Toxicity assessment of electrochemical advanced oxidation process-treated groundwater from a gas station with petrochemical contamination.

Electrochemical advanced oxidation process (EAOP) is known for its efficient and fast degradation of organic pollutants in polluted water treatment. In this study, the EAOP using a boron-doped diamond (BDD) anode was applied to treat two-season groundwater samples collected from four sampling wells (GS1 to GS4) with petrochemical contaminants including methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), benzene, toluene, chlorobenzene, total organic compounds (TOC), and total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) at a gas station in southern Taiwan. Moreover, toxicity tests (ATP, p53, and NF-κB bioassays) were performed to evaluate the biological responses of raw and EAOP-treated groundwater. Results show that the concentrations of chlorobenzene before and after EAOP treatment were all below its method detection limit. High degradation efficiencies were observed for MTBE (100%), benzene (100%), toluene (100%, except that of GS2 in the first season), TPH (94-97%, except that of GS4 in the first season), and TOC (85-99%). Cell viability for both the raw groundwater (81.2 ± 13.5%) and EAOP-treated samples (84.7 ± 11.7%) as detected using the ATP bioassay showed no significant difference (p = 0.715). A mean reduction in the DNA damage (739 to 165 ng DOX-equivalency L-1 (ng DOX-EQ. L-1)) and inflammatory response levels (460 to 157 ng TNFα-equivalency L-1 (ng TNFα-EQ. L-1)) were observed for EAOP-treated samples subjected to p53 and NF-κB bioassays. Overall, the significances of the average degradation efficiency, DNA damage, and inflammatory response before and after groundwater with EAOP treatment was observed to be significant (p < 0.05). p53 and NF-κB bioassays might be applied to assess ecotoxic risk in the environment.

Development and user experience of an innovative multi-mode stroke rehabilitation system for the arm and hand for patients with stroke.

Many individuals with stroke experience upper-limb motor deficits, and a recent trend is to develop novel devices for enhancing their motor function. This study aimed to develop a new upper-limb rehabilitation system with the integration of two rehabilitation therapies into one system, digital mirror therapy (MT) and action observation therapy (AOT), and to test the usability of this system. In the part I study, the new system was designed to operate in multiple training modes of digital MT (i.e., unilateral and bilateral modes) and AOT (i.e., pre-recorded and self-recorded videos) with self-developed software. In the part II study, 4 certified occupational therapists and 10 stroke patients were recruited for evaluating usability. The System Usability Scale (SUS) (maximum score = 100) and a self-designed questionnaire (maximum score = 50) were used. The mean scores of the SUS were 79.38 and 80.00, and those of the self-designed questionnaire were 41.00 and 42.80, respectively, for the therapists and patients after using this system, which indicated good usability and user experiences. This novel upper-limb rehabilitation system with good usability might be further used to increase the delivery of two emerging rehabilitation therapies, digital AOT and MT, to individuals with stroke.