4,357 research outputs found
UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024
The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp
Soft touchless sensors and touchless sensing for soft robots
Soft robots are characterized by their mechanical compliance, making them well-suited for various bio-inspired applications. However, the challenge of preserving their flexibility during deployment has necessitated using soft sensors which can enhance their mobility, energy efficiency, and spatial adaptability. Through emulating the structure, strategies, and working principles of human senses, soft robots can detect stimuli without direct contact with soft touchless sensors and tactile stimuli. This has resulted in noteworthy progress within the field of soft robotics. Nevertheless, soft, touchless sensors offer the advantage of non-invasive sensing and gripping without the drawbacks linked to physical contact. Consequently, the popularity of soft touchless sensors has grown in recent years, as they facilitate intuitive and safe interactions with humans, other robots, and the surrounding environment. This review explores the emerging confluence of touchless sensing and soft robotics, outlining a roadmap for deployable soft robots to achieve human-level dexterity
Silicon-Based Optical Sensors for Fungal Pathogen Diagnostics
The last years have witnessed a link between the COVID-19 pandemic with increasing numbers of
vulnerable patients and globally emerging incidences of severe drug-resistant fungal infections, thus,
calling for rapid, reliable, and sensitive diagnostic tools for fungal infections. However, despite strong
warnings from health authorities, such as the World Health Organization, concerning the fatal consequences
of the global spread of drug-resistant pathogenic fungi, progress in fungal infection diagnosis and therapy
is still limited. Today, gold standard methods for revealing resistance and susceptibility in pathogenic fungi,
namely antifungal susceptibility testing (AFST), require several days for completion, and thus this lengthy
process can adversely affect antifungal therapy and further promote the spread of resistance.
In this work, the use of photonic silicon chips consisting of micropatterned diffraction gratings as sensitive
sensors for rapid AFST of clinically relevant fungal pathogens is investigated. These photonic chips provide
a surface for the colonization of microbial pathogens at a liquid-solid interface and serve as the optical
transducer element for label-free monitoring of fungal growth by detecting real-time changes in the white
light reflectance. These sensor elements are used to track morphological changes of fungi in the presence
of clinically relevant antifungals at varying concentrations to rapidly determine the minimum inhibitory
concentration (MIC) values that help to classify pathogens as resistant or susceptible. We show that by
careful design of the chip dimensions, this optical method can extend from bacteria, through yeasts, to
filamentous fungi for accelerated AFST, which is at least three times faster than current gold standard
methods and can provide same-day results.
Moreover, a 3D-printed microfluidic gradient generator was designed to complement the assay and provide
an integrated system, which can potentially be employed in point-of-care settings. This gradient generator
produces the two-fold dilution series of clinically relevant antimicrobials in an automated manner and is
interfaced with the photonic silicon chips to include a complete, on-chip, label-free, and phenotypic assay.
Using the bacterial species Escherichia coli and ciprofloxacin as a model pathogen-drug combination, MIC
values can be expeditiously determined within 90 minutes compared to current clinical practices, which
typically require up to 24 h for bacterial species
Functional Nanomaterials and Polymer Nanocomposites: Current Uses and Potential Applications
This book covers a broad range of subjects, from smart nanoparticles and polymer nanocomposite synthesis and the study of their fundamental properties to the fabrication and characterization of devices and emerging technologies with smart nanoparticles and polymer integration
Design aspects and characterization of hydrogel-based bioinks for extrusion-based bioprinting
publishedVersionPeer reviewe
- …