Chicken skin based Milli Watt range biocompatible triboelectric nanogenerator for biomechanical energy harvesting.

This work reports a high-performance, low-cost, biocompatible triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) using chicken skin (CS). The device is suitable to power wearable devices, which is critical to adapt electronics in monitoring, predicting, and treating people. It also supports sustainability by providing a cost-effective way to reduce the poultry industry's waste. It has been shown here that CS-derived biowaste is an effective means of generating tribopositive material for TENGs. The CS contains amino acid functional groups based on (Glycine, Proline, and Hydroxyproline), which are essential to demonstrate the electron-donating ability of collagen. The skin was cut into 3 × 3 cm2 and used as the raw material for fabricating the TENG device with a stacking sequence of Al/Kapton/spacing/CS/Al. The chicken skin-based TENG (CS-TENG) is characterized at different frequencies (4-14 HZ) using a damping system. The CS-TENG produces an open-circuit voltage of 123 V, short-circuit current of 20 µA and 0.2 mW/cm2 of a power density at 20 MΩ. The biocompatible CS-TENG presents ultra-robust and stable endurance performance with more than 52,000 cycles. The CS-TENG is impressively capable of scavenging energy to light up to 55 commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs), a calculator, and to measure the physiological motions of the human body. CS-TENG is a step toward sustainable, battery-less devices or augmented energy sources, especially when using traditional power sources, such as in wearable devices, remote locations, or mobile applications is not practical or cost-effective.

Beta2-adrenergic receptor variants in children and adolescents with bronchial asthma.

The region encoding the N-terminal of human ß2-adrenergic receptor gene (ADRB2) shows several polymorphisms. To this end, we studied change in susceptibility and/or response to therapy in 175 asthmatic children and adolescents by the two most common variants of the ADRB2 gene namely, rs1042713 (Gly16Arg) and rs1042714 (Gln27Glu). Although, the variants did not correlate with risk of development nor with the severity of the asthma, Gly16/Glu27 haplotype in homozygous individuals conferred protection against development of asthma and was associated with a lower frequency of dyspnea and sputum production. In contrast, the Arg16/Gln27 haplotype was associated with a better response to treatment. These findings show that the risk of development of asthma or response to treatment can be, respectively, deciphered by the detection of both rs1042713 and rs1042714 variants in ADRB2 gene.