Sensors for Fetal Hypoxia and Metabolic Acidosis: A Review.

This article reviews existing clinical practices and sensor research undertaken to monitor fetal well-being during labour. Current clinical practices that include fetal heart rate monitoring and fetal scalp blood sampling are shown to be either inadequate or time-consuming. Monitoring of lactate in blood is identified as a potential alternative for intrapartum fetal monitoring due to its ability to distinguish between different types of acidosis. A literature review from a medical and technical perspective is presented to identify the current advancements in the field of lactate sensors for this application. It is concluded that a less invasive and a more continuous monitoring device is required to fulfill the clinical needs of intrapartum fetal monitoring. Potential specifications for such a system are also presented in this paper.

Multiplexed single-mode wavelength-to-time mapping of multimode light.

When an optical pulse propagates along an optical fibre, different wavelengths travel at different group velocities. As a result, wavelength information is converted into arrival-time information, a process known as wavelength-to-time mapping. This phenomenon is most cleanly observed using a single-mode fibre transmission line, where spatial mode dispersion is not present, but the use of such fibres restricts possible applications. Here we demonstrate that photonic lanterns based on tapered single-mode multicore fibres provide an efficient way to couple multimode light to an array of single-photon avalanche detectors, each of which has its own time-to-digital converter for time-correlated single-photon counting. Exploiting this capability, we demonstrate the multiplexed single-mode wavelength-to-time mapping of multimode light using a multicore fibre photonic lantern with 121 single-mode cores, coupled to 121 detectors on a 32 × 32 detector array. This work paves the way to efficient multimode wavelength-to-time mapping systems with the spectral performance of single-mode systems.

Solid-phase microextraction to determine micropollutant-macromolecule partition coefficients.

Aqueous micropollutants such as estradiol can have a large environmental impact-even at low concentrations. Part of understanding this impact involves determining the extent to which the micropollutants interact with macromolecules in water. In environmental samples, relevant macromolecules to which micropollutants bind are referred to as dissolved organic matter, and the most common examples of these in freshwater and coastal seawater are fulvic and humic acids. In living organisms, the most common macromolecules that affect bioavailability of a drug (or toxin) are proteins such as albumin. Using [2, 4, 6, 7 - (3)H]estradiol as an example compound, this protocol uses solid-phase microextraction and scintillation detection as analytical tools to quantify the amount of radiolabeled micropollutant available in solution. The measured free concentration after exposure to various concentrations of macromolecule (dissolved organic matter or protein) or micropollutant is used to determine the partition coefficient in the case of micropollutant-macromolecule interactions. The calibration and preparatory studies take at least 8 d, and the steps to determine the partition coefficient can be completed within 3 d. The protocol could be modified such that nonlabeled compounds are studied; instead of detection of activity by a liquid scintillation counter (LSC), the compounds can be quantified using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) or liquid chromatography (LC)-MS(/MS).

Deformability Assessment of Waterborne Protozoa Using a Microfluidic-Enabled Force Microscopy Probe.

Many modern filtration technologies are incapable of the complete removal of Cryptosporidium oocysts from drinking-water. Consequently, Cryptosporidium-contaminated drinking-water supplies can severely implicate both water utilities and consumers. Existing methods for the detection of Cryptosporidium in drinking-water do not discern between non-pathogenic and pathogenic species, nor between viable and non-viable oocysts. Using FluidFM, a novel force spectroscopy method employing microchannelled cantilevers for single-cell level manipulation, we assessed the size and deformability properties of two species of Cryptosporidium that pose varying levels of risk to human health. A comparison of such characteristics demonstrated the ability of FluidFM to discern between Cryptosporidium muris and Cryptosporidium parvum with 86% efficiency, whilst using a measurement throughput which exceeded 50 discrete oocysts per hour. In addition, we measured the deformability properties for untreated and temperature-inactivated oocysts of the highly infective, human pathogenic C. parvum to assess whether deformability may be a marker of viability. Our results indicate that untreated and temperature-inactivated C. parvum oocysts had overlapping but significantly different deformability distributions.

Angry pathogens, how to get rid of them: introducing microfluidics for waterborne pathogen separation to children.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new approach for introducing to a non-scientific audience a major public health issue: access to safe drinking water. Access to safe drinking water is a privilege in developed countries and an urgent need in the third world, which implies always more efficient and reliable engineering tools to be developed. As a major global challenge it is important to make children aware of this problem for understanding (i) what safe drinking water is, (ii) how ingenious techniques are developed for this purpose and (iii) the role of microfluidics in this area. This paper focuses on different microfluidic-based techniques to separate and detect pathogens in drinking water that have been adapted to be performed by a young audience in a simplified, recreational and interactive way.