Automated Microdosing System for Integration With a Miniaturized High-pressure Reactor System

We present a new automated dosing system developed by the Institute for Automation of the University of Rostock, Germany. The new system is designed for the dosing of chemical liquids in the range of 50 μL–2.5 mL. It is integrated into a miniaturized reactor system to be used in the field of combinatorial synthesis. The reactor system can be pressurized up to 150 bar and tempered up to 200^C. A wide range of liquids with different physical properties can be handled with the new dosing system. A detailed description of the new dosing system in terms of function and operation as well as the relevant features and potential benefits is provided

Fuzzy Filtering: A Mathematical Theory and Applications in Life Science

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New Developments in the Field of Reaction Technology: The Multiparallel Reactor HPMR 50-96

Catalytic high-pressure reactions play an important role in classic bulk chemistry. The optimization of common reactions, the search for new and more effective catalysts, and the increasing use of catalytic pressure reactions in the field of drug development call for high-parallel reaction systems. A crucial task of current developments, apart from the parameters of pressure, temperature, and number of reaction chambers, is, in this respect, the systems' integration into complex laboratory automation environments

An 8-Fold Parallel Reactor System for Combinatorial Catalysis Research

Increasing economic globalization and mounting time and cost pressure on the development of new raw materials for the chemical industry as well as materials and environmental engineering constantly raise the demands on technologies to be used. Parallelization, miniaturization, and automation are the main concepts involved in increasing the rate of chemical and biological experimentation

A Knowledge-based Telemonitoring Platform for Application in Remote Healthcare

Telemonitoring systems have been shown to greatly reduce medical costs while improving the quality of medical care. Today, the main factors restricting the development and popularization of Telemonitoring systems include scalability and compatibility. The challenge for the remote healthcare lies in the variety of heterogeneous medical sensors which need to be dynamically removed or added to the environment according to the health care needs. This paper presents the design for an ontology-based context model and related middleware that provides a reusable and extensible application platform for Remote Healthcare. We designed the ontology context model to describe physiological parameters, medical tasks and the patient’s personal profile. Developers may extend the ontology model by considering new requirements as needed

A Context-Aware mHealth System for Online Physiological Monitoring in Remote Healthcare

Physiological or biological stress is an organism’s response to a stressor such as an environmental condition or a stimulus. The identification of physiological stress while performing the activities of daily living is an important field of health research in preventive medicine. Activities initiate a dynamic physiological response that can be used as an indicator of the overall health status. This is especially relevant to high risk groups; the assessment of the physical state of patients with cardiovascular diseases in daily activities is still very difficult. This paper presents a context-aware telemonitoring platform, IPM-mHealth, that receives vital parameters from multiple sensors for online, real-time analysis. IPM-mHealth provides the technical basis for effectively evaluating patients’ physiological conditions, whether inpatient or at home, through the relevance between physical function and daily activities. The two core modules in the platform include: 1) online activity recognition algorithms based on 3-axis acceleration sensors and 2) a knowledge-based, conditional-reasoning decision module which uses context information to improve the accuracy of determining the occurrence of a potentially dangerous abnormal heart rate. Finally, we present relevant experiments to collect cardiac information and upper-body acceleration data from the human subjects. The test results show that this platform has enormous potential for use in long-term health observation, and can help us define an optimal patient activity profile through the automatic activity analysis

Hardware Prototype for Wrist-Worn Simultaneous Monitoring of Environmental, Behavioral, and Physiological Parameters

We designed a low-cost wrist-worn prototype for simultaneously measuring environmental, behavioral, and physiological domains of influencing factors in healthcare. Our prototype continuously monitors ambient elements (sound level, toxic gases, ultraviolet radiation, air pressure, temperature, and humidity), personal activity (motion tracking and body positioning using gyroscope, magnetometer, and accelerometer), and vital signs (skin temperature and heart rate). An innovative three-dimensional hardware, based on the multi-physical-layer approach is introduced. Using board-to-board connectors, several physical hardware layers are stacked on top of each other. All of these layers consist of integrated and/or add-on sensors to measure certain domain (environmental, behavioral, or physiological). The prototype includes centralized data processing, transmission, and visualization. Bi-directional communication is based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and can connect to smartphones as well as smart cars and smart homes for data analytic and adverse-event alerts. This study aims to develop a prototype for simultaneous monitoring of the all three areas for monitoring of workplaces and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients with a concentration on technical development and validation rather than clinical investigation. We have implemented 6 prototypes which have been tested by 5 volunteers. We have asked the subjects to test the prototype in a daily routine in both indoor (workplaces and laboratories) and outdoor. We have not imposed any specific conditions for the tests. All presented data in this work are from the same prototype. Eleven sensors measure fifteen parameters from three domains. The prototype delivers the resolutions of 0.1 part per million (PPM) for air quality parameters, 1 dB, 1 index, and 1 °C for sound pressure level, UV, and skin temperature, respectively. The battery operates for 12.5 h under the maximum sampling rates of sensors without recharging. The final expense does not exceed 133€. We validated all layers and tested the entire device with a 75 min recording. The results show the appropriate functionalities of the prototype for further development and investigations

System Concepts for Robots in Life Science Applications

For a long time, robot-based automation solutions have found their way into industrial production and manufacturing [...