Gustation is one of the five innate sensations for humans, distinguishing from vision, auditory, tactile, and olfaction, as which is a close and chemically induced sense. Despite the fact that a handful of gustation display technologies have been developed, the new technologies still pose significant challenges in miniaturization of the overall size for portability, enriching taste options within a limited working area, supporting natural human-device interaction, and achieving precisely controlled taste feedback. To address these issues, here, we report a set of intelligent and portable lollipop-shaped taste interfacing systems covering from 2 to 9 different taste options for establishing an adjustable taste platform in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a rich and complex tumor immune microenvironment (TIME). M2 macrophages are among the most extensively infiltrated immune cells in the TIME and are necessary for the growth and migration of cancers. However, the mechanisms and targets mediating M2 macrophage infiltration in pancreatic cancer remain elusive.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe capacity to discern and locate positions in three-dimensional space is crucial for human-machine interfaces and robotic perception. However, current soft electronics can only obtain two-dimensional spatial locations through physical contact. In this study, we report a non-contact position targeting concept enabled by transparent and thin soft electronic skin (E-skin) with three-dimensional sensing capabilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExosomes are increasingly being regarded as emerging and promising biomarkers for cancer screening, diagnosis, and therapy. The downstream molecular analyses of exosomes were greatly affected by the isolation efficiency from biosamples. Among the current exosome isolation strategies, affinity nanomaterials performed comparably better with selectivity and specificity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiosens Bioelectron
November 2024
The dense mechanoreceptors in human fingertips enable texture discrimination. Recent advances in flexible electronics have created tactile sensors that effectively replicate slowly adapting (SA) and rapidly adapting (RA) mechanoreceptors. However, the influence of dermatoglyphic structures on tactile signal transmission, such as the effect of fingerprint ridge filtering on friction-induced vibration frequencies, remains unexplored.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFlexible organic photodetectors (OPDs) hold immense promise in health monitoring sensors, flexible imaging sensors, and portable optical communication. Nevertheless, the actualization of high-performance flexible electronics has been hindered by rigid electrodes such as metals or metal oxides. In this work, we constructed a flexible broadband organic photodetector using a solution-processed polymeric electrode, which exhibits flexibility surpassing that of conventional indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeonatal mouse hearts can regenerate post-injury, unlike adult hearts that form fibrotic scars. The mechanism of thyroid hormone signaling in cardiac regeneration warrants further study. We found that triiodothyronine impairs cardiomyocyte proliferation and heart regeneration in neonatal mice after apical resection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMiniaturized mobile electronic system is an effective candidate for in situ exploration of confined spaces. However, realizing such system still faces challenges in powering issue, untethered mobility, wireless data acquisition, sensing versatility, and integration in small scales. Here, we report a battery-free, wireless, and miniaturized soft electromagnetic swimmer (SES) electronic system that achieves multiple monitoring capability in confined water environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rapid diagnosis of respiratory virus infection through breath and blow remains challenging. Here we develop a wireless, battery-free, multifunctional pathogenic infection diagnosis system (PIDS) for diagnosing SARS-CoV-2 infection and symptom severity by blow and breath within 110 s and 350 s, respectively. The accuracies reach to 100% and 92% for evaluating the infection and symptom severity of 42 participants, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The adult mammalian heart is incapable of regeneration, whereas a transient regenerative capacity is maintained in the neonatal heart, primarily through the proliferation of preexisting cardiomyocytes. Neonatal heart regeneration after myocardial injury is accompanied by an expansion of cardiac fibroblasts and compositional changes in the extracellular matrix. Whether and how these changes influence cardiomyocyte proliferation and heart regeneration remains to be investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrosyst Nanoeng
October 2023
Muscle groups perform their functions in the human body via bilateral muscle actuation, which brings bionic inspiration to artificial robot design. Building soft robotic systems with artificial muscles and multiple control dimensions could be an effective means to develop highly controllable soft robots. Here, we report a bilateral actuator with a bilateral deformation function similar to that of a muscle group that can be used for soft robots.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContinuous monitoring of arterial blood pressure (BP) outside of a clinical setting is crucial for preventing and diagnosing hypertension related diseases. However, current continuous BP monitoring instruments suffer from either bulky systems or poor user-device interfacial performance, hampering their applications in continuous BP monitoring. Here, we report a thin, soft, miniaturized system (TSMS) that combines a conformal piezoelectric sensor array, an active pressure adaptation unit, a signal processing module, and an advanced machine learning method, to allow real wearable, continuous wireless monitoring of ambulatory artery BP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImplantable bioelectronics provide unprecedented opportunities for real-time and continuous monitoring of physiological signals of living bodies. Most bioelectronics adopt thin-film substrates such as polyimide and polydimethylsiloxane that exhibit high levels of flexibility and stretchability. However, the low permeability and relatively high modulus of these thin films hamper the long-term biocompatibility.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransdifferentiation of type II alveolar cells (AECII) is a major cause for radiation-induced lung fibrosis (RILF). Cell differentiation phenotype is determined by Lin28 (undifferentiated marker) and let-7 (differentiated marker) in a see-saw-pattern. Therefore, differentiation phenotype can be extrapolated based on Lin28/let-7 ratio.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This prospective randomized controlled study was designed to evaluate the effect of S-ketamine with sufentanil given intraoperatively and postoperatively on recovery of gastrointestinal (GI) function and postoperative pain in gynecological patients undergoing open abdomen surgery.
Methods: One hundred gynecological patients undergoing open abdomen surgery were randomized into an S-ketamine group (group S) or placebo group (0.9% saline; group C).
: Individualized pain therapy conforms to the concept of precision medicine and contributes to adequate pain management after surgery. Preoperative biomarkers associated with postoperative pain may instruct anesthesiologists to improve personalized suitable analgesia. Therefore, it is essential to explore the association between preoperative proteins and postoperative acute pain using the proteomics platform.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA critical challenge lies in the development of the next-generation neural interface, in mechanically tissue-compatible fashion, that offer accurate, transient recording electrophysiological (EP) information and autonomous degradation after stable operation. Here, an ultrathin, lightweight, soft and multichannel neural interface is presented based on organic-electrochemical-transistor-(OECT)-based network, with capabilities of continuous high-fidelity mapping of neural signals and biosafety active degrading after performing functions. Such platform yields a high spatiotemporal resolution of 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimal Model Exp Med
October 2022
Background: To understand the relationship between myocardial contractility and external stimuli, detecting ex vivo myocardial contractility is necessary.
Methods: We elaborated a method for contractility detection of isolated C57 mouse papillary muscle using Myostation-Intact system under different frequencies, voltages, and calcium concentrations.
Results: The results indicated that the basal contractility of the papillary muscle was 0.
A combined treatment using medication and electrostimulation increases its effectiveness in comparison with one treatment alone. However, the organic integration of two strategies in one miniaturized system for practical usage has seldom been reported. This article reports an implantable electronic medicine based on bioresorbable microneedle devices that is activated wirelessly for electrostimulation and sustainable delivery of anti-inflammatory drugs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSuppressing the dark current is an effective strategy to boost the detection capability of organic photodetectors (OPDs). In this Letter, the water transfer printing method is demonstrated in double bulk heterojunction (BHJ) OPDs, which is solvent-independent rather than the traditional sequential spin-coating method, enabling the elimination of the negative effects of solvents on the underlying film and the suppressing of the dark current. As a result, a photo detectivity up to 10 Jones was obtained in the wide spectral range of 400-900 nm with a small working area of 3 mm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOrigami has become an optimal methodological choice for creating complex three-dimensional (3D) structures and soft robots. The simple and low-cost origami-inspired folding assembly provides a new method for developing 3D soft robots, which is ideal for future intelligent robotic systems. Here, we present a series of materials, structural designs, and fabrication methods for developing independent, electrically controlled origami 3D soft robots for walking and soft manipulators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransient power sources with excellent biocompatibility and bioresorablility have attracted significant attention. Here, we report high-performance, transient glucose enzymatic biofuel cells (TEBFCs) based on the laser-induced graphene (LIG)/gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) composite electrodes. Such LIG electrodes can be easily fabricated from polyimide (PI) with an infrared CO laser and exhibit a low impedance (16 Ω).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith the requirements of self-powering sensors in flexible electronics, wearable triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have attracted great attention due to their advantages of excellent electrical outputs and low-cost processing routes. The crosstalk effect between adjacent sensing units in TENGs significantly limits the pixel density of sensor arrays. Here, we present a skin-integrated, flexible TENG sensor array with 100 sensing units in an overall size of 7.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of developing intelligent robotics to prevent infectious disease spread. Human-machine interfaces (HMIs) give a chance of interactions between users and robotics, which play a significant role in teleoperating robotics. Conventional HMIs are based on bulky, rigid, and expensive machines, which mainly focus on robots/machines control, but lack of adequate feedbacks to users, which limit their applications in conducting complicated tasks.
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