Ubiquitous Resources Research Articles

Bad Habits that Stick: An Investigation into Adhesive Medical Tape Use Practices and Beliefs

Background: Medical tape is one of the most ubiquitous resources in the hospital. Although tape is advertised by manufacturers as a single patient-use item, half-used rolls are a common sight in hospitals. Tape is often manipulated by un-sanitized and ungloved hands and comes in close contact with patient skin. Medical tape has the potential to be a source of hospital-acquired infection as it has been documented to be colonized with pathogens ranging from MRSA to Rhizopus. Despite infection risk, currently the only clinical guidelines of tape use are outlined in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services guidance for Hemodialysis patients issued in 2008 that requires “tape should be dedicated to a single patient and discarded after use” as hemodialysis patients are at higher risk of infection. However, there is a lack of standards in the practice of tape use across hospital systems. Methods: To understand the current practices and beliefs of tape use at our institution, we developed a standardized survey to query individuals from various roles (RN, Physician, Patient Care Technicians, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists) across all patient care areas at a 746-bed academic, tertiary care center. Results: 52 units were surveyed, including 225 employees. Qualitative analysis revealed a wide variety of uses for medical tape for patient care, with venipuncture, securing IVs, and wound dressings being the most common. Only 1.4% of individuals reported single use of tape rolls. 54% of individuals reported tape use behaviors that carry an elevated risk for inoculation of pathogens. 70% of individuals reported that tape was discarded after the patient was discharged from their respective area. These practices did not change across procedure-heavy areas such as the Emergency Department or the Operating Rooms, in fact only 22% of individuals surveyed reported single use of tape in these areas. Beliefs about tape use varied: 95% of individuals agreed that a roll of tape could be used multiple times on a single patient, and 52% of individuals agreed that a roll of tape could be used on multiple patients. Conclusions: Tape use practices varied across hospital units, indicating the need for standardized policies for tape use and storage. Beliefs about tape not being a single-use item were consistent across the hospital and suggest that education and culture change efforts are needed to decrease the risk for hospital-acquired infections from improper medical tape use.

Supporting parents with acutely ill children: Environment scan and user evaluation of mobile applications (the SuPa kids project)

BackgroundChildren are one of the biggest users of emergency departments in the UK, sometimes utilising services when experiencing acute illnesses that can be managed at home. mHealth can be an efficacious way for parents/guardians to manage acute illnesses. It has also become a ubiquitous resource to promote public health interests within a resource constrained health system. However, to be effective, co-design is necessary with concepts such as usefulness, ease of use, trustworthiness and security underpinning the utility of mHealth interventions for acute childhood illness. ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to conduct an environmental scan of mHealth apps for parental assessment and management of acute childhood illnesses in 0- to 5-year-olds, review the content and functionality of each identified app against the list of desired attributes identified in previous research and synthesise publicly available reviews from end users to demonstrate the quality of current apps in the marketplace and identify areas for improvement. MethodApp characteristics were mapped to an a priori defined list of desirable attributes. End user reviews were mapped to a modified Technology Acceptance Model framework that included overarching themes of: Perceived Usefulness (PU), Perceived Ease of Use (PEU), Perceived Trustworthiness (PT) and Perceived Security (PS) using reflexive thematic analysis. ResultsOverall, 15 apps were included in the analysis (Table 2). Fourteen of the 15 apps were available on both the iOS and Android platforms. ‘Baby Illness, Prevention, Cure’ was only available on the Android store. All apps were free to download and did not restrict access to information or features via in-app purchases. Baby and child first aid (British Red Cross) was the earliest app to be released (2014). This app was updated annually, with the most recent update being 2022. The most recent apps to be released (2018) were ‘AskFirst’ (formerly Ask NHS), ‘Essex Child Health’ and ‘The Lullaby Trust Baby Check’, updated in 2022, 2020 and 2019, respectively. No individual app met all the desirable attributes highlighted by parents in previous research. Both ‘Healthier Together’, and ‘The Lullaby Trust Baby Check’ included all but one desirable attributes (video), as did the ‘’CATCH (Common Approach to Children’s Health), which did not utilise a traffic light system. Apps that were locality specific were not rated by users (Berkshire Child Health, Cheshire Child Health, Child Health Guide Newham, Child Health HMR, Oldham Child Illness and Walsall Healthy Child). All other apps were rated from 2/5 to 5/5 stars. When considering localities, the ‘CATCH’ app was only supported in Halton, Cheshire, Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens and Vale Royal. Further investigation evidenced no correlation between inclusion of the desirable attributes and app rating. ConclusionOverall, this research has highlighted several aspects of best practise when developing mHealth apps for the management of acute childhood illnesses, for increasing PU, PEU, PT and PS; and also, places importance on co-design.

Resource sharing for collaborative edge learning: A privacy-aware incentive mechanism combined with demand prediction

Edge intelligence benefits from ubiquitous resource capabilities by numerous edge devices. However, interest concerns and privacy issues caused by the openness of the edge network make smart devices reluctant to participate in collaborative edge learning. This work proposes a privacy-aware incentive mechanism based on combinatorial double auction (PIMCDA) to facilitate idle resource sharing of diversified edge devices. First, we establish an auction model based on blockchain to form a trusted sharing market in a multi-resource binding manner. Then, we propose a two-stage auction solution combined with differential privacy: The privacy-aware winner selection stage matches the optimal winner candidate to the task that is the closest in probability to maximize the revenue of resource providers with the obfuscated location information. The probabilistic pricing decision stage is designed based on a uniform pricing method and exponential mechanism, which can ensure bid privacy from inference attacks. Furthermore, to ensure the effectiveness of PIMCDA for long-term participation, we design a supply and demand balance mechanism with a learning-based resource prediction method. Theoretical and simulation analysis demonstrate that the proposed mechanism achieves privacy-preserving in location and bid information while ensuring effective incentive properties. Our approach effectively motivates the sharing of multiple resources in edge computing.

Spatial focussing of wave energy for improved power capture by an oscillating water column

The world’s oceans represent an abundant reserve of renewable energy. Wave power is a ubiquitous resource which is both temporarily and spatially consistent. This designates wave power as a particularly suitable energy resource for exploitation. Nevertheless, the development of wave energy technologies is lagging behind other renewable energy devices. Few grid-connected wave energy converters (WECs) have been constructed or deployed. The main barriers to the commercialisation of WECs is the relatively low energy conversion efficiencies that have been achieved, both with prototype devices, and with full scale installations.
 Many studies have been performed to augment the wave energy capture by WECs. Until now, investigations have predominantly focussed on modifying the device geometry (e.g. additional chambers in OWCs, varied buoy shapes for point absorbers etc.), or PTO systems to improve the energy yield. In this study, a novel approach is adopted, which demonstrates that significantly improved WEC performances can be achieved by manipulating the hydrodynamic wave field in the vicinity of the WEC to consolidate the wave energy. Few studies have been undertaken on methods to focus the linearly distributed wave energy at the WEC device. The concept of concentrating renewable energy resources for improved harvest is employed in other industries, for example, concentrated solar power plants utilize vast arrays of mirrors to consolidate the areally distributed solar energy to a central PTO tower. The present study demonstrates that wave energy can be focussed in an analogous manner.
 This research investigates the effectiveness of various geometry structures to reflect and focus the incident wave energy to point locations at which WEC devices can be positioned. To achieve this energy focussing effect, we install reflecting walls within a numerical wave tank to manipulate the hydrodynamic wave field. Three diverse wall configurations are examined (see Fig. 1). Initially, a straight wall is installed at an oblique angle to the incident waves. The waves are reflected from the wall and interact with propagating incident waves, forming a chequerboard type pattern on the free surface. Where the incident waves and reflected waves interact, a positive interference manifests which yields amplified free surface displacements, signifying energy concentration localisations. The second set of numerical experiments investigate wave focussing in the concave opening of a parabolic reflecting wall. Significantly augmented free surface displacement amplifications are observed at the parabolic wall focus. Finally, the study investigates wave focussing at the convex side of a double parabola wall. In this configuration, a complex reflecting wave field pattern emerges which may be particularly suitable for the installation of a WEC array. In each of the geometrical scenarios described, an oscillating water column (OWC) WEC is installed at the wave focussing position and its performance is analysed over a range of incident wave conditions. The performance of the OWC in each wave focussing case is compared with an equivalent OWC installed in open-seas conditions. In this manner, the effectiveness of the wall geometry in terms of the energy focussing and subsequent energy capture enhancement by the WEC is determined.

Rural tourism in Bali: towards a conflict-based tourism resource typology and management

ABSTRACT Although conflicts over resource utilisation have been widely discussed, tourism resource typology has not been explored clearly from a conflict-based perspective. Based on a case study of two Balinese villages, this research extends the previous literature by exploring tourism resource typology and management. The findings reveal four typologies with a two-dimensional matrix: activity and facility-based resources on one axis and localised and ubiquitous resources on another. The resource management model applies three steps: planning, regulating and implementing. The findings contribute to practical suggestions about rural tourism development within a strong spiritual context by emphasising spiritual resources and development. They also encourage a counterbalance towards spiritual development and suggest a triadic intermingling in resource management. Several directions for future research are suggested in the rural tourism domain, especially for developing countries.

Digital learning: The reach of podcasts and YouTube on trauma surgery education

BackgroundPhysicians, medical students, and health care professionals are charged with staying current throughout their training. No studies have examined the scope of trauma surgery–related podcasts and videos. Our goal was to characterize and evaluate the growing number of trauma-related podcasts and YouTube channels. MethodsWe conducted a search across 3 podcasting platforms (Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify) and 1 video-sharing site (YouTube) for podcasts published up to November 11, 2022. We queued platforms for “Trauma” and “Trauma Surgery.” We included podcasts or video channels in English that focused on trauma surgery or trauma survivorship and recovery. Descriptive analyses were used to determine the characteristics of podcasts and YouTube channels, reported as counts. ResultsWe identified 91 podcasts and 103 YouTube channels dedicated to trauma recovery and/or trauma surgery. The longest running podcast was the “TraumaCast,” and the oldest YouTube channel was “TraumaPro.” The podcast with the most episodes was “Trauma Therapist,” and the YouTube channel with the most episodes was the Arizona Trauma Association. Podcasts were aimed at public audiences, whereas YouTube channels focused on providers. A large proportion of content is not created by licensed professionals. ConclusionsOur study shows that popular trauma-focused podcasts target the general population, not health care professionals. The content creators behind these digital platforms seek to educate the public on the recovery process after traumatic injury. We must better understand the advantages and pitfalls of these ubiquitous resources.

Parallel Driving OS: A Ubiquitous Operating System for Autonomous Driving in CPSS

With the rapid development of autonomous driving technologies, a vast array of autonomous driving algorithms and platforms have emerged. These algorithms and platforms are usually designed for different tasks in specific scenarios, which makes them incompatible with each other. To solve the problem, we propose a ubiquitous operating system named Parallel Driving Operating System (PDOS) based on the parallel driving theory. Specifically, the PDOS architecture includes the hardware layer, the kernel layer, the functional layer, and the application layer, which can realize heterogeneous hardware support, ubiquitous resource management, algorithm optimization, and ubiquitous application development, respectively. Moreover, we derive the PDOS into specific operating systems in four application scenarios, i.e., intelligent mining, intelligent warehousing, intelligent logistics, and intelligent port. To validate the PDOS, we test its usability, reliability, and efficiency in these scenarios. Evaluation results demonstrate the high performance of PDOS in multiple autonomous driving, and indicate that PDOS is an efficient operating system for parallel driving.

Asian American Female Composers and Digital Memory

Asian American Female Composers and Digital Memory

Enhancing the realism of decarbonisation scenarios with practicable regional constraints on CO2 storage capacity

• Integrated assessment model scenarios substantially overestimate CO 2 storage potential. • A new storage potential estimate, the investable potential, is introduced. • Reduced CO 2 storage requires faster mitigation and greater use of renewable energy. • Scenarios prioritise very different CCS applications depending on storage availability. • The impact of cross-border trade in CO 2 and low discount rates are also explored. Most low-carbon scenarios produced by integrated assessment models deploy substantial amounts of carbon capture and storage (CCS). These models generally assume that CO 2 storage is a low-cost and globally ubiquitous resource. Here we challenge this assumption, introducing a CO 2 storage potential which accounts for the financial, contractual, and institutional barriers to CO 2 storage, which we term the investable potential. We provide a first estimate of this investable potential and utilise a global energy system model to explore the implications for global and regional mitigation pathways. Our results suggest that low-carbon scenarios which assume abundant CO 2 storage may substantially overestimate the role of CCS in deep decarbonisation, particularly in key regions such as China and India. Limited CO 2 storage leads to mitigation pathways with faster emission reductions and greater reliance on renewable energy for decarbonisation. We demonstrate that the optimal use of CCS depends heavily on the availability of CO 2 storage, with different use-cases prioritised at different scales of storage availability. Finally, we present exploratory analysis on the potential for cross-border trade in captured CO 2 to match sources and sinks. The results of this analysis can help calibrate expectations and inform policy decisions around the role of CCS in addressing climate change.

Direct determination of arbitrary dimensional entanglement monotones using statistical correlators and minimal complementary measurements

Higher dimensional quantum systems (qudits) present a potentially more efficient means, compared to qubits, for implementing various information theoretic tasks. One of the ubiquitous resources in such explorations is entanglement. Entanglement monotones (EMs) are of key importance, particularly for assessing the efficacy of a given entangled state as a resource for information theoretic tasks. Till date, investigations towards determination of EMs have focused on providing their tighter lower bounds. There is yet no general scheme available for direct determination of the EMs. Consequently, an empirical determination of any EM has not yet been achieved for entangled qudit states. The present paper fills this gap, both theoretically as well as experimentally. First, we derive analytical relations between statistical correlation measures i.e. mutual predictability (MP), mutual information (MI) and Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) and standard EMs i.e. negativity (N) and entanglement of formation (EOF) in arbitrary dimensions. As a proof of concept, we then experimentally measure MP, MI and PCC of two-qutrit pure states and determine their N and EOF using these derived relations. This is a useful addition to the experimenter’s toolkit wherein by using a limited number of measurements (in this case 1 set of measurements), one can directly measure the EMs in a bipartite arbitrary dimensional system. We obtain the value of N for our bipartite qutrit to be 0.907 ± 0.013 and the EOF to be 1.323 ± 0.022. Since the present scheme enables determination of more than one EM by the same limited number of measurements, we argue that it can serve as a unique experimental platform for quantitatively comparing and contrasting the operational implications of EMs as well as showing their non-monotonicity for a given bipartite pure qudit state.

Sharing of Teaching Resources for English Majors Based on Ubiquitous Learning Resource Sharing Platform and Neural Network.

Teachers in traditional English education devote a great deal of time and effort to developing excellent English teaching courseware and other teaching materials. However, because the network's powerful sharing capability was not fully utilized, poor resource sharing hampered the school's overall teaching efficiency. The goal of this paper is to investigate how to use a ubiquitous learning resource sharing platform and a neural network to analyze the method of English major education resource sharing. Because the BP neural network algorithm has better classification and prediction functions, it was proposed because it can classify and predict information in the sharing of teaching resources for English majors. This allows for seamless sharing of teaching materials. According to the findings of this study, there were 562.13 million people learning English in China in 2015, accounting for 37% of the population. By 2018, 945.61 million people were learning English, accounting for 85 percent of the population. Almost every student is learning English, demonstrating the language's importance. As a result, the importance of English instruction is clear, and the sharing of teaching resources should be prioritized.

Effects of habitat, season and flood on corvid scavenging dynamics in Central Australia

AbstractCarrion is an ubiquitous resource that drives the dynamics of scavenger populations and shapes the structure and composition of their communities. Corvids (Family: Corvidae) are among the most common scavengers globally, facilitating carcass discovery by other species and contributing to carcass biomass removal. Here, we examine how environmental factors influence corvid scavenging dynamics in an arid region of Central Australia. Specifically, we investigate how habitat, season and a major flood event affect corvid discovery and visitation time, and group size around carcass sites. To do so, we used data collected from camera traps monitoring 80 experimentally positioned red kangaroo (Osphranter rufus) carcasses stratified across closed and open habitats, spring and winter seasons, and before and after a flood event. Corvids took longer to discover carcasses in closed compared to open habitats, but habitat did not affect how long corvids spent visiting carcasses, or corvid group size. Corvids discovered carcasses faster in winter compared to spring and in post‐flood compared with the pre‐flood periods, and season and flood interacted to influence both corvid visitation time and group size. Our results reflect a complex interplay between temperature, the extreme boom and bust cyclicity of the study region and changing corvid activity and abundance in the local study area. We identify environmental factors as key determinants of corvid scavenging dynamics and provide the first detailed description of scavenging by corvids in the arid zone of Australia.

Energizing Low Power Devices by Harvesting Energy from Ubiquitous Electromagnetic Wave Resources

In the recent years most of the devices are designed with low power consumption such as wearable devices, remote monitoring sensors, sensors used in fashionablecities. However, even long lasting batteries have a limited lifespan and must be replaced every few years. Replacements of batteries become costly when there are hundreds of sensors in rural areas.Technologies of Energy harvesting, on the other hand, provide infinite operating life of low-power equipment and avoid the need to replace batteries where it is costly, impractical or hazardous. Energy Harvesting (EH) is a process wherein the sources such as mechanical load, vibrations, temperature gradients and light, etc., serve as the resource from which the energy harvested and transformed to obtain relatively small levels of power in the range of nW-mW. The transducer converts one form of energy to other form usually electrical signal. The output obtained from the RF antenna is sent for power conditioning to ensure the operating frequency, voltage and current. The received RF signal is given to the matching network to provide proper impedance matching between the antenna and the signal conditioning circuit. The received RF signal is rectified and passed through the voltage multiplier circuit. In order to get sufficient output voltage to drive the device voltage quadrupler is used in the proposed system. As electromagnetic wave is available in surplus in our surrounding, it can be an uninterrupted resource for the energy generation for the device. Energy storage device is associated with the energy scavenging circuitry to enable the energy scavenged to be utilized for future purpose. The proposed system meets the state-of-the-art in the field of energy harvesting for low power devices using the RF energy harvesting.

Coherence-based inequality for the discrimination of three-qubit GHZ and W class

Quantum coherence and entanglement originate from the superposition principle. We derive a rigorous relation between the \({l_1}\)-norm of coherence and concurrence, in that we show that the former is always greater than the latter. This result highlights the hierarchical relationship between coherence and concurrence, and proves coherence to be a fundamental and ubiquitous resource. We derive an analogous form of monogamy inequality, which is based on the partial coherence of the reduced two-qubit and reduced single qubit of the particular class of three-qubit state. Moreover, we provide coherence-based inequality for the classification of GHZ class and W class of three-qubit states. Finally, we provide theoretical discussion for the possible implementation of the scheme in an experiment.

Designing Fine-Grained Access Control for Software-Defined Networks Using Private Blockchain

Emerging next-generation Internet yields proper administration of a wide-ranging dynamic network to assist rapid ubiquitous resource accessibility, whilst providing higher channel bandwidth. Since its inception, the traditional static network infrastructure-based solutions involve manual configuration and proprietary controls of networked devices. It then leads to improper utilization of the overall resources, and hence experiences various security threats. Although transport layer security (TLS)-based solution is presently advocated in the said framework, it is vulnerable to many security threats like man-in-the-middle, replay, spoofing, privileged insider, impersonation, and denial-of-service attacks. Moreover, the current settings of the said tool do not facilitate any secure and reliable mechanisms for data forwarding, application flow routing, new configuration deployment, and network event management. Also, it suffers from the single point of controller failure issue. In this article, we propose a new private blockchain-enabled fine-grained access control mechanism for the SDN environment. In this regard, attribute-based encryption (ABE) and certificate-based access control protocol are incorporated. This proposed solution can resist several well-known security threats, and alleviate different system-level inconveniences. The formal and informal security inspections and performancewise comparative study of the proposed scheme endorse better qualifying scores as compared to the other existing competing state-of-the-art schemes. Besides, the experimental testbed implementation and blockchain simulation show the implementation feasibility of the proposed mechanism.

Clinical notes as prognostic markers of mortality associated with diabetes mellitus following critical care: A retrospective cohort analysis using machine learning and unstructured big data

BackgroundClinical notes are ubiquitous resources offering potential value in optimizing critical care via data mining technologies. ObjectiveTo determine the predictive value of clinical notes as prognostic markers of 1-year all-cause mortality among people with diabetes following critical care. Materials and methodsMortality of diabetes patients were predicted using three cohorts of clinical text in a critical care database, written by physicians (n = 45253), nurses (159027), and both (n = 204280). Natural language processing was used to pre-process text documents and LASSO-regularized logistic regression models were trained and tested. Confusion matrix metrics of each model were calculated and AUROC estimates between models were compared. All predictive words and corresponding coefficients were extracted. Outcome probability associated with each text document was estimated. ResultsModels built on clinical text of physicians, nurses, and the combined cohort predicted mortality with AUROC of 0.996, 0.893, and 0.922, respectively. Predictive performance of the models significantly differed from one another whereas inter-rater reliability ranged from substantial to almost perfect across them. Number of predictive words with non-zero coefficients were 3994, 8159, and 10579, respectively, in the models of physicians, nurses, and the combined cohort. Physicians’ and nursing notes, both individually and when combined, strongly predicted 1-year all-cause mortality among people with diabetes following critical care. ConclusionClinical notes of physicians and nurses are strong and novel prognostic markers of diabetes-associated mortality in critical care, offering potentially generalizable and scalable applications. Clinical text-derived personalized risk estimates of prognostic outcomes such as mortality could be used to optimize patient care.

Irrigation canal assessment using geomatics techniques

Water is one of the most important resources supporting life on Earth, yet this seemingly ubiquitous resource has become the source of multiple different emergencies rising significant concerns at international and national levels. This research examines the water crisis faced by Iraq as a consequence of a large portion of its water originating from outside of its boundaries, including sources in Iran, Turkey and Syria; more specifically, it studies the issue of the water shortage in the Wend River by evaluating the placement of the Blajo canal using a GIS based TOPSIS method. The approach taken evaluates existing canal dependency using TOPSIS as one of the MCDM techniques to consider the distance between every option from both the positive perfect point and from the negative perfect point. This was done to ensure that the best option had optimal distance from both the positive point and the from the negative point. The results showed that the best spatial location for the Blajo canal was in alternative a4, which was ranked 3 within the TOPSIS method. This rating reflects the site is near to arable areas and satisfies some criteria but is not the best location with respect to other factors.

Environmental attributes of fungal-like adhesive materials and future directions for bioinspired manufacturing

This study evaluates the environmental impact of fungal-like adhesive materials (FLAMs), which are at the forefront of bioinspired manufacturing for sustainability and are thus well-poised to enable a circular economy because they can be sourced, manufactured, and degraded in almost any ecosystem, including urban environments. The main constituents of FLAMs (i.e., cellulose and chitin) are ubiquitous and available from diverse material sources, and the environmental impact of current production practices would vary depending on material sourcing. Here, cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessments were performed on four scenarios with different material sources to. provide insights into the environmental impact of the technology in its current state and identify critical areas to prioritize in future developments. Key contributors were material transportation and chemical use (i.e., sodium hydroxide), which significantly improved when FLAM production was based on regional suppliers and reduced the import distances of raw materials. Next, it was determined that cellulose selection must be based on regionally available pulping technology because using virgin or recycled cellulose fibers has a negligible impact on FLAM production. Finally, it was found that the use of locally produced chitosan from black soldier flies is a positive step toward regionalization and shorter distances. However, as a process performed at a lab scale, it requires the adoption of novel and more efficient biomass fractionation, such as those being implemented for other farmed arthropods (e.g., shrimp). Relative to similar materials, such as rigid polyurethane foam, lower impacts were observed in more than half the environmental indicators, positioning FLAMs in their current state as a more sustainable alternative, even without considering their unassisted compostability. The direction of future developments recommended here resonates with the research efforts on bioinspired manufacturing based on the convergence of ubiquitous resources, regional production, and optimized methods of extraction and fractionation of biomass resources, which we believe should be prioritized. The potential impact of the ongoing and proposed research efforts highlights the unique opportunity enabled by FLAMs and bioinspired manufacturing to minimize transportation and maximize the ecological integration of materials, which in turn present a unique prospect for the development of sustainable manufacturing.

Evaporative electrical energy generation via diffusion-driven ion-electron-coupled transport in semiconducting nanoporous channel

Water is one of the plentiful and ubiquitous resources on earth. Due to this characteristic, much efforts have been made to utilize various fluidic phenomena, such as fluidic transport and energy conversions. Recently, in conjunction with an advent of diverse nanomaterials, studies of these fluidic phenomena have been expanded to nanometric domains in those materials, possessing a high surface-to-volume ratio and unique solid-liquid interfacial effects. However, as an understanding of the nanofluidic effects therein was deficient, detailed studies of ionic transports and corresponding ion-solid interfacial interactions are still required. Herein, an evaporation-driven fluidic energy production in molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) and silica nanoparticle (SiO 2 NP)-based nanoporous channel was demonstrated by a translation of an evaporation-driven electro-diffusion of ions in the nanofluidic domain into a charge carrier effect in the semiconducting MoS 2 layer via interfacial coulombic field drag effect. The revealing results showed that the semiconducting nanofluidic channels can be utilized to induce an ion-charge carrier-coupled effect beyond conventional electro-kinetic effects in insulating conduits. Our finding could provide understandings of water-nanomaterials interfacial interactions for developing advanced nanofluidic energy conversion systems. • Highly stable and continuous electricity generation in an evaporation-driven energy conversion device was demonstrated with a semiconducting molybdenum disulfide/silica nanoparticle composite. • Continuous ion-electron interactions at an electrolyte-nanoconduit interface, a key factor for a continuity of evaporation-driven electricity generation, were verified firstly through analyses of ion specificity and concentration dependency in the device. • A mechanism was verified with a coulombic ion-electron-coupled transport in the nanocapillarity-semiconducting electrode interface. • Applications of energy harvesting and electrochemical process were proposed through the device.

Genopo: a nanopore sequencing analysis toolkit for portable Android devices

The advent of portable nanopore sequencing devices has enabled DNA and RNA sequencing to be performed in the field or the clinic. However, advances in in situ genomics require parallel development of portable, offline solutions for the computational analysis of sequencing data. Here we introduce Genopo, a mobile toolkit for nanopore sequencing analysis. Genopo compacts popular bioinformatics tools to an Android application, enabling fully portable computation. To demonstrate its utility for in situ genome analysis, we use Genopo to determine the complete genome sequence of the human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in nine patient isolates sequenced on a nanopore device, with Genopo executing this workflow in less than 30 min per sample on a range of popular smartphones. We further show how Genopo can be used to profile DNA methylation in a human genome sample, illustrating a flexible, efficient architecture that is suitable to run many popular bioinformatics tools and accommodate small or large genomes. As the first ever smartphone application for nanopore sequencing analysis, Genopo enables the genomics community to harness this cheap, ubiquitous computational resource.