Automated Urinal-Based Specific Gravity Measurement Device for Real-Time Hydration Monitoring in Male Athletes.

Acute and chronic hydration status is important for athlete safety and performance and is frequently measured by sports scientists and performance staff in team environments via urinalysis. However, the time required for urine collection, staff testing, and reporting often delays immediate reporting and personalized nutrition insight in situations of acute hydration management before training or competition. Furthermore, the burdensome urine collection and testing process often renders chronic hydration monitoring sporadic or non-existent in real-world settings. An automated urinalysis device (InFlow) was developed to measure specific gravity, an index of hydration status, in real-time during urination. The device was strongly correlated to optical refractometry with a mean absolute error of 0.0029 (±0.0021). Our results show this device provides a novel and useful approach for real-time hydration status via urinalysis for male athletes in team environments with high testing frequency demands.

Fully-drawn carbon-based chemical sensors on organic and inorganic surfaces.

Mechanical abrasion is an extremely simple, rapid, and low-cost method for deposition of carbon-based materials onto a substrate. However, the method is limited in throughput, precision, and surface compatibility for drawing conductive pathways. Selective patterning of surfaces using laser-etching can facilitate substantial improvements to address these current limitations for the abrasive deposition of carbon-based materials. This study demonstrates the successful on-demand fabrication of fully-drawn chemical sensors on a wide variety of substrates (e.g., weighing paper, polymethyl methacrylate, silicon, and adhesive tape) using single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) as sensing materials and graphite as electrodes. Mechanical mixing of SWCNTs with solid or liquid selectors yields sensors that can detect and discriminate parts-per-million (ppm) quantities of various nitrogen-containing vapors (pyridine, aniline, triethylamine).

Robust cyclohexanone selective chemiresistors based on single-walled carbon nanotubes.

Functionalized single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT)-based chemiresistors are reported for a highly robust and sensitive gas sensor to selectively detect cyclohexanone, a target analyte for explosive detection. The trifunctional selector has three important properties: it noncovalently functionalizes SWCNTs with cofacial π-π interactions, it binds to cyclohexanone via hydrogen bond (mechanistic studies were investigated), and it improves the overall robustness of SWCNT-based chemiresistors (e.g., humidity and heat). Our sensors produced reversible and reproducible responses in less than 30 s to 10 ppm of cyclohexanone and displayed an average theoretical limit of detection (LOD) of 5 ppm.