1,720,952 research outputs found
Flexible, wearable biosensors for digital health
No full textFlexible and stretchable biosensors have the advantage of enhanced signal validity and patient comfort during physiological signal sensing and biomolecular analysis, crucial for disease diagnosis, treatment and health management. Their lightness, softness and excellent mechanical properties enable effective skin-device interface coupling and skin safety profiles, realizing multi-functional, intelligent real-time sensing. In this review, the basic sensing principles of biosensor systems and their applications are discussed. Moreover, the potential applications and prospective progress of these biosensors are further prospected. Flexible, wearable biosensors have the potential to realize continuous and long-term health monitoring in clinical and daily health care.ChemE/Product and Process Engineerin
Design of Flexible Dry CNT/PDMS Electrodes for In-ear EEG: The Effect of Microstructures on Electrode Performance
No full textIn-ear EEG is a discreet and convenient method for monitoring EEG by placing the electrodes in the ear canal. This enables everyday monitoring outside of clinical environments in contrast to generally used scalp EEG with wet electrodes. This thesis proposes and describes the design of novel flexible dry CNT/PDMS electrodes with short pins, long pins, and a snake pattern. These dry electrodes make use of microstructures to improve electrode-skin impedance (ESI) by enlarging the effective contact area. In the composite fabrication process, SEM is used to optimize CNT dispersion which plays a significant role in the impedance of the material. The performance of the proposed dry electrodes is evaluated in comparison to conventionally used wet Ag/AgCl electrodes. Electrode impedance measurements show the superior performance of CNT/PDMS electrodes with microstructures with lower aspect ratios. This is confirmed by ESI measurements, which show a 49 % improvement at 10 Hz for the electrode with short pins compared to the electrode with long pins, and a further 53 % improvement for electrodes with the snake pattern. This makes the latter comparable to wet electrodes. Moreover, normalization by the projected surface area shows significantly lower ESI at low frequencies for dry CNT/PDMS electrodes with a snake pattern compared to wet electrodes. ESI of the dry electrode at 10 Hz is 30 kΩ cm2, one order of magnitude lower than for wet electrodes. At 1 kHz the ESI is 9.9 kΩ cm2, which is comparable to wet electrodes. Finally, ASSR tests show comparable suitability of dry CNT/PDMS electrodes and wet electrodes for in-ear EEG monitoring, suggesting that the proposed dry CNT/PDMS electrodes are a viable solution for in-ear EEG applications.Biomedical Engineerin
Always-on wireless ear-EEG to monitor brain activity: Electronics design
No full textCurrently, EEG recordings are mostly made using scalp recording devices. These devices are typically difficult to put on and bulky, limiting their use to a lab environment. In-ear EEG recording is proposed as a more practical alternative to scalp EEG recording. In-ear EEG replaces the scalp electrode array with more discrete earpieces, recording the EEG signals from the ear canal instead of the scalp. Because of their increased convenience with respect to their scalp electrode array counterpart, the earpieces allow for everyday use, enabling the possibility of long-term EEG recording, outside of a lab environment.This work presents the design of a fully-integrated in-ear EEG device. The device has been designed to record EEG signals, process them locally, and transmit the processed data to a smartphone or personal computer. The device is made to be easily re-programmable, making it possible to change the device firmware depending on the intended application. This functionality has been integrated into a small form factor, to allow for the integration of the electronics into an earpiece. A low-power design has been created, to allow for long-term battery operation. Two prototypes have been made. The first prototype focuses on exploring different system configurations, with the small form factor less of a priority. The performance of the prototype is tested by comparing it to a commercially available scalp EEG recording device based on scalp EEG recordings. For this comparison, the auditory steady-state response (ASSR), steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), and alpha-band modulation paradigms are used. The prototype has shown similar performance to the scalp EEG device in these experiments, with the scalp EEG device performing slightly better for the ASSR and alpha-band modulation paradigms, while the prototype showed the best performance for the SSVEP paradigm.The second prototype realises the best-performing system configuration that has been found with the first prototype into a form factor that fits into an earpiece. Ear EEG experiments are performed, with electrodes placed around the ears. The ASSR, SSVEP, and alpha-band modulation paradigms have again been used in these experiments. The measured performance on the ASSR and alpha-band modulation paradigms are slightly worse than that measured using the scalp EEG experiments. The SSVEP experiments showed significantly worse performance compared to the scalp EEG experiments. These results align with the expectations, as ear EEG has been documented to have performance close to scalp EEG for the ASSR and alpha-band modulation paradigms, while the SSVEP performance is typically worse for ear EEG than for scalp EEG.Electrical Engineerin
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Life Cycle Assessment of microfluidic devices for point-of-care testing: A comparative analysis of PDMS, paper and PLA
No full textIn microfluidics, typical laboratory processes can be condensed to a miniature device. This reduces analysis time and required volumes of samples and reagents, increases mobility and flexibility, and is cost effective. In this work, the environmental impacts of three microfluidic devices for glucose detection are assessed using a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) from cradle-to-grave. The three devices are a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) device manufactured through soft lithography, a paper device manufactured through wax stamping, and a polylactic acid (PLA) device manufactured through 3D printing. The environmental impacts are determined for two manufacturing scenarios: on laboratory-scale and commercial-scale. The functional unit is 1 act of glucose detection performed on a human sample using 1 microfluidic glucose detection device. Assuming laboratory-scale manufacturing, the paper device has the lowest environmental impacts, whereas the PLA device has the highest impact. The main contributing processes are those pertaining to the devices' manufacture. For the PDMS device, these are the processes for soft lithography, for the paper device it is the paraffin use, while for the PLA device it is the 3D printing. Assuming commercial-scale manufacturing, the PLA device has the lowest environmental impact, whereas the PDMS device has the highest impact. This scenario was modelled by improving efficiencies in the manufacturing of the PDMS and paper device, and substituting 3D printing for injection moulding for the PLA device.To reduce the devices' environmental impacts, a general recommendation is to transition to an electricity mix based on renewables rather than fossil fuels. For the PDMS device, a recommendation is to redesign the device such that the user can apply reagents before use, thereby avoiding emissions by cutting out a need for refrigeration, which is present in the current design. For the paper device a recommendation is to minimise the waste of paraffin, as it is the main contributor to the device's environmental impacts. Lastly, for the paper and PLA device it is recommended to consider alternate manufacturing methods when upscaling production. Their current manufacturing methods are ideal for prototyping, but are inefficient on a commercial scale. Some limitations are that several data points were estimated, cut off, or secondary. Data gaps were bridged through the use of proxies and stoichiometry for chemicals, which affected the accuracy of the model. Furthermore, recycling and chance of failure during manufacture are not accounted for. Lastly, as microfluidic devices are designed in many different ways, the results cannot be translated one-to-one to other devices. They can only provide a general idea of what the impacts for other devices might be. A continuation of this work could simulate the synthesis of chemicals using process design software, for increased accuracy. Another opportunity for further study is to collect and implement primary data and assess how that affects the results. Future research could investigate fields of microfluidics other than diagnostics. Generally, more research is necessary to model a proper ex-ante LCA with various scenarios. With enough research, microfluidics might fully reach its potential, while being environmentally responsible.Industrial Ecolog
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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