Wearable or attachable health monitoring smart systems are considered to be the next generation of personal portable devices for remote medicine practices. Smart flexible sensing electronics are ...components crucial in endowing health monitoring systems with the capability of real‐time tracking of physiological signals. These signals are closely associated with body conditions, such as heart rate, wrist pulse, body temperature, blood/intraocular pressure and blood/sweat bio‐information. Monitoring such physiological signals provides a convenient and non‐invasive way for disease diagnoses and health assessments. This Review summarizes the recent progress of flexible sensing electronics for their use in wearable/attachable health monitoring systems. Meanwhile, we present an overview of different materials and configurations for flexible sensors, including piezo‐resistive, piezo‐electrical, capacitive, and field effect transistor based devices, and analyze the working principles in monitoring physiological signals. In addition, the future perspectives of wearable healthcare systems and the technical demands on their commercialization are briefly discussed.
Flexible sensing electronics play crucial roles in wearable health monitoring systems, which is considered to be a convenient and effective way for disease diagnoses and health assessments. The advances of flexible sensing electronics and related nanomaterials in healthcare are summarized.
Simple sequence repeats (SSRs), also referred to as microsatellites, are highly variable tandem DNAs that are widely used as genetic markers. The increasing availability of whole-genome and ...transcript sequences provides information resources for SSR marker development. However, efficient software is required to efficiently identify and display SSR information along with other gene features at a genome scale. We developed novel software package Genome-wide Microsatellite Analyzing Tool Package (GMATA) integrating SSR mining, statistical analysis and plotting, marker design, polymorphism screening and marker transferability, and enabled simultaneously display SSR markers with other genome features. GMATA applies novel strategies for SSR analysis and primer design in large genomes, which allows GMATA to perform faster calculation and provides more accurate results than existing tools. Our package is also capable of processing DNA sequences of any size on a standard computer. GMATA is user friendly, only requires mouse clicks or types inputs on the command line, and is executable in multiple computing platforms. We demonstrated the application of GMATA in plants genomes and reveal a novel distribution pattern of SSRs in 15 grass genomes. The most abundant motifs are dimer GA/TC, the A/T monomer and the GCG/CGC trimer, rather than the rich G/C content in DNA sequence. We also revealed that SSR count is a linear to the chromosome length in fully assembled grass genomes. GMATA represents a powerful application tool that facilitates genomic sequence analyses. GAMTA is freely available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/gmata/?source=navbar.
Studies of lipid kinetics in both sexes have elucidated many of the mechanisms responsible for the sex differences in the plasma lipid profile; however, the underlying physiologic modulators remain ...unclear.
It is commonly thought that sex hormones are important regulators of plasma lipid kinetics and are responsible for sexual dimorphism in the plasma lipid profile. Here we discuss the findings from studies evaluating lipid and lipoprotein kinetics in men and women in the context of what we know about the effects of exogenous sex hormone administration, and we conclude that it is more complicated than that. It has become clear that normal physiological alterations in the hormonal milieu (i.e. due to menopause or throughout the menstrual cycle) do not significantly affect plasma lipid homeostasis. Furthermore, parenterally administered estrogens have either no effect or only very small beneficial effects, whereas orally administered estrogens raise plasma triglyceride concentrations—a phenomenon that is not consistent with the observed sex differences and likely results from the hepatic “first-pass effect.” The effects of progestogens and androgens mimic only in part the differences in plasma lipids between men and women. Thus, the underlying physiological modulators of plasma lipid metabolism responsible for the differences between men and women remain to be elucidated.
Two‐dimensional (2D) materials have great potential in the fields of flexible electronics and photoelectronic devices due to their unique properties derived by special structures. The study of the ...mechanical properties of 2D materials plays an important role in next‐generation flexible mechanical electronic device applications. Unfortunately, traditional experiment models and measurement methods are not suitable for 2D materials due to their atomically ultrathin thickness, which limits both the theoretical research and practical value of the 2D materials. In this review, we briefly summarize the characterization of mechanical properties of 2D materials by in situ probe nanoindentation experiments, and discuss the effect of thickness, grain boundary, and interlayer interactions. We introduce the strain‐induced effect on electrical properties and optical properties of 2D materials. Then, we generalize the mechanical sensors based on various 2D materials and their future potential applications in flexible and wearable electronic devices. Finally, we discuss the state of the art for the mechanical properties of 2D materials and their opportunities and challenges in both basic research and practical applications.
Two‐dimensional materials are promising for flexible electronics due to their novel mechanical, electrical, and optical properties. The mechanical induced properties of 2D materials are discussed, and their applications in flexible mechanical sensors are summarized.
This article reviews recent progress leading to the generation of optical vortex beams. After introducing the basics of optical vortex beams and their promising applications, we summarized different ...approaches for optical vortex generation by discrete components and laser cavities. We place particular emphasis on the recent development of vortex generation by the planar phase plates, which are able to engineer a spiral phasefront via dynamic or geometric phase in nanoscale, and highlight the independent operation of these two different phases which leads to a multifunctional optical vortex beam generation and independent spin-orbit interaction. We also introduced the recent progress on vortex lasing, including vortex beam generation from the output of bulk lasers by modification of conventional laser cavities with phase elements and from integrated on-chip microlasers. Similar approaches are also applied to generate fractional vortex beams carrying fractional topological charge. The advanced technology and approaches on design and nanofabrications enable multiple vortex beams generation from a single device via multiplexing, multicasting, and vortex array, open up opportunities for applications on data processing, information encoding/decoding, communication and parallel data processing, and micromanipulations.
Reduced graphene oxide ultrathin films are fabricated by a reproducible exfoliation method at the liquid/air interface, and they show high transparency, tunable sheet resistance, uniform electric ...conductivity, and structural homogeneity over a large area. A flexible relative humidity sensing matrix is demonstrated and it is shown to be excellent for close proximity sensing without touching it. This method opens up a novel avenue for future human–machine interaction applications.
Flexible tactile sensors are considered as an effective way to realize the sense of touch, which can perform the synchronized interactions with surrounding environment. Here, the utilization of ...bionic microstructures on natural lotus leaves is demonstrated to design and fabricate new‐type of high‐performance flexible capacitive tactile sensors. Taking advantage of unique surface micropattern of lotus leave as the template for electrodes and using polystyrene microspheres as the dielectric layer, the proposed devices present stable and high sensing performance, such as high sensitivity (0.815 kPa−1), wide dynamic response range (from 0 to 50 N), and fast response time (≈38 ms). In addition, the flexible capacitive sensor is not only applicable to pressure (touch of a single hair), but also to bending and stretching forces. The results indicate that the proposed capacitive tactile sensor is a promising candidate for the future applications in electronic skins, wearable robotics, and biomedical devices.
The utilization of bionic microstructures on natural lotus leaves are demonstrated to design and fabricate a new‐type flexible capacitive tactile sensor, the proposed device exhibit high sensitivity (0.815 kPa−1), wide dynamic response range (from 0 to 50 N), and fast response time (≈38 ms), which is perfectly applicable to pressure, bending, and stretching forces.
Botanical systems have evolved the intriguing ability to respond to diverse stimuli due to long‐term survival competition. Mimicking these dynamic behaviors has greatly advanced the developments in ...wide fields ranging from soft robotics, precision sensors to drug delivery and biomedical devices. However, realization of stimuli‐responsive components at the microscale with high response speed still remains a significant challenge. Herein, the miniature biomimetic 4D printing of pH‐responsive hydrogel is reported in spatiotemporal domain by femtosecond laser direct writing. The dimension of the printed architectures is at the microscale (<102 µm) and the response speed is reduced down to subsecond level (<500 ms). Shape transformation with multiple degrees of freedom is accomplished by taking advantage of pH‐triggered expansion, contraction, and torsion. Biomimetic complex shape‐morphing is enabled by adopting flexible scanning strategies. In addition, application of this 4D‐printed micro‐architecture in selective micro‐object trapping and releasing is demonstrated, showcasing its possibilities in micromanipulation, single‐cell analysis, and drug delivery.
Complex shape morphing with expansion, contraction, twisting, and curling can be achieved by the proposed femtosecond laser 4D printing of hydrogels at the microscale. The 4D‐printed architectures can respond to the environmental stimuli with high speed. On‐demand capture and release of microparticles can be accomplished by using the 4D‐printed hydrogels.
As a result of small fault current, high level of noise and a large penetration of distributed generators (DG), in the neutral non-effectively grounded medium-voltage (MV) distribution networks, it ...is quite difficult to locate the faulted line section for single phase to ground faults. In this paper, using a technique based on synchronized measurements in distribution networks, a fault location method based on the analysis of the energy of the transient zero-sequence current in the selected frequency band (SFB) is proposed. The equivalent impedance of the distribution network with lateral branches is studied with an equivalent network, and the phase-frequency characteristics of the equivalent impedance are analyzed. The SFB, within which the transient energy of the faulty line section is larger than that of the healthy line sections is determined. A combined fault-section location criterion is proposed and the implementation scheme is illustrated with the distribution level phasor measurement units. Numerical simulations of the IEEE 34 node system and the field experiments of a 10kV distribution network validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.
The exopolysaccharide galactosaminogalactan (GAG) has been well characterized in Aspergilli, especially the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus. It has been found that a five-gene cluster is ...responsible for GAG biosynthesis in Aspergilli to mediate fungal adherence, biofilm formation, immunosuppression or induction of host immune defences. Herein, we report the presence of the conserved GAG biosynthetic gene cluster in the insect pathogenic fungus Metarhizium robertsii to mediate either similar or unique biological functions. Deletion of the gene cluster disabled fungal ability to produce GAG on germ tubes, mycelia and appressoria. Relative to the wild type strain, null mutant was impaired in topical infection but not injection of insect hosts. We found that GAG production by Metarhizium is partially acetylated and could mediate fungal adherence to hydrophobic insect cuticles, biofilm formation, and penetration of insect cuticles. In particular, it was first confirmed that this exopolymer is responsible for the formation of appressorium mucilage, the essential extracellular matrix formed along with the infection structure differentiation to mediate cell attachment and expression of cuticle degrading enzymes. In contrast to its production during A. fumigatus invasive growth, GAG is not produced on the Metarhizium cells harvested from insect hemocoels; however, the polymer can glue germ tubes into aggregates to form mycelium pellets in liquid culture. The results of this study unravel the biosynthesis and unique function of GAG in a fungal system apart from the aspergilli species.
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