Human Body Research Articles

Flexible and air-stable n-type oleylamine/carbon nanotube hybrid yarns for high-performance wearable thermoelectric generators

Wearable thermoelectric generators (TEGs), envisioned to harness the temperature gradient (ΔT) between the human body and the environment into electricity, hold great promise for powering wearable electronics. However, their practical application has been hampered by the scarcity of flexible n-type thermoelectric (TE) materials boasting both high performance and long-term air stability. Here, we introduce a significant advancement by developing an n-type TE material through immersing carbon nanotube yarn (CNTY) into an oleylamine (OAm)/ethanol solution, followed by drying under atmospheric conditions. The resulting OAm/CNTY exhibits a Seebeck coefficient of -80.48 μV K-1, an electrical conductivity of 1353.18 S cm-1 and a power factor of 876.25 μW m-1 K-2, all while exhibiting exceptional mechanical flexibility. Notably, this hybrid yarn maintains stable n-type behavior even after enduring exposure to air for over 370 days, surpassing previous n-type TE materials based on CNT fibers and CNTY. Leveraging this advancement, we construct a prototype wearable TEG by alternately embroidering pristine p-type CNTY and n-type OAm/CNTY into a polyester spacer fabric, electrically connecting them in series using conductive silver paint. The resulting wearable TEG, featuring with 150 p-n couples, yields an output voltage of 705.94 mV and a maximum output power of 44.34 μW at a ΔT of 40 K. This groundbreaking work opens new avenues for the development of high-performance, air-stable, and flexible n-type TE material, ushering in a new era for wearable TEGs.

Machine Learning Platform for Disease Diagnosis with Contrast CT Scans

Machine learning has gained significant recognition as a powerful approach for medical diagnosis using medical images. Among various medical imaging modalities, contrast-enhanced CT (CECT) is utilized to obtain additional diagnostic information that improves visualization and evaluation of certain abnormalities in the human body, as well as to observe temporal changes in lesions and tumors across different time phases. However, developing such medical diagnostic systems presents two significant challenges: high technical complexity and substantial development effort. This paper presents a software platform that effectively addresses these challenges. Specifically, we propose a unified software process that fully automates contrast-enhanced CT (CECT)-specific disease diagnosis, with key tasks performed by leveraging task-specific machine learning models to enhance accuracy. The platform incorporates a suite of specialized machine learning models into the diagnostic process, enabling precise diagnosis of lesions, malignancies, tumors, tumor characteristics, and temporal changes over phases. Moreover, the platform has been designed according to the Open–Closed Principle, allowing it to be applicable to a wide range of CECT-based diagnostic systems. The platform has been implemented in Python using the Scikit-learn and TensorFlow libraries. To validate its applicability and reusability, a hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) diagnosis system has been implemented.

Rapid and nondestructive identification of rice storage year using hyperspectral technology

Rice is the main staple food for more than half of the world's population. Consumption of long-stored rice will have adverse effects on the human body. Here, we proposed the near-infrared (NIR) hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technique to distinguish rice from different storage years. Multiplicative Scatter Correction (MSC), Standard Normalize Variate (SNV) and 1st Derivative (1st) were used for the pretreatment of HSI data. In order to reduce dimensional spectral features, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (tSNE) were used for data visualization. Besides, spectral characteristic wavelengths were extracted by competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso). Simultaneously, the textural features of rice were analyzed by Local Binary Pattern (LBP), Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) and Tamura algorithms. In order to realize feature fusion of spectra and texture, Support Vector Machine (SVM) model was optimized using the Whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model were established based on spectral features and textural features. Compared to other models, feature fusion model showed an excellent result with an accuracy of 98.89%. Experimental results suggested that HSI technology can be served as an effective method for rice detection.

The Provisions of Using Elephants’ Ivory Bone: An Applied Jurisprudential Study

The study aimed to clarify the rulings on the use and utilization of ivory in Islamic jurisprudence. It followed both the inductive and analytical methods, elucidating the nature of ivory and the rulings on the purity of bones from deceased animals, with a particular focus on elephant bones, through presenting the opinions of jurists. It also addressed the rulings on the utilization of ivory through sale and its use in various industries, as well as its use in medicine and treatment. The study sought to determine the most authoritative opinion based on evidence and in alignment with the objectives of Sharia. The study concluded with several findings, including that elephant bone is considered pure according to the most authoritative opinion, that the sale of ivory is permissible, and that it can be used in various industries and in the field of medicine, such as being implanted in the human body, when necessary, without affecting the validity of prayer. The study recommended incorporating the rulings on the utilization of ivory into academic curricula and presenting papers at conferences to explore this topic in a manner consistent with contemporary realities.

Molecular and cellular level analysis of the mechanism of nutritional intervention in preventing epidemic virus infection

Molecular nutrition encompasses a wider range of investigations than nutritional genomics, which can be considered a scientific investigation of how different nutrients and dietary components influence the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the body and health. In effect, increasing antioxidant elements in daily diets can assist with combating the inflammatory response caused by cytokines in the human body. Antioxidants can impede the oxidation process and hence avoid the creation of free radicals in the cytoplasm that can damage the cells via chain reactions. Contamination sequences, batch effects, uneven sampling, unreported taxa, technological biases, and heteroscedasticity are all significant issues in molecular microbial biology. Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodologies to uncover hidden patterns, connections, and interactions within metabolomics data, allowing them to provide personalized food recommendations based on individual health profiles. A multi-scale convolutional neural network (MCNN) classifies cellular images into phenotypes in a single coherent step utilizing the image’s pixel intensity values. Hence, the proposed AI-MCNN has been an essential nutrient that assists the immune system in various ways, including acting as an antioxidant to protect healthy cells, promoting immune cell development and function, and creating antibodies. According to epidemiological research, people who are undernourished are more likely to get bacterial, viral, and other diseases. Nutritional epidemiology investigates dietary or nutritional parameters concerning illness prevalence in communities. Nutritional epidemiology results often add to the evidence that provides dietary recommendations for preventing disease and related disorders.

Separation of triacylglycerol (TAG) isomers by cyclic ion mobility mass spectrometry

Triacylglycerols (TAGs), a major lipid class in foods and the human body, consist of three fatty acids esterified to a glycerol backbone. They can occur in various isomeric forms, including sn-positional, cis/trans configurational, acyl chain length, double bond positional, and mixed type isomers. Separating isomeric mixtures is of great interest as different isomers can have distinct influence on mechanisms, such as digestibility, oxidative stability, or lipid metabolism. However, TAG isomer separation remains challenging with established analytical methodologies such as liquid-chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS). In this study, we developed a method with cyclic ion mobility mass spectrometry (cIMS-MS) for the separation and identification of all types of TAG isomers. First, the influence of different adducts (Li+, NH4+, Na+, and K+) on the separation was studied. Overall, it was concluded that the sodium adduct is the best choice to efficiently separate all types of TAG isomers. In addition, trends were found in the influence of specific structural features on the drift time order. An order of relative influence (from high to low) was established; (1) degree of unsaturation of the fatty acid(s) on an exterior position (if the total degree of unsaturation(s) is equal in both TAGs), (2) acyl chain length on the exterior positions, (3) cis/trans configuration, and (4) double bond (DB)-position. Finally, various cIMS-MS strategies were developed for the separation of mixtures containing four, five, and six isomers. To conclude, the developed methods can be used for separation of complex mixtures of TAG isomers and have great potential to be expanded to isomers of similar types of lipids such as di- and monoacylglycerols. This study also shows the potential of cIMS-MS to be used for the application on real TAG samples.

Determination of Some Element’s Migrants in Aqueous Simulant from Plastic Food Contact Products by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer

AbstractVarious chemicals present at different stages in the food supply chain can lead to the leaching of heavy metals. These metals can accumulate in the human body through the consumption of contaminated food. Consequently, it is necessary to validate an analytical technique for the quantification chemical that could contaminate food. This study presents a rapid, straightforward, and efficient analytical method for the direct quantification of some potentially toxic elements in aqueous simulants from plastic food contact products using an inductively coupled mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). The method’s validation encompassed the study of the estimated detection limits, practical quantification limits, linearity, accuracy, and measurement uncertainty of aluminium (Al), antimony (Sb), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), lead (Pb), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), and zinc (Zn) under optimized ICP-MS conditions. The estimated detection limits ranged from 7.5 × 10−4 to 0.074 mg/kg, while practical quantification limits spanned from 0.02 to 0.8 mg/kg. The average recoveries ± standard deviations at different spiking levels were varied between 85.7 ± 1.51 and 115.6 ± 0.88% with coefficients of variation between 0.42 and 5.85%. The method trueness was verified by using references materials (test material in aqueous acetic acid) purchased from Food Chemistry Proficiency Testing and Analysis (FAPAS) yielding satisfactory results within acceptable recovery and Z-score values. The method precision, in terms of relative standard deviation (RSD), was being below 4.22%. The method uncertainty expressed as expanded uncertainty of all validated elements was found to be ≤ 21.9%. Validated method was employed to determine specific elements in aqueous simulants of thirty commercial plastic food packaging samples, representing three distinct types of plastic polymers. The results showed that the mean concentrations, in mg/kg, were as follows: 2.04 (Al), 0.02 (As), 0.02 (Cd), 0.02 (Co), 0.06 (Cr), 0.41 (Cu), 1.55 (Fe), 0.09 (Mn), 0.15 (Ni), 0.07 (Pb), 0.05 (Sb), and 0.81 (Zn). Furthermore, 30% of analyzed samples exceeding the maximum permissible limits of Al for plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food.

MONITORING OF THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT THROUGH AIR POLLUTANTS IN THE POLOG FIELD OF THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA

Introduction: The Republic of North Macedonia and especially the field pit of Polog in terms of geographical position and climatic aspect is considered as a place with different variables such as: temperature, humidity, radioactive exposure, hilly-mountainous relief. The Sharr mountain in the west and the dry mountain in the north, limit the Polog field pit in all directions, such as north-west and south-east, causing the living environment to deteriorate in the winter period due to air, water and land pollutants. With special emphasis, we highlight the winter season when we have an alarming state of air pollution, such as certain regions of the Republic of North Macedonia and especially the region of the field pit of Polog with the cities of Tetovo and Gostivar and the surrounding area. Recently, the city of Tetova and its surroundings is considered one of the most polluted cities in the country, region and the largest in the world, then this phenomenon of pollution necessarily leads us to unwanted consequences for the population that lives and operates in this region. As a result of environmental factors such as air pollution and other related factors such as: stress, temperature, food, social genes, mental state and other related factors can lead to disorders in the human body and lead to diseases that attack the nervous and cardiovascular systems , skeletal and thyroid. Many studies talk about the alarming condition of patients who are affected by these diseases, therefore our paper will focus on the effect of these factors above all on the actual state of pollutants in the Polog region of North Macedonia. The purpose of the study: This paper aims to investigate the potential causes that can affect the health of the population of the Polog field pit and especially the city of Tetova and its surroundings. As a potential pollutants of the living environment, the following can be considered: carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, urban combustion from automobiles, combustion of various physical substances, chemical components from factories, smoke from chimneys from burning oil and coal, combustion from wood in the form of pellets, etc. Material and working method: In the study, fertilized chicken eggs were taken and incubated in the incubator for 21 days of incubation. The eggs were treated with different doses of air pollutant extract at certain stages of embryonic development. Using the stereomicroscope with macroscopic and microscopic method were analyzed ontogenetic changes in certain stages of embryonic development. Research results: The results of the research will give a real insight into the situation of the level of pollution of the living environment in the city of Tetovo and its surroundings and in the field pit of Pollog. The monitoring of the living environment can be followed by the treatment of air pollutants in certain doses in the form of ampoule therapy, and the negative effect of the given dose on the hen's eggs will be observed. All eggs with the highest dose of injection had a stagnated embryonic development, whereas egss with lower dose of injections had underdeveloped embryos. Conclusion: From the results of the research we can conclude that the potential pollutants from air pollutants can lead to consequences for the population living in this region but also for the living world in general. These factors can lead to disorders of the nervous system, cardiovascular, and thyroid disorders and other respiratory diseases. This research will give a real insight into the pollution of the living environment and the possible consequences of this at a local, regional and wider level.

Oral processing of bakery products: An overview of current status and future outlook

Food oral processing (FOP) is an emerging research topic that allows a better comprehension of the relation between intrinsic food factors (physicochemical and sensory properties), and human physiology and eating behaviours. FOP can then help in the design of novel and healthier food to meet both quality requirements and consumer needs. In this context, this review presents the current state of knowledge and new insights for future research concerning FOP of bakery products. The application of FOP in bakery science is new, with different protocols and related evaluation being applied, as detailed in this review. The current knowledge shows that bread structure and texture, influenced by formulation and process conditions, as well as the crust and shortenings present, impact bread breakdown and bolus formation, sensory perception, and food physiological effects such as glycaemic response, satiation, and satiety. For a better comprehension of oral processing, cross-modal perception between sensory attributes is used to understand consumer perception and this is carried out using both in vivo, and in vitro methods. This review highlighted the great potential of FOP to assist researchers and producers to face the current challenges relating to i – salt, fat and sugar reduction in bakery products to fulfil current food nutrition policies, ii – the design of healthier bakery products, and iii – the development of bakery products for consumers with special dietary requirements and ageing needs. In conclusion, FOP shows great potential to assist in the development of novel and healthier foods to meet actual food nutrition policies and consumer needs and should be more explored in bakery science and production.

Contagious Vibrations: Sympathetic Resonance as a Model for Disease Transmission in the Writings of Ficino, Fracastoro, and Cardano.

Contagious diseases were among the most vexing problems in ancient theories of health, which could not easily account for how a corruption of one person's humors could cause a similar corruption in another's. One useful explanatory concept for Renaissance doctors tackling this theoretical gap was the phenomenon of resonance or "sympathetic vibration" - where one stationary string begins to vibrate spontaneously when a similarly tuned string is plucked nearby - as both resonance and contagion involved some mysterious, insensible action at a distance between an agent and a patient. Tracing the writings of Marsilio Ficino, Girolamo Fracastoro, and Girolamo Cardano, this essay explores the relationships between the writers' accounts of sympathetic vibrations and their contagion theories. It argues that different conceptions of the acoustic phenomenon - either as a manifestation of a Neo-Platonic World-Soul that underpinned the universe or else as a physical effect - revealed the writers' cosmological views that, in turn, informed their accounts of the human body and disease.

High elongation, low hysteresis, fatigue resistant gel electrolyte for supercapacitor and strain sensor

With the arrival of the era of the Internet of Everything and the popularization of flexible wearable devices, energy supply devices serving flexible wearable devices have also become a research hotspot. Hydrogels are gaining ground in the field of flexible energy supply devices, especially supercapacitors, which have attracted wide attention due to the advantages of fast charging/discharging, high power density, and stability. However, flexible supercapacitor inevitably undergoes varying degrees of deformation during use, and their service life decreases dramatically with the prolongation of use. Therefore, the fabrication of a flexible supercapacitor that can be assembled from hydrogel electrolyte and is fatigue-resistant and stable has become a promising research direction. In this study, we constructed a gel electrolyte with high stretchability, low hysteresis, high stability, and fatigue resistance by designing a dual network structure, and assembled it into a supercapacitor. The device has many excellent features, providing a surface capacitance of 100 mF/cm2, a power density of 0.19 mW/cm2, and an energy density of 425 μWh/cm2 at a frequency of 1 mA/cm2. More importantly, it also exhibits superb stability when subjected to varying degrees of bending and compression. In addition, the gel electrolyte can detect small changes of the human body and quickly and sensitively convert motion signals into electrical signals, showing great potential as a flexible wearable device. This study provides an effective strategy for designing gel electrolytes with low hysteresis and high stability for wider application in flexible electronic devices.

A colorimetric sensor based on multiple elements doped carbon dot nanozyme for rapid detection of 1-naphthol in human urine samples

The residual carbaryl in crops can cause serious damage to the human kidney and nervous system after entering the human body, which may be metabolized to 1-naphthol (1-NAP) and excreted through urine. 1-NAP is often used as the biomarker for carbaryl exposure, so the intake or leakage of carbaryl can be monitored by detecting the concentration of 1-NAP. Herein, Co, N, P ternary co-doped carbon dots (CoNP-CDs) derived from vitamin B12 were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. CoNP-CDs exhibited oxidase-like activity and excellent peroxidase-like activity, which was attributed to the Fenton-like reaction of Co2+/Co3+ and the presence of pyrrole N and P elements, which together provided multiple active sites for chromogenic substrates. Due to the dual enzyme-like activity of CoNP-CDs, hydroxyl radicals (OH) and superoxide radicals (O2−) were generated during the catalytic process, which could rapidly oxidize colorless 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethyl benzidine (TMB) to blue oxidation products (oxTMB). The α-carbon in 1-NAP can be attacked by OH, and the catalytic oxidation process of TMB can be inhibited by the consumption of OH, so that the blue color of the solution became lighter. Based on this principle, a smartphone-assisted colorimetric sensing platform was constructed for the detection of 1-NAP, and which resulted in a linear range of 1.07–37.3 μM and a visual detection limit of 0.68 μM. Moreover, the colorimetric sensing system showed satisfactory recoveries in the detection of human urine samples. The colorimetric sensing system owned the advantages of fast response, strong selectivity and simple operation, and provided a potential strategy for the on-site detection of 1-NAP.

Measurement Techniques for Low-Concentration Tritium Radiation in Water: Review and Prospects.

Tritium (3H) is one of the most critical nuclides for environmental monitoring, yet it is challenging to measure. Its high natural mobility and its potential to enter the human body through the food chain underscore the importance of not overlooking the radiation safety risks associated with tritium. The need for the online measurement of tritium at low concentrations is becoming increasingly apparent. This review examines the two principal stages of current measurement methodologies: sample preparation and radiation signal detection. It provides a summary of the tritium sample preparation and detection techniques, highlighting advances in the research with potential applications in online monitoring. The review concludes with an analysis of the issues inherent in the current techniques and offers perspectives on possible technological enhancements and future trajectories for the development of online monitoring systems for trace tritium levels.

Characterizing the effects of triclosan and triclocarban on the intestinal epithelial homeostasis using small intestinal organoids

Intestinal epithelium has the largest surface of human body, contributes dramatically to defense of toxicant-associated intestinal injury. Triclosan (TCS) and triclocarban (TCC), extensively employed as antibacterial agents in personal care products (PCPs) and healthcare facilities, caused serious damage to human intestine. However, the role of the intestinal epithelium in TCS/TCC-induced intestinal toxicity and its underlying toxic mechanisms remain incompletely understood. In this study, a novel 3D intestinal organoid model was utilized to investigate that exposure to TCS/TCC led to a compromised self-renewal and differentiation of intestinal stem cells (ISCs). Consequently, this disrupted intestinal epithelial homeostasis ultimately caused a reduction in nutrient absorption and deficient of epithelial defense to exogenous and endogenous pathogens stimulation. The inhibition of the Wnt signaling pathway in intestinal stem cell was contributed to the intestinal toxicity of TCS/TCC. These results were further confirmed in vivo with mice exposed to TCS/TCC. The findings of this study provide evidence that TCS/TCC possess the capacity to disturb the homeostasis of the intestinal epithelium, and emphasize the credibility of organoids as a valuable model for toxicological studies, as they could faithfully recapitulate in vivo phenomena.

Sequencing technology in sarcopenia: current research progress and future trends.

Muscle is an important tissue of the human body. Muscle atrophy is common in people of all ages, which will lead to human weakness and decline of motor function, which is one of the important causes of disability. The common methods of genomics research are transcriptome, proteomics and metabolomics, which are important means to explore the molecular pathology of diseases. In recent years, combinatorial research has been carried out on a large scale in the field of muscle atrophy. However, no author in this field has carried out bibliometrics and visual analysis. In this study, articles related to the histological study of muscular dystrophy since 2000 were searched from the Web of Science core database (WoSCC). We will retrieve the results through CiteSpace, VosViewer and R for data statistics and visual analysis. In this study, a total of 141 publications were collected, and the number of publications increased year by year. These 141 articles came from 1031 co-authors from 361 institutions in 31 countries and were published in 92 journals. A total of 6286 articles from 1383 journals were cited. Authors from American institutions have published the most articles and have been cited the most, and authors from other countries have also made considerable contributions. This is the first bibliometric and visual analysis of published research in the field of muscular dystrophy through systematic data retrieval and combined with a variety of bibliometric analysis tools. Through these data, we summarize the previous studies of scholars, and provide prospects for future research in the field.

Foundation model-driven distributed learning for enhanced retinal age prediction.

The retinal age gap (RAG) is emerging as a potential biomarker for various diseases of the human body, yet its utility depends on machine learning models capable of accurately predicting biological retinal age from fundus images. However, training generalizable models is hindered by potential shortages of diverse training data. To overcome these obstacles, this work develops a novel and computationally efficient distributed learning framework for retinal age prediction. The proposed framework employs a memory-efficient 8-bit quantized version of RETFound, a cutting-edge foundation model for retinal image analysis, to extract features from fundus images. These features are then used to train an efficient linear regression head model for predicting retinal age. The framework explores federated learning (FL) as well as traveling model (TM) approaches for distributed training of the linear regression head. To evaluate this framework, we simulate a client network using fundus image data from the UK Biobank. Additionally, data from patients with type 1 diabetes from the UK Biobank and the Brazilian Multilabel Ophthalmological Dataset (BRSET) were utilized to explore the clinical utility of the developed methods. Our findings reveal that the developed distributed learning framework achieves retinal age prediction performance on par with centralized methods, with FL and TM providing similar performance (mean absolute error of 3.57 ± 0.18 years for centralized learning, 3.60 ± 0.16 years for TM, and 3.63 ± 0.19 years for FL). Notably, the TM was found to converge with fewer local updates than FL. Moreover, patients with type 1 diabetes exhibited significantly higher RAG values than healthy controls in all models, for both the UK Biobank and BRSET datasets (P < .001). The high computational and memory efficiency of the developed distributed learning framework makes it well suited for resource-constrained environments. The capacity of this framework to integrate data from underrepresented populations for training of retinal age prediction models could significantly enhance the accessibility of the RAG as an important disease biomarker.

Effects of Isotretinoin treatment on human body - review

Introduction: Isotretinoin (13-cis-Retinoic Acid) is a part of the retinoid group, and is used in dermatology for the treatment of acne, due to its demonstrated inhibitory effect on sebaceous gland activity and proliferation. Isotretinoin is a highly lipophilic drug, for this reason taking it with food, doubles the bioavailability of the substance, during systemic treatment. Isotretinoin as a drug has been used effectively for more than 40 years in the treatment of acne, although its exact mechanism of action is not known. Objective: The objective of this study is to gather and analyze literature regarding the adverse effects of isotretinoin therapy on mental health and the digestive, cardiovascular, immune, urinary, and reproductive systems. Materials and Methods: A literature review was conducted using the PubMed database with the following search terms : retinoids, isotretinoin, acne, 13-cis-retinoic acid. Current Knowledge: Isotretinoin therapy has a vast spectrum of side effects affecting various systems of the human body. During the use of isotretinoin, special caution should be taken in patients with depression, lipid disorders, and abnormal liver function. In addition, in patients of childbearing age, make sure to use contraception one month before, during and one month after the end of isotretinoin therapy due to its teratogenicity. Conclusion: Isotretinoin is still the most effective drug in the systemic treatment of severe forms of acne, nevertheless its potential side effects should be kept in mind. Regular monitoring of patients should be a mainstay during isotretinoin therapy, especially with regard to lipid profile and liver parameters.

Multilayer Electrode Strategy Shorten Thermal Charging Time and Boost Energy Output in Gelatin‐Based i‐TE Cells

AbstractGel‐based ionic thermoelectric (i‐TE) cells provide alternative thermal energy harvesting from the environment, showing obvious advantages in voltage matching for self‐powered Internet‐of‐Things (IoT) sensors. However, the gel‐based i‐TE cells always suffer a long thermal charging time and poor output power performance. Herein, a multilayer electrode engineering strategy is proposed from the device‐design level, aiming to decrease the ions' diffusion distance, increase the electrode surface area, and facilitate the ions' reaction and recovery process. The thermal charging time is shortened from 27 to 8 min as the electrode layers increase from 2 to 8. An ultrahigh instantaneous power density of 15.8 mW m−2 K−2 and 2 h output energy density (E2h) of 403 J m−2 are achieved in an 8‐layer electrode i‐TE cell. Finally, A flexible and wearable i‐TE device with 20 units is demonstrated to generate a remarkable voltage of 3.8 V and output power of 282 µW by harvesting the human body heat. This work provides a feasible and effective route to design the i‐TE device, hopefully promoting its practical power generation application.

Applying the Atomic Force Microscopy Technique in Medical Sciences—A Narrative Review

Penetrating deep into the cells of the human body in real time has become increasingly possible with the implementation of modern technologies in medicine. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) enables the effective live imaging of cellular and molecular structures of biological samples (such as cells surfaces, components of biological membranes, cell nuclei, actin networks, proteins, and DNA) and provides three-dimensional surface visualization (in X-, Y-, and Z-planes). Furthermore, the AFM technique enables the study of the mechanical, electrical, and magnetic properties of cells and cell organelles and the measurements of interaction forces between biomolecules. The technique has found wide application in cancer research. With the use of AFM, it is not only possible to differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells, but also to distinguish between the stages of cancerous conditions. For many years, AFM has been an important tool for the study of neurodegenerative diseases associated with the deposition of peptide amyloid plaques. In recent years, a significant amount of research has been conducted on the application of AFM in the evaluation of connective tissue cell mechanics. This review aims to provide the spectrum of the most important applications of the AFM technique in medicine to date.

Bacterial association with metals enables in vivo monitoring of urogenital microbiota using magnetic resonance imaging

Bacteria constitute a significant part of the biomass of the human microbiota, but their interactions are complex and difficult to replicate outside the host. Exploiting the superior resolution of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine signal parameters of selected human isolates may allow tracking of their dispersion throughout the body. Here we investigate longitudinal and transverse MRI relaxation rates and found significant differences between several bacterial strains. Common commensal strains of lactobacilli display notably high MRI relaxation rates, partially explained by elevated cellular manganese content, while other species contain more iron than manganese. Lactobacillus crispatus show particularly high values, 4-fold greater than any other species; up to 60-fold greater signal than relevant tissue background; and a linear relationship between relaxation rate and fraction of live cells. Different bacterial strains have detectable, repeatable MRI relaxation rates that in the future may enable monitoring of their persistence in the human body for enhanced molecular imaging.