The global burden of decubitus ulcers from 1990 to 2019.

There are no studies assessing the epidemiology and burden of decubitus ulcers at global, regional, and national levels. We aim to report this issue from 1990 to 2019 by extracting data from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2019 and stratifying it by age, gender, and socio-demographic index (SDI). Globally, the number of prevalent cases of decubitus ulcers in 2019 is 0.85 (95% UI 0.78 to 0.94) million. The age-standardized rates of prevalence, incidence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) in 2019 are 11.3 (95% UI 10.2 to 12.5), 41.8 (37.8 to 46.2), and 1.7 (1.2 to 2.2) per 100,000 population, and compared with 1990, it has decreased by 10.6% (95% UI 8.7% to 12.3%), 10.2% (8.2 to 11.9%), and 10.4% (8.1 to 12.5%), respectively. In addition, the global prevalence rate of decubitus ulcers increases with age, peaking at the > 95 age group among men and women. At the regional and national levels, we observe a positive correlation between age-standardized YLDs and SDI. Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand experienced the most significant increases in age-standardized prevalence rates at the national level. Finally, we concluded that the age-standardized prevalence, incidence, and YLDs rates of decubitus ulcer declined from 1990 to 2019, with significant regional differences. In order to monitor the dynamic changes of decubitus ulcers burden, it is recommended to improve the quality of decubitus ulcer health data in all regions and countries.

[Development of teaching training and assessment system for warming acupuncture].

A teaching training and assessment system for warming acupuncture is developed. This system is suitable for the technique operation of multi-acupoint warming acupuncture, and could evaluate the training effects of warming acupuncture at each acupoint. The hardware structure of this system is mainly composed of man-machine interface, control unit and training unit. The software program includes reset module, system clock module, needle depth signal control module, vibration control module and communication module. The teaching training and assessment system of warming acupuncture adopted touch-screen human-machine interface, which is simple to operate. The basic training unit, through multi-angle and multi-dimension adjustment of universal base, could realize the simulation training of warming acupuncture at different acupoints and angles of human body. Each training unit is relatively independent, and relevant parameters are set separately; the relevant parameters information is displayed in real time. The parameters of training unit includes needling time, vibration frequency and vibration time. In conclusion, the teaching training and assessment system for warming acupuncture could be used in the teaching and assessment of warming acupuncture. According to the criteria including operation time and effect, the students' technique ability of warming acupuncture could be evaluated objectively, which is helpful to set teaching objectives and technical operation requirements in warming acupuncture teaching.

Is skin pressure a relevant factor for socket assessment in patients with lower limb amputation?

BACKGROUND: Prosthetic rehabilitation improves the overall quality of life of patients, despite discomfort and medical complications. No quantitative assessment of prosthesis-patient interaction is used in routine protocols and prosthesis quality still results from the manufacturer's know-how. OBJECTIVE: Our objective is to investigate whether pressure can be a relevant factor for assessing socket adequacy. METHODS: A total of 8 transtibial amputee volunteers took part in this experimental study. The protocol included static standing and 2 minutes walking tests while the stump-to-socket interface pressures were measured. Questionnaires on comfort and pain were also conducted. RESULTS: During static standing test, maximum pressures were recorded in the proximal region of the leg, with a peak value reaching 121.1 ± 31.6 kPa. During dynamic tests, maximum pressures of 254.1 ± 61.2 kPa were recorded during the loading phase of the step. A significant correlation was found between the pain score and static maximum recorded pressure (r= 0.81). CONCLUSIONS: The protocol proposed and evaluated in this study is a repeatable, easy-to-set quantified analysis of the patient to socket interaction while standing and walking. This approach is likely to improve feedback for prosthesis manufacturers and consequently the overall design of prostheses.

Towards Low-Cost Yet High-Performance Sensor Networks by Deploying a Few Ultra-fast Charging Battery Powered Sensors.

The employment of mobile vehicles to charge sensors via wireless energy transfer is a promising technology to maintain the perpetual operation of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Most existing studies assumed that sensors are powered with off-the-shelf batteries, e.g., Lithium batteries, which are cheap, but it takes some non-trivial time to fully charge such a battery (e.g., 30⁻80 min). The long charging time may incur long sensor dead durations, especially when there are many lifetime-critical sensors to be charged. On the other hand, other studies assumed that every sensor is powered with an ultra-fast charging battery, where it only takes some trivial time to replenish such a battery, e.g., 1 min, but the adoption of many ultra-fast sensors will bring about high purchasing cost. In this paper, we propose a novel heterogeneous sensor network model, in which there are only a few ultra-fast sensors and many low-cost off-the-shelf sensors. The deployment cost of the network in the model is low, as the number of ultra-fast sensors is limited. We also have an important observation that we can significantly shorten sensor dead durations by enabling the ultra-fast sensors to relay more data for lifetime-critical off-the-shelf sensors. We then propose a joint charging scheduling and routing allocation algorithm, such that the longest sensor dead duration is minimized. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm through extensive simulation experiments. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is very promising and the longest sensor dead duration by it is only about 10% of those by existing algorithms.

Performance Assessment of Full-Scale Wastewater Treatment Plants Based on Seasonal Variability of Microbial Communities via High-Throughput Sequencing.

Microbial communities of activated sludge (AS) play a key role in the performance of wastewater treatment processes. However, seasonal variability of microbial population in varying AS-based processes has been poorly correlated with operation of full-scale wastewater treatment systems (WWTSs). In this paper, significant seasonal variability of AS microbial communities in eight WWTSs located in the city of Guangzhou were revealed in terms of 16S rRNA-based Miseq sequencing. Furthermore, variation redundancy analysis (RDA) demonstrated that the microbial community compositions closely correlated with WWTS operation parameters such as temperature, BOD, NH4+-N and TN. Consequently, support vector regression models which reasonably predicted effluent BOD, SS and TN in WWTSs were established based on microbial community compositions. This work provided an alternative tool for rapid assessment on performance of full-scale wastewater treatment plants.