Astronauts are at risk for low back pain and injury during extravehicular activity because of the deconditioning of the lumbar region and biomechanical demands associated with wearing a spacesuit. To understand and mitigate injury risks, it is necessary to study the lumbar kinematics of astronauts inside their spacesuit. To expand on previous efforts, the purpose of this study was to develop and test a generalizable method to assess complex lumbar motion using 10 fabric strain sensors placed on the torso. Anatomical landmark positions and corresponding sensor measurements were collected from 12 male study participants performing 16 static lumbar postures. A multilayer principal component and regression-based model was constructed to estimate lumbar joint angles from the sensor measurements. Good lumbar joint angle estimation was observed (<9° mean error) from flexion and lateral bending joint angles, and lower accuracy (13.7° mean error) was observed from axial rotation joint angles. With continued development, this method can become a useful technique for measuring suited lumbar motion and could potentially be extrapolated to civilian work applications.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2020.103624 | DOI Listing |
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces
January 2025
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
Hydrogel-based sensors typically demonstrate conspicuous swelling behavior in aqueous environments, which can severely compromise the mechanical integrity and distort sensing signals, thereby considerably constraining their widespread applicability. Drawing inspiration from the multilevel heterogeneous structures in biological tissues, an antiswelling hydrogel sensor endowed with high strength, rapid self-recovery, and low swelling ratio was fabricated through a water-induced phase separation and coordination cross-linking strategy. A dense heterogeneous architecture was developed by the integration of "rigid" quadridentate carboxyl-Zr coordination bonds and "soft" hydrophobic unit-rich regions featuring π-π stacking and cation-π interactions into the hydrogels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Bioeng Biotechnol
January 2025
Department of Orthodontics, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, College of Stomatology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, National Center for Stomatology, National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Stomatology and Shanghai Research Institute of Stomatology, Research Unit of Oral and Maxillofacial Regenerative Medicine, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Shanghai, China.
A one-step hydrothermal method was applied to prepare carbon dots (CDs) with superior fluorescence properties using chitosan as a carbon source. The as-prepared carbon dots were then grafted onto a sodium alginate-gelatin hydrogel film to form a fluorescent hydrogel film (FHGF), emitting at 450 nm under excitation of 350 nm light. In comparison to the CDs, the fluorescence intensity of this film was maintained over 90.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMater Horiz
January 2025
Institute of Biomass and Function Materials & National Demonstration Centre for Experimental Light Chemistry Engineering Education, College of Bioresources Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Xi'an, 710021, P. R. China.
Intelligent electronic textiles have important application value in the field of wearable electronics due to their unique structure, flexibility, and breathability. However, the currently reported electronic textiles are still challenged by issues such as their biocompatibility, photothermal conversion, and electromagnetic wave contamination. Herein, a multifunctional biomass-based conductive coating was developed using natural carboxymethyl starch (CMS), dopamine and polypyrrole (PPy) and then further employed for constructing multifunctional intelligent electronic textiles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
Department of Biomedical Engineering, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY, 13902, USA.
Creating durable, motion-compliant neural interfaces is crucial for accessing dynamic tissues under in vivo conditions and linking neural activity with behaviors. Utilizing the self-alignment of nano-fillers in a polymeric matrix under repetitive tension, here, we introduce conductive carbon nanotubes with high aspect ratios into semi-crystalline polyvinyl alcohol hydrogels, and create electrically anisotropic percolation pathways through cyclic stretching. The resulting anisotropic hydrogel fibers (diameter of 187 ± 13 µm) exhibit fatigue resistance (up to 20,000 cycles at 20% strain) with a stretchability of 64.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Appl Mater Interfaces
January 2025
Materials Science and Technology Division, CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Trivandrum 695 019, Kerala, India.
Lightweight flexible piezoelectric devices have garnered significant interest over the past few decades due to their applications as energy harvesters and wearable sensors. Among different piezoelectrically active polymers, poly(vinylidene fluoride) and its copolymers have attracted considerable attention for energy conversion due to their high flexibility, thermal stability, and biocompatibility. However, the orientation of polymer chains for self-poling under mild conditions is still a challenging task.
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