical, where all the concepts created in the methodological steps were implemented and the necessary adjustments were made to create the model as a technological innovation, which will have the concept for product commercialization.
Conclusions: a mask for protection against surgical smoke (HeLP) was developed, from the design step to the prototype development, being a technological innovation.

Combining the design flexibility and rapid prototyping capabilities of additive manufacturing with photocatalytic and plasmonic functionalities is promising for the development of next-generation SERS applications such as point of care diagnostics and in situ monitoring of chemical reactions in fuels and chemical processing. Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is a well-matured additive manufacturing technique which generates metallic structures through localised melting and joining of metal powders using a laser. LPBF reduces material wastage during manufacturing, is applicable to a wide range of metals and alloys, and allows printing of complex internal structures. This feature article elaborates the use of soot templating, chemical vapour deposition and electroless plating techniques for grafting plasmonic and semiconductor nanoparticles on the surface of LPBF manufactured metallic substrates. The capability to fabricate different types of intricate metallic lattices using additive manufacturing is demonstrated and technical challenges in their adequate functionalization are elaborated. The developed methodology allows tailoring of the substrate structure, composition, morphology, plasmonic and photocatalytic activities and thus unveils a new class of recyclable SERS substrates.

Humans, Health Facilities, Delivery of Health Care, Focus Groups, Fitness Centers, and Refugees

Background: Refugee and immigrant populations have diverse cultural factors that affect their access to health care and must be considered when building a new clinical space. Health design thinking can help a clinical team evaluate and consolidate these factors while maintaining close contact with architects, patients' community leaders, and hospital or institutional leadership. A diverse group of clinicians, medical students, community leaders and architects planned a clinic devoted to refugee and immigrant health, a first-of-its-kind for South Philadelphia.
Methods: The planning process and concept design of this wellness center is presented as a design case study to demonstrate how principles and methods of human-centered design were used to create a community clinic. Design thinking begins with empathizing with the end users' experiences before moving to ideation and prototyping of a solution. These steps were accomplished through focus groups, a design workshop, and iterations of the center's plan.
Results: Focus groups were thematically analyzed and generated two themes of access and resources and seven subthemes that informed the design workshop. A final floor plan of the wellness center was selected, incorporating priorities of all stakeholders and addressing issues of disease prevention, social determinants of health, and lifestyle-related illness that were relevant to the patient population.
Conclusions: Design thinking methods are useful for health care organizations that must adapt to the needs of diverse stakeholders and especially populations that are underserved or displaced. While much has been written on the theory and stages of design thinking, this study is novel in describing this methodology from the beginning to the end of the process of planning a clinical space with input from the patient population. This study thus serves as a proof of concept of the application of design thinking in planning clinical spaces.
(© 2023. The Author(s).)

Female, Humans, Caregivers, Persuasive Communication, Male, Adolescent, Young Adult, Adult, Emigrants and Immigrants, Mentoring, and Mobile Applications

Background: Informal caregivers are vital in caring for their family and friends at home who may have illnesses or disabilities. In particular, the demands for caregiving can be even more challenging for those with limited resources, support systems, and language barriers, such as immigrant informal caregivers. They face complex challenges in providing care for their relatives. These challenges can be related to sociocultural diversity, language barriers, and health care system navigation. Acknowledging the global context of the increasing number of immigrants is essential in designing inclusive mobile health apps.
Objective: This study aims to investigate the needs of immigrant informal caregivers in Sweden and discuss the application of the Persuasive System Design Model (PSDM) to develop an e-coaching prototype. By addressing the unique challenges faced by immigrant informal caregivers, this study will contribute to the development of more effective and inclusive mobile health apps.
Methods: The participants were considered immigrants and included in the study if they and their parents were born outside of Sweden. Through various channels, such as the National Association of Relatives, rehabilitation departments at municipalities, and immigrant groups, we recruited 13 immigrant informal caregivers. These immigrant informal caregivers were primarily women aged 18 to 40 years. Most participants belonged to the Middle Eastern region whereas some were from North Africa. However, all of them spoke Arabic. We used semistructured interviews to gather data from the participants in Arabic, which were translated into English. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis and discussed in relation to the extended PSDM. The needs of the caregivers were compared with the description of persuasive design principles, and a design principle was chosen based on the match. The PSDM was extended if the need description did not match any principles. Several brainstorming and prototyping sessions were conducted to design the mobile e-coaching app.
Results: Immigrant informal caregivers have various needs in their caregiving role. They reported a need for training on the illness and future caregiving needs, assistance with understanding the Swedish language and culture, and help with accessing internet-based information and services. They also required recognition and appreciation for their efforts, additional informal support, and easy access to health care services, which can be important for their mental health. The PSDM was adapted to the informal caregiving context by adding "facilitating conditions" and "verbal encouragement" as additional persuasive design principles. This study also presents the subsequent mobile e-coaching app for immigrant informal caregivers in Sweden.
Conclusions: This study revealed important immigrant informal caregivers' needs based on which design suggestions for a mobile e-coaching app were presented. We also proposed an adapted PSDM, for the informal caregiving context. The adapted PSDM can be further used to design digital interventions for caregiving.
(©Shweta Premanandan, Awais Ahmad, Åsa Cajander, Pär Ågerfalk, Michal Dolezel, Lisette van Gemert-Pijnen. Originally published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (https://mhealth.jmir.org), 09.11.2023.)

Microfluidic platforms enable more precise control of biological stimuli and environment dimensionality than conventional macroscale cell-based assays; however, long fabrication times and high-cost specialized equipment limit the widespread adoption of microfluidic technologies. Recent improvements in vat photopolymerization three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies such as liquid crystal display (LCD) printing offer rapid prototyping and a cost-effective solution to microfluidic fabrication. Limited information is available about how 3D printing parameters and resin cytocompatibility impact the performance of 3D-printed molds for the fabrication of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based microfluidic platforms for cellular studies. Using a low-cost, commercially available LCD-based 3D printer, we assessed the cytocompatibility of several resins, optimized fabrication parameters, and characterized the minimum feature size. We evaluated the response to both cytotoxic chemotherapy and targeted kinase therapies in microfluidic devices fabricated using our 3D-printed molds and demonstrated the establishment of flow-based concentration gradients. Furthermore, we monitored real-time cancer cell and fibroblast migration in a 3D matrix environment that was dependent on environmental signals. These results demonstrate how vat photopolymerization LCD-based fabrication can accelerate the prototyping of microfluidic platforms with increased accessibility and resolution for PDMS-based cell culture assays.
Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare no competing interests.
(© The Author(s) 2023.)

Background: Various older adult care settings have embraced the use of the life story approach to enhance the development of comprehensive care plans. However, organizing life stories and extracting useful information is labor-intensive, primarily due to the repetitive, fragmented, and redundant nature of life stories gathered from everyday communication scenarios. Existing life story systems, while available, do not adequately fulfill the requirements of users, especially in the application of care services.
Objective: The objective of this study is to design, develop, and evaluate a digital system that provides caregivers with the necessary tools to view and manage the life stories of older adults, enabling expedited access to pertinent information effectively and visually.
Methods: This study used a multidisciplinary, user-centered design approach across 4 phases: initial design requirements, prototyping, prototype refinement workshops, and usability testing. During the initial phase, we conducted field research in the Hefei Tianyu Senior Living Service Nursing Home, China, to discover how caregivers currently store and use life stories and their needs, challenges, and obstacles in organizing and retrieving information. Subsequently, we designed a low-fidelity prototype according to the users' requirements. A prototyping workshop involving 6 participants was held to collaboratively design and discuss the prototype's function and interaction. User feedback from the workshops was used to optimize the prototype, leading to the development of the system. We then designed 2 rounds of usability testing with 7 caregivers to evaluate the system's usability and effectiveness.
Results: We identified 3 categories of functionalities that are necessary to include in the design of our initial low-fidelity prototype of life story visualizations: life story input, life story organization, and timeline generation. Subsequently, through the workshops, we identified 3 categories for functional optimization: feedback on user interface and usability, optimization suggestions for existing features, and the request for additional functionalities. Next, we designed a medium-fidelity prototype based on human-centered design. The Story Mosaic system underwent usability testing in the Hefei Tianyu Senior Living Service Nursing Home. Overall, 7 users recorded and organized 1123 life stories of 16 older adults. The usability testing results indicated that the system was accessible and easy to use for caregivers. Based on the feedback from the usability testing, we finalized the high-fidelity prototype.
Conclusions: We designed, developed, and evaluated the Story Mosaic system to support the visual management of older adults' life stories. This system empowers caregivers through digital technology and innovative design, pioneering personal narrative integration in caregiving. This system can expand to include informal caregivers and family members for continued adaptability and empathy.
(© Fang Gui, Jiaoyun Yang, Qilin Wu, Yang Liu, Jia Zhou, Ning An. Originally published in JMIR Aging (https://aging.jmir.org).)

Objective: Reinforcement learning (RL) is a machine learning technique uniquely effective at sequential decision-making, which makes it potentially relevant to ICU treatment challenges. We set out to systematically review, assess level-of-readiness and meta-analyze the effect of RL on outcomes for critically ill patients.
Data Sources: A systematic search was performed in PubMed, Embase.com, Clarivate Analytics/Web of Science Core Collection, Elsevier/SCOPUS and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Xplore Digital Library from inception to March 25, 2022, with subsequent citation tracking.
Data Extraction: Journal articles that used an RL technique in an ICU population and reported on patient health-related outcomes were included for full analysis. Conference papers were included for level-of-readiness assessment only. Descriptive statistics, characteristics of the models, outcome compared with clinician's policy and level-of-readiness were collected. RL-health risk of bias and applicability assessment was performed.
Data Synthesis: A total of 1,033 articles were screened, of which 18 journal articles and 18 conference papers, were included. Thirty of those were prototyping or modeling articles and six were validation articles. All articles reported RL algorithms to outperform clinical decision-making by ICU professionals, but only in retrospective data. The modeling techniques for the state-space, action-space, reward function, RL model training, and evaluation varied widely. The risk of bias was high in all articles, mainly due to the evaluation procedure.
Conclusion: In this first systematic review on the application of RL in intensive care medicine we found no studies that demonstrated improved patient outcomes from RL-based technologies. All studies reported that RL-agent policies outperformed clinician policies, but such assessments were all based on retrospective off-policy evaluation.
Competing Interests: Dr. Dam’s institution received funding from ZonMW/Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (10430012010003); they received funding from Pacmed BV. Dr. Hengst received funding from ING Bank N.V. Dr. Hoogendoorn disclosed co-ownership of PersonalAIze B.V. The remaining authors have disclosed that they do not have any potential conflicts of interest.
(Copyright © 2023 by the Society of Critical Care Medicine and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Image reconstruction from data collected over full-angular range (FAR) in dual-energy CT (DECT) is well-studied. There exists interest in DECT with advanced scan configurations in which data are collected only over limited-angular ranges (LARs) for meeting unique workflow needs in certain practical imaging applications, and thus in the algorithm development for image reconstruction from such LAR data. The objective of the work is to investigate and prototype image reconstructions in DECT with LAR scans. We investigate and prototype optimization programs with various designs of constraints on the directional-total-variations (DTVs) of virtual monochromatic images and/or basis images, and derive the DTV algorithms to numerically solve the optimization programs for achieving accurate image reconstruction from data collected in a slew of different LAR scans. Using simulated and real data acquired with low- and high-kV spectra over LARs, we conduct quantitative studies to demonstrate and evaluate the optimization programs and their DTV algorithms developed. As the results of the numerical studies reveal, while the DTV algorithms yield images of visual quality and quantitative accuracy comparable to that of the existing algorithms from FAR data, the former reconstruct images with improved visualization, reduced artifacts, and also enhanced quantitative accuracy when applied to LAR data in DECT. Optimization-based, one-step algorithms, including the DTV algorithms demonstrated, can be developed for quantitative image reconstruction from spectral data collected over LARs of extents that are considerably smaller than the FAR in DECT. The theoretical and numerical results obtained can be exploited for prototyping designs of optimization-based reconstructions and LAR scans in DECT, and they may also yield insights into the development of reconstruction procedures in practical DECT applications. The approach and algorithms developed can naturally be applied to investigating image reconstruction from LAR data in multi-spectral and photon-counting CT.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Nanotechnology, Microfluidics, Bioreactors, Microfluidic Analytical Techniques, and Nanopores

While injection molding is becoming the fabrication modality of choice for high-scale production of microfluidic devices, especially those used for in vitro diagnostics, its translation into the growing area of nanofluidics (structures with at least one dimension <100 nm) has not been well established. Another prevailing issue with injection molding is the high startup costs and the relatively long time between device iterations making it in many cases impractical for device prototyping. We report, for the first time, functional nanofluidic devices with dimensions of critical structures below 30 nm fabricated by injection molding for the manipulation, identification, and detection of single molecules. UV-resin molds replicated from Si masters served as mold inserts, negating the need for generating Ni-mold inserts via electroplating. Using assembled devices with a cover plate via hybrid thermal fusion bonding, we demonstrated two functional thermoplastic nanofluidic devices. The first device consisted of dual in-plane nanopores placed at either end of a nanochannel and was used to detect and identify single ribonucleotide monophosphate molecules via resistive pulse sensing and obtain the effective mobility of the molecule through nanoscale electrophoresis to allow its identification. The second device demonstrated selective binding of a single RNA molecule to a solid phase bioreactor decorated with a processive exoribonuclease, XRN1. Our results provide a simple path towards the use of injection molding for device prototyping in the development stage of any nanofluidic or even microfluidic application, through which rapid scale-up is made possible by transitioning from prototyping to high throughput production using conventional Ni mold inserts.

Polymer-based lab-on-a-disc (LoaD) devices for isolating ribonucleic acid (RNA) from whole blood samples have gained considerable attention for accurate biomedical analysis and point-of-care diagnostics. However, the mass production of these devices remains challenging in manufacturing cost and sustainability, primarily due to the utilization of a laser cutter or router computer numerical control (CNC) machine for engraving and cutting plastics in the conventional prototyping process. Herein, we reported the first energy-efficient room-temperature printing-imprinting integrated roll-to-roll manufacturing platform for mass production of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based LoaD to on-site isolate ribonucleic acid (RNA) from undiluted blood samples. We significantly reduced energy consumption and eliminated thermal expansion variations between the mold, substrate, and resists by accelerating the PDMS curing time to less than 10 min at room temperature without using heat or ultraviolet radiation. The additive manufacturing technology was applied to fabricate a multi-depth flexible polymer mold that integrated macro (2 mm) and micro-sized (500 μm) features, which overcomes the economic and environmental challenges of conventional molding techniques. Our integrated R2R platform was enabled to print adhesion-promoting films at the first printing unit and continuously in-line imprint with a high replication accuracy (99%) for high-volume manufacturing of a new centrifugal microfluidic chip with an enhancement of mixing performance by integrating an efficient mixing chamber and serpentine micromixer. This research paved the way for scalable green manufacturing of large-volume polymer-based microfluidic devices, often required in real-world sample-driven analytical systems for clinical bioanalysis.
Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Jinkee Lee, Gyoujin Cho reports financial support was provided by 10.13039/501100002647Sungkyunkwan University - Natural Sciences Campus.
(© 2023 The Authors.)

'openFrame' is a modular, low-cost, open-hardware microscopy platform that can be configured or adapted to most light microscopy techniques and is easily upgradeable or expandable to multiple modalities. The ability to freely mix and interchange both open-source and proprietary hardware components or software enables low-cost, yet research-grade instruments to be assembled and maintained. It also enables rapid prototyping of advanced or novel microscope systems. For long-term time-lapse image data acquisition, slide-scanning or high content analysis, we have developed a novel optical autofocus incorporating orthogonal cylindrical optics to provide robust single-shot closed-loop focus lock, which we have demonstrated to accommodate defocus up to ±37 μm with <200 nm accuracy, and a two-step autofocus mode which we have shown can operate with defocus up to ±68 μm. We have used this to implement automated single molecule localisation microscopy (SMLM) in a relatively low-cost openFrame-based instrument using multimode diode lasers for excitation and cooled CMOS cameras.
(© 2023 The Authors. Journal of Microscopy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Microscopical Society.)

Acoustics and Transducers

Annually, more than 16 × 109 medical needles are consumed worldwide. However, the functions of the medical needle are still limited mainly to cutting and delivering material to or from a target site. Ultrasound combined with a hypodermic needle could add value to many medical applications, for example, by reducing the penetration force needed during the intervention, adding precision by limiting the needle deflection upon insertion into soft tissues, and even improving tissue collection in fine-needle biopsy applications. In this study, we develop a waveguide construct able to operate a longitudinal-flexural conversion of a wave when transmitted from a Langevin transducer to a conventional medical needle, while maintaining high electric-to-acoustic power efficiency. The optimization of the waveguide structure was realized in silico using the finite element method followed by prototyping the construct and characterizing it experimentally. The experiments conducted at low electrical power consumption (under 5 W) show a 30 kHz flexural needle tip displacement up to 200 μm and 73% electric-to-acoustic power efficiency. This, associated with a small sized transducer, could facilitate the design of ultrasonic medical needles, enabling portability, batterization, and improved electrical safety, for applications such as biopsy, drug and gene delivery, and minimally invasive interventions.
(© 2023 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).)

Clothing fit and pressure comfort play important role in clothing comfort, especially in medical body sculpting clothing (MBSC). In the present study, different body movements (forward bending, side bending, and twisting) were adopted to simulate and investigate the biomechanical stress distribution of the human body with three kinds of porosity inelastic MBSCs through the finite element analysis method. The elastic modulus of the investigated MBSCs was also measured by means of tensile testing. Analytical results showed that in the compression region during body movements, the investigated inelastic MBSCs endured less compression stress, and most of the stress was transmitted to the human body. Moreover, the stresses on the body surface were decreased with the porosity increasing. However, most of the von Mises stresses on the human body were in the desired pressure comfort range. Therefore, these results could provide potential information in the modification of MBSC for medical applications.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Shyuan-Yow Chen reports financial support was provided by Cathay General Hospital. Jia-Wei You reports financial support was provided by Taipei Medical University Hospital.
(Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Carrageenan pharmacology, Carrageenan chemistry, Wound Healing, Biocompatible Materials chemistry, Hydrogels pharmacology, Hydrogels chemistry, Gelatin pharmacology, and Gelatin chemistry

Injectable hydrogels based on natural polymers have shown great potential for various tissue engineering applications, such as wound healing. However, poor mechanical properties and weak self-healing ability are still major challenges. In this work, we introduce a host-guest (HG) supramolecular interaction between acrylate-β-cyclodextrin (Ac-β-CD) conjugated on methacrylated kappa-carrageenan (MA-κ-CA) and aromatic residues on gelatin to provide self-healing characteristics. We synthesize an MA-κ-CA to conjugate Ac-β-CD and fabricate dual crosslinked hybrid hydrogels with gelatin to mimic the native extracellular matrix (ECM). The dual crosslinking occurs on the MA-κ-CA backbone through the addition of KCl and photocrosslinking process, which enhances mechanical strength and stability. The hybrid hydrogels exhibit shear-thinning, self-healing, and injectable behavior, which apply easily under a minimally invasive manner and contribute to shear stress during the injection. In-vitro studies indicate enhanced cell viability. Furthermore, scratch assays are performed to examine cell migration and cell-cell interaction. It is envisioned that the combination of self-healing and injectable dual crosslinked hybrid hydrogels with HG interactions display a promising and functional biomaterial platform for wound healing applications.
(© 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Acetyl Coenzyme A metabolism, Cell Extracts, Escherichia coli metabolism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae genetics, Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolism, and Metabolic Engineering

Building and optimizing biosynthetic pathways in engineered cells holds promise to address societal needs in energy, materials, and medicine, but it is often time-consuming. Cell-free synthetic biology has emerged as a powerful tool to accelerate design-build-test-learn cycles for pathway engineering with increased tolerance to toxic compounds. However, most cell-free pathway prototyping to date has been performed in extracts from wildtype cells which often do not have sufficient flux towards the pathways of interest, which can be enhanced by engineering. Here, to address this gap, we create a set of engineered Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains rewired via CRISPR-dCas9 to achieve high-flux toward key metabolic precursors; namely, acetyl-CoA, shikimate, triose-phosphate, oxaloacetate, α-ketoglutarate, and glucose-6-phosphate. Cell-free extracts generated from these strains are used for targeted enzyme screening in vitro. As model systems, we assess in vivo and in vitro production of triacetic acid lactone from acetyl-CoA and muconic acid from the shikimate pathway. The need for these platforms is exemplified by the fact that muconic acid cannot be detected in wildtype extracts provided with the same biosynthetic enzymes. We also perform metabolomic comparison to understand biochemical differences between the cellular and cell-free muconic acid synthesis systems (E. coli and S. cerevisiae cells and cell extracts with and without metabolic rewiring). While any given pathway has different interfaces with metabolism, we anticipate that this set of pre-optimized, flux enhanced cell extracts will enable prototyping efforts for new biosynthetic pathways and the discovery of biochemical functions of enzymes.
(Copyright © 2023 International Metabolic Engineering Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Acoustic hologram (AH) lenses are typically produced by high-resolution 3-D printing methods, such as stereolithography (SLA) printing. However, SLA printing of thin, plate-shaped lens structures has major limitations, including vulnerability to deformation during photocuring and limited control of acoustic impedance. To overcome these limitations, we demonstrated a nanoparticle-epoxy composite (NPEC) molding technique, and we tested its feasibility for AH lens fabrication. The characterized acoustic impedance of the 22.5% NPEC was 4.64 MRayl, which is 55% higher than the clear photopolymer (2.99 MRayl) used by SLA. Simulations demonstrated that the improved pressure transmission by the higher acoustic impedance of the NPEC resulted in 21% higher pressure amplitude in the region of interest (ROI, -6-dB pressure amplitude pixels) than the photopolymer. This improvement was experimentally demonstrated after prototyping NPEC lenses through a molding process. The NPEC lens showed no significant deformation and 72% lower thickness profile errors than the photopolymer, which otherwise experienced deformed edges due to thermal bending. Beam mapping results using the NPEC lens validated the predicted improvement, demonstrating 24% increased pressure amplitude on average and 10% improved structural similarity (SSIM) with the simulated pressure pattern compared to the photopolymer lens. This method can be used for AH lens applications with improved pressure output and accurate pressure field formation.

Synthetic Biology, Biotechnology, Bioengineering, Microalgae genetics, Microalgae metabolism, and Biosensing Techniques

Biosensors are powerful tools to investigate, phenotype, improve and prototype microbial strains, both in fundamental research and in industrial contexts. Genetic and biotechnological developments now allow the implementation of synthetic biology approaches to novel different classes of microbial hosts, for example photosynthetic microalgae, which offer unique opportunities. To date, biosensors have not yet been implemented in phototrophic eukaryotic microorganisms, leaving great potential for novel biological and technological advancements untapped. Here, starting from selected biosensor technologies that have successfully been implemented in heterotrophic organisms, we project and define a roadmap on how these could be applied to microalgae research. We highlight novel opportunities for the development of new biosensors, identify critical challenges, and finally provide a perspective on the impact of their eventual implementation to tackle research questions and bioengineering strategies. From studying metabolism at the single-cell level to genome-wide screen approaches, and assisted laboratory evolution experiments, biosensors will greatly impact the pace of progress in understanding and engineering microalgal metabolism. We envision how this could further advance the possibilities for unraveling their ecological role, evolutionary history and accelerate their domestication, to further drive them as resource-efficient production hosts.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
(Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The 3D laser printing of form birefringent structures promises fast prototyping of polarization-sensitive photonic elements. However, achieving the quarter- and half-wave phase retardation levels needed in applications still remains a challenge, especially at visible wavelengths. Thickness of the birefringent region, usually consisting of simple 1D gratings, must be sufficiently large to ensure the required retardance, making the 3D laser-printed gratings prone to mechanical collapse. Here we demonstrate 3D laser-printed mechanically robust form birefringent 3D structures whose thickness and phase retardation can be increased without loss of mechanical stability, and report on the realization of compact self-supporting structures exhibiting quarter- and half-wave phase retardation at visible wavelengths.

This design study presents an analysis and abstraction of temporal and spatial data, and workflows in the domain of hydrogeology and the design and development of an interactive visualization prototype. Developed in close collaboration with a group of hydrogeological researchers, the interface supports them in data exploration, selection of data for their numerical model calibration, and communication of findings to their industry partners. We highlight both pitfalls and learnings of the iterative design and validation process and explore the role of rapid prototyping. Some of the main lessons were that the ability to see their own data changed the engagement of skeptical users dramatically and that interactive rapid prototyping tools are thus powerful to unlock the advantage of visual analysis for novice users. Further, we observed that the process itself helped the domain scientists understand the potential and challenges of their data more than the final interface prototype.

Magnetically hard materials are widely used to build soft magnetic robots, providing large magnetic force/torque and macrodomain programmability. However, their high magnetic coercivity often presents practical challenges when attempting to reconfigure magnetization patterns, requiring a large magnetic field or heating. In this study, magnetic putty is introduced as a magnetically hard and soft material with large remanence and low coercivity. It is shown that the magnetization of magnetic putty can be easily reoriented with maximum magnitude using an external field that is only one-tenth of its coercivity. Additionally, magnetic putty is a malleable, autonomous self-healing material that can be recycled and repurposed. The authors anticipate magnetic putty could provide a versatile and accessible tool for various magnetic robotics applications for fast prototyping and explorations for research and educational purposes.
(© 2023 The Authors. Advanced Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Objective: Design thinking is a creative problem-solving process used to better understand users' needs and experiences so that a product or service can be improved. Its emphasis on empathy, iterative prototyping, and participatory collaboration make it an ideal methodology for innovation in medical education. We apply this framework to the virtual rheumatology fellowship interview process so that interviews can become more applicant centered.
Methods: This educational quality improvement project uses a design-thinking framework to identify opportunities and challenges for rheumatology fellowship applicants. The investigators use the 5-step process (Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test) and incorporate rapid qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews to innovate the interview experience. The iterative and collaborative nature of this process has empowered participants to codesign an applicant-centered interview experience.
Results: Interviews with fellowship applicants (n = 9), fellow physicians (n = 4), and faculty members (n = 3) identified three major dynamics of the interview process: (1) Is it a safe environment to ask questions? (2) How do I exchange information effectively? and (3) How do I fit all these data into the bigger picture? Creative brainstorming techniques at a series of three workshops yielded four prototypes emphasizing customization, hybridization, facilitation, and preparation. A finalized applicant-centered interview template was devised in preparation for the 2023-2024 application season.
Conclusion: Design thinking has yielded insights into three important dynamics that drive applicant experiences. These insights allow for a redesign of processes so that virtual interviews can be more applicant centered. This framework allows for further iterations and modifications as the needs of applicants and programs evolve over time.
(© 2023 The Authors. ACR Open Rheumatology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American College of Rheumatology.)

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) demands massive data processing and real-time displaying during high-speed imaging. Current OCT imaging software is predominantly based on C++, aiming to maximize performance through low-level hardware management. However, the steep learning curve of C++ hinders agile prototyping, particularly for research purposes. Moreover, manual memory management poses challenges for novice developers and may lead to potential security issues. To address these limitations, OCTSharp is developed as an open-source OCT software based on the memory-safe language C#. Within the managed C# environment, OCTSharp offers synchronized hardware control, minimal memory management, and GPU-based parallel processing. The software has been thoroughly tested and proven capable of supporting real-time image acquisition, processing, and visualization with spectral-domain OCT systems equipped with the latest advanced hardware. With these enhancements, OCTSharp is positioned to serve as an open-source platform tailored for various applications.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
(© 2023 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement.)

Patient self-reported satisfaction is commonly used as an assessment of service experience and quality for community pharmacy services. This commentary discusses alternative foundational approaches to evaluating service experience and quality in patient-centered care. It describes historical and recent literature pertaining to the development and use of satisfaction measures for service design and patient experience assessment. It then highlights potential limitations of patient satisfaction as an assessment tool for patient-centeredness and patient experience identified in the pharmacy literature, which include criticisms that use of patient satisfaction may compromise accuracy in measuring quality due to factors such as patients having poor knowledge of and low expectations for quality and having a predisposition toward rating satisfaction highly when experiencing no-cost and/or unfamiliar services. Moreover, satisfaction measurements may change based on service exposure, with patient preferences for service offerings changing with increased service exposure and variation in patient-specific and environmental factors. After discussing limitations and criticism of patient self-reported satisfaction, we introduce alternative assessments methods which may facilitate more accurate assessments of patient experience and patient-centered pharmacy services such as patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs), patient-reported experience measures (PREMs), and human-centered design techniques such as journey mapping, prototyping, and user testing to design and assess patient-centered pharmacy services. These alternative assessments are rooted in, or related to preferred implementation science approaches to establishing, evaluating, and sustaining pharmacy services.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(© 2023 The Authors.)

Objective: The COVID-19 infodemic has been a global public health challenge, especially affecting vulnerable populations such as Syrian refugees with limited internet access and functional, health, digital, and media literacies. To address this problem, we developed Wikaytek , a software to diffuse reliable COVID-19 information using WhatsApp, the preferred communication channel among Syrian refugees. In this paper, we describe the systematic development of the tool.
Methods: We undertook a pilot study guided by the Humanitarian Engineering Initiative (HEI)'s user-centered design framework, comprising five stages: (a) user research, including needs assessment and desk review of interventions with target users; (b) concept design based on platform and source selection, message format, concept testing, and architecture design; (c) prototyping and implementation, encompassing software development and system operation; (d) user testing (alpha and beta); and (e) evaluation through software analytics and user interviews. We reported a qualitative process evaluation.
Results: Wikaytek scrapes validated and reliable COVID-19-related information from reputable sources on Twitter, automatically translates it into Arabic, attaches relevant media (images/video), and generates an audio format using Google text-to-speech. Then, messages are broadcast to WhatsApp. Our evaluation shows that users appreciate receiving "push" information from reliable sources they can trust and prefer the audio format over text.
Conclusions: Wikaytek is a useful and well-received software for diffusing credible information on COVID-19 among Syrian refugees with limited literacy, as it complements the texts with audio messages. The tool can be adapted to diffuse messages about other public health issues among vulnerable communities, extending its scope and reach in humanitarian settings.
Competing Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
(© The Author(s) 2023.)

Humans, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Ear, External, Tissue Engineering, Printing, Three-Dimensional, and Plastic Surgery Procedures

Current 3D scanning and printing technologies offer not only state-of-the-art developments in the field of medical imaging and bio-engineering, but also cost and time effective solutions for surgical reconstruction procedures. Besides tissue engineering, where living cells are used, bio-compatible polymers or synthetic resin can be applied. The combination of 3D handheld scanning devices or volumetric imaging, (open-source) image processing packages, and 3D printers form a complete workflow chain that is capable of effective rapid prototyping of outer ear replicas. This paper reviews current possibilities and latest use cases for 3D-scanning, data processing and printing of outer ear replicas with a focus on low-cost solutions for rehabilitation engineering.
(© 2023. The Author(s).)

Adult, Humans, Child, Finite Element Analysis, Knee diagnostic imaging, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Biomechanical Phenomena, Range of Motion, Articular, Knee Joint pathology, and Patellofemoral Joint

Finite element (FE) models have been widely used to investigate knee joint biomechanics. Most of these models have been developed to study adult knees, neglecting pediatric populations. In this study, an atlas-based approach was employed to develop subject-specific FE models of the knee for eight typically developing pediatric individuals. Initially, validation simulations were performed at four passive tibiofemoral joint (TFJ) flexion angles, and the resulting TFJ and patellofemoral joint (PFJ) kinematics were compared to corresponding patient-matched measurements derived from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A neuromusculoskeletal-(NMSK)-FE pipeline was then used to simulate knee biomechanics during stance phase of walking gait for each participant to evaluate model simulation of a common motor task. Validation simulations demonstrated minimal error and strong correlations between FE-predicted and MRI-measured TFJ and PFJ kinematics (ensemble average of root mean square errors < 5 mm for translations and < 4.1° for rotations). The FE-predicted kinematics were strongly correlated with published reports (ensemble average of Pearson's correlation coefficients (ρ) > 0.9 for translations and ρ > 0.8 for rotations), except for TFJ mediolateral translation and abduction/adduction rotation. For walking gait, NMSK-FE model-predicted knee kinematics, contact areas, and contact pressures were consistent with experimental reports from literature. The strong agreement between model predictions and experimental reports underscores the capability of sequentially linked NMSK-FE models to accurately predict pediatric knee kinematics, as well as complex contact pressure distributions across the TFJ articulations. These models hold promise as effective tools for parametric analyses, population-based clinical studies, and enhancing our understanding of various pediatric knee injury mechanisms. They also support intervention design and prediction of surgical outcomes in pediatric populations.
(© 2023. The Author(s).)

Premature birth and neonatal mortality are significant global health challenges, with 15 million premature births annually and an estimated 2.5 million neonatal deaths. Approximately 90% of preterm births occur in low/middle income countries, particularly within the global regions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Neonatal hypothermia is a common and significant cause of morbidity and mortality among premature and low birth weight infants, particularly in low/middle-income countries where rates of premature delivery are high, and access to health workers, medical commodities, and other resources is limited. Kangaroo Mother Care/Skin-to-Skin care has been shown to significantly reduce the incidence of neonatal hypothermia and improve survival rates among premature infants, but there are significant barriers to its implementation, especially in low/middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper proposes the use of a multidisciplinary approach to develop an integrated mHealth solution to overcome the barriers and challenges to the implementation of Kangaroo Mother Care/Skin-to-skin care (KMC/STS) in LMICs. The innovation is an integrated mHealth platform that features a wearable biomedical device (NeoWarm) and an Android-based mobile application (NeoRoo) with customized user interfaces that are targeted specifically to parents/family stakeholders and healthcare providers, respectively. This publication describes the iterative, human-centered design and participatory development of a high-fidelity prototype of the NeoRoo mobile application. The aim of this study was to design and develop an initial ("A") version of the Android-based NeoRoo mobile app specifically to support the use case of KMC/STS in health facilities in Kenya. Key functions and features are highlighted. The proposed solution leverages the promise of digital health to overcome identified barriers and challenges to the implementation of KMC/STS in LMICs and aims to equip parents and healthcare providers of prematurely born infants with the tools and resources needed to improve the care provided to premature and low birthweight babies. It is hoped that, when implemented and scaled as part of a thoughtful, strategic, cross-disciplinary approach to reduction of global rates of neonatal mortality, NeoRoo will prove to be a useful tool within the toolkit of parents, health workers, and program implementors.
Competing Interests: I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: Dr. Sherri Bucher has been awarded intellectual property protection for invention of the NeoWarm biomedical device. This includes US patent US10390630B2, Nigeria NG/PT/C/2018/2802 and ARIPO patent PT/C/2018/2802. The authors declare no other potential conflicts of interest with respect to research, authorship, financial relationships, and/or publication of the article.
(Copyright: © 2023 Bucher et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Density Functional Theory, Machine Learning, Algorithms, and Alloys

Structural characterization of nanoclusters is one of the major challenges in nanocluster modeling owing to the multitude of possible configurations of arrangement of cluster atoms. The genetic algorithm (GA), a class of evolutionary algorithms based on the principles of natural evolution, is a commonly employed search method for locating the global minimum configuration of nanoclusters. Although a GA search at the DFT level is required for the accurate description of a potential energy surface to arrive at the correct global minimum configuration of nanoclusters, computationally expensive DFT evaluation of the significantly larger number of cluster geometries limits its practicability. Recently, machine learning potentials (MLP) that are learned from DFT calculations gained significant attention as computationally cheap alternative options that provide DFT level accuracy. As the accuracy of the MLP predictions is dependent on the quality and quantity of the training DFT data, active learning (AL) strategies have gained significant momentum to bypass the need of large and representative training data. In this application note, we present Cluster-MLP, an on-the-fly active learning genetic algorithm framework that employs the Flare++ machine learning potential (MLP) for accelerating the GA search for global minima of pure and alloyed nanoclusters. We have used a modified version the Birmingham parallel genetic algorithm (BPGA) for the nanocluster GA search which is then incorporated into distributed evolutionary algorithms in Python (DEAP), an evolutionary computational framework for fast prototyping or technical experiments. We have shown that the incorporation of the AL framework in the BPGA significantly reduced the computationally expensive DFT calculations. Moreover, we have shown that both the AL-GA and DFT-GA predict the same global minima for all the clusters we tested.

Three-dimensional printing enables the fabrication of silica glass optics with complex structures. However, shrinkage remains a significant obstacle to high-precision 3D printing of glass optics. Here we 3D-printed Dammann gratings (DGs) with low lateral shrinkage (<4%) using a two-photon polymerization (2PP) technique. The process consists of two steps: patterning two-photon polymerizable glass slurry with a 515 nm femtosecond laser to form desired structures and debinding/sintering the structures into transparent and dense silica glass. The sintered structures exhibited distinct shrinkage rates in the lateral against longitudinal directions. As the aspect ratio of the structures increased, the lateral shrinkage decreased, while the longitudinal shrinkage increased. Specifically, the structure with an aspect ratio of approximately 60 achieved a minimal lateral shrinkage of 1.1%, the corresponding longitudinal shrinkage was 61.7%. The printed DGs with a surface roughness below 20 nm demonstrated good beam-shaping performance. The presented technique opens up possibilities for rapid prototyping of silica diffractive optical elements.

Humans, SARS-CoV-2, Australia epidemiology, Disease Outbreaks prevention control, Workplace, and COVID-19 epidemiology

Early case detection is critical to preventing onward transmission of COVID-19 by enabling prompt isolation of index infections, and identification and quarantining of contacts. Timeliness and completeness of ascertainment depend on the surveillance strategy employed. This paper presents modelling used to inform workplace testing strategies for the Australian government in early 2021. We use rapid prototype modelling to quickly investigate the effectiveness of testing strategies to aid decision making. Models are developed with a focus on providing relevant results to policy makers, and these models are continually updated and improved as new questions are posed. Developed to support the implementation of testing strategies in high risk workplace settings in Australia, our modelling explores the effects of test frequency and sensitivity on outbreak detection. We start with an exponential growth model, which demonstrates how outbreak detection changes depending on growth rate, test frequency and sensitivity. From the exponential model, we learn that low sensitivity tests can produce high probabilities of detection when testing occurs frequently. We then develop a more complex Agent Based Model, which was used to test the robustness of the results from the exponential model, and extend it to include intermittent workplace scheduling. These models help our fundamental understanding of disease detectability through routine surveillance in workplaces and evaluate the impact of testing strategies and workplace characteristics on the effectiveness of surveillance. This analysis highlights the risks of particular work patterns while also identifying key testing strategies to best improve outbreak detection in high risk workplaces.
(© 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.)

Animals, Laboratories, Computers, Printing, Three-Dimensional, Mammals, Microfluidics, and Biological Science Disciplines

The integration of Raspberry Pi miniature computer systems with microfluidics has revolutionised the development of low-cost and customizable analytical systems in life science laboratories. This review explores the applications of Raspberry Pi in microfluidics, with a focus on imaging, including microscopy and automated image capture. By leveraging the low cost, flexibility and accessibility of Raspberry Pi components, high-resolution imaging and analysis have been achieved in direct mammalian and bacterial cellular imaging and a plethora of image-based biochemical and molecular assays, from immunoassays, through microbial growth, to nucleic acid methods such as real-time-qPCR. The control of image capture permitted by Raspberry Pi hardware can also be combined with onboard image analysis. Open-source hardware offers an opportunity to develop complex laboratory instrumentation systems at a fraction of the cost of commercial equipment and, importantly, offers an opportunity for complete customisation to meet the users' needs. However, these benefits come with a trade-off: challenges remain for those wishing to incorporate open-source hardware equipment in their own work, including requirements for construction and operator skill, the need for good documentation and the availability of rapid prototyping such as 3D printing plus other components. These advances in open-source hardware have the potential to improve the efficiency, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness of microfluidic-based experiments and applications.

Plant-based desserts are becoming increasingly popular with and appreciated by consumers. However, they are limited by the choice of ingredients, which are often expensive and unstable with a random texture. Therefore, the aim of the research is to propose a new product that offers an advantageous texture and flavour in a fermented dessert based on a flour mix supplemented with an enzymatic hydrolysate. This study involved the development of two processes: (i) an enzymatic hydrolysis of oat flour and (ii) a fermentation of a flour mixture (oat, chickpea, and coconut) by lactic acid bacteria ( Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus ). The result of the oat flour hydrolysate shows a significant decrease in starch after 60 min of reaction, followed by an increase in sugar content. During 23 days of storage at 4 °C, the formulations used showed post-acidification, water retention capacity decrease, and hardness increase related to the hydrolysate rate ( p < 0.05). All formulations allowed the viability of lactic bacteria (over 5 log 10 CFU/mL) and verified their ability to produce exopolysaccharides (0.23-0.73 g/100 g). The prototyping of such a product represents a key step in meeting the growing demand for plant-based alternatives, with qualitative sensory characteristics without additives.

Plasmids genetics, Cell Physiological Phenomena, Cell-Free System metabolism, Protein Processing, Post-Translational, and Gene Regulatory Networks genetics

Although cell-free protein expression has been widely used for the synthesis of single proteins, cell-free synthetic biology has rapidly expanded to new, more complex applications. One such application is the prototyping or implementation of complex genetic networks involving the expression of multiple proteins at precise ratios, often from different plasmids. However, expression of multiple proteins from multiple plasmids may inadvertently result in unexpected, off-target changes to the levels of the proteins being expressed, a phenomenon termed plasmid crosstalk. Here, we show that the effects of plasmid crosstalk─even at the qualitative level of increases vs decreases in protein expression─depend on the concentration of plasmids in the reaction and the type of transcriptional machinery involved in the expression. This crosstalk can have a significant impact on genetic circuitry function and even interpretation of simple experimental results and thus should be taken into consideration during the development of cell-free applications.

Background: Mobile health (mHealth) applications have the potential to support adolescents' self-management of knee pain. However, ensuring adherence remains a barrier when designing mHealth concepts for adolescents.
Objective: This study aimed to explore barriers and facilitators for adhering to mHealth interventions to inform design principles.
Methods: Think-aloud tests were conducted with 12 adolescents (aged 12.5 years median) with knee pain, using a low-fidelity prototype. The prototype was informed by the authors previous work, rapid prototyping sessions with seven health professionals, and synthesis via the Behavioral Intervention Technology Model. The think-aloud tests were video recorded and analyzed thematically to identify design principles.
Results: The analysis based on user testing with adolescents with knee pain identified three themes: "user experience and feedback," "contextual challenges," and "new features" and nine subthemes. Adolescents were able to use mHealth behavioral features such as self-tracking, goal setting, education, and data visualization to capture and reflect on their knee pain developments, which facilitated use. However, adolescents struggle with timing interventions, breaking down management behaviors, and biases towards interventions were identified as internal threats to adherence. Competing activities, parental meddling, and privacy concerns were external adherence barriers. Twelve design principles were identified for integrating these insights into mHealth designs.
Conclusion: Participants' motivations for adherence were influenced by internal and external factors. While adolescents were able to use mHealth behavioral features to capture and reflect on knee pain developments, understanding how to accommodate adolescents' cognitive abilities, competing activities, and need for independence is quintessential to enhance adherence in everyday contexts.
Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
(© The Author(s) 2023.)

Male, Animals, Peptides chemistry, Peptide Library, Combinatorial Chemistry Techniques methods, and Solid-Phase Synthesis Techniques

New somatostatin analogs are highly desirable for diagnosing and treating neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). Here we describe the solid-phase synthesis of a new octreotate (TATE) analog where the disulfide bond is replaced with a tryptathionine (Ttn) staple as part of an effort to prototyping a one-bead-one-compound (OBOC) library of Ttn-stapled peptides. Library design provides the potential for on- and off-bead screening. To validate our method, we labelled Ttn-TATE with a fluorescent dye to demonstrate binding to soluble somatostatin receptor subtype-2 and staining of Ar42J rat prostate cancer cells. By exploring this staple in the context of a ligand of known affinity, this method paves the way for an OBOC library construction of bioactive octreotate analogs and, more broadly speaking, tryptathionine-staped peptide macrocycles.

Flavones and flavonols are important classes of flavonoids with nutraceutical and pharmacological value, and their production by fermentation with recombinant microorganisms promises to be a scalable and economically favorable alternative to extraction from plant sources. Flavones and flavonols have been produced recombinantly in a number of microorganisms, with Saccharomyces cerevisiae typically being a preferred production host for these compounds due to higher yields and titers of precursor compounds, as well as generally improved ability to functionally express cytochrome P450 enzymes without requiring modification to improve their solubility. Recently, a rapid prototyping platform has been developed for high-value compounds in E. coli , and a number of gatekeeper (2 S )-flavanones, from which flavones and flavonols can be derived, have been produced to high titers in E. coli using this platform. In this study, we extended these metabolic pathways using the previously reported platform to produce apigenin, chrysin, luteolin and kaempferol from the gatekeeper flavonoids naringenin, pinocembrin and eriodictyol by the expression of either type-I flavone synthases (FNS-I) or type-II flavone synthases (FNS-II) for flavone biosynthesis, and by the expression of flavanone 3-dioxygenases (F3H) and flavonol synthases (FLS) for the production of the flavonol kaempferol. In our best-performing strains, titers of apigenin and kaempferol reached 128 mg L -1 and 151 mg L -1 in 96-DeepWell plates in cultures supplemented with an additional 3 mM tyrosine, though titers for chrysin (6.8 mg L -1 ) from phenylalanine, and luteolin (5.0 mg L -1 ) from caffeic acid were considerably lower. In strains with upregulated tyrosine production, apigenin and kaempferol titers reached 80.2 mg L -1 and 42.4 mg L -1 respectively, without the further supplementation of tyrosine beyond the amount present in the rich medium. Notably, the highest apigenin, chrysin and luteolin titers were achieved with FNS-II enzymes, suggesting that cytochrome P450s can show competitive performance compared with non-cytochrome P450 enzymes in prokaryotes for the production of flavones.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.
(Copyright © 2023 Yiakoumetti, Hanko, Zou, Chua, Chromy, Stoney, Valdehuesa, Connolly, Yan, Hollywood, Takano and Breitling.)

Background: Although mobile health (mHealth) apps for both health consumers and health care providers are increasingly common, their implementation is frequently unsuccessful when there is a misalignment between the needs of the user and the app's functionality. Nurses are well positioned to help address this challenge. However, nurses' engagement in mHealth app development remains unclear.
Objective: This scoping review aims to determine the extent of the evidence of the role of nurses in app development, delineate developmental phases in which nurses are involved, and to characterize the type of mHealth apps nurses are involved in developing.
Methods: We conducted a scoping review following the 6-stage methodology. We searched 14 databases to identify publications on the role of nurses in mHealth app development and hand searched the reference lists of relevant publications. Two independent researchers performed all screening and data extraction, and a third reviewer resolved any discrepancies. Data were synthesized and grouped by the Software Development Life Cycle phase, and the app functionality was described using the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics functionality scoring system.
Results: The screening process resulted in 157 publications being included in our analysis. Nurses were involved in mHealth app development across all stages of the Software Development Life Cycle but most frequently participated in design and prototyping, requirements gathering, and testing. Nurses most often played the role of evaluators, followed by subject matter experts. Nurses infrequently participated in software development or planning, and participation as patient advocates, research experts, or nurse informaticists was rare.
Conclusions: Although nurses were represented throughout the preimplementation development process, nurses' involvement was concentrated in specific phases and roles.
(©Caitlin J Bakker, Tami H Wyatt, Melissa CS Breth, Grace Gao, Lisa M Janeway, Mikyoung A Lee, Christie L Martin, Victoria L Tiase. Originally published in JMIR Nursing (https://nursing.jmir.org), 17.10.2023.)

Achieving lightweight, high-strength, and biocompatible composites is a crucial objective in the field of tissue engineering. Intricate porous metallic structures, such as lattices, scaffolds, or triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMSs), created via the selective laser melting (SLM) technique, are utilized as load-bearing matrices for filled ceramics. The primary metal alloys in this category are titanium-based Ti6Al4V and iron-based 316L, which can have either a uniform cell or a gradient structure. Well-known ceramics used in biomaterial applications include titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ), zirconium dioxide (ZrO 2 ), aluminum oxide (Al 2 O 3 ), hydroxyapatite (HA), wollastonite (W), and tricalcium phosphate (TCP). To fill the structures fabricated by SLM, an appropriate ceramic is employed through the spark plasma sintering (SPS) method, making them suitable for in vitro or in vivo applications following minor post-processing. The combined SLM-SPS approach offers advantages, such as rapid design and prototyping, as well as assured densification and consolidation, although challenges persist in terms of large-scale structure and molding design. The individual or combined application of SLM and SPS processes can be implemented based on the specific requirements for fabricated sample size, shape complexity, densification, and mass productivity. This flexibility is a notable advantage offered by the combined processes of SLM and SPS. The present article provides an overview of metal-ceramic composites produced through SLM-SPS techniques. Mg-W-HA demonstrates promise for load-bearing biomedical applications, while Cu-TiO 2 -Ag exhibits potential for virucidal activities. Moreover, a functionally graded lattice (FGL) structure, either in radial or longitudinal directions, offers enhanced advantages by allowing adjustability and control over porosity, roughness, strength, and material proportions within the composite.

Water Quality

An implementation proposal that seeks to globalize the scope of the sustainable technologies developed in the University laboratories is presented. This approach uses the generation of triple-impact projects placing people at the center of technological development to bring technical and scientific knowledge into a service design oriented to global sustainable solutions. This research is an approach to what a hub for scientific research, technological implementation, and human needs would look like by designing common environments in which to interact and expand knowledge in an iterated way through the experience of all the actors involved in technological implementation. As a control case, a new technology developed at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, consisting of using sustainable materials as tubular reactor fillers for water treatment was chosen. Based on data obtained within the framework of a University extension project, in which the water quality diagnosis for human consumption was carried out and cross-examined with the mathematical analysis of sorption, design parameters of the reactor, participatory design, and open source concepts application, different virtual environments were generated with distinct objectives: i) open design environment: publishing and mapping of installed sorption reactors, reactor model plans, and useful information related to drinking water quality (aimed at contributors of the open source design environment); ii) platform for academic actors linking: connecting data between prototyping lab for participatory design of sorption reactors (aimed at university research users); iii) information disclosure page: space where the implemented technology impact is displayed and shows options to contact researchers and request a reactor design diagnosis for another community (aimed at beneficiary users). A technological service designed to link the University with the community was proposed, by resolving one of the main gaps related to the possibility for communities to access public financing for self-managed improvement projects, increasing the appropriation of the adopted technology and democratizing public investment, making it sustainable over time.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Silicon nitride (Si 3 N 4 ) waveguides become an appealing choice to realize complex photonic integrated circuits for applications in telecom/datacom transceivers, sensing, and quantum information sciences. However, compared to high-index-contrast silicon-on-insulator platform, the index difference between the Si 3 N 4 waveguide core and its claddings is more moderate, which adversely affects the development of vertical grating-coupled optical interfaces. Si 3 N 4 grating couplers suffer from the reduced strength, therefore it is more challenging to radiate all the waveguide power out of the grating within a beam size that is comparable to the mode field diameter of standard optical fibers. In this work, we present, by design and experiments, a library of low-loss and fabrication-tolerant surface grating couplers, operating at 1.55 μm wavelength range and standard SMF-28 fiber. Our designs are fabricated on 400 nm Si 3 N 4 platform using single-etch fabrication and foundry-compatible low-pressure chemical vapor deposition wafers. Experimentally, the peak coupling loss of - 4.4 dB and - 3.9 dB are measured for uniform couplers, while apodized grating couplers yield fiber-chip coupling loss of - 2.9 dB, without the use of bottom mirrors, additional overlays, and multi-layered grating arrangements. Beside the single-hero demonstrations, over 130 grating couplers were realized and tested, showing an excellent agreement with finite difference time domain designs and fabrication-robust performance. Demonstrated grating couplers are promising for Si 3 N 4 photonic chip prototyping by using standard optical fibers, leveraging low-cost and foundry-compatible fabrication technologies, essential for stable and reproducible large-volume device development.
(© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)

Introduction: Migrants, especially from the Middle East, experience poorer health outcomes and face greater difficulties in accessing healthcare compared to native populations and there is a need for culturally appropriate education for this vulnerable group. The purpose of this study is to describe the process of developing a culturally appropriate tool to support self-care in migrants with type 2 diabetes.
Methods: In this Co-design study, a tool for supporting self-care in migrants with type 2 diabetes was developed. Migrant patients with type 2 diabetes, healthcare providers and researchers participated in the process, which was based on six elements; engage, plan, explore, develop, decide and change. From February 2021 to December 2022, idea groups were conducted, and a tool was developed through brainstorming, prioritizing and prototyping.
Results: In total, 14 migrant patients, ten health care providers and four researchers participated in the Co-design process. The patients wished to receive information about type 2 diabetes self-care behaviour in their own languages. The healthcare providers asked for clear instructions on where to guide their patients regarding reliable information about diabetes in the patient's own language. All participants agreed that information can be presented in different formats, either: text (paper or online), audio-visual via recorded videos and/or lectures and pictures.
Discussion: The Co-design process led to several important insights and experiences related to the importance of diverse cultural backgrounds. When conducting a Co-design study with end-users as stakeholders, it is significant that the stakeholders have a diverse background in experiences, both as patients as well as those who deliver or implement the health service. In this study it was of great importance to include patients with diverse backgrounds regarding; gender, age, health literacy, occupation, years living in Sweden and duration of diabetes.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in this work.
(© 2023 Pettersson et al.)

Robots are notoriously difficult to design because of complex interdependencies between their physical structure, sensory and motor layouts, and behavior. Despite this, almost every detail of every robot built to date has been manually determined by a human designer after several months or years of iterative ideation, prototyping, and testing. Inspired by evolutionary design in nature, the automated design of robots using evolutionary algorithms has been attempted for two decades, but it too remains inefficient: days of supercomputing are required to design robots in simulation that, when manufactured, exhibit desired behavior. Here we show de novo optimization of a robot's structure to exhibit a desired behavior, within seconds on a single consumer-grade computer, and the manufactured robot's retention of that behavior. Unlike other gradient-based robot design methods, this algorithm does not presuppose any particular anatomical form; starting instead from a randomly-generated apodous body plan, it consistently discovers legged locomotion, the most efficient known form of terrestrial movement. If combined with automated fabrication and scaled up to more challenging tasks, this advance promises near-instantaneous design, manufacture, and deployment of unique and useful machines for medical, environmental, vehicular, and space-based tasks.

Mice, Animals, Insulin Secretion, Fibrillar Collagens metabolism, Collagen chemistry, Insulin metabolism, Islets of Langerhans, Insulin-Secreting Cells metabolism, and Islets of Langerhans Transplantation methods

The protection and interrogation of pancreatic β-cell health and function ex vivo is a fundamental aspect of diabetes research, including mechanistic studies, evaluation of β-cell health modulators, and development and quality control of replacement β-cell populations. However, present-day islet culture formats, including traditional suspension culture as well as many recently developed microfluidic devices, suspend islets in a liquid microenvironment, disrupting mechanochemical signaling normally found in vivo and limiting β-cell viability and function in vitro . Herein, we present a novel three-dimensional (3D) microphysiological system (MPS) to extend islet health and function ex vivo by incorporating a polymerizable collagen scaffold to restore biophysical support and islet-collagen mechanobiological cues. Informed by computational models of gas and molecular transport relevant to β-cell physiology, a MPS configuration was down-selected based on simulated oxygen and nutrient delivery to collagen-encapsulated islets, and 3D-printing was applied as a readily accessible, low-cost rapid prototyping method. Recreating critical aspects of the in vivo microenvironment within the MPS via perfusion and islet-collagen interactions mitigated post-isolation ischemia and apoptosis in mouse islets over a 5-day period. In contrast, islets maintained in traditional suspension formats exhibited progressive hypoxic and apoptotic cores. Finally, dynamic glucose-stimulated insulin secretion measurements were performed on collagen-encapsulated mouse islets in the absence and presence of well-known chemical stressor thapsigargin using the MPS platform and compared to conventional protocols involving commercial perifusion machines. Overall, the MPS described here provides a user-friendly islet culture platform that not only supports long-term β-cell health and function but also enables multiparametric evaluations.

Introduction: At the moment, no commercial model solution is available for the individualisation of the dentition depending on the clinical case scenario. Furthermore, the realistic training of most restorative and prosthodontic procedures on a single dental study model is not possible. The aim of this study was the creation of a new training model to fill this gap.
Materials and Methods: Complete upper and lower jaw models were created based on existing scans and radiological data from a patient. All components for 100 complete models and 1128 teeth for the training were produced with a SLA-printer. Overall, 94 voluntary students attending the first and second preclinical course in prosthodontics tested the functionality of the model with three different tooth types against a standard dental study model and real teeth. After the training, the model was rated in a questionnaire.
Results: The production of the models and teeth was feasible. The overall rating of the different teeth was worse for type I (Ø 3.6 ± 1.1), significantly better for type II (Ø 2.5 ± 1.0) and type III (Ø 2.4 ± 1.0) than a standard typodont tooth (Ø 2.7 ± 1.1). The new model was rated significantly better overall (Ø 2.6 ± 1.0) than the standard training model (Ø 3.0 ± 1.1).
Conclusions: The aim of this study was fulfilled. A superior training model was created with equivalent and better tooth types. The new teeth were outstanding in terms of cost-efficiency, appearance and feeling during preparation.
(© 2023 The Authors. European Journal of Dental Education published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Humans, Hemolysis, Materials Testing, Stress, Mechanical, von Willebrand Factor metabolism, and Heart-Assist Devices adverse effects

Ex vivo hemocompatibility testing is a vital element of preclinical assessment for blood-contacting medical devices. Current approaches are resource intensive; thus, we investigated the feasibility of accelerating hemocompatibility testing by standardizing the number of pump exposures in loops of various sizes. Three identical blood loops were constructed, each with a custom-molded reservoir able to facilitate large-volume expansion. Using the HVAD rotary blood pump operating at 5 L·min -1 and 100 mmHg, three test volumes (80, 160, and 320 ml) were circulated for 4000 pump exposures. Blood sampling was performed at individualized intervals every one-sixth of total duration for the assessment of hemolysis and von Willebrand Factor (vWF) degradation. While steady increases in hemolysis (~24 mg·dl -1 ) were identified in all tests at completion, loop volume was not a primary discriminator. The normalized index of hemolysis did not vary significantly between loops (4.2-4.9 mg·100 L -1 ). vWF degradation progressively occurred with duration of testing to a similar extent under all conditions. These data support an accelerated approach to preclinical assessment of ex vivo blood damage. Adopting this approach enables: enhanced efficiency for rapid prototyping; reduced ex vivo blood aging, and; greater utility of blood, which is presently limited if 450 ml loops are desired.
Competing Interests: Disclosure: The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.
(Copyright © ASAIO 2023.)

Humans, Metals, Refractometry, Glucose, Surface Plasmon Resonance methods, and Biosensing Techniques

The present study introduces a highly sensitive bimetallic SPR biosensor based on metal nitride for efficient urine glucose detection. Using a BK-7 prism, Au (25 nm), Ag (25nm), AlN (15 nm), and a biosample (urine) layer, the proposed sensor comprises of five layers. The selection of the sequence and dimensions of both metal layers is based on their performance in a number of case studies including both monometallic and bimetallic layers. After optimizing the bimetallic layer as Au (25 nm) - Ag (25 nm), various nitride layers were used to further increase the sensitivity by utilizing the synergistic effect of the bimetallic and metal nitride layers through case studies of several urine samples, ranging from nondiabetic to severely diabetic patients. AlN is determined to be the best suited material, and its thickness is optimized to 15 nanometers. The performance of the structure has been evaluated using a visible wavelength, i.e., λ = 633 nm, in order to increase sensitivity while providing room for low-cost prototyping. With the layer parameters optimized, a significant sensitivity of 411°/RIU (Refractive Index Unit) and figure of merit (FoM) of 105.38 /RIU has been achieved. The computed resolution of the proposed sensor is 4.17e-06. This study's findings have also been compared to some recently reported results. The proposed structure would be useful for detecting glucose concentrations, with a rapid response as measured by a substantial shift in resonance angle in SPR curves.

Commerce, Research, Printing, Three-Dimensional, and Bioprinting

With the characteristics of fast prototyping and personalized manufacturing, 3D-printing (three-dimensional printing) is an emerging technology with promising applications for orthopedic medical devices. It can complete the process of medical devices with complex shape which can not be completed by conventional fabrication process. At present, a variety of orthopedic medical devices manufactured by 3D printing technology, has been approved for marketing, and their use has been proved to be beneficial. 3D bioprinting in this area has also made a few breakthroughs. However, many challenges still remain to be addressed as well. In this study, the research status, as well as the development of the 3D-printing technology in the field of orthopedic medical devices is elaborated.

As digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) proliferate, there is a growing need to understand the complexities of moving these tools from concept and design to service-ready products. We highlight five case studies from a center that specializes in the design and evaluation of digital mental health interventions to illustrate pragmatic approaches to the development of digital mental health interventions, and to make transparent some of the key decision points researchers encounter along the design-to-product pipeline. Case studies cover different key points in the design process and focus on partnership building, understanding the problem or opportunity, prototyping the product or service, and testing the product or service. We illustrate lessons learned and offer a series of questions researchers can use to navigate key decision points in the digital mental health intervention (DMHI) development process.
Competing Interests: Jonah Meyerhoff has accepted consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim and Shirley Ryan Ability Lab. David C. Mohr has accepted honoraria and consulting fees from Otsuka Pharmaceuticals, Optum Behavioral Health, Centerstone Research Institute, and the One Mind Foundation, royalties from Oxford Press, and has an ownership interest in Adaptive Health, Inc. Emily Lattie and Miranda Beltzer are currently employed by Lyra Health. Ashley Knapp has accepted consulting fees from Woebot, Inc. Caitlin A. Stamatis has received salary and equity support from Akili Interactive Labs and Google. Bayley Taple is currently employed by BehaVR, Inc. Madhu Reddy has accepted consulting fees from Boehringer Ingelheim.
(© 2023 The Authors.)

The integration of two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals materials with nanostructures has triggered a wide spectrum of optical and optoelectronic applications. Photonic structures of conventional materials typically lack efficient reconfigurability or multifunctionality. Atomically thin 2D materials can thus generate new functionality and reconfigurability for a well-established library of photonic structures such as integrated waveguides, optical fibers, photonic crystals, and metasurfaces, to name a few. Meanwhile, the interaction between light and van der Waals materials can be drastically enhanced as well by leveraging micro-cavities or resonators with high optical confinement. The unique van der Waals surfaces of the 2D materials enable handiness in transfer and mixing with various prefabricated photonic templates with high degrees of freedom, functionalizing as the optical gain, modulation, sensing, or plasmonic media for diverse applications. Here, we review recent advances in synergizing 2D materials to nanophotonic structures for prototyping novel functionality or performance enhancements. Challenges in scalable 2D materials preparations and transfer, as well as emerging opportunities in integrating van der Waals building blocks beyond 2D materials are also discussed.

The continuous growth of annual production and consumption of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is coined with increasing waste that leaks into the environment, landfills and oceans as microplastics and nano plastics fragments. Upcycling the recycled PET to make a feedstock for the fast-growing material-extrusion additive manufacturing (MEX-AM) technology can contribute to the solution and supports the concept of sustainable materials. In this work, extrudable filaments comprising recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) with low-cost additives, such as pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA) as a chain extender, styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene terpolymer functionalized with maleic anhydride (SEBS-g-MA), a thermal modifier and toughening agent, ethylene-ethyl acrylate-glycidyl methacrylate terpolymer (E-EA-GMA), a functional reactive elastomeric impact modifier and ethylene-ethyl-acrylate (EEA), a non-reactive elastomeric impact modifier, have been fabricated using the twin-screw extruder. The optimum extrusion process parameters for producing uniform filaments of different rPET compounded formulations have been identified, this includes the extrusion die temperature of 280 °C and the screw speed of 150 ± 3 rpm. The compounded filaments are then printed into standard ASTM test specimens for thermal characterization and mechanical characterization, including glass transition and melting temperatures, crystallinity and crystallization temperature, tensile strength, tensile modulus, ductility, flexural strength, and Izod impact energy. Furthermore, the melt flow index for the filaments was measured. More significantly, the experimental data showed that compounding rPET with such additives in the reactive twin-screw extrusion process results in uniform filaments that display advantageous thermal and mechanical properties and can be used as a feedstock in the MEX-AM technology. This study suggests that compounding the recycled PET pellets with low-cost additives while extruding them into filaments for MEX-AM offers excellent potential to make high-value-added customized products from a sustainable polymer feedstock, such as prototyping, tooling, testing components or end-use internal components for small machines and cars.
(© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)

Electric Impedance, Carbon, Electrodes, Microphysiological Systems, and Polymethyl Methacrylate

Trans-endothelial electrical resistance (TEER) is one of the most widely used indicators to quantify the barrier integrity of endothelial layers. Over the last decade, the integration of TEER sensors into organ-on-a-chip (OOC) platforms has gained increasing interest for its efficient and effective measurement of TEER in OOCs. To date, microfabricated electrodes or direct insertion of wires has been used to integrate TEER sensors into OOCs, with each method having advantages and disadvantages. In this study, we developed a TEER-SPE chip consisting of carbon-based screen-printed electrodes (SPEs) embedded in a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-based multi-layered microfluidic device with a porous poly(ethylene terephthalate) membrane in-between. As proof of concept, we demonstrated the successful cultures of hCMEC/D3 cells and the formation of confluent monolayers in the TEER-SPE chip and obtained TEER measurements for 4 days. Additionally, the TEER-SPE chip could detect changes in the barrier integrity due to shear stress or an inflammatory cytokine (i.e., tumor necrosis factor-α). The novel approach enables a low-cost and facile fabrication of carbon-based SPEs on PMMA substrates and the subsequent assembly of PMMA layers for rapid prototyping. Being cost-effective and cleanroom-free, our method lowers the existing logistical and technical barriers presenting itself as another step forward to the broader adoption of OOCs with TEER measurement capability.
(© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

The layup process of large composite structures made from dry reinforcement fabrics is considered. One such structure is a wind turbine blade, for which the current draping process is mostly manual. Automating the draping process will, therefore, lower the costs. Based on a literature review, a new concept is synthesized and analyzed using an advanced finite element model with rigid multi-body kinematics and a dedicated material model for the fabric. The material model is calibrated using experimental coupon tests, i.e. the bias-extension test (shear) and Peirce's cantilever test (out-of-plane bending). The concept is analyzed numerically by means of a simple parameter study and draping test cases on a flat mold as well as a general double-curved mold. The simulation results show that the concept is feasible for the draping operation and is thus qualified for the subsequent physical prototyping.
Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Johnny Jakobsen reports financial support was provided by 10.13039/501100022591The Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme, Grant no. 64019-0514. Christian Krogh reports financial support was provided by 10.13039/501100022591The Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme, Grant no. 64019-0514.
(© 2023 The Authors.)

The use of 3D-printed composites in structural applications beyond current prototyping applications requires the definition of safe and robust methodologies for the determination of critical loads. Taking into account that notches (corners, holes, grooves, etc.) are unavoidable in structural components, the presence of these types of stress risers affects the corresponding load-carrying capacity. This work applies the point method (PM) to the estimation of the critical (fracture) loads of graphene-reinforced polylactic acid (PLA-Gr) plates obtained via fused deposition modeling (FDM) with a fixed raster orientation at 45/-45. Additionally, the plates contain three different notch types (U-notches, V-notches, and circular holes) and comprise various thicknesses (from 5 mm up to 20 mm) and ratios of notch length to plate width (a/W= 0.25 and a/W = 0.50). The comparison between the obtained experimental critical loads and the corresponding estimations derived from the application of the PM reveals that this approach generates reasonable accuracy in this particular material that is comparable to the accuracy obtained in other structural materials obtained via traditional manufacturing processes.

Photolithography is the foundational process at the root of micro-electromechanical (MEMS) and microfluidic systems manufacture. The process is descendant from the semiconductor industry, originating from printed circuit board and microprocessor fabrication, itself historically performed in a cleanroom environment utilizing expensive, specialist microfabrication equipment. Consequently, these conditions prove cost-prohibitive and pose a large barrier to entry. We present a novel homebrew, "do-it-yourself" method for performing photolithography to produce master mold wafers using only household appliances and homemade equipment at the bench side, outside of a cleanroom, producing a range of designs including spiral, serpentine, rectangular, and circulatory. Our homebrew processes result in the production of microfluidic channels with feature resolution of ∼85 μm width and 50 μm height utilizing inkjet-printed photomasks on transparency film to expose dry-film photoresist. From start to finish, the entire process takes under <90 min and costs <£300. With SU8 epoxy negative photoresist and a chrome photomask, our low-cost UV exposure apparatus and homemade spincoater could be used to produce PDMS devices containing large arrays of identical microwells measuring 4.4 μm in diameter. We show that our homebrew method produces both rectangular and spiral microfluidic channels with better results than can be achieved by SLA 3D printing by comparison, and amenable to bonding into multilayer functional microfluidic devices. As these methods are fundamental to microfluidics manufacture, we envision that this work will be of value to researchers across a broad range of disciplines, such as those working in resource-constrained countries or conditions, with many and widely varying applications.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest.
(© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

The emergence of additive manufacturing technologies has brought about a significant transformation in several industries. Among these technologies, Fused Deposition Modeling/Fused Filament Fabrication (FDM/FFF) 3D printing has gained prominence as a rapid prototyping and small-scale production technique. The potential of FDM/FFF for applications that require improved mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties has been restricted due to the limited range of materials that are suitable for this process. This study explores the integration of various reinforcements, including carbon fibers, glass fibers, and nanoparticles, into the polymer matrix of FDM/FFF filaments. The utilization of advanced materials for reinforcing the filaments has led to the enhancement in mechanical strength, stiffness, and toughness of the 3D-printed parts in comparison to their pure polymer counterparts. Furthermore, the incorporation of fillers facilitates improved thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, and flame retardancy, thereby broadening the scope of potential applications for FDM/FFF 3D-printed components. Additionally, the article underscores the difficulties linked with the utilization of filled filaments in FDM/FFF 3D printing, including but not limited to filament extrusion stability, nozzle clogging, and interfacial adhesion between the reinforcement and matrix. Ultimately, a variety of pragmatic implementations are showcased, wherein filled filaments have exhibited noteworthy benefits in comparison to standard FDM/FFF raw materials. The aforementioned applications encompass a wide range of industries, such as aerospace, automotive, medical, electronics, and tooling. The article explores the possibility of future progress and the incorporation of innovative reinforcement materials. It presents a plan for the ongoing growth and application of advanced composite materials in FDM/FFF 3D printing.

Background: Increased levels of physical activity are associated with beneficial health effects for people with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and/or severe obesity; however, transforming knowledge about these effects into action is challenging. The aim of this paper is to explore lessons learnt from a co-creation process in a partnership project involving local stakeholders, including citizens, and researchers. The purpose of the process was to link a public health care institution with civil society organisations in the local community to make it possible for citizens to continue to be physically active after ending their public rehabilitation. Secondarily, this paper aims to develop a conceptual model of the above process.
Methods: The study constitutes the first part of Project Active Communities and was based on a partnership between three research institutions and a Danish rural municipality, involving municipal and civil society stakeholders and citizens with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and/or severe obesity in co-creation of concrete interventions for implementation. The co-creation process was divided into two tracks, one involving citizens (two workshops) and one involving municipal and civil society stakeholders (two workshops). The two tracks were concluded with a final workshop involving all stakeholders, including local politicians. Data sources are focus groups and bilateral meetings, workshop observations, and questionnaires.
Results: Lessons learnt include the importance of having a flexible timeframe for the co-creation process; giving room for disagreements and matching of mutual expectations between stakeholders; the value of a coordinator in the municipality to achieve acceptance of the project; and the significance of engaging local politicians in the co-creation process to accommodate internal political agendas. We have developed a conceptual model for a co-creation process, where we outline and explain three distinct phases: stakeholder identification and description, co-creation, and prototyping. The model can be adapted and applied to other sectors and settings.
Conclusions: This study documents lessons learnt in a co-creation process aiming to link a public health care institution with civil society organisations in the local community. Further, this study has specified productive co-creative processes and documented the various phases in a conceptual model.
(© 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.)

Morphogenesis, Water, Biology, Hormesis, and Fractals

Background: "Quantum biology" (QB) is a promising theoretical approach addressing questions about how living systems are able to unfold dynamics that cannot be solved on a chemical basis or seem to violate some fundamental laws (e.g., thermodynamic yield, morphogenesis, adaptation, autopoiesis, memory, teleology, biosemiotics). Current "quantum" approaches in biology are still very basic and "corpuscular", as these rely on a semi-classical and approximated view. We review important considerations of theory and experiments of the recent past in the field of condensed matter, water, physics of living systems, and biochemistry to join them by creating a consistent picture applicable for life sciences. Within quantum field theory (QFT), the field (also in the matter field) has the primacy whereby the particle, or "quantum", is a derivative of it. The phase of the oscillation and not the number of quanta is the most important observable of the system. Thermodynamics of open systems, symmetry breaking, fractals, and quantum electrodynamics (QED) provide a consistent picture of condensed matter, liquid water, and living matter. Coherence, resonance-driven biochemistry, and ion cyclotron resonance (Liboff-Zhadin effect) emerge as crucial hormetic phenomena. We offer a paradigmatic approach when dealing with living systems in order to enrich and ultimately better understand the implications of current research activities in the field of life sciences.

Humans, Skin microbiology, Propionibacterium acnes genetics, Synthetic Biology, Acne Vulgaris genetics, and Acne Vulgaris microbiology

In the past few years, new bacterial-cell-free transcription-translation systems have emerged as potent and quick platforms for protein production as well as for prototyping of DNA regulatory elements, genetic circuits, and metabolic pathways. The Gram-positive commensal Cutibacterium acnes is one of the most abundant bacteria present in the human skin microbiome. However, it has recently been reported that some C. acnes phylotypes can be associated with common inflammatory skin conditions, such as acne vulgaris, whereas others seem to play a protective role, acting as possible "skin probiotics". This fact has made C. acnes become a bacterial model of interest for the cosmetic industry. In the present study we report for the first time the development and optimization of a C. acnes -based cell-free system (CFS) that is able to produce 85 μg/mL firefly luciferase. We highlight the importance of harvesting the bacterial pellet in mid log phase and maintaining CFS reactions at 30 °C and physiological pH to obtain the optimal yield. Additionally, a C. acnes promoter library was engineered to compare coupled in vitro TX-TL activities, and a temperature biosensor was tested, demonstrating the wide range of applications of this toolkit in the synthetic biology field.

Reconfigurable modular microfluidics presents an opportunity for flexibly constructing prototypes of advanced microfluidic systems. Nevertheless, the strategy of directly integrating modules cannot easily fulfill the requirements of common applications, e.g., the incorporation of materials with biochemical compatibility and optical transparency and the execution of small batch production of disposable chips for laboratory trials and initial tests. Here, we propose a manufacturing scheme inspired by the movable type printing technique to realize 3D free-assembly modular microfluidics. Double-layer 3D microfluidic structures can be produced by replicating the assembled molds. A library of modularized molds is presented for flow control, droplet generation and manipulation and cell trapping and coculture. In addition, a variety of modularized attachments, including valves, light sources and microscopic cameras, have been developed with the capability to be mounted onto chips on demand. Microfluidic systems, including those for concentration gradient generation, droplet-based microfluidics, cell trapping and drug screening, are demonstrated. This scheme enables rapid prototyping of microfluidic systems and construction of on-chip research platforms, with the intent of achieving high efficiency of proof-of-concept tests and small batch manufacturing.
Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare no competing interests.
(© Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2023.)

Three-dimensional (3D)/four-dimensional (4D) printing, also known as additive manufacturing or fast prototyping, is a manufacturing technique that uses a digital model to generate a 3D/4D solid product. The usage of biomaterials with 3D/4D printers in the pharma and healthcare industries is gaining significant popularity. 3D printing has mostly been employed in the domain of otolaryngology to build portable anatomical models, personalized patient-centric implants, biologic tissue scaffolds, surgical planning in individuals with challenging conditions, and surgical training. Although identical to 3D printing technology in this application, 4D printing technology comprises a fourth dimension of time. With the use of 4D printing, a printed structure may alter over time under various stimuli. Smart polymeric materials are also generally denoted as bioinks are frequently employed in tissue engineering applications of 3D/4D printing. In general, 4D printing could significantly improve the safety and efficacy of otolaryngology therapies. The use of bioprinting in otolaryngology has an opportunity to transform the treatment of diseases influencing the ear, nose, and throat as well as the field of tissue regeneration. The present review briefs on polymeric material including biomaterials and cells used in the manufacturing of patient centric 3D/4D bio-printed products utilized in management of otolaryngology.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2023 Vyas, Shah, Singh and Prajapati.)

Humans, Ankle, Muscles, Walking, Knee Joint, Fatigue, Walking Speed, and Foot Orthoses

Background: The stiffness of a dorsal leaf AFO that minimizes walking energy cost in people with plantarflexor weakness varies between individuals. Using predictive simulations, we studied the effects of plantarflexor weakness, passive plantarflexor stiffness, body mass, and walking speed on the optimal AFO stiffness for energy cost reduction.
Methods: We employed a planar, nine degrees-of-freedom musculoskeletal model, in which for validation maximal strength of the plantar flexors was reduced by 80%. Walking simulations, driven by minimizing a comprehensive cost function of which energy cost was the main contributor, were generated using a reflex-based controller. Simulations of walking without and with an AFO with stiffnesses between 0.9 and 8.7 Nm/degree were generated. After validation against experimental data of 11 people with plantarflexor weakness using the Root-mean-square error (RMSE), we systematically changed plantarflexor weakness (range 40-90% weakness), passive plantarflexor stiffness (range: 20-200% of normal), body mass (+ 30%) and walking speed (range: 0.8-1.2 m/s) in our baseline model to evaluate their effect on the optimal AFO stiffness for energy cost minimization.
Results: Our simulations had a RMSE < 2 for all lower limb joint kinetics and kinematics except the knee and hip power for walking without AFO. When systematically varying model parameters, more severe plantarflexor weakness, lower passive plantarflexor stiffness, higher body mass and walking speed increased the optimal AFO stiffness for energy cost minimization, with the largest effects for severity of plantarflexor weakness.
Conclusions: Our forward simulations demonstrate that in individuals with bilateral plantarflexor the necessary AFO stiffness for walking energy cost minimization is largely affected by severity of plantarflexor weakness, while variation in walking speed, passive muscle stiffness and body mass influence the optimal stiffness to a lesser extent. That gait deviations without AFO are overestimated may have exaggerated the required support of the AFO to minimize walking energy cost. Future research should focus on improving predictive simulations in order to implement personalized predictions in usual care. Trial Registration Nederlands Trial Register 5170. Registration date: May 7th 2015.  http://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/admin/rctview.asp?TC=5170.
(© 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.)

It is a well-known fact that in the field of modern manufacturing processes, additive manufacturing (AM) offers unexpected opportunities for creativity and rapid development. Compared with classical manufacturing technologies, AM offers the advantages of reducing weight and improving performance and offers excellent design capabilities for prototyping and rapid sample manufacture. To achieve its full potential regarding cost, durability, material consumption, and rigidity, as well as maintaining competitiveness, there are several research directions that have not been explored. One less frequently explored direction is the involvement of dimensional methods in obtaining an optimal and competitive final product. In this review, we intend to discuss the ways in which dimensional methods, such as geometric analogy, similarity theory, and dimensional analysis, are involved in addressing the problems of AM. To the best of our knowledge, it appears that this field of engineering has not fully maximized the advantages of these dimensional methods to date. In this review, we survey mainly polymer-based AM technology. We focus on the design and optimization of highly competitive products obtained using AM and also on the optimization of layer deposition, including their orientation and filling characteristics. With this contribution to the literature, we hope to suggest a fruitful direction for specialists involved in AM to explore the possibilities of modern dimensional analysis.

Animals, Mice, Dimethylpolysiloxanes, Disease Models, Animal, Wound Healing, and Capillary Tubing

The development of wearable bioelectronic systems is a promising approach for optimal delivery of therapeutic treatments. These systems can provide continuous delivery of ions, charged biomolecules, and an electric field for various medical applications. However, rapid prototyping of wearable bioelectronic systems for controlled delivery of specific treatments with a scalable fabrication process is challenging. We present a wearable bioelectronic system comprised of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) device cast in customizable 3D printed molds and a printed circuit board (PCB), which employs commercially available engineering components and tools throughout design and fabrication. The system, featuring solution-filled reservoirs, embedded electrodes, and hydrogel-filled capillary tubing, is assembled modularly. The PDMS and PCB both contain matching through-holes designed to hold metallic contact posts coated with silver epoxy, allowing for mechanical and electrical integration. This assembly scheme allows us to interchange subsystem components, such as various PCB designs and reservoir solutions. We present three PCB designs: a wired version and two battery-powered versions with and without onboard memory. The wired design uses an external voltage controller for device actuation. The battery-powered PCB design uses a microcontroller unit to enable pre-programmed applied voltages and deep sleep mode to prolong battery run time. Finally, the battery-powered PCB with onboard memory is developed to record delivered currents, which enables us to verify treatment dose delivered. To demonstrate the functionality of the platform, the devices are used to deliver H[Formula: see text] in vivo using mouse models and fluoxetine ex vivo using a simulated wound environment. Immunohistochemistry staining shows an improvement of 35.86% in the M1/M2 ratio of H[Formula: see text]-treated wounds compared with control wounds, indicating the potential of the platform to improve wound healing.
(© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)

Background: An active online learning environment enables 2-way communication wherein students can engage in problem-based learning and projects, unlike fragmented lecture-style classes.
Purpose: This pilot study aimed to develop a metaverse-based online learning system and evaluate its usability.
Methods: A rapid prototyping model and Gather.town was used to design and develop a metaverse classroom. Participants were 10 nursing students from a college in South Korea. To evaluate usability, 10 tasks were configured and 2 pilot tests were conducted. The degree of difficulty, time required to perform tasks, and students' experience were investigated.
Results: The Metaverse for Education of Nursing Students was successfully completed, incorporating student feedback and addressing identified areas for improvement.
Conclusion: This study reflects a learner-centered educational environment through the direct participation in the development process of the instructors who conducted the lectures. The metaverse space can be widely applied in creative nursing education in the future.
Competing Interests: The authors disclose no conflicts of interest.
(Copyright © 2023 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: In-person dermatology clinical research studies often face recruitment and participation challenges due to travel-, time-, and cost-associated barriers. Studies incorporating virtual/asynchronous formats can potentially enhance research subject participation and satisfaction, but few mobile health tools are available to enable remote study conduct. We developed SkinTracker, a patient-facing mobile app and researcher-facing web platform, that enables longitudinal collection of skin photos, patient reported outcomes, and biometric health and environmental data.
Methods: Eight design thinking sessions including dermatologists, clinical research staff, software engineers, and graphic designers were held to create the components of SkinTracker. Following iterative prototyping, SkinTracker was piloted across six adult and four pediatric subjects with atopic dermatitis (AD) of varying severity levels to test and provide feedback on SkinTracker for six months.
Results: The SkinTracker app enables collection of informed consent for study participation, baseline medical history, standardized skin photographs, patient-reported outcomes (e.g., Patient Oriented Eczema Measure (POEM), Pruritus Numerical Rating Scale (NRS), Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI)), medication use, adverse events, voice diary to document qualitative experiences, chat function for communication with research team, environmental and biometric data such as exercise and sleep metrics through integration with an Apple Watch. The researcher web portal allows for management and visualization of subject enrollment, skin photographs for examination and severity scoring, survey completion, and other patient modules. The pilot study requested that subjects complete surveys and photographs on a weekly to monthly basis via the SkinTracker app. Afterwards, participants rated their experience in a 7-item user experience survey covering app function, design, and desire for participation in future studies using SkinTracker. Almost all subjects agreed or strongly agreed that SkinTracker enabled more convenient participation in skin research studies compared to an in-person format.
Discussion: To our knowledge, SkinTracker is one of the first integrated app- and web-based platforms allowing collection and management of data commonly obtained in clinical research studies. SkinTracker enables detailed, frequent capture of data that may better reflect the fluctuating course of conditions such as AD, and can be modularly customized for different skin conditions to improve dermatologic research participation and patient access.
Competing Interests: TB has received research grant funding from Novartis and Regeneron and is a principal investigator for trials sponsored by Abbvie, Castle, CorEvitas, Dermavant, Galderma, Mindera, and Pfizer. She has served as an advisor for Abbvie, Arcutis, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Janssen, Leo, Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer, Sun, and UCB. WL has received research grant funding from Abbvie, Amgen, Janssen, Leo, Novartis, Pfizer, Regeneron, and TRex Bio. AK, PD, and ND were employed by RedBlink Inc. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(© 2023 Jin, Hong, Elhage, Braun, Spencer, Chung, Yeroushalmi, Hadeler, Mosca, Bartholomew, Hakimi, Davis, Thibodeaux, Wu, Kahlon, Dhaliwal, Mathes, Dhaliwal, Bhutani and Liao.)

Despite scientific and technological advances in the field of assistive technology (AT) for people with visual impairment (VI), technological designs are frequently based on a poor understanding of the physical and social context of use, resulting in devices that are less than optimal for their intended beneficiaries. To resolve this situation, user-centred approaches in the development process of AT have been widely adopted in recent years. However, there is a lack of systematization on the application of this approach. This systematic review registered in PROSPERO (CRD42022307466), assesses the application of the ISO 9241-210 human-centred design principles in allegedly "user-centred designed" AT developments for persons with VI (see Supplementary PROSPERO Protocol). The results point to a wide variation of the depth of understanding of user needs, a poor characterization of the application of the User Centred Design (UCD) approach in the initial design phases or in the early prototyping, and a vague description of user feedback and device iteration. Among the principles set out in ISO 9241-210, the application of 5.6: "the design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives" is the one for which the least evidence is found. The results show there is not enough evidence to fully assess the impact of UCD in (1) promoting innovation regarding AT products and practices, and (2) Judging if AT produced following such standards is leading to better user access, wellbeing outcomes and satisfaction. To address this gap it is necessary to, first, generate better implementation of UCD in AT development and second, to strengthen evidence regarding the implementation and outcomes of using UCD for AT. To better engage with the realities of persons with VI, we propose capacity building across development teams regarding UCD, its principles and components; better planning for UCD implementation; and cross-fertilization across engineering disciplines and social and clinical science.
Systematic Review Registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=307466 PROSPERO (CRD42022307466).
Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(© 2023 Ortiz-Escobar, Chavarria, Schönenberger, Hurst, Stein, Mugeere and Rivas Velarde.)

Crystallization, Commerce, Polyesters, Bioengineering, and Biomedical Engineering

Compared to traditional methods, three/four-dimensional (3D/4D) printing technologies allow rapid prototyping and mass customization, which are ideal for preparing nano/microstructures of soft polymer materials. Poly (lactic acid) (PLA) is a biopolymer material widely used in additive manufacturing (AM) because of its biocompatibility and biodegradability. Unfortunately, owing to its intrinsically poor nucleation ability, a PLA product is usually in an amorphous state after industrial processing, leading to some undesirable properties such as a barrier property and low thermal resistance. Crystallization mediation offers a most practical way to improve the properties of PLA products. Herein, we summarize and discuss 3D/4D printing technologies in the processing of PLA nano/microstructures, focusing on crystallization principles and practical applications including bio-inspired structures, flexible electronics and biomedical engineering mainly reported in the last five years. Moreover, the challenges and prospects of 3D/4D printing technologies in the fabrication of high-performance PLA materials nano/microstructures will also be discussed.

Models of urea kinetics facilitate a mechanistic understanding of urea transfer and provide a tool for optimizing dialysis efficacy. Dual-compartment models have largely replaced single-compartment models as they are able to accommodate the urea rebound on the cessation of dialysis. Modeling the kinetics of urea and other molecular species is frequently regarded as a rarefied academic exercise with little relevance at the bedside. We demonstrate the utility of System Dynamics in creating multi-compartment models of urea kinetics by developing a dual-compartment model that is efficient, intuitive, and widely accessible to a range of practitioners. Notwithstanding its simplicity, we show that the System Dynamics model compares favorably with the performance of a more complex volume-average model in terms of calibration to clinical data and parameter estimation. Its intuitive nature, ease of development/modification, and excellent performance with real-world data may make System Dynamics an invaluable tool in widening the accessibility of hemodialysis modeling.
(© 2023. The Author(s).)

Optical sensing offers several advantages owing to its non-invasiveness and high sensitivity. The miniaturization of optical sensors will mitigate spatial and weight constraints, expanding their applications and extending the principal advantages of optical sensing to different fields, such as healthcare, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and other aspects of society. In this study, we present the development of a miniature optical sensor for monitoring thrombi in extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). The sensor, based on a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor integrated circuit (CMOS-IC), also serves as a photodiode, amplifier, and light-emitting diode (LED)-mounting substrate. It is sized 3.8 × 4.8 × 0.75 mm 3 and provides reflectance spectroscopy at three wavelengths. Based on semiconductor and microelectromechanical system (MEMS) processes, the design of the sensor achieves ultra-compact millimeter size, customizability, prototyping, and scalability for mass production, facilitating the development of miniature optical sensors for a variety of applications.

Animals, Antivenins therapeutic use, Antibodies, Monoclonal therapeutic use, Snake Bites diagnosis, Snake Bites drug therapy, Crotalid Venoms therapeutic use, and Bothrops

Background: Brazil is home to a multitude of venomous snakes; perhaps the most medically relevant of which belong to the Bothrops genus. Bothrops spp. are responsible for roughly 70% of all snakebites in Brazil, and envenomings caused by their bites can be treated with three types of antivenom: bothropic antivenom, bothro-lachetic antivenom, and bothro-crotalic antivenom. The choice to administer antivenom depends on the severity of the envenoming, while the choice of antivenom depends on availability and on how certain the treating physician is that the patient was bitten by a bothropic snake. The diagnosis of a bothropic envenoming can be made based on expert identification of the dead snake or a photo thereof or based on a syndromic approach wherein the clinician examines the patient for characteristic manifestations of envenoming. This approach can be very effective but requires staff that has been trained in clinical snakebite management, which, unfortunately, far from all relevant staff has.
Results: In this article, we describe a prototype of the first lateral flow assay (LFA) capable of detecting venoms from Brazilian Bothrops spp. The monoclonal antibodies for the assay were generated using hybridoma technology and screened in sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) to identify Bothrops spp.-specific antibody sandwich pairs. The prototype LFA is able to detect venom from several Bothrops spp. The LFA has a limit of detection (LoD) of 9.5 ng/mL in urine, when read with a commercial reader, and a visual LoD of approximately 25 ng/mL.
Significance: The work presented here serves as a proof of concept for a genus-specific venom detection kit that could support physicians in diagnosing Bothrops envenomings. Although further optimisation and testing is needed before the LFA can find clinical use, such a device could aid in decentralising antivenoms in the Brazilian Amazon and help ensure optimal snakebite management for even more victims of this highly neglected disease.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Cecilie Knudsen, Jonas A. Jürgensen, Søren H. Dam, Aleksander M. Haack, Rasmus U. W. Friis, and Andreas H. Laustsen are co-founders of VenomAid Diagnostics A/S. Jonas A. Jürgensen, Pelle D. Knudsen, and Georgina M. Ross are employed by VenomAid Diagnostics A/S. Cecilie Knudsen is an industrial PhD student at the Technical University of Denmark. Her PhD is co-sponsored by Innovation Fund Denmark and BioPorto Diagnostics A/S. Cecilie Knudsen, Jonas A. Jürgensen, Søren H. Dam, Aleksander M. Haack, Rasmus U. W. Friis, and Andreas H. Laustsen have been designated as inventors on a patent application related to the work presented here.
(Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Since temperature and its spatial, and temporal variations affect a wide range of physical properties of material systems, they can be used to create reconfigurable spatial structures of various types in physical and biological objects. This paper presents an experimental optical setup for creating tunable two-dimensional temperature patterns on a micrometer scale. As an example of its practical application, we have produced temperature-induced magnetization landscapes in ferrimagnetic yttrium iron garnet films and investigated them using micro-focused Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy. It is shown that, due to the temperature dependence of the magnon spectrum, spatial temperature distributions can be visualized even for microscale thermal patterns.
(© 2023 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).)

Humans, Thinking, and Pharmacy Research

Design thinking is an approach to problem solving that focuses on a solution to a problem. This systematic approach can be applied to practice-based research or implementation projects in your practice setting. It may be useful for starting new projects as well as revisiting past projects that may not have yielded meaningful results. The design-thinking process begins with identifying a problem or knowledge gap and then the steps include: (1) understanding the problem, (2) observing the problem, (3) defining the problem, (4) brainstorming possible solutions, (5) prototyping the best solution, and (6) testing the solution.