Cephalopod-inspired jetting devices for gastrointestinal drug delivery.

Needle-based injections currently enable the administration of a wide range of biomacromolecule therapies across the body, including the gastrointestinal tract, through recent developments in ingestible robotic devices. However, needles generally require training, sharps management and disposal, and pose challenges for autonomous ingestible systems. Here, inspired by the jetting systems of cephalopods, we have developed and evaluated microjet delivery systems that can deliver jets in axial and radial directions into tissue, making them suitable for tubular and globular segments of the gastrointestinal tract.

Europe as a secondary distribution hub in the worldwide invasion of the potato cyst nematode Globodera rostochiensis.

The potato cyst nematode Globodera rostochiensis originates from the Andean Mountain region in South America and has unintentionally been introduced to all inhabited continents. Several studies have examined the population genetic structure of this pest in various countries by using microsatellite markers. However, merging microsatellite data produced from different laboratories is challenging and can introduce uncertainty when interpreting the results.

Screening oral drugs for their interactions with the intestinal transportome via porcine tissue explants and machine learning.

In vitro systems that accurately model in vivo conditions in the gastrointestinal tract may aid the development of oral drugs with greater bioavailability. Here we show that the interaction profiles between drugs and intestinal drug transporters can be obtained by modulating transporter expression in intact porcine tissue explants via the ultrasound-mediated delivery of small interfering RNAs and that the interaction profiles can be classified via a random forest model trained on the drug-transporter relationships. For 24 drugs with well-characterized drug-transporter interactions, the model achieved 100% concordance.

Extraction of Essential Oils from 'Margaret Roberts' Using Steam Distillation, Hydrodistillation, and Cellulase-Assisted Hydrodistillation: Experimentation and Cost Analysis.

Lavender oil is an important essential oil with many applications. The purpose of this study was to compare different methods of essential oil extraction to determine which method would be the most effective and profitable for commercial-scale production from ('Margret Roberts') flowers and leaves. The lavender from this variety flowers year-round, providing an extended production season compared to some other lavender varieties.

First report of ryegrass cyst nematode, Heterodera mani, in Tasmania, Australia.

Cyst nematodes of the genus Heterodera are a major group of sedentary plant parasites causing a significant economic impact, restricting production and market access globally (Moens et al. 2018). The ryegrass cyst nematode Heterodera mani is in the Avenae group and is found predominantly in pastures and grasslands in Europe, California, and South Africa.

A microneedle platform for buccal macromolecule delivery.

Alternative means for drug delivery are needed to facilitate drug adherence and administration. Microneedles (MNs) have been previously investigated transdermally for drug delivery. To date, drug loading into MNs has been limited by drug solubility in the polymeric blend.

Taxonomy, Morphological and Molecular Identification of the Potato Cyst Nematodes, and .

The scope of this paper is limited to the taxonomy, detection, and reliable morphological and molecular identification of the potato cyst nematodes (PCN) and . It describes the nomenclature, hosts, life cycle, pathotypes, and symptoms of the two species. It also provides detailed instructions for soil sampling and extraction of cysts from soil.

Ingestible transiently anchoring electronics for microstimulation and conductive signaling.

Ingestible electronic devices enable noninvasive evaluation and diagnosis of pathologies in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract but generally cannot therapeutically interact with the tissue wall. Here, we report the development of an orally administered electrical stimulation device characterized in ex vivo human tissue and in in vivo swine models, which transiently anchored itself to the stomach by autonomously inserting electrically conductive, hooked probes. The probes provided stimulation to the tissue via timed electrical pulses that could be used as a treatment for gastric motility disorders.

Detecting face presentation attacks in mobile devices with a patch-based CNN and a sensor-aware loss function.

With the widespread use of biometric authentication comes the exploitation of presentation attacks, possibly undermining the effectiveness of these technologies in real-world setups. One example takes place when an impostor, aiming at unlocking someone else's smartphone, deceives the built-in face recognition system by presenting a printed image of the user. In this work, we study the problem of automatically detecting presentation attacks against face authentication methods, considering the use-case of fast device unlocking and hardware constraints of mobile devices.

A once-a-month oral contraceptive.

Poor patient adherence to oral contraceptives is the predominant cause of failure of these therapies, leading to unplanned pregnancies that can negatively affect female health worldwide. To improve patient adherence, we developed an oral contraceptive that is administered once a month. Here, we describe the design and report in vivo characterization of a levonorgestrel-releasing gastric resident dosage form in pigs.

A luminal unfolding microneedle injector for oral delivery of macromolecules.

Insulin and other injectable biologic drugs have transformed the treatment of patients suffering from diabetes, yet patients and healthcare providers often prefer to use and prescribe less effective orally dosed medications. Compared with subcutaneously administered drugs, oral formulations create less patient discomfort, show greater chemical stability at high temperatures, and do not generate biohazardous needle waste. An oral dosage form for biologic medications is ideal; however, macromolecule drugs are not readily absorbed into the bloodstream through the gastrointestinal tract.

A data-driven approach to referable diabetic retinopathy detection.

Unlabelled: Prior art on automated screening of diabetic retinopathy and direct referral decision shows promising performance; yet most methods build upon complex hand-crafted features whose performance often fails to generalize.

Objective: We investigate data-driven approaches that extract powerful abstract representations directly from retinal images to provide a reliable referable diabetic retinopathy detector.

Methods: We gradually build the solution based on convolutional neural networks, adding data augmentation, multi-resolution training, robust feature-extraction augmentation, and a patient-basis analysis, testing the effectiveness of each improvement.

Chronic Environmental and Occupational Lead Exposure and Kidney Function among African Americans: Dallas Lead Project II.

We examined the effects of lead on kidney function in occupationally and environmentally exposed adults from a Dallas lead smelter community that was the site of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund clean-up. All subjects were African Americans-a racial group that bears a disproportionate burden of kidney disease. : A two-phase health screening was conducted.

Molecular Assessment of the Introduction and Spread of Potato Cyst Nematode, Globodera rostochiensis, in Victoria, Australia.

Potato cyst nematodes (PCN) are damaging soilborne quarantine pests of potato in many parts of the world. There are two recognized species, Globodera pallida and G. rostochiensis, with only the latter species-the golden cyst nematode-present in Australia.

Beyond Lesion-Based Diabetic Retinopathy: A Direct Approach for Referral.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness in adults, but can be managed if detected early. Automated DR screening helps by indicating which patients should be referred to the doctor. However, current techniques of automated screening still depend too much on the detection of individual lesions.

Automated multi-lesion detection for referable diabetic retinopathy in indigenous health care.

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a complication of diabetes mellitus that affects more than one-quarter of the population with diabetes, and can lead to blindness if not discovered in time. An automated screening enables the identification of patients who need further medical attention. This study aimed to classify retinal images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples utilizing an automated computer-based multi-lesion eye screening program for diabetic retinopathy.

Peer-selected "best papers"-are they really that "good"?

Background: Peer evaluation is the cornerstone of science evaluation. In this paper, we analyze whether or not a form of peer evaluation, the pre-publication selection of the best papers in Computer Science (CS) conferences, is better than random, when considering future citations received by the papers.

Methods: Considering 12 conferences (for several years), we collected the citation counts from Scopus for both the best papers and the non-best papers.

Automatic Diabetic Retinopathy detection using BossaNova representation.

The biomedical community has shown a continued interest in automated detection of Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), with new imaging techniques, evolving diagnostic criteria, and advancing computing methods. Existing state of the art for detecting DR-related lesions tends to emphasize different, specific approaches for each type of lesion. However, recent research has aimed at general frameworks adaptable for large classes of lesions.

Advancing bag-of-visual-words representations for lesion classification in retinal images.

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a complication of diabetes that can lead to blindness if not readily discovered. Automated screening algorithms have the potential to improve identification of patients who need further medical attention. However, the identification of lesions must be accurate to be useful for clinical application.

Assessing the Need for Referral in Automatic Diabetic Retinopathy Detection.

Emerging technologies in health care aim at reducing unnecessary visits to medical specialists, minimizing overall cost of treatment and optimizing the number of patients seen by each doctor. This paper explores image recognition for the screening of diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that can lead to blindness if not discovered in its initial stages. Many previous reports on DR imaging focus on the segmentation of the retinal image, on quality assessment, and on the analysis of presence of DR-related lesions.