Sterilization and Filter Performance of Nano- and Microfibrous Facemask Filters - Electrospinning and Restoration of Charges for Competitive Sustainable Alternatives.

Facemask materials have been under constant development to optimize filtration performance, wear comfort, and general resilience to chemical and mechanical stress. While single-use polypropylene meltblown membranes are the established go-to material for high-performing mask filters, they are neither sustainable nor particularly resistant to sterilization methods. Herein an in-depth analysis is provided of the sterilization efficiency, filtration efficiency, and breathing resistance of selected aerosol filters commonly implemented in facemasks, with a particular focus on the benefits of nanofibrous filters.

Innovative air mattress for the prevention of pressure ulcers in neonates.

Objective: Pressure ulcers (PUs) severely impact health outcomes in neonatal intensive care, with up to 28% prevalence and doubled mortality rates. Due to their only partially developed stratum corneum, neonates are highly susceptible to PUs because of a lack of adequate support surfaces. The occipital region of the head and hip are the main risk areas due to immobility and newborn body proportions.

Exploring the thermally-controlled fentanyl transdermal therapy to provide constant drug delivery by physics-based digital twins.

Transdermal drug delivery is suitable for low-molecular-weight drugs with specific lipophilicity, like fentanyl, which is widely used for cancer-induced pain management. However, fentanyl's transdermal therapy displays high intra-individual variability. Factors like skin characteristics at application sites and ambient temperature contribute to this variation.

Dual Functional Antibacterial-Antioxidant Core/Shell Alginate/Poly(ε-caprolactone) Nanofiber Membrane: A Potential Wound Dressing.

Core/shell nanofibers offer the advantage of encapsulating multiple drugs with different hydrophilicity in the core and shell, thus allowing for the controlled release of pharmaceutic agents. Specifically, the burst release of hydrophilic drugs from such fiber membranes causes an instantaneous high drug concentration, whereas a long and steady release is usually desired. Herein, we tackle the problem of the initial burst release by the generation of core/shell nanofibers with the hydrophilic antibiotic drug gentamycin loaded within a hydrophilic alginate core surrounded by a hydrophobic shell of poly(ε-caprolactone).

Variations of skin thermal diffusivity on different skin regions.

Background And Objective: Skin thermal diffusivity plays a crucial role in various applications, including laser therapy and cryogenic skin cooling.This study investigates the correlation between skin thermal diffusivity and two important skin parameters, melanin content and erythema, in a cohort of 102 participants.

Methods: An in-house developed device based on transient temperature measurement was used to assess thermal diffusivity at different body locations.

Implementing physics-based digital patient twins to tailor the switch of oral morphine to transdermal fentanyl patches based on patient physiology.

Fentanyl transdermal patches are widely implemented for cancer-induced pain treatment due to the high potency of fentanyl and gradual drug release. However, transdermal fentanyl up-titration for opioid-naïve patients is difficult, which is why opioid treatment is often started with oral/iv morphine. Based on the daily dose of morphine, the initial dose of the fentanyl patch is decided upon.

Assessment of compression forces in a digitally modified short leg cast for pressure injury risk monitoring in healthy children.

Introduction: Casting is an essential treatment for neuro-orthopedic conditions in children with cognitive, sensory, and communicational disabilities. However, a main side-effect is the development of pressure injuries resulting in additional (wound) therapies and prolongation of the hospital stay. The primary aim of our study was to investigate the potential of objective pressure measurements in casts to assess the risk for pressure injury development.

Use of a novel pressure distribution system for severely ill neonates: a clinical pilot study carried out by the PREPICare consortium.

Background: Pressure Injuries are not exclusively an adult phenomenon; various risk factors contribute to a high prevalence rate of 43% in the neonatal and pediatric intensive care population. Effective preventive measures in this population are limited.

Methods: We performed a pilot study to analyze the distribution and localization of support surface interface pressures in neonates in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).

Lab-on-a-Fiber Wearable Multi-Sensor for Monitoring Wound Healing.

Chronic wounds are regarded as a silent epidemic, affecting 1-2% of the population and representing 2-4% of healthcare expenses. The current methods used to assess the wound healing process are based on the visual evaluation of physical parameters. This work aims to design a wearable non-invasive device capable of evaluating three parameters simultaneously: the pH and the levels of glucose and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) present in the wound exudate.

Functional Fiber Membranes with Antibacterial Properties for Face Masks.

Unlabelled: Reusable face masks are an important alternative for minimizing costs of disposable and surgical face masks during pandemics. Often complementary to washing, a prolonged lifetime of face masks relies on the incorporation of self-cleaning materials. The development of self-cleaning face mask materials requires the presence of a durable catalyst to deactivate contaminants and microbes after long-term use without reducing filtration efficiency.

Advanced and Smart Textiles during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic: Issues, Challenges, and Innovations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has hugely affected the textile and apparel industry. Besides the negative impact due to supply chain disruptions, drop in demand, liquidity problems, and overstocking, this pandemic was found to be a window of opportunity since it accelerated the ongoing digitalization trends and the use of functional materials in the textile industry. This review paper covers the development of smart and advanced textiles that emerged as a response to the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2.

Ibuprofen-loaded electrospun poly(ethylene--vinyl alcohol) nanofibers for wound dressing applications.

Chronic wounds are characterized by a prolonged inflammation phase preventing the normal processes of wound healing and natural regeneration of the skin. To tackle this issue, electrospun nanofibers, inherently possessing a high surface-to-volume ratio and high porosity, are promising candidates for the design of anti-inflammatory drug delivery systems. In this study, we evaluated the ability of poly(ethylene--vinyl alcohol) nanofibers of various chemical compositions to release ibuprofen for the potential treatment of chronic wounds.

An individualized digital twin of a patient for transdermal fentanyl therapy for chronic pain management.

Fentanyl transdermal therapy is a suitable treatment for moderate-to-severe cancer-related pain. The inter-individual variability of the patients leads to different therapy responses. This study aims to determine the effect of physiological features on the achieved pain relief.

How long and effective does a mask protect you from an infected person who emits virus-laden particles: By implementing one-dimensional physics-based modeling.

SARS-CoV-2 spreads droplets, aerosols, and smear infection. From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, using a facemask in different locations was recommended to slow down the spread of the virus. To evaluate facemasks' performance, masks' filtration efficiency is tested for a range of particle sizes.

Emulsion electrospinning of sodium alginate/poly(ε-caprolactone) core/shell nanofibers for biomedical applications.

Electrospun nanofibers have shown great potential as drug vehicles and tissue engineering scaffolds. However, the successful encapsulation of multiple hydrophilic/hydrophobic therapeutic compounds is still challenging. Herein, sodium alginate/poly(ε-caprolactone) core/shell nanofibers were fabricated water-in-oil emulsion electrospinning.

Modeling and Prediction of Thermophysiological Comfort Properties of a Single Layer Fabric System Using Single Sector Sweating Torso.

Thermophysiological comfort is known to play a primary role in maintaining thermal balance, which corresponds to a person's satisfaction with their immediate thermal environment. Among the existing test methods, sweating torsos are one of the best tools to provide a combined measurement of heat and moisture transfer using non-isothermal conditions. This study presents a preliminary numerical model of a single sector sweating torso to predict the thermophysiological comfort properties of fabric systems.

Wicking fingering in electrospun membranes.

Pronounced fingering of the waterfront is observed for in-plane wicking in thin, aligned electrospun fibrous membranes. We hypothesize that a perturbation in capillary pressure triggers the onset of fingering, which grows in a non-local manner based on the waterfront gradient. Vertical and horizontal wicking in thin electrospun membranes of poly(ethylene--vinyl alcohol) (EVOH) fibers with varying fiber alignment and degree of orientation is studied with backlight photography.

A novel inactivated virus system (InViS) for a fast and inexpensive assessment of viral disintegration.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused considerable interest worldwide in antiviral surfaces, and there has been a dramatic increase in the research and development of innovative material systems to reduce virus transmission in the past few years. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) norms 18,184 and 21,702 are two standard methods to characterize the antiviral properties of porous and non-porous surfaces. However, during the last years of the pandemic, a need for faster and inexpensive characterization of antiviral material was identified.

Wicking through complex interfaces at interlacing yarns.

Hypothesis: Wicking flow in the wale direction of knit fabrics is slowed by capillary pressure minima during the transition at yarn contacts. The characteristic pore structure of yarns leads to an unfavorable free energy evolution and is the cause of these minima.

Experiments: Time-resolved synchrotron tomographic microscopy is employed to study the evolution of water configuration during wicking flow in interlacing yarns.

Wicking dynamics in yarns.

Unlabelled: The spontaneous imbibition of a liquid within porous media, known as wicking, can display uncommon features in textiles and yarns. Yarns exhibited step-wise wicking dynamics not captured by current models.

Hypothesis: Wicking dynamics in yarns not only depend on inter-fiber pore filling, but are mainly determined by the pore-to-pore transition processes and the structure of the pore network.

Thioflavin-modified molecularly imprinted hydrogel for fluorescent-based non-enzymatic glucose detection in wound exudate.

The concentration of glucose in the body's fluids is an important parameter that can indicate pathological conditions such as the progress of infected wounds. Several wearables and implantable detection approaches have been developed with high selectivity and sensitivity for glucose. However, all of them have drawbacks such as low stability, limited selectivity, and often require complex technology.

Community Masks - from an Emergency Solution to an Innovation Booster for the Textile Industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in shortages of personal protective equipment and medical devices in the initial phase. Agile small and medium-sized enterprises from regional textile industries reacted quickly. They delivered alternative products such as textile-based community masks in collaboration with industrial partners and research institutes from various sectors.

Tailoring Fibre Structure Enabled by X-ray Analytics for Targeted Biomedical Applications.

The rising interest in designing fibres via spinning techniques combining the properties of various polymeric materials into advanced functionalised materials is directed towards targeted biomedical applications such as drug delivery, wearable sensors or tissue engineering. Understanding how these functional polymers exhibit multiscale structures ranging from the molecular level to nano-, micro-and millimetre scale is a key prerequisite for their challenging applications that can be addressed by a non-destructive X-ray based analytical approach. X-ray multimodalities combining X-ray imaging, scattering and diffraction allow the study of morphology, molecular structure, and the analysis of nano-domain size and shape, crystallinity and preferential orientation in 3D arrangements.

On the durability of surgical masks after simulated handling and wear.

After the spread of COVID-19, surgical masks became highly recommended to the public. They tend to be handled and used multiple times, which may impact their performance. To evaluate this risk, surgical masks of Type IIR were submitted to four simulated treatments: folding, ageing with artificial saliva or sweat and washing cycles.