Multipurpose Modular Wireless Sensor for Remote Monitoring and IoT Applications.

Today, maintaining an Internet connection is indispensable; as an example, we can refer to IoT applications that can be found in fields such as environmental monitoring, smart manufacturing, healthcare, smart buildings, smart homes, transportation, energy, and others. The critical elements in IoT applications are both the Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSn) and the Wireless Sensor Networks. It is essential to state that designing an application demands a particular design of a WSn, which represents an important time consumption during the process. In line with this observation, our work describes the development of a modular WSn (MWSn) built with digital processing, wireless communication, and power supply subsystems. Then, we reduce the WSn-implementing process into the design of its modular sensing subsystem. This would allow the development and launching processes of IoT applications across different fields to become faster and easier. Our proposal presents a versatile communication between the sensing modules and the MWSn using one- or two-wired communication protocols, such as I2C. To validate the efficiency and versatility of our proposal, we present two IoT-based remote monitoring applications.

COVID-19 Long-Term Effects: Is There an Impact on the Simple Reaction Time and Alternative-Forced Choice on Recovered Patients?

A comparative single-evaluation cross-sectional study was performed to evaluate cognitive damage in post-COVID-19 patients. The psychophysics tests of Two-Alternative Forced Choice (2AFC) and Simple Reaction Time (SRT), under a designed virtual environment, were used to evaluate the cognitive processes of decision-making, visual attention, and information processing speed. The population under study consisted of 147 individuals, 38 controls, and 109 post-COVID patients. During the 2AFC test, an Emotiv EPOC+® headset was used to obtain EEG signals to evaluate their Focus, Interest, and Engagement metrics. Results indicate that compared to healthy patients or recovered patients from mild-moderate COVID-19 infection, patients who recovered from a severe-critical COVID infection showed a poor performance in different cognitive tests: decision-making tasks required higher visual sensitivity (p = 0.002), Focus (p = 0.01) and information processing speed (p < 0.001). These results signal that the damage caused by the coronavirus on the central nervous and visual systems significantly reduces the cognitive processes capabilities, resulting in a prevalent deficit of 42.42% in information processing speed for mild-moderate cases, 46.15% for decision-making based on visual sensitivity, and 62.16% in information processing speed for severe-critical cases. A psychological follow-up for patients recovering from COVID-19 is recommended based on our findings.

Consensus must be found on intravenous fluid therapy management in trauma patients

Introduction: Trauma is an important cause of death among young people and 30-40% of this mortality rate is due to hypovolemic shock, intensified by trauma's lethal triad: Hypothermia, Acidosis, and Coagulopathy. Nurses are responsible for managing fluid therapy administration in trauma victims. The purpose of this study is to analyse the reasons why intravenous fluid therapy is recommended for trauma patients' hemodynamic stabilization. Methods: This narrative literature review included published and unpublished studies in English, Spanish or Portuguese between 1994 and January 2019. The search results were analyzed by two independent reviewers. Inclusion criteria encompasses quantitative studies involving trauma victims aged over 18 who underwent fluid therapy in a prehospital assessment context. Results and Discussion: 11 quantitative studies were included. 9 involved the use of fluid therapy for hypotension treatment and 2 of the studies analyzed involved the use of warmed fluid therapy for hypothermia treatment. The analysis performed reveals that the administration of aggressive fluid therapy seems to be responsible for the worsening of the lethal triad. In the presence of traumatic brain injury, permissive hypotension is not allowed due to the negative impact on cerebral perfusion pressure. Used as warming measure, warmed fluid therapy does not seem to have a significant impact on body temperature. Conclusions: There is no consensus regarding the administration of fluid therapy to trauma patients. This conclusion clearly supports the need to develop more randomized controlled trials in order to understand the effectiveness of such measure when it comes to control hypovolemia and hypothermia

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