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There is a need for valves and pumps that operate at the microscale with precision and accuracy, are versatile in their application, and are easily fabricated. To that end, we developed a new rotary planar multiport valve to faithfully select solutions (contamination = 5.22 ± 0.06 ppb) and a rotary planar peristaltic pump to precisely control fluid delivery (flow rate = 2.4 ± 1.7 to 890 ± 77 μL/min). Both the valve and pump were implemented in a planar format amenable to single-layer soft lithographic fabrication. These planar microfluidics were actuated by a rotary motor controlled remotely by custom software. Together, these two devices constitute an innovative microformulator that was used to prepare precise, high-fidelity mixtures of up to five solutions (deviation from prescribed mixture = ±|0.02 ± 0.02| %). This system weighed less than a kilogram, occupied around 500 cm3, and generated pressures of 255 ± 47 kPa. This microformulator was then combined with an electrochemical sensor creating a microclinical analyzer (μCA) for detecting glutamate in real time. Using the chamber of the μCA as an in-line bioreactor, we compared glutamate homeostasis in human astrocytes differentiated from human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from a control subject (CC-3) and a Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC) patient carrying a pathogenic TSC2 mutation. When challenged with glutamate, TSC astrocytes took up less glutamate than control cells. These data validate the analytical power of the μCA and the utility of the microformulator by leveraging it to assess disease-related alterations in cellular homeostasis.Healthcare is becoming increasingly automated with the development and deployment of care robots. There are many benefits to care robots but they also pose many challenging ethical issues. This paper takes care robots for the elderly as the subject of analysis, building on previous literature in the domain of the ethics and design of care robots. Using the value sensitive design (VSD) approach to technology design, this paper extends its application to care robots by integrating the values of care, values that are specific to AI, and higher-scale values such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The ethical issues specific to care robots for the elderly are discussed at length alongside examples of specific design requirements that work to ameliorate these ethical concerns.While instruments to price congestion exist since the 1970s, less than a dozen cities around the world have a cordon or zone pricing scheme. Geneva, Switzerland, may be soon joining them. This paper builds on a detailed review of the existing schemes to identify a set of plausible design options for the Geneva congestion charge. In turn, it analyzes their acceptability, leveraging a large survey of residents of both Geneva and the surrounding areas of Switzerland and France. Our original approach combines a discrete choice experiment with randomized informational treatments. We consider an extensive set of attributes, such as perimeter, price and price modulation, use of revenues, and exemption levels and beneficiaries. The informational treatments address potential biased beliefs concerning the charge's expected effects on congestion and pollution. We find that public support depends crucially on the policy design. We identify an important demand for exemptions, which, albeit frequently used in the design of environmental taxation, is underexplored in the analysis of public support. This demand for exemptions is not motivated by efficiency reasons. It comes mostly by local residents, for local residents. Further, people show a marked preference for constant prices, even if efficiency would point to dynamic pricing based on external costs. Hence, we highlight a clear trade-off between efficiency and acceptability. However, we also show, causally, that this gap can in part be closed, with information provision. Analyzing heterogeneity, we show that preferences vary substantially with where people live and how they commute. Even so, we identify several designs that reach majority support.

The COVID-19 crisis generated changes in consumer behavior related to food purchase and the management of food packaging. Due to the intensification of online purchases for home delivery, there has been an increase in the use of food packaging (mostly non-biodegradable or non-renewable). Moreover, the fear of contamination with SARS-CoV-2 through contact with materials and surfaces has led to an intensified disposal of food packaging, promoting a setback in waste management.

The purpose of this short commentary is to address the impacts of increased use and disposal of food packaging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Technological solutions have been presented as tools to minimize the environmental impacts of the increased volume of disposed food packaging (namely, the development of biodegradable food packaging) as well as to minimize the occurrence of cross-contamination (namely, the incorporation of active antiviral components).

The consumer behavior in the COVID-19 pandemic requires actions concerning are are opportunities to reduce food packaging-related environmental footprints while also decreasing the occurrence of surface-mediated cross-contamination.Initially found in Hubei, Wuhan, and identified as a novel virus of the coronavirus family by the WHO, COVID-19 has spread worldwide at exponential speed, causing millions of deaths and public fear. Currently, the USA, India, Brazil, and other parts of the world are experiencing a secondary wave of COVID-19. However, the medical, mathematical, and pharmaceutical aspects of its transmission, incubation, and recovery processes are still unclear. The classical susceptible-infected-recovered model has limitations in describing the dynamic behavior of COVID-19. Hence, it is necessary to introduce a recursive, latent model to predict the number of future COVID-19 infection cases in the USA. In this article, a dynamic recursive and latent infection model (RLIM) based on the classical SEIR model is proposed to predict the number of COVID-19 infections. Given COVID-19 infection and recovery data for a certain period, the RLIM is able to fit current values and produce an optimal set of parameters with a minimum error rh an equilibrium condition. A successful forecast is generated using New York state's COVID-19 transmission, in which a turning point is predicted to emerge on January 31, 2021.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11071-021-06520-1.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11071-021-06520-1.This paper studies an SEIR-type epidemic model with time delay and vaccination control. The vaccination control is applied when the basic reproduction number R 0 > 1 . The vaccination strategy is expressed as a state delayed feedback which is related to the current and previous state of the epidemic model, and makes the model become a linear system in new coordinates. For the presence and absence of vaccination control, we investigate the nonnegativity and boundedness of the model, respectively. We obtain some sufficient conditions for the eigenvalues of the linear system such that the nonnegativity of the epidemic model can be guaranteed when the vaccination strategy is applied. In addition, we study the stability of disease-free equilibrium when R 0 1 . Finally, we use the obtained theoretical results to simulate the vaccination strategy to control the spread of COVID-19.This study investigates the high strain-rate tensile properties of a cold-rolled medium-Mn steel (Fe-12Mn-3Al-0.05C % in mass fraction) designed to have a multi-phase microstructure and positive strain-rate sensitivity. At the intercritical annealing temperature of 585 °C, increasing the annealing time from 0.5 h to 8 h increased the phase volume fraction of ultrafine-grained (UFG) austenite from 2% to 35% by reversion. The remainder of the microstructure was composed of UFG ferrite and recovered α'-martensite (the latter resembles the cold-rolled state). Servo hydraulic tension testing and Kolsky-bar tension testing were used to measure the tensile properties from quasi-static strain rates to dynamic strain rates ( ε ˙ = 10 - 4 s - 1 to ε ˙ = 10 3 s - 1 ). The strain-rate sensitivities of the yield strength (YS) and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) were positive for both annealing times. Tensile properties and all non-contact imaging modalities (infrared imaging and digital image correlation) indicated an advantageous suppression of Lüders bands and Portevin Le Chatelier (PLC) bands (a critical challenge in multi-phase medium-Mn steel design) due to the unique combination of microstructural constituents and overall composition. Fracture surfaces of specimens annealed for 0.5 h showed some instances of localized cleavage fracture (approximately 30 μm wide areas and lath-like ridges). Specimens annealed for 8 h maintained a greater product of strength and elongation by at least 2.5 GPa % (on average for each strain rate). The relevant processing-structure-property relationships are discussed in the context of recommendations for design strategies concerning multi-phase steels such that homogeneous deformation behavior and positive strain-rate sensitivities can be achieved.Flooding poses a serious public health hazard throughout the world. Flood modeling is an important tool for emergency preparedness and response, but some common methods require a high degree of expertise or may be unworkable due to poor data quality or data availability issues. The conceptually simple method of inverse distance weight modeling offers an alternative. Using stream gauges as inputs, this study interpolated stream elevation via inverse distance weight modeling under 15 different model input parameter scenarios for Harris County, Texas, USA, from August 25th to September 15th, 2017 (before, during, and after Hurricane Harvey inundated the county). A digital elevation model was used to identify areas where modeled stream elevation exceeded ground elevation, indicating flooding. Imagery and observed high water marks were used to validate the models' outputs. There was a high degree of agreement (between 79 and 88%) between imagery and model outputs of parameterizations visually validated. Quantitative validations based on high water marks were also positive, with a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency of in excess of .6 for all parameterizations relative to a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency of the benchmark of 0.56. Inverse distance weight modeling offers a simple, accurate method for first-order estimations of riverine flooding in near real-time using readily available data, and outputs are robust to some alterations to input parameters.Marine organisms are vital sources of staple and functional food but are also the major dietary route of human exposure to total arsenic. We surveyed the total arsenic content and the mass fractions of hydrophilic arsenic species from five different marine food types cutting across the food chain from microalgae, macroalgae, bivalve clam, crustaceans and finfish. Total arsenic was determined using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) while arsenic speciation analysis was performed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to ICP-MS as the detector. The total arsenic contents ranged from 133 ± 11 ng/g to 26,630 ± 520 ng/g. The mass fractions of inorganic arsenic (iAs), arsenobetaine (AsB), dimethylarsinic acid (DMA), and the four commonly occurring arsenosugars (AsSugars) are reported. Rucaparib clinical trial Extractable hydrophilic arsenic species accounted for 10 % (aquacultured shrimp) to 95 % (kelp) of the total arsenic. DMA was established to be a byproduct of the decomposition of AsSugars in acid extracts of samples known to contain these species.