Fibre Bragg Grating Based Interface Pressure Sensor for Compression Therapy.

Compression therapy is widely used as the gold standard for management of chronic venous insufficiency and venous leg ulcers, and the amount of pressure applied during the compression therapy is crucial in supporting healing. A fibre optic pressure sensor using Fibre Bragg Gratings (FBGs) is developed in this paper to measure sub-bandage pressure whilst removing cross-sensitivity due to strain in the fibre and temperature. The interface pressure is measured by an FBG encapsulated in a polymer and housed in a textile to minimise discomfort for the patient. The repeatability of a manual fabrication process is investigated by fabricating and calibrating ten sensors. A customized calibration setup consisting of a programmable translation stage and a weighing scale gives sensitivities in the range 0.4-1.5 pm/mmHg (2.6-11.3 pm/kPa). An alternative calibration method using a rigid plastic cylinder and a blood pressure cuff is also demonstrated. Investigations are performed with the sensor under a compression bandage on a phantom leg to test the response of the sensor to changing pressures in static situations. Measurements are taken on a human subject to demonstrate changes in interface pressure under a compression bandage during motion to mimic a clinical application. These results are compared to the current gold standard medical sensor using a Bland-Altman analysis, with a median bias ranging from -4.6 to -20.4 mmHg, upper limit of agreement (LOA) from -13.5 to 2.7 mmHg and lower LOA from -32.4 to -7.7 mmHg. The sensor has the potential to be used as a training tool for nurses and can be left in situ to monitor bandage pressure during compression therapy.

PhenoMeNal: processing and analysis of metabolomics data in the cloud.

BACKGROUND: Metabolomics is the comprehensive study of a multitude of small molecules to gain insight into an organism's metabolism. The research field is dynamic and expanding with applications across biomedical, biotechnological, and many other applied biological domains. Its computationally intensive nature has driven requirements for open data formats, data repositories, and data analysis tools. However, the rapid progress has resulted in a mosaic of independent, and sometimes incompatible, analysis methods that are difficult to connect into a useful and complete data analysis solution. FINDINGS: PhenoMeNal (Phenome and Metabolome aNalysis) is an advanced and complete solution to set up Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) that brings workflow-oriented, interoperable metabolomics data analysis platforms into the cloud. PhenoMeNal seamlessly integrates a wide array of existing open-source tools that are tested and packaged as Docker containers through the project's continuous integration process and deployed based on a kubernetes orchestration framework. It also provides a number of standardized, automated, and published analysis workflows in the user interfaces Galaxy, Jupyter, Luigi, and Pachyderm. CONCLUSIONS: PhenoMeNal constitutes a keystone solution in cloud e-infrastructures available for metabolomics. PhenoMeNal is a unique and complete solution for setting up cloud e-infrastructures through easy-to-use web interfaces that can be scaled to any custom public and private cloud environment. By harmonizing and automating software installation and configuration and through ready-to-use scientific workflow user interfaces, PhenoMeNal has succeeded in providing scientists with workflow-driven, reproducible, and shareable metabolomics data analysis platforms that are interfaced through standard data formats, representative datasets, versioned, and have been tested for reproducibility and interoperability. The elastic implementation of PhenoMeNal further allows easy adaptation of the infrastructure to other application areas and 'omics research domains.

Use of the wetting method on cassava flour in three konzo villages in Mozambique reduces cyanide intake and may prevent konzo in future droughts.

Konzo is an irreversible paralysis of the legs that occurs mainly in children and young women associated with large cyanide intake from bitter cassava coupled with malnutrition. In East Africa outbreaks occur during drought, when cassava plants produce much more cyanogens than normal. A wetting method that removes cyanogens from cassava flour was taught to the women of three konzo villages in Mozambique, to prevent sporadic konzo and konzo outbreaks in the next drought. The intervention was in three villages with 72 konzo cases and mean konzo prevalence of 1.2%. The percentage of children with high (>350 µmol/L) urinary thiocyanate content and at risk of contracting konzo in Cava, Acordos de Lusaka, and Mujocojo reduced from 52, 10, and 6 at baseline to 17, 0, and 4 at conclusion of the intervention. Cassava flour showed large reductions in total cyanide over the intervention. The percentage of households using the wetting method was 30-40% in Acordos de Lusaka and Mujocojo and less in Cava. If the wetting method is used extensively by households during drought it should prevent konzo outbreaks and chronic cyanide intoxication. We recommend that the wetting method be taught in all konzo areas in East Africa.

MUSCLE: automated multi-objective evolutionary optimization of targeted LC-MS/MS analysis.

Developing liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analyses of (bio)chemicals is both time consuming and challenging, largely because of the large number of LC and MS instrument parameters that need to be optimized. This bottleneck significantly impedes our ability to establish new (bio)analytical methods in fields such as pharmacology, metabolomics and pesticide research. We report the development of a multi-platform, user-friendly software tool MUSCLE (multi-platform unbiased optimization of spectrometry via closed-loop experimentation) for the robust and fully automated multi-objective optimization of targeted LC-MS/MS analysis. MUSCLE shortened the analysis times and increased the analytical sensitivities of targeted metabolite analysis, which was demonstrated on two different manufacturer's LC-MS/MS instruments.