Functionalizing the Electrical Properties of Kombucha Zoogleal Mats for Biosensing Applications.

Kombucha is a type of tea that is fermented using yeast and bacteria. During this process, a film made of cellulose is produced. This film has unique properties such as biodegradability, flexibility, shape conformability, and ability to self-grow as well as be produced across customized scales.

Living Plants Ecosystem Sensing: A Quantum Bridge between Thermodynamics and Bioelectricity.

The in situ measurement of the bioelectric potential in and superior plants reveals valuable insights into the biological activity of these organisms, including their responses to lunar and solar cycles and collective behaviour. This paper reports on the "Cyberforest Experiment" conducted in the open-air Paneveggio forest in Valle di Fiemme, Trento, Italy, where spruce (i.e.

Living wearables: Bacterial reactive glove.

A reactive bacterial glove is a cotton glove colonised by Acetobacter aceti, an example of biofabrication of a living electronic sensing device. The bacterial colony, supported by a cellulose-based hydrogel, forms a several millimetres-thick living coating on the surface of the glove. This paper proposes a novel method for analysing the complex electrical activity of trains of spikes generated by a living colony.

A Multi-Stream Convolutional Neural Network for Classification of Progressive MCI in Alzheimer's Disease Using Structural MRI Images.

Early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and its prodromal stage, also known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), is critical since some patients with progressive MCI will develop the disease. We propose a multi-stream deep convolutional neural network fed with patch-based imaging data to classify stable MCI and progressive MCI. First, we compare MRI images of Alzheimer's disease with cognitively normal subjects to identify distinct anatomical landmarks using a multivariate statistical test.

Stimulating Fungi with Hydrocortisone.

Fungi cells can sense extracellular signals via reception, transduction, and response mechanisms, allowing them to communicate with their host and adapt to their environment. They feature effective regulatory protein expressions that enhance and regulate their response and adaptation to various triggers such as stress, hormones, physical stimuli such as light, and host factors. In our recent studies, we have shown that oyster fungi generate electrical potential impulses in the form of spike events in response to their exposure to environmental, mechanical, and chemical triggers, suggesting that the nature of stimuli may be deduced from the fungal electrical responses.

Electrical activity of fungi: Spikes detection and complexity analysis.

Oyster fungi Pleurotus djamor generate actin potential like spikes of electrical potential. The trains of spikes might manifest propagation of growing mycelium in a substrate, transportation of nutrients and metabolites and communication processes in the mycelium network. The spiking activity of the mycelium networks is highly variable compared to neural activity and therefore can not be analysed by standard tools from neuroscience.

Reactive fungal wearable.

Smart wearables sense and process information from the user's body and environment and report results of their analysis as electrical signals. Conventional electronic sensors and controllers are commonly, sometimes augmented by recent advances in soft electronics. Organic electronics and bioelectronics, especially with living substrates, offer a great opportunity to incorporate parallel sensing and information processing capabilities of natural systems into future and emerging wearables.

East-West paths to unconventional computing.

Unconventional computing is about breaking boundaries in thinking, acting and computing. Typical topics of this non-typical field include, but are not limited to physics of computation, non-classical logics, new complexity measures, novel hardware, mechanical, chemical and quantum computing. Unconventional computing encourages a new style of thinking while practical applications are obtained from uncovering and exploiting principles and mechanisms of information processing in and functional properties of, physical, chemical and living systems; in particular, efficient algorithms are developed, (almost) optimal architectures are designed and working prototypes of future computing devices are manufactured.