Mobile-Based Analysis of Malaria-Infected Thin Blood Smears: Automated Species and Life Cycle Stage Determination

Microscopy examination has been the pillar of malaria diagnosis, being the recommended procedure when its quality can be maintained. However, the need for trained personnel and adequate equipment limits its availability and accessibility in malaria-endemic areas. Rapid, accurate, accessible diagnostic tools are increasingly required, as malaria control programs extend parasite-based diagnosis and the prevalence decreases. This paper presents an image processing and analysis methodology using supervised classification to assess the presence of malaria parasites and determine the species and life cycle stage in Giemsa-stained thin blood smears. The main differentiation factor is the usage of microscopic images exclusively acquired with low cost and accessible tools such as smartphones, a dataset of 566 images manually annotated by an experienced parasilogist being used. Eight different species-stage combinations were considered in this work, with an automatic detection performance ranging from 73.9% to 96.2% in terms of sensitivity and from 92.6% to 99.3% in terms of specificity. These promising results attest to the potential of using this approach as a valid alternative to conventional microscopy examination, with comparable detection performances and acceptable computational times.Financial support from North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE2020), Portugal 2020 and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) from the European Union through the project Deus ex Machina: Symbiotic Technology for Societal Efficiency Gains’, NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000026.N/

Multisensor inspection of laser-brazed joints in the automotive industry

Funding Information: Acknowledgments: Authors acknowledge the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Programa Operacional Regional de Lisboa (Lisb@2020 e Portugal2020), for its financial support via the project PROBING (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-040042, Ref. 40042) and the Portuguese company INTROSYS—Integration for Robotic Systems (www.introsys.eu accessed 3 November 2021) for technical collaboration. Authors also acknowledge FCT—MCTES for its financial support via the project UIDB/00667/2020 (UNIDEMI).Automobile laser brazing remains a complex process whose results are affected by several process variables that may result in nonacceptable welds. A multisensory customized inspection system is proposed, with two distinct non-destructive techniques: the potential drop method and eddy current testing. New probes were designed, simulated, produced, and experimentally validated in automobile’s laser-brazed weld beads with artificially introduced defects. The numerical simulations allowed the development of a new four-point probe configuration in a non-conventional orthogonal shape demonstrating a superior performance in both simulation and experimental validation. The dedicated inspection system allowed the detection of porosities, cracks, and lack of bonding defects, demonstrating the redundancy and complementarity these two techniques provide.publishersversionpublishe

Non-Destructive Inspection of High Temperature Piping Combining Ultrasound and Eddy Current Testing

Project Hi2TRUST—Second generation platform for high-temperature component inspection, (Ref. 3335), supported by Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER), Programa Operacional Regional de Lisboa (Lisb@2020 and Portugal2020). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.This paper presents an automated Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) system for the in-service inspection of orbital welds on tubular components operating at temperatures as high as 200 °C. The combination of two different NDT methods and respective inspection systems is here proposed to cover the detection of all potential defective weld conditions. The proposed NDT system combines ultrasounds and Eddy current techniques with dedicated approaches for dealing with high temperature conditions. Phased array ultrasound was employed, searching for volumetric defects within the weld bead volume while Eddy currents were used to look for surface and sub-surface cracks. The results from the phased array ultrasound results showed the effectiveness of the cooling mechanisms and that temperature effects on sound attenuation can be easily compensated for up to 200 °C. The Eddy current results showed almost no influence when temperatures were raised up to 300 °C.publishersversionpublishe

Evaluation of Antipsychotic Drugs’ Stability in Oral Fluid Samples

Antipsychotics have narrow therapeutic windows, and their monitoring in biological fluids is therefore important; consequently, stability in those fluids must be investigated during method development and validation. This work evaluates the stability of chlorpromazine, levomepromazine, cyamemazine, clozapine, haloperidol, and quetiapine in oral fluid (OF) samples, using the dried saliva spots (DSS) sampling approach and gas chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry. Since many parameters can influence the stability of the target analytes, design of experiments was adopted to check the crucial factors that affect that stability in a multivariate fashion. The studied parameters were the presence of preservatives at different concentrations, temperature, light, and time. It was possible to observe that antipsychotic stability improved when OF samples in DSS were stored at 4 °C, with a low ascorbic acid concentration, and in the absence of light. With these conditions, chlorpromazine and quetiapine were stable for 14 days, clozapine and haloperidol were stable for 28 days, levomepromazine remained stable for 44 days, and cyamemazine was stable for the entire monitored period (146 days). This is the first study that evaluates the stability of these antipsychotics in OF samples after application to DSS cards.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Low-Cost Multi-Frequency Eddy Current Coating Thickness Measurement System

A low-cost coating thickness gauge based on Eddy Current Testing (ECT) is reported in this paper. This measurement system employs a Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) to generate pure sinusoidal stimulus applied to a measurement coil whose impedance varies with the measured coating thickness. The coil current and voltage are digitally acquired using an ARM Cortex M4F microcontroller where sine-fitting digital signal processing algorithms are applied to estimate the coil inductance and resistivity at different operation frequencies. Post-processing implements a simple multi-frequency estimate algorithm providing accuracy improvements around 10% when compared with the use of a single frequency

Contactless high-speed eddy current inspection of unidirectional carbon fiber reinforced polymer

This paper presents the development and the results of a customized eddy current (EC) non-destructive testing (NDT) system for highly demanding online inspection conditions. Several planar eddy current array probes were designed, numerically simulated and experimentally compared for the inspection of low conductivity unidirectional carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) ropes. The inspections were performed using a dedicated scanner device at 4 m/s with 3 mm probe lift-off where defects under 1 mm were detected with an excellent SNR. Different defect morphologies and sizes, such as broken fibres and lateral cuts, were successful detected and compared to conventional probes.Peer reviewe

Genipin prevents alpha-synuclein aggregation and toxicity by affecting endocytosis, metabolism and lipid storage

In this work, the authors identify Genipin as a small iridoid able to prevent alpha-synuclein aggregation and toxicity by affecting endocytosis, metabolism and lipid storage

Simple does not mean poor: grasslands and forests harbor similar ant species richness and distinct composition in highlands of southern Brazil

Several studies addressed ant communities in the dense Atlantic Forest that runs along the Brazilian coast. However, comparatively little is known about the mixed forests and grasslands that occur in the southern range of the Atlantic Forest domain. In this study we performed the first standardized assessment of ants in the forest- grassland mosaic found in the highlands of the state of Santa Catarina. We aimed to investigate and compare ant richness and composition between mixed forests and grasslands in the main mountain range of south Brazil. Ants were collected in two years with ground pitfalls, tree pitfalls and litter samples. Sixty ant species were recorded, resulting in 22 new records for “Planalto Serrano” region and three for the state of Santa Catarina: Eurhopalothrix depressa , Pheidole radoszkowskii and Wasmannia williamsoni . There was significant dissimilarity in ant species composition between grasslands and forests, but no difference in ant species richness, even considering the higher number of strata in mixed forests. Similar richness and low number of arboreal species suggest that this ant community is structured similarly to temperate ones. Both habitats presented a large proportion of exclusive species. The fact that species composition between grassland and forest areas differed, coupled with the similarity in species richness between habitats and the record of new ant species for the region, calls for strong conservation efforts in grasslands of southern Brazil, which still are little protected by conservation areas