Publications

Al Taee, A & Al-Jumaily, A 2020, 'Correction to: Electrogastrogram Based Medical Applications an Overview and Processing Frame Work' in Hybrid Intelligent Systems, Springer International Publishing, pp. C1-C1.
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Azadi, S, Aboulkheyr Es, H, Kulasinghe, A, Bordhan, P & Ebrahimi Warkiani, M 2020, 'Application of microfluidic technology in cancer research and therapy' in Advances in Clinical Chemistry.
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© 2020 Elsevier Inc. Cancer is a heterogeneous disease that requires a multimodal approach to diagnose, manage and treat. A better understanding of the disease biology can lead to identification of novel diagnostic/prognostic biomarkers and the discovery of the novel therapeutics with the goal of improving patient outcomes. Employing advanced technologies can facilitate this, enabling better diagnostic and treatment for cancer patients. In this regard, microfluidic technology has emerged as a promising tool in the studies of cancer, including single cancer cell analysis, modeling angiogenesis and metastasis, drug screening and liquid biopsy. Microfluidic technologies have opened new ways to study tumors in the preclinical and clinical settings. In this chapter, we highlight novel application of this technology in area of fundamental, translational and clinical cancer research.

Chaczko, Z, Zhang, W, Christopher, C, Jan, S & Su, S 2020, 'Internet of Things Is Changing Teaching of Technical Subjects at UTS' in Klempous, R & Nikodem, J (eds), Smart Innovations in Engineering and Technology, Springer Nature AG Switzerland, Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland, pp. 131-296.
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The Internet of Things, involving the connection of intelligent devices (other than standard, already connected products such as computers and smartphones) to the Internet, is in the process of transforming numerous areas of lives. For many years, both academia and industry prepared the background theories and implementations for what is today's IoT, keeping changing and evolving. Students of universities, preparing to be the driving forces of innovation and progress have a very strong interest in IoT and related subjects. Teaching at universities, especially technical ones is strongly affected by the need to give students the required background and show the direction for self-study. In this paper we will provide a literature review to analyze how IoT inspired changes in teaching some technical subjects at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) by describing, the recently undertaken projects in this area, providing some case studies and drawing conclusions.

Huang, Y, Su, S & Song, R 2020, 'Voluntary intention-driven rehabilitation robots for the upper limb' in Hu, X (ed), Intelligent Biomechatronics in Neurorehabilitation, Academic Press, UK, pp. 111-130.
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Voluntary motion intention during rehabilitation is essential for patients with neurological motor disorders but who still have their own residual motor ability. The weight of the arm and limited involvement of the residual motor efforts might hinder movement performance because of patients' weak muscles. Two different kinds of control strategies are developed and applied by a cable-based upper limb rehabilitation robot for these reasons. A novel strategy for position-varying compensation of arm gravity is proposed for assisting patients whose residual motor ability is restricted by gravity. The robot can time-varyingly adjust the forces for compensating the gravity according to real-time position feedback. The performance of the strategy was assessed by recruiting seven healthy participants to track different movements in three-dimensional space. A natural integration for human–machine cooperation is built up using surface electromyography (sEMG) signals for revealing the voluntary motor intention of patients who still have their own residual motor ability. A model for continuously revealing the relationship between the sEMG signals and participants' voluntary forces is trained based on a linear state-space model. Ten healthy participants were recruited to track a rectilinear task with and without robot assistance. The results indicated that, with the proposed gravity compensation strategy, the robot might assist participants to perform higher-quality movements and improve their participation in movements. With the sEMG-based control strategy, the robot could provide appropriate assistance based on participants' voluntary motion and reveal their motor efforts. Overall, it is reasonable to choose different rehabilitation therapies for stroke patients with different motor statuses.

Jaddoa, M, Gonzalez, L, Cuthbertson, H & Al-Jumaily, A 2020, 'Multi View Face Detection in Cattle Using Infrared Thermography', pp. 223-236.
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© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Face detection in thermal imaging has been used widely in human for different purposes such as surveillance, obtaining physiological reading: respiratory and heart rate from face region via thermal imaging. Physiological reading via infrared thermal imaging used in emotion and stress detection as well as polygraph analysis. In animal as general and cattle in specific, face region localized manually in order to obtain temperature for eyes, nose and mouth, which used for stress, diseases and inflammation detection. In order to develop a future automated system for monitoring health conditions in cattle, it required to detect the face region automatically. Based on author knowledge, there is no research done regarding face detection in cattle using infrared thermal images. Unlike the human, cattle keep roaming, which lead to a change in the face and body orientation. The main objective of this paper is proposing a new method for Multi-view face detection in cattle with accuracy enhancement by using three classifiers and temperature thresholding. Classifiers are established by using Histogram Oriented Gradient (HOG) as features and Support vector machine (SVM) for classification. The results show that the proposed algorithm is performing well in term of Specificity, Recall and F-measure and detection rate compare to the currently used method in the literature.

Zhang, W, Chiu, C, Szymanski, J, Chaczko, Z, Su, S & Zhou, J 2020, 'Internet of Things is Changing Teaching of Technical Subjects at UTS' in Klempous, R & Nikodem, J (eds), Smart Innovations in Engineering and Technology: Intelligent Engineering and Informatics, Springer Nature, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 131-143.
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Alajlouni, D, Bliuc, D, Tran, T, Eisman, JA, Nguyen, TV & Center, JR 2020, 'Decline in muscle strength and performance predicts fracture risk in elderly women and men.', J Clin Endocrinol Metab.
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CONTEXT: Muscle strength and performance are associated with fractures. However, the contribution of their rate of decline is unclear. OBJECTIVE: To assess the independent contribution of the rate of decline in muscle strength and performance to fracture risk. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Community dwelling women (n=811) and men (n=440) aged 60+ from the prospective Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study followed from 2000 to 2018 for incident fracture. Clinical data, appendicular lean mass/ht2, BMD, quadriceps strength/ht (QS), timed get-up-go (TGUG), sit-to-stand (5xSTS), and gait speed (GS) measured biennially. Rates of decline in muscle parameters were calculated using ordinal least square regression and fracture risk assessed using Cox's models. MAIN OUTCOME: Incident low-trauma fracture ascertained by X-ray report. RESULTS: Apart from lean mass in women, all muscle parameters declined over time. Greater rates of decline in physical performance were associated with increased fracture risk in women (HRs ranging from 2.1 (95%CI:1.5-2.9) for GS to 2.7 (1.9-3.6) for 5xSTS) while in men, only the decline in GS was associated with fracture risk (HR: 3.4 (1.8-6.3)). Baseline performance and strength were also associated with increased fracture risk in men (HRs ranging from 1.8 (1.1-3.0) for QS to 2.5 (1.5-4.1) for TGUG) but not in women. CONCLUSION: Rate of decline in physical performance in both genders, and baseline strength and performance in men contributed independently to fracture risk. 5xSTS and GS were the tests most consistently associated with fractures. Further studies are required to determine whether muscle strength/performance improve the predictive accuracy of fracture prediction models.

Al-Zubi, M & Sanagavarapu, A 2020, 'Implantable Biosensor Interface Platform for Monitoring of Atherosclerosis', IEEE Sensors Letters.
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The drug-eluting stents (DESs) have been considered as an effective technique to reduce the severity of atherosclerotic stenosis. Recent technological advances have opened the door for developing new and innovative smart cardiovascular stents by integrating various electronics components and sensors to improve health monitoring and diagnosis. Rupture of atherosclerotic plaque represents the major cause of cardiovascular disease (CVD) such as heart attacks due to blockages of the arterial lumen. Pentraxin-3 (PTX3) is a novel localized inflammatory biomarker associated with the development of atherosclerosis and plaque vulnerability. In this paper, we propose a biosensor interface platform for monitoring the plaque vulnerability via detection and prediction of the inflammatory biomarker (PTX3). We propose mathematical and stochastic models using molecular communication paradigm for detection of Pentraxin-3 (PTX3) molecules in the atherosclerotic arterial wall using biosensor attached to a vascular stent inside the artery. The proposed platform and models can help in the localized sensing of the atherosclerotic biomarkers for monitoring of the plaque progression and for early warning of certain disorders such as heart attack.

Amin, DB, Tavakoli, J, Freeman, BJC & Costi, JJ 2020, 'Mechanisms of Failure Following Simulated Repetitive Lifting: A Clinically Relevant Biomechanical Cadaveric Study', Spine, vol. 45, no. 6, pp. 357-367.
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© 2018 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. Study Design.A biomechanical analysis correlating internal disc strains and tissue damage during simulated repetitive lifting.Objective.To understand the failure modes during simulated safe and unsafe repetitive lifting.Summary of Background Data.Repetitive lifting has been shown to lead to lumbar disc herniation (LDH). In vitro studies have developed a qualitative understanding of the effect of repetitive loading on LDH. However, no studies have measured internal disc strains and subsequently correlated these with disc damage.Methods.Thirty human cadaver lumbar functional spinal units were subjected to an equivalent of 1 year of simulated repetitive lifting under safe and unsafe levels of compression, in combination with flexion (13-15°), and right axial rotation (2°) for 20,000 cycles or until failure. Safe or unsafe lifting were applied as a compressive load to mimic holding a 20kg weight either close to, or at arm's length, from the body, respectively. Maximum shear strains (MSS) were measured, and disc damage scores were determined in nine regions from axial post-Test magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and macroscopic images.Results.Twenty percent of specimens in the safe lifting group failed before 20,000 cycles due to endplate failure, compared with 67% in the unsafe group. Over half of the specimens in the safe lifting group failed via either disc protrusion or LDH, compared with only 20% via protrusion in the unsafe group. Significant positive correlations were found between MRI and macroscopic damage scores in all regions (rs>0.385, P<0.049). A significant positive correlation was observed in the left lateral region for MSS versus macroscopic damage score (rs=0.486, P<0.037) and MSS versus failure mode (rs=0.724, P=0.018, only specimens with disc failure). Pfirrmann Grade 3 discs were strongly associated with subsequent LDH (P=0.003).Conclusion.Increased shear strains were observed in the contralater...

Asadniaye Fardjahromi, M, Razmjou, A, Vesey, G, Ejeian, F, Banerjee, B, Chandra Mukhopadhyay, S & Ebrahimi Warkiani, M 2020, 'Mussel inspired ZIF8 microcarriers: a new approach for large-scale production of stem cells', RSC Advances, vol. 10, no. 34, pp. 20118-20128.
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© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have high porosity, large surface area, and tunable functionality and have been widely used for drug loading. The aim of this study was to exploit unique features of zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF8) to develop an innovative composite microcarrier (MC) for human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) adhesion and proliferation. ZIF8 MCs were prepared by immobilization of polydopamine/polyethyleneimine (PDA/PEI) and ZIF8 on the surface of polystyrene beads. The chemical properties of MCs such as coating stability and homogeneity were characterized by different techniques such as ATR-FTIR, XRD, EDX, SEM, and contact angle. The prepared MCs were tested using human adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hADSCs) in both static and dynamic conditions, and results were compared to a commercially available MC (Star-Plus), polydopamine coated MCs and amine-functionalized MCs as a control. Results show that PDA/PEI/ZIF8 coated MCs (in short: ZIF8 MCs) provides an excellent biocompatible environment for hADSCs adhesion and growth. In conclusion, ZIF8 MCs represent suitable and low-cost support for hADSCs culture and expansion, which can maximize cell yield and viability while preserving hADSCs multipotency. The present findings have revealed this strategy has the potential for chemical and topographical modification of MCs in tissue engineering applications.

Bajan, S & Hutvagner, G 2020, 'RNA-Based Therapeutics: From Antisense Oligonucleotides to miRNAs', CELLS, vol. 9, no. 1.
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Bazaz, SR, Mashhadian, A, Ehsani, A, Saha, SC, Kruger, T & Warkiani, ME 2020, 'Computational inertial microfluidics: a review', LAB ON A CHIP, vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 1023-1048.
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Bishop, AN & Moral, PD 2020, 'An Explicit Floquet-Type Representation of Riccati Aperiodic Exponential Semigroups', International Journal of Control.
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The article presents a rather surprising Floquet-type representation of time-varying transition matrices associated with a class of nonlinear matrix differential Riccati equations. The main difference with conventional Floquet theory comes from the fact that the underlying flow of the solution matrix is aperiodic. The monodromy matrix associated with this Floquet representation coincides with the exponential (fundamental) matrix associated with the stabilizing fixed point of the Riccati equation. The second part of this article is dedicated to the application of this representation to the stability of matrix differential Riccati equations. We provide refined global and local contraction inequalities for the Riccati exponential semigroup that depend linearly on the spectral norm of the initial condition. These refinements improve upon existing results and are a direct consequence of the Floquet-type representation, yielding what seems to be the first results of this type for this class of models.

Blazevski, A, Scheltema, MJ, Yuen, B, Masand, N, Nguyen, TV, Delprado, W, Shnier, R, Haynes, A-M, Cusick, T, Thompson, J & Stricker, P 2020, 'Oncological and Quality-of-life Outcomes Following Focal Irreversible Electroporation as Primary Treatment for Localised Prostate Cancer: A Biopsy-monitored Prospective Cohort.', European urology oncology.
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BACKGROUND:Focal irreversible electroporation (IRE) can be used to treat men with localised prostate cancer (PCa) with reduced impact on quality of life (QoL). OBJECTIVE:To assess oncological and functional outcomes. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS:To report on a prospective database of patients undergoing primary IRE between February 2013 and August 2018. A minimum of 12-mo follow-up was available for 123 patients. Median follow-up was 36 mo (interquartile range [IQR] 24-52 mo). A total of 112 (91%) patients had National Comprehensive Cancer Network intermediate risk and 11 (9%) had low risk. A total of 12 (9.8%) had International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grade 1, 88 (71.5%) had ISUP 2, and 23 (18.7%) had ISUP 3. INTERVENTION:Focal IRE ablation of PCa lesions. OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS:Follow-up involved serial prostate-specific antigen (PSA), multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI), and transperineal template mapping biopsy (TTMB) at 12 mo. Failure-free survival (FFS) was defined as progression to whole-gland or systemic treatment or metastasis/death. Functional outcomes were assessed. RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS:Median age was 68yr (IQR 62-73yr). Median preoperative PSA was 5.7ng/ml (IQR 3.8-8.0ng/ml). On post-treatment TTMB, in-field recurrence was present in 2.7-9.8% of patients. FFS at 3yr was 96.75%, metastasis-free survival 99%, and overall survival 100%. A total of 18 patients required salvage treatment (12 had repeat IRE; six had whole-gland treatment). The negative predictive value of mpMRI was 94% and sensitivity 40% for detecting in-field residual disease 6 mo after treatment. Among patients who returned questionnaires, 80/81 (98.8%) remained pad free and 40/53 (76%) had no change in erectile function. CONCLUSIONS:Focal IRE in select patients with localised clinically significant PCa has satisfactory short-term oncological outcomes with a minimal impact on patient QoL. PATIENT SUMMARY:In this study, 123 pati...

Bradbury, P, Wu, H, Choi, JU, Rowan, AE, Zhang, H, Poole, K, Lauko, J & Chou, J 2020, 'Modeling the Impact of Microgravity at the Cellular Level: Implications for Human Disease', Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, vol. 8.
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© Copyright © 2020 Bradbury, Wu, Choi, Rowan, Zhang, Poole, Lauko and Chou. A lack of gravity experienced during space flight has been shown to have profound effects on human physiology including muscle atrophy, reductions in bone density and immune function, and endocrine disorders. At present, these physiological changes present major obstacles to long-term space missions. What is not clear is which pathophysiological disruptions reflect changes at the cellular level versus changes that occur due to the impact of weightlessness on the entire body. This review focuses on current research investigating the impact of microgravity at the cellular level including cellular morphology, proliferation, and adhesion. As direct research in space is currently cost prohibitive, we describe here the use of microgravity simulators for studies at the cellular level. Such instruments provide valuable tools for cost-effective research to better discern the impact of weightlessness on cellular function. Despite recent advances in understanding the relationship between extracellular forces and cell behavior, very little is understood about cellular biology and mechanotransduction under microgravity conditions. This review will examine recent insights into the impact of simulated microgravity on cell biology and how this technology may provide new insight into advancing our understanding of mechanically driven biology and disease.

Cao, Z, Ding, W, Wang, YK, Hussain, FK, Al-Jumaily, A & Lin, CT 2020, 'Effects of repetitive SSVEPs on EEG complexity using multiscale inherent fuzzy entropy', Neurocomputing, vol. 389, pp. 198-206.
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© 2019 Elsevier B.V. Multiscale inherent fuzzy entropy is an objective measurement of electroencephalography (EEG) complexity, reflecting the habituation of brain systems. Entropy dynamics are generally believed to reflect the ability of the brain to adapt to a visual stimulus environment. In this study, we explored repetitive steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based EEG complexity by assessing multiscale inherent fuzzy entropy with relative measurements. We used a wearable EEG device with Oz and Fpz electrodes to collect EEG signals from 40 participants under the following three conditions: a resting state (closed-eyes (CE) and open-eyes (OE) stimulation with five 15-Hz CE SSVEPs and stimulation with five 20-Hz OE SSVEPs. We noted monotonic enhancement of occipital EEG relative complexity with increasing stimulus times in CE and OE conditions. The occipital EEG relative complexity was significantly higher for the fifth SSVEP than for the first SSEVP (FDR-adjusted p < 0.05). Similarly, the prefrontal EEG relative complexity tended to be significantly higher in the OE condition compared to that in the CE condition (FDR-adjusted p < 0.05). The results also indicate that multiscale inherent fuzzy entropy is superior to other competing multiscale-based entropy methods. In conclusion, EEG relative complexity increases with stimulus times, a finding that reflects the strong habituation of brain systems. These results suggest that multiscale inherent fuzzy entropy is an EEG pattern with which brain complexity can be assessed using repetitive SSVEP stimuli.

Carmichael, CL, Wang, J, Nguyen, T, Kolawole, O, Benyoucef, A, De Mazière, C, Milne, A, Samuel, S, Gillinder, KR, Hediyeh-Zadeh, S, Vo, ANQ, Huang, Y, Knezevic, K, McInnes, WRL, Shields, BJ, Mitchell, H, Ritchie, ME, Lammens, T, Lintermans, B, Van Vlierberghe, P, Wong, N, Haigh, K, Thoms, JAI, Toulmin, E, Curtis, DJ, Oxley, EP, Dickins, RA, Beck, D, Perkins, AC, McCormack, MP, Davis, MJ, Berx, G, Zuber, J, Pimanda, JE, Kile, BT, Goossens, S & Haigh, JJ 2020, 'The EMT modulator SNAI1 contributes to AML pathogenesis via its interaction with LSD1.', Blood.
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Modulators of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) have recently emerged as novel players in the field of leukemia biology. The mechanisms by which EMT modulators contribute to leukemia pathogenesis, however, remain to be elucidated. Here we show that overexpression of SNAI1, a key modulator of EMT, is a pathologically relevant event in human acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that contributes to impaired differentiation, enhanced self-renewal and proliferation of immature myeloid cells. We demonstrate that ectopic expression of Snai1 in hematopoietic cells predisposes mice to AML development. This effect is mediated by interaction with the histone demethylase KDM1A/LSD1. Our data shed new light on the role of SNAI1 in leukemia development and identify a novel mechanism of LSD1 corruption in cancer. This is particularly pertinent given the current interest surrounding the use of LSD1 inhibitors in the treatment of multiple different malignancies, including AML.

Chamoli, U, Umali, J, Kleuskens, MWA, Chepurin, D & Diwan, AD 2020, 'Morphological characteristics of the kangaroo lumbar intervertebral discs and comparison with other animal models used in spine research.', European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 652-662.
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PURPOSE:Animal models are frequently used to elucidate pathomechanism and pathophysiology of various disorders of the human intervertebral disc (IVD) and also to develop therapeutic approaches. Here we report morphological characteristics of the kangaroo lumbar IVDs and compare them with other animal models used in spine research. METHODS:Twenty-five fresh-frozen cadaveric lumbar spines (T12-S1) derived from kangaroo carcases (Macropus giganteus) of undetermined age were first scanned in a C-Arm X-ray machine. A photograph of the axial section of the disc including a calibrated metric scale was also acquired. The digital radiographs and photographs were processed in ImageJ to determine the axial and sagittal plane dimensions for the whole disc (WD) and the nucleus pulposus (NP) and the mid-sagittal disc height for all the lumbar levels. RESULTS:Our results suggest that the L6-S1 IVD in kangaroos is distinctly large compared with the upper lumbar IVDs. Based on previously published data, human lumbar IVDs are the largest of all the animal IVDs used in spine research, with camelid cervical IVDs being the closest relative in absolute dimensions (llamas: 78% in disc height, 40% in WD volume, and 38% in NP volume). Kangaroo L6-S1 IVD was approximately 51% in height, 20% in WD volume, and 20% in NP volume of the human lumbar IVD. CONCLUSIONS:We conclude that morphological similarities exist between a kangaroo and human lumbar IVD, especially with the lima bean shape in the axial plane, wedge shape in the sagittal plane, convexity at the cephalad endplates, and percentage volume occupied by the NP in the IVD. These slides can be retrieved under Electronic Supplementary Material.

Chandran, M, Bhadada, SK, Ebeling, PR, Gilchrist, NL, Khan, AH, Halbout, P, Lekamwasam, S, Lyubomirsky, G, Mitchell, PJ, Nguyen, TV & Tiu, KL 2020, 'IQ driving QI: the Asia Pacific Consortium on Osteoporosis (APCO): an innovative and collaborative initiative to improve osteoporosis care in the Asia Pacific', OSTEOPOROSIS INTERNATIONAL.
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Changani, Z, Razmjou, A, Taheri-Kafrani, A, Warkiani, ME & Asadnia, M 2020, 'Surface modification of polypropylene membrane for the removal of iodine using polydopamine chemistry', CHEMOSPHERE, vol. 249.
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Chen, X, Chamoli, U, Castillo, JV, Ramakrishna, VAS & Diwan, AD 2020, 'Complication rates of different discectomy techniques for symptomatic lumbar disc herniation: a systematic review and meta-analysis', EUROPEAN SPINE JOURNAL.
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Dun, MD, Mannan, A, Rigby, CJ, Butler, S, Toop, HD, Beck, D, Connerty, P, Sillar, J, Kahl, RGS, Duchatel, RJ, Germon, Z, Faulkner, S, Chi, M, Skerrett-Byrne, D, Murray, HC, Flanagan, H, Almazi, JG, Hondermarck, H, Nixon, B, De Iuliis, G, Chamberlain, J, Alvaro, F, de Bock, CE, Morris, JC, Enjeti, AK & Verrills, NM 2020, 'Shwachman–Bodian–Diamond syndrome (SBDS) protein is a direct inhibitor of protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) activity and overexpressed in acute myeloid leukaemia', Leukemia.
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Frost, SA, Kelly, A, Gaudin, J, Mc Evoy, L, Wilson, C, Marov, L, El Haddad, C, Center, J, Eisman, JA, Nguyen, TV & Hassett, G 2020, 'Establishing baseline absolute risk of subsequent fracture among adults presenting to hospital with a minimal-trauma-fracture', BMC MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS, vol. 21, no. 1.
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Gao, S, Lu, R, Wang, X, Chou, J, Wang, N, Huai, X, Wang, C, Zhao, Y & Chen, S 2020, 'Immune response of macrophages on super-hydrophilic TiO2 nanotube arrays', Journal of Biomaterials Applications, vol. 34, no. 9, pp. 1239-1253.
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© The Author(s) 2020. Macrophages are attracting increasing attention in promoting implant-mediated osteogenesis by modulating the microenvironment of the implant site. Biomaterial surface properties including topography and wettability regulate macrophage responses to influence tissue repair. The objective of our present study was to investigate the effects of hydrogenated titanium dioxide nanotube surfaces on the immune response of macrophages in vitro. Hydrogenated titanium dioxide nanotubes (TNTs) were synthesized on Ti surfaces by anodic oxidation and hydrogenation to form super-hydrophilic nanotubular surfaces. Macrophages were seeded directly onto three substrates (hydrogenated TNTs (H2-TNTs), air-annealed TNTs, and commercially pure Ti substrates) and grown under standard or lipopolysaccharide-stimulated culture conditions. Cell proliferation and viability were evaluated by Cell Counting Kit-8 and live/dead staining at 24 and 48 h. Secretion and expression of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines were evaluated at 24 and 48 h to determine whether the surfaces elicited differential macrophage behaviors. Gene expression of the M1/M2 surface markers of macrophages was analyzed to assess the effect of the H2-TNT surface on macrophage polarization. The results showed that hydrogenation of the TNT surface resulted in a super-hydrophilic substrate, which exhibited markedly improved wettability attributable to the formation of oxygen vacancies in the nanotubes. The H2-TNT group induced a significantly lower macrophage proliferation rate and up-regulated anti-inflammatory cytokines (interleukin-10, bone morphogenetic protein-2, and transforming growth factor-β1) irrespective of lipopolysaccharide stimulation, while alleviating the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6, nitric oxide, and macrophage chemotactic protein-1) induced by lipopolysaccharide. Moreover, the H2-TNT surface elicited up-regulated gene expression of M2 s...

Gentile, C, Kesteven, S, Wu, J, Davies, MJ, Bursill, C, Feneley, M & Figtree, G 2020, 'Endothelial nitric oxide synthase plays a protective role in endothelial cells and cardiomyocytes against myocardial infarction', Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, vol. 140, pp. 31-31.
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Ghorbani, F, Fathi, F, Aghebati-Maleki, L, Abolhasan, R, Rikhtegar, R, Dolatabadi, JEN, Babaloo, Z, Khalilzadeh, B, Warkiani, ME, Sharifzadeh, Z, Rashidi, M-R & Yousefi, M 2020, 'Kinetic and thermodynamic study of c-Met interaction with single chain fragment variable (scFv) antibodies using phage based surface plasmon resonance.', Eur J Pharm Sci, vol. 150, pp. 105362-105362.
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Mesenchymal epithelial transition factor (c-Met) has been recently regarded as an attractive target for the treatment of cancer. Our previous study showed that c-Met-specific single chain fragment variables (scFvs) can be considered as a promising therapy for cancer, however, their molecular interaction with c-Met protein have not been assessed. Accordingly, in the current study we aim to evaluate the kinetic and thermodynamic properties of c-Met interaction with these scFvs as anticancer agents by means of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique. Phage-scFvs were immobilized on the 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid gold chips after carboxylic groups activation by N-ethyl-N-(3-diethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide/N-hydroxysuccinimide and, then the c-Met binding to each scFvs (ES1, ES2, and ES3) at different concentrations (ranging from 20 to 665 μM) was explored. Kinetic studies revealed that ES1 has the highest affinity (KD = 3.36 × 10-8) toward its target at 25°C. Calculation of thermodynamic parameters also showed positive values for enthalpy and entropy changes, which was representative of hydrophobic forces between c-Met and ES1. Furthermore, the positive value of Gibbs free energy indicated that c-Met binding to ES1 was enthalpy-driven. Taken together, we concluded that produced ES1 can be applied as promising scFv-based therapy for diagnosis or targeting of c-Met in various cancers.

Hagihghi, R, Razmjou, A, Orooji, Y, Warkiani, ME & Asadnia, M 2020, 'A miniaturized piezoresistive flow sensor for real-time monitoring of intravenous infusion.', Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B: Applied Biomaterials, vol. 108, no. 2, pp. 568-576.
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Drug overdose (DO) is considered one of the current issues of intravenous (IV) infusion particularly resulting in serious injuries and deaths. Malfunction of infusion pumps is reported as the main cause of the drug overdose. Live monitoring and flow rate calculation by health professionals have been practicing to avoid DO. However, human errors and miscalculations are inevitable. A secondary measurement tool is required to avoid the risk of OD when infusion pump malfunctions cannot be detected immediately. Here, inspired by nature, we developed a real-time monitoring device through which an administrator can review, evaluate, and modify the IV infusion process. Our flow sensor possesses an erected polymer hair cell on a multi-layered silicon base forming from a patterned gold strained gauge layer on a piezoresistive liquid crystal polymer (LCP) membrane. Gold strain gauges on an LCP membrane have been used instead of a piezoresistive silicon membrane as the sensing element. The combination of gold strain gauges and LCP membrane provides better sensitivity than a piezoresistive silicon membrane of the same dimensions and thickness. We also miniaturized our biocompatible sensor such that it can be possible to install it inside the IV tube in contact with the liquid providing an in-suite online flow monitoring. The proposed LCP membrane sensor is compared with two commercially available IV sensors to validate its flow sensing ability. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed sensor provides a low threshold detection limit of 5 mL/hr, which betters the performance of other commercial sensors at low flow rates.

Hao, H, Niu, J, Xue, B, Su, QP, Liu, M, Yang, J, Qin, J, Zhao, S, Wu, C & Sun, Y 2020, 'Golgi-associated microtubules are fast cargo tracks and required for persistent cell migration', EMBO REPORTS, vol. 21, no. 3.
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Hassanzadeh-Barforoushi, A, Warkiani, ME, Gallego-Ortega, D, Liu, G & Barber, T 2020, 'Capillary-assisted microfluidic biosensing platform captures single cell secretion dynamics in nanoliter compartments', BIOSENSORS & BIOELECTRONICS, vol. 155.
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Hill, M, Mason, D, Monteiro Marques, T, Gama Carvalho, M & Tran, N 2020, 'Developing a virus-microRNA interactome using cytoscape', MethodsX, vol. 7.
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© 2019 It is currently difficult to determine the effect of oncogenic viruses on the global function and regulation of pathways within mammalian cells. A thorough understanding of the molecular pathways and individual genes altered by oncogenic viruses is needed for the identification of targets that can be utilised for early diagnosis, prevention, and treatment methods. We detail a logical step-by-step guide to uncover viral-protein-miRNA interactions using publically available datasets and the network building program, Cytoscape. This method may be applied to identify specific pathways that are altered in viral infection, and contribute to the oncogenic transformation of cells. To demonstrate this, we constructed a gene regulatory interactome encompassing Human Papillomavirus Type 16 (HPV16) and its control of specific miRNAs. This approach can be broadly applied to understand and map the regulatory functions of other oncogenic viruses, and determine their role in altering the cellular environment in cancer. Availability and Implementation Cytoscape (Shannon et al. (2003), Smoot et al. (2010)) is freely available at https://cytoscape.org/. • This method allows for the analysis and visualization of large datasets to generate an interactome that integrates key players of molecular biology • This approach may be applied to any oncogenic virus to map its regulatory functions, and its secondary impact on gene regulation via microRNAs.

Huang, P, Huang, Y, Li, JJ, Li, Y, Luo, K, Tang, G, Tang, L, Wu, Y-L, Yang, Z & Yu, B 2020, 'Outstanding Reviewers for Biomaterials Science in 2019', BIOMATERIALS SCIENCE, vol. 8, no. 9, pp. 2343-2343.
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Huang, Y, Song, R, Argha, A, Savkin, AV, Celler, BG & Su, SW 2020, 'Continuous Description of Human 3D Motion Intent Through Switching Mechanism', IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL SYSTEMS AND REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 277-286.
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Iqbal, S, Parker, LM, Everest-Dass, AV, Moh, ESX, Sayyadi, N, Hutchinson, MR & Packer, NH 2020, 'Lipopolysaccharide and Morphine-3-Glucuronide-Induced Immune Signalling Increases the Expression of Polysialic Acid in PC12 Cells.', Molecular neurobiology, vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 964-975.
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Polysialic acid (polySia), a long homopolymer of 2,8-linked sialic acids, is abundant in the embryonic brain and is restricted largely in adult brain to regions that exhibit neurogenesis and structural plasticity. In the central nervous system (CNS), polySia is highly important for cell-cell interactions, differentiation, migration and cytokine responses, which are critical neuronal functions regulating intercellular interactions that underlie immune signalling in the CNS. In recent reports, a metabolite of morphine, morphine-3-glucuronide (M3G), has been shown to cause immune signalling in the CNS. In this study, we compared the effects of neurite growth factor (NGF), lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and M3G exposure on the expression of polySia in PC12 cells using immunocytochemistry and Western blot analysis. PolySia was also extracted from stimulated cell proteins by endo-neuraminidase digestion and quantitated using fluorescent labelling followed by HPLC analysis. PolySia expression was significantly increased following NGF, M3G or LPS stimulation when compared with unstimulated cells or cells exposed to the TLR4 antagonist LPS-RS. Additionally, we analyzed the effects of test agent exposure on cell migration and the oxidative stress response of these cells in the presence and absence of polySia expression on their cell surface. We observed an increase in oxidative stress in cells without polySia as well as following M3G or LPS stimulation. Our study provides evidence that polySia expression in neuronal-like PC12 cells is influenced by M3G and LPS exposure alike, suggestive of a role of TLR4 in triggering these events.

Keall, P, Nguyen, DT, O'Brien, R, Hewson, E, Ball, H, Poulsen, P, Booth, J, Greer, P, Hunter, P, Wilton, L, Bromley, R, Kipritidis, J, Eade, T, Kneebone, A, Hruby, G, Moodie, T, Hayden, A, Turner, S, Arumugam, S, Sidhom, M, Hardcastle, N, Siva, S, Tai, KH, Gebski, V & Martin, J 2020, 'Real-Time Image Guided Ablative Prostate Cancer Radiation Therapy: Results From the TROG 15.01 SPARK Trial', International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics.
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© 2020 Elsevier Inc. Purpose: Kilovoltage intrafraction monitoring (KIM) is a novel software platform implemented on standard radiation therapy systems and enabling real-time image guided radiation therapy (IGRT). In a multi-institutional prospective trial, we investigated whether real-time IGRT improved the accuracy of the dose patients with prostate cancer received during radiation therapy. Methods and Materials: Forty-eight patients with prostate cancer were treated with KIM-guided SABR with 36.25 Gy in 5 fractions. During KIM-guided treatment, the prostate motion was corrected for by either beam gating with couch shifts or multileaf collimator tracking. A dose reconstruction method was used to evaluate the dose delivered to the target and organs at risk with and without real-time IGRT. Primary outcome was the effect of real-time IGRT on dose distributions. Secondary outcomes included patient-reported outcomes and toxicity. Results: Motion correction occurred in ≥1 treatment for 88% of patients (42 of 48) and 51% of treatments (121 of 235). With real-time IGRT, no treatments had prostate clinical target volume (CTV) D98% dose 5% less than planned. Without real-time IGRT, 13 treatments (5.5%) had prostate CTV D98% doses 5% less than planned. The prostate CTV D98% dose with real-time IGRT was closer to the plan by an average of 1.0% (range, –2.8% to 20.3%). Patient outcomes showed no change in the 12-month patient-reported outcomes compared with baseline and no grade ≥3 genitourinary or gastrointestinal toxicities. Conclusions: Real-time IGRT is clinically effective for prostate cancer SABR.

Khan, TA & Ling, SH 2020, 'An improved gravitational search algorithm for solving an electromagnetic design problem', JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL ELECTRONICS, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 773-779.
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Khorsand, M, Tavakoli, J, Guan, H & Tang, Y 2020, 'Artificial intelligence enhanced mathematical modeling on rotary triboelectric nanogenerators under various kinematic and geometric conditions', Nano Energy, vol. 75.
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© 2020 Elsevier Ltd The triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has been introduced as a revolutionary technology in the renewable electrical energy generation at micro/nanoscale. In the current study, experimental and theoretical models for augmented rotary TENGs are presented. The power generated by TENGs is found to be a function of the number of segments, rotational speed, and tribo-surface spacing. Mathematical modeling combined with artificial intelligence is applied to characterize the TENG output under various kinematics and geometric conditions. Sensitivity analysis reveals that the generated energy and the matched resistance depend highly on segmentation and angular velocity rate. It is shown that the optimized harvested energy reaches 0.369 mJ at each cycle. The TENG dynamic outputs for various structural parameters are found and described. This study enhances understanding of rotation-induced periodic TENGs and reveals optimized characteristics for disk-shaped TENG energy harvesters.

Li, J & Little, C 2020, 'An In Vitro study to investigate the effects of stem cell therapy for treating Osteoarthritis', Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, vol. 28, pp. S503-S504.
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Liu, B, Chen, C, Di, X, Liao, J, Wen, S, Su, QP, Shan, X, Xu, Z-Q, Ju, LA, Mi, C, Wang, F & Jin, D 2020, 'Upconversion nonlinear structured illumination microscopy.', Nano letters.
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Video-rate super-resolution imaging through biological tissue can visualize and track biomolecule interplays and transportations inside cellular organisms. Structured illumination microscopy allows for wide-field super resolution observation of biological samples but is limited by the strong extinction of light by biological tissues, which restricts the imaging depth and degrades its imaging resolution. Here we report a photon upconversion scheme using lanthanide-doped nanoparticles for wide-field super-resolution imaging through the biological transparent window, featured by near-infrared and low-irradiance nonlinear structured illumination. We demonstrate that the 976 nm excitation and 800 nm up-converted emission can mitigate the aberration. We found that the nonlinear response of upconversion emissions from single nanoparticles can effectively generate the required high spatial frequency components in the Fourier domain. These strategies lead to a new modality in microscopy with a resolution below 131 nm, 1/7th of the excitation wavelength, and an imaging rate of 1 Hz.

Liu, T, Zhang, W, Yuwono, M, Zhang, M, Ueland, M, Forbes, SL & Su, SW 2020, 'A data-driven meat freshness monitoring and evaluation method using rapid centroid estimation and hidden Markov models', SENSORS AND ACTUATORS B-CHEMICAL, vol. 311.
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Lyu, J, Bi, X & Ling, SH 2020, 'Multi-Level Cross Residual Network for Lung Nodule Classification', SENSORS, vol. 20, no. 10.
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Mahmoudi, T, Tazehkand, AP, Pourhassan-Moghaddam, M, Alizadeh-Ghodsi, M, Ding, L, Baradaran, B, Bazaz, SR, Jin, D & Warkiani, ME 2020, 'PCR-free paper-based nanobiosensing platform for visual detection of telomerase activity via gold enhancement', MICROCHEMICAL JOURNAL, vol. 154.
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Mahmoudi, Z, Mohammadnejad, J, Razavi Bazaz, S, Abouei Mehrizi, A, Saidijam, M, Dinarvand, R, Ebrahimi Warkiani, M & Soleimani, M 2020, 'Promoted chondrogenesis of hMCSs with controlled release of TGF-β3 via microfluidics synthesized alginate nanogels', Carbohydrate Polymers, pp. 115551-115551.
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Mehmood, A, Zameer, A, Chaudhary, NI, Ling, SH & Raja, MAZ 2020, 'Design of meta-heuristic computing paradigms for Hammerstein identification systems in electrically stimulated muscle models', NEURAL COMPUTING & APPLICATIONS.
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Mihandoust, A, Bazaz, SR, Maleki-Jirsaraei, N, Alizadeh, M, Taylor, RA & Warkiani, ME 2020, 'High-throughput particle concentration using complex cross-section microchannels', Micromachines, vol. 11, no. 4.
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© 2020 by the authors. High throughput particle/cell concentration is crucial for a wide variety of biomedical, clinical, and environmental applications. In this work, we have proposed a passive spiral microfluidic concentrator with a complex cross-sectional shape, i.e., a combination of rectangle and trapezoid, for high separation efficiency and a confinement ratio less than 0.07. Particle focusing in our microfluidic system was observed in a single, tight focusing line, in which higher particle concentration is possible, as compared with simple rectangular or trapezoidal cross-sections with similar flow area. The sharper focusing stems from the confinement of Dean vortices in the trapezoidal region of the complex cross-section. To quantify this effect, we introduce a new parameter, complex focusing number or CFN, which is indicative of the enhancement of inertial focusing of particles in these channels. Three spiral microchannels with various widths of 400 μ m, 500 μ m, and 600 μ m, with the corresponding CFNs of 4.3, 4.5, and 6, respectively, were used. The device with the total width of 600 μ m was shown to have a separation efficiency of ~98%, and by recirculating, the output concentration of the sample was 500 times higher than the initial input. Finally, the investigation of results showed that the magnitude of CFN relies entirely on the microchannel geometry, and it is independent of the overall width of the channel cross-section. We envision that this concept of particle focusing through complex cross-sections will prove useful in paving the way towards more efficient inertial microfluidic devices.

Mueller, M, Zolfaghari, R, Briggs, A, Furtado, H, Booth, J, Keall, P, Nguyen, D, O'Brien, R & Shieh, C-C 2020, 'The first prospective implementation of markerless lung target tracking in an experimental quality assurance procedure on a standard linear accelerator.', Physics in medicine and biology, vol. 65, no. 2, pp. 025008-025008.
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The ability to track tumour motion without implanted markers on a standard linear accelerator (linac) could enable wide access to real-time adaptive radiotherapy for cancer patients. We previously have retrospectively validated a method for 3D markerless target tracking using intra-fractional kilovoltage (kV) projections acquired on a standard linac. This paper presents the first prospective implementation of markerless lung target tracking on a standard linac and its quality assurance (QA) procedure. The workflow and the algorithm developed to track the 3D target position during volumetric modulated arc therapy treatment delivery were optimised. The linac was operated in clinical QA mode, while kV projections were streamed to a dedicated computer using a frame-grabber software. The markerless target tracking accuracy and precision were measured in a lung phantom experiment under the following conditions: static localisation of seven distinct positions, dynamic localisation of five patient-measured motion traces, and dynamic localisation with treatment interruption. The QA guidelines were developed following the AAPM Task Group 147 report with the requirement that the tracking margin components, the margins required to account for tracking errors, did not exceed 5 mm in any direction. The mean tracking error ranged from 0.0 to 0.9 mm (left-right), -0.6 to  -0.1 mm (superior-inferior) and  -0.7 to 0.1 mm (anterior-posterior) over the three tests. Larger errors were found in cases with large left-right or anterior-posterior and small superior-inferior motion. The tracking margin components did not exceed 5 mm in any direction and ranged from 0.4 to 3.2 mm (left-right), 0.7 to 1.6 mm (superior-inferior) and 0.8 to 1.5 mm (anterior-posterior). This study presents the first prospective implementation of markerless lung target tracking on a standard linac and provides a QA procedure for its safe clinical implementation, potentially enabling real-time adaptive radiother...

Ngo, CQ, Chai, R, Nguyen, T, Jones, TW & Nguyen, HT 2020, 'Electroencephalogram Spectral Moments for the Detection of Nocturnal Hypoglycemia', IEEE JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL AND HEALTH INFORMATICS, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 1237-1245.
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Nguyen, TV 2020, 'Toward the era of precision fracture risk assessment', The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism, vol. 105, no. 7.
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Ramakrishna, VAS, Chamoli, U, Rajan, G, Mukhopadhyay, SC, Prusty, BG & Diwan, AD 2020, 'Smart orthopaedic implants: A targeted approach for continuous postoperative evaluation in the spine', JOURNAL OF BIOMECHANICS, vol. 104.
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Raoufi, MA, Bazaz, SR, Niazmand, H, Rouhi, O, Asadnia, M, Razmjou, A & Warkiani, ME 2020, 'Fabrication of unconventional inertial microfluidic channels using wax 3D printing', SOFT MATTER, vol. 16, no. 10, pp. 2448-2459.
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Razavi Bazaz, S, Rouhi, O, Raoufi, MA, Ejeian, F, Asadnia, M, Jin, D & Ebrahimi Warkiani, M 2020, '3D Printing of Inertial Microfluidic Devices', Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. 1.
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© 2020, The Author(s). Inertial microfluidics has been broadly investigated, resulting in the development of various applications, mainly for particle or cell separation. Lateral migrations of these particles within a microchannel strictly depend on the channel design and its cross-section. Nonetheless, the fabrication of these microchannels is a continuous challenging issue for the microfluidic community, where the most studied channel cross-sections are limited to only rectangular and more recently trapezoidal microchannels. As a result, a huge amount of potential remains intact for other geometries with cross-sections difficult to fabricate with standard microfabrication techniques. In this study, by leveraging on benefits of additive manufacturing, we have proposed a new method for the fabrication of inertial microfluidic devices. In our proposed workflow, parts are first printed via a high-resolution DLP/SLA 3D printer and then bonded to a transparent PMMA sheet using a double-coated pressure-sensitive adhesive tape. Using this method, we have fabricated and tested a plethora of existing inertial microfluidic devices, whether in a single or multiplexed manner, such as straight, spiral, serpentine, curvilinear, and contraction-expansion arrays. Our characterizations using both particles and cells revealed that the produced chips could withstand a pressure up to 150 psi with minimum interference of the tape to the total functionality of the device and viability of cells. As a showcase of the versatility of our method, we have proposed a new spiral microchannel with right-angled triangular cross-section which is technically impossible to fabricate using the standard lithography. We are of the opinion that the method proposed in this study will open the door for more complex geometries with the bespoke passive internal flow. Furthermore, the proposed fabrication workflow can be adopted at the production level, enabling large-scale manufacturing of inertial micro...

Reza, AM, Tavakoli, J, Zhou, Y, Qin, J & Tang, Y 2020, 'Synthetic fluorescent probes to apprehend calcium signalling in lipid droplet accumulation in microalgae—an updated review', Science China Chemistry, vol. 63, no. 3, pp. 308-324.
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© 2020, Science China Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. Lipid bodies are dynamic organelles of photosynthetic microalgae that can be used as the third generation resources for biofuel production. Biosynthesis of lipids can be influenced by different signalling processes. Visualisation of these processes can provide useful information about the fate and associated roles of lipid molecules in different biological systems. In photosynthetic organisms, however, studies of calcium ediated lipid biosynthesis is bottlenecked due to the limitation of proper and efficient technologies, which also include visualisation techniques. Currently, most studies to visualise lipid droplets in vivo have used traditional dyes, and proper visualisation of lipid drops is hindered by dye-specific limitations. This hurdle could be overcome by using recently developed aggregation-induced emission biooprobes. This review reveals current knowledge gaps in the studies of lipid drops and calcium ions in microalgae, as calcium signaling is important secondary messenger to detect a wide variety of environmental stimuli in plant and animal cells. To obtain insight into the mechanisms of these processes, the merits and demerits of currently available visualisation techniques for lipid drops and calcium are also detailed. Finally, opportunities and possibilities are proposed to recommend further improvement of techniques for detecting the role of calcium during lipid formation in microalgae for biofuel production.

Roche, CD, Brereton, RJL, Ashton, AW, Jackson, C & Gentile, C 2020, 'Current challenges in three-dimensional bioprinting heart tissues for cardiac surgery.', European journal of cardio-thoracic surgery : official journal of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery.
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Previous attempts in cardiac bioengineering have failed to provide tissues for cardiac regeneration. Recent advances in 3-dimensional bioprinting technology using prevascularized myocardial microtissues as 'bioink' have provided a promising way forward. This review guides the reader to understand why myocardial tissue engineering is difficult to achieve and how revascularization and contractile function could be restored in 3-dimensional bioprinted heart tissue using patient-derived stem cells.

Rzhevskiy, AS, Razavi Bazaz, S, Ding, L, Kapitannikova, A, Sayyadi, N, Campbell, D, Walsh, B, Gillatt, D, Ebrahimi Warkiani, M & Zvyagin, AV 2020, 'Rapid and Label-Free Isolation of Tumour Cells from the Urine of Patients with Localised Prostate Cancer Using Inertial Microfluidics.', Cancers, vol. 12, no. 1.
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During the last decade, isolation of circulating tumour cells via blood liquid biopsy of prostate cancer (PCa) has attracted significant attention as an alternative, or substitute, to conventional diagnostic tests. However, it was previously determined that localised forms of PCa shed a small number of cancer cells into the bloodstream, and a large volume of blood is required just for a single test, which is impractical. To address this issue, urine has been used as an alternative to blood for liquid biopsy as a truly non-invasive, patient-friendly test. To this end, we developed a spiral microfluidic chip capable of isolating PCa cells from the urine of PCa patients. Potential clinical utility of the chip was demonstrated using anti-Glypican-1 (GPC-1) antibody as a model of the primary antibody in immunofluorescent assay for identification and detection of the collected tumour cells. The microchannel device was first evaluated using DU-145 cells in a diluted Dulbecco's phosphate-buffered saline sample, where it demonstrated >85 (±6) % efficiency. The microchannel proved to be functional in at least 79% of cases for capturing GPC1+ putative tumour cells from the urine of patients with localised PCa. More importantly, a correlation was found between the amount of the captured GPC1+ cells and crucial diagnostic and prognostic parameter of localised PCa-Gleason score. Thus, the technique demonstrated promise for further assessment of its diagnostic value in PCa detection, diagnosis, and prognosis.

Salik, B, Yi, H, Hassan, N, Santiappillai, N, Vick, B, Connerty, P, Duly, A, Trahair, T, Woo, AJ, Beck, D, Liu, T, Spiekermann, K, Jeremias, I, Wang, J, Kavallaris, M, Haber, M, Norris, MD, Liebermann, DA, D'Andrea, RJ, Murriel, C & Wang, JY 2020, 'Targeting RSPO3-LGR4 Signaling for Leukemia Stem Cell Eradication in Acute Myeloid Leukemia.', Cancer cell.
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Signals driving aberrant self-renewal in the heterogeneous leukemia stem cell (LSC) pool determine aggressiveness of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). We report that a positive modulator of canonical WNT signaling pathway, RSPO-LGR4, upregulates key self-renewal genes and is essential for LSC self-renewal in a subset of AML. RSPO2/3 serve as stem cell growth factors to block differentiation and promote proliferation of primary AML patient blasts. RSPO receptor, LGR4, is epigenetically upregulated and works through cooperation with HOXA9, a poor prognostic predictor. Blocking the RSPO3-LGR4 interaction by clinical-grade anti-RSPO3 antibody (OMP-131R10/rosmantuzumab) impairs self-renewal and induces differentiation in AML patient-derived xenografts but does not affect normal hematopoietic stem cells, providing a therapeutic opportunity for HOXA9-dependent leukemia.

Shrestha, J, Bazaz, SR, Es, HA, Azari, DY, Thierry, B, Warkiani, ME & Ghadiri, M 2020, 'Lung-on-a-chip: the future of respiratory disease models and pharmacological studies', CRITICAL REVIEWS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 213-230.
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Sritharan, K, Chamoli, U, Kuan, J & Diwan, AD 2020, 'Assessment of degenerative cervical stenosis on T2-weighted MR imaging: sensitivity to change and reliability of mid-sagittal and axial plane metrics.', Spinal cord.
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STUDY DESIGN:A retrospective cross-sectional study. OBJECTIVE:To assess the sensitivity to change and reliability of various mid-sagittal and axial plane metrics in the assessment of patients with single-level degenerative cervical stenosis on T2-weighted MR imaging. SETTING:A diagnostic MR imaging facility in Sydney (Australia). METHODS:We retrospectively reviewed T2-weighted MR images of 85 consecutive patients (48 M and 37 F) with single-level degenerative cervical stenosis. Canal compromise and cord compression were evaluated using three mid-sagittal plane metrics (M1, M2, and M3) and two axial plane metrics (M4 and M5), at the level of stenosis and nonstenotic cephalad and caudal levels (controls). Sensitivity to change (SC) for each metric was evaluated as the percentage deviation of the measured value from the estimated normal value based on cephalad and caudal controls. Reliability for each metric was evaluated using intraclass correlation coefficients. RESULTS:Degenerative cervical stenosis showed a bimodal distribution peaking at C5-6 (n = 32) and C3-4 (n = 29) levels. The changes in the canal and cord geometry along the rostrocaudal axis were inconsistent. Across all individual subjects (reflecting a range of stenosis severity), M3 (-32.87% ± 10.60%) was more sensitive to change compared with M1 (16.64% ± 16.48%) and M2 (-23.95% ± 11.12%). Similarly, M4 (-24.62% ± 12.17%) was more sensitive to change compared with M5 (-6.71% ± 11.08%). The level of reliability was "moderate" to "excellent" for mid-sagittal plane measurements, and "poor" to "excellent" for axial plane measurements. CONCLUSION:Changes in canal dimensions in the mid-sagittal plane and cord shape in the axial plane are sensitive indicators of degenerative cervical stenosis on T2-weighted MR images.

Su, QP, Zhao, ZW, Meng, L, Ding, M, Zhang, W, Li, Y, Liu, M, Li, R, Gao, Y-Q, Xie, XS & Sun, Y 2020, 'Superresolution imaging reveals spatiotemporal propagation of human replication foci mediated by CTCF-organized chromatin structures.', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 117, no. 26, pp. 15036-15046.
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Mammalian DNA replication is initiated at numerous replication origins, which are clustered into thousands of replication domains (RDs) across the genome. However, it remains unclear whether the replication origins within each RD are activated stochastically or preferentially near certain chromatin features. To understand how DNA replication in single human cells is regulated at the sub-RD level, we directly visualized and quantitatively characterized the spatiotemporal organization, morphology, and in situ epigenetic signatures of individual replication foci (RFi) across S-phase at superresolution using stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy. Importantly, we revealed a hierarchical radial pattern of RFi propagation dynamics that reverses directionality from early to late S-phase and is diminished upon caffeine treatment or CTCF knockdown. Together with simulation and bioinformatic analyses, our findings point to a "CTCF-organized REplication Propagation" (CoREP) model, which suggests a nonrandom selection mechanism for replication activation at the sub-RD level during early S-phase, mediated by CTCF-organized chromatin structures. Collectively, these findings offer critical insights into the key involvement of local epigenetic environment in coordinating DNA replication across the genome and have broad implications for our conceptualization of the role of multiscale chromatin architecture in regulating diverse cell nuclear dynamics in space and time.

Tavakoli, J, Diwan, AD & Tipper, JL 2020, 'Elastic fibers: The missing key to improve engineering concepts for reconstruction of the Nucleus Pulposus in the intervertebral disc', Acta Biomaterialia.
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© 2020 The increasing prevalence of low back pain has imposed a heavy economic burden on global healthcare systems. Intense research activities have been performed for the regeneration of the Nucleus Pulposus (NP) of the IVD; however, tissue-engineered scaffolds have failed to capture the multi-scale structural hierarchy of the native tissue. The current study revealed for the first time, that elastic fibers form a network across the NP consisting of straight and thick parallel fibers that were interconnected by wavy fine fibers and strands. Both straight fibers and twisted strands were regularly merged or branched to form a fine elastic network across the NP. As a key structural feature, ultrathin (53 ± 7 nm), thin (215 ± 20 nm), and thick (890 ± 12 nm) elastic fibers were observed in the NP. While our quantitative analysis for measurement of the thickness of elastic fibers revealed no significant differences (p < 0.633), the preferential orientation of fibers was found to be significantly different (p < 0.001) across the NP. The distribution of orientation for the elastic fibers in the NP represented one major organized angle of orientation except for the central NP. We found that the distribution of elastic fibers in the central NP was different from those located in the peripheral regions representing two symmetrically organized major peaks (±45⁰). No significant differences in the maximum fiber count at the major angles of orientation (±45⁰) were observed for both peripheral (p = 0.427) and central NP (p = 0.788). Based on these new findings a structural model for the elastic fibers in the NP was proposed. The geometrical presentation, along with the distribution of elastic fibers orientation, resulting from the present study identifies the ultrastructural organization of elastic fibers in the NP important towards understanding their mechanical role which is still under investigation. Given the results of this new geometrical analysis, more-accurate multisca...

Tavakoli, J, Pye, S, Reza, AHMM, Xie, N, Qin, J, Raston, CL, Tang, BZ & Tang, Y 2020, 'Tuning aggregation-induced emission nanoparticle properties under thin film formation', Materials Chemistry Frontiers, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 537-545.
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© 2020 the Partner Organisations. The most frequently used approach to preparing aggregation-induced emission fluorogen (AIEgen) particles is precipitation. Therefore, the addition of an AIEgen solution into water results in the formation of AIEgen particles in a very short time. Within such a short period of time and in the absence of proper mixing under shear, AIE particles are likely to be distributed in a wide range of sizes, thereby affecting their ultimate brightness and applications. Despite numerous attempts, the size of AIEgen particles is still within the range of 200-300 nm. For the first time, we developed a facile robust and cost-effective method for the fabrication of aggregation-induced emission nanoparticles with tuneable particle sizes <100 nm, high quantum yield, and excellent photostability. The direct diffusion of nanoparticles within the cell or in a single-celled organism, as an advantage of size reduction, opens new opportunities for biological and material studies. Such a significant reduction in AIE nanoparticle size has the potential for developing more efficient techniques for characterizing advanced nanomaterials and understanding biological processes and detection strategies.

Tavakoli, J, Raston, CL, Ma, Y & Tang, Y 2020, 'Vortex fluidic mediated one-step fabrication of polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel films with tunable surface morphologies and enhanced self-healing properties', Science China Materials, vol. 63, no. 7, pp. 1310-1317.
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© 2020, Science China Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. Previous strategies for controlling the surface morphologies of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-based hydrogels, including freeze-drying and electrospinning, require a post-treatment process, which can affect the final textures and properties of the hydrogels. Of particular interest, it is almost impossible to control the surface morphology during the formation of PVA hydrogels using these approaches. The strategy reported in this study used the novel vortex fluidic device (VFD) technology, which for the first time provided an opportunity for one-step fabrication of PVA hydrogel films. PVA hydrogels with different surface morphologies could be readily fabricated using a VFD. By also reducing the cross-linking agent concentration, a self-healing gel with enhanced fracture stress (60% greater than that of traditionally made hydrogel) was achieved. Interestingly, the associated self-healing property remained unchanged during the 260-s mechanical testing performed with the strain rate of 5% s−1. The VFD can effectively tune the surface morphologies of the PVA-based hydrogels and their associated properties, particularly the self-healing property.

Tavakoli, J, Wang, J, Chuah, C & Tang, Y 2020, 'Nartural-based hydrogels: A journey from simple to smart networks for medical examination', Current Medicinal Chemistry, vol. 27, no. 16, pp. 2704-2733.
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© 2020 Bentham Science Publishers. Natural hydrogels, due to their unique biological properties, have been used extensively for various medical and clinical examinations that are performed to investigate the signs of disease. Re-cently, complex-crosslinking strategies improved the mechanical properties and advanced approaches have resulted in the introduction of naturally derived hydrogels that exhibit high biocompatibility, with shape memory and self-healing characteristics. Moreover, the creation of self-assembled natural hydro-gels under physiological conditions has provided the opportunity to engineer fine-tuning properties. To highlight recent studies of natural-based hydrogels and their applications for medical investigation, a critical review was undertaken using published papers from the Science Direct database. This review presents different natural-based hydrogels (natural, natural-synthetic hybrid and complex-crosslinked hydrogels), their historical evolution, and recent studies of medical examination applications. The application of natural-based hydrogels in the design and fabrication of biosensors, catheters and medical electrodes, detection of cancer, targeted delivery of imaging compounds (bioimaging) and fabrication of fluorescent bioprobes is summarised here. Without doubt, in future, more useful and practical con-cepts will be derived to identify natural-based hydrogels for a wide range of clinical examination appli-cations.

Tran, T, Bliuc, D, O’Donoghue, S, Hansen, L, Abrahamsen, B, Bergh, JVD, Geel, TV, Geusens, P, Vestergaard, P, Nguyen, TV, Eisman, JA & Center, J 2020, 'OR13-03 Understanding Why Older People with Low Trauma Fractures Die Prematurely', Journal of the Endocrine Society, vol. 4, no. Supplement_1.
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Abstract There is increasing evidence that all proximal and not just hip fractures are associated with increased mortality risk. However, the cause of this increased mortality is unknown. We sought to determine the post-fracture trajectories of subsequent hospital admissions and mortality to develop an understanding of why patients with non-hip fractures die prematurely. This nationwide Danish population-based study included all individuals aged 50+ years who sustained an incident fragility fracture between 2001 and 2014. High-trauma fractures or individuals with fracture prior to 2001 were excluded. Fracture patients were matched 1:4 by sex, age and comorbidity status with non-fracture subjects alive at the time of fracture. Comorbidities included 33 unique medical conditions of the Charlson or Elixhauser comorbidity index. We modelled the contribution of specific fractures on the risk of subsequent admissions or death within the following 2 years. There were 212,498 women and 95,372 men with fracture followed by 30,677 and 19,519 deaths, respectively over 163,482 and 384,995 person-years of follow up. Mean age at fracture was 72± 11 for women and 75± 11 for men. Proximal fractures including hip, femur, pelvis, rib, clavicle and humerus had increased mortality compared with their matched non-fracture counterparts with HRs ranging from 1.5-4.0, while distal fractures such as ankle, forearm, hand or foot fractures had similar or lower mortality risk. Almost 75% of men and 60% of women had ≥1 comorbidity. For every additional comorbidity, risk of mortality increased for all fracture types. However, only for proximal fractures did the fracture itself independently increase mortality risk over and above co-morbidity status. The 2-yr post fracture admission and mortality patterns differed betwee...

Tran, T, Bliuc, D, Pham, HM, van Geel, T, Adachi, JD, Berger, C, van den Bergh, J, Eisman, JA, Geusens, P, Goltzman, D, Hanley, DA, Josse, RG, Kaiser, SM, Kovacs, CS, Langsetmo, L, Prior, JC, Nguyen, TV, Center, JR & CaMos Research Group 2020, 'A risk assessment tool for predicting fragility fractures and mortality in the elderly.', Journal of bone and mineral research : the official journal of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
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Existing fracture risk assessment tools are not designed to predict fracture-associated consequences, possibly contributing to the current under-management of fragility fractures worldwide. We aimed to develop a risk assessment tool for predicting the conceptual risk of fragility fractures and consequences. The study involved 8965 people aged ≥60 years from the Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study and the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study. Incident fracture was identified from X-ray reports and questionnaires, and death ascertained though contact with a family member or obituary review. We used multistate model to quantify the effects of the predictors on the transition risks to an initial and subsequent incident fracture, and mortality, accounting for their complex inter-relationships, confounding effects and death as a competing risk. There were 2364 initial fractures, 755 subsequent fractures, and 3300 deaths during a median follow up of 13 years (IQR: 7, 15). The prediction model included gender, age, BMD, history of falls within 12 previous months, prior fracture after the age of 50 years, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, chronic pulmonary diseases, hypertension and cancer. The model accurately predicted fragility fractures up to 11 years of follow up, and post-fracture mortality up to 9 years, ranging from 7 years following hip fractures to 15 years following non-hip fractures. For example, a 70-year old woman with a T-score of -1.5 and without other risk factors would have 10% chance of sustaining a fracture and an 8% risk of dying in 5 years. However, after an initial fracture, her risk of sustaining another fracture or dying doubles to 33%, ranging from 26% following a distal to 42% post hip fracture. A robust statistical technique was used to develop a prediction model for individualisation of progression to fracture and its consequences, facilitating informed decision making about risk and thus treatment for individuals with different...

Vasilescu, SA, Bazaz, SR, Jin, D, Shimoni, O & Warkiani, ME 2020, '3D printing enables the rapid prototyping of modular microfluidic devices for particle conjugation', Applied Materials Today, vol. 20.
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© 2020 Elsevier Ltd Antibody micro/nano-particle conjugates have proven to be essential tools in many diagnostic and nanomedicine applications. However, their production with homogenous coating and in a continuous fashion remains a tedious, labor-intensive, and costly process. In this regard, 3D micromixer-based microfluidic devices offer significant advantages over existing methods, where manipulating the flow in three dimensions increases fluid contact area and surface disruption, facilitating efficient mixing. While conventional softlithography is capable of fabricating simple 2D micromixers, complications arise when processing 3D structures. In this paper, we report the direct fabrication of a 3D complex microchannel design using additive manufacturing for the continuous conjugation of antibodies onto particle surfaces. This method benefits from a reduction in cost and time (from days to hours), simplified fabrication process, and limited post-processing. The flexibility of direct 3D printing allows quick and easy tailoring of design features to facilitate the production of micro and nanoparticles conjugated with functional antibodies in a continuous mixing process. We demonstrate that the produced antibody-functionalized particles retain their functionality by a firm and specific interaction with antigen presenting cells. By connecting 3D printed micromixers across the conjugation process, we illustrate the role of 3D printed microchannels as modularized components. The 3D printing method we report enables a broad spectrum of researchers to produce complex microfluidic geometries within a short time frame.

Wang, Y, Sayyadi, N, Zheng, X, Woods, TA, Leif, RC, Shi, B, Graves, SW, Piper, JA & Lu, Y 2020, 'Time-resolved microfluidic flow cytometer for decoding luminescence lifetimes in the microsecond region.', Lab on a Chip: miniaturisation for chemistry, physics, biology, materials science and bioengineering.
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Time-resolved luminescence detection using long-lived probes with lifetimes in the microsecond region have shown great potential in ultrasensitive and multiplexed bioanalysis. In flow cytometry, however, the long lifetime poses a significant challenge to measure wherein the detection window is often too short to determine the decay characteristics. Here we report a time-resolved microfluidic flow cytometer (tr-mFCM) incorporating an acoustic-focusing chip, which allows slowing down of the flow while providing the same detection conditions for every target, achieving accurate lifetime measurement free of autofluorescence interference. Through configuration of the flow velocity and detection aperture with respect to the time-gating sequence, a multi-cycle luminescence decay profile is captured for every event under maximum excitation and detection efficiency. A custom fitting algorithm is then developed to resolve europium-stained polymer microspheres as well as leukemia cells against abundant fluorescent particles, achieving counting efficiency approaching 100% and lifetime CVs (coefficient of variation) around 2-6%. We further demonstrate lifetime-multiplexed detection of prostate and bladder cancer cells stained with different europium probes. Our acoustic-focusing tr-mFCM offers a practical technique for rapid screening of biofluidic samples containing multiple cell types, especially in resource-limited environments such as regional and/or underdeveloped areas as well as for point-of-care applications.

Wedyan, M, AL-Jumaily, A & Dorgham, O 2020, 'The use of augmented reality in the diagnosis and treatment of autistic children: a review and a new system', Multimedia Tools and Applications.
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© 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. This paper consists of two parts. The first presents a review of the literature on the use of augmented reality (AR) in the diagnosis and treatment of autistic children with a particular focus on the efficacy of AR in assisting autistic children who have communicative, social, sentiment, and attention deficit disorders. The review also investigated interactions between AR systems and children, taking into consideration the target behaviors that are selected from the child during treatment. Such modes were fully explored by taking into account the needs of the individual child in terms of achieving an improvement in their condition. Most significantly, the empirical information that was obtained from the reviewed works was evaluated according to some specific targeted attitudes and how each AR solution was utilized during treatment to achieve the fostering of such attitudes in order to identify the requirements for building an effective AR system. In addition, the review revealed the essential design features that can enable AR systems to achieve a high level of effectiveness in autism therapy. The review also covered the instruction that AR systems were noticed to execute, and focused on the significant characteristics that allow AR systems to accomplish degrees of efficacy in autism treatment. The review ends by classifying the various AR systems based on different criteria. The second part of the paper focuses on our new AR system as a case study. It covers the design considerations and decisions as well as the key features and appearance of the system. The paper concludes by making some recommendations for the further development of an AR system for application in the domain of child autism.

Wu, CT, Chang, HT, Wu, CY, Chen, SW, Huang, SY, Huang, M, Pan, YT, Bradbury, P, Chou, J & Yen, HW 2020, 'Machine learning recommends affordable new Ti alloy with bone-like modulus', Materials Today.
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© 2019 Elsevier Ltd A neural-network machine called “βLow” enables a high-throughput recommendation for new β titanium alloys with Young's moduli lower than 50 GPa. The machine was trained by using a very general approach with small data from experiments. Its efficiency and accuracy break the barrier for alloy discovery. βLow's best recommendation, Ti-12Nb-12Zr-12Sn (in wt.%) alloy, was unexpected in previous methods. This new alloy meets the requirements for bio-compatibility, low modulus, and low cost, and holds promise for orthopedic and prosthetic implants. Moreover, βLow's prediction guides us to realize that the unexplored space of the chemical compositions of low-modulus biomedical titanium alloys is still large. Machine-learning-aided materials design accelerates the progress of materials development and reduces research costs in this work.

Xing, D, Wu, J, Wang, B, Liu, W, Liu, W, Zhao, Y, Wang, L, Li, JJ, Liu, A, Zhou, Q, Hao, J & Lin, J 2020, 'Intra-articular delivery of umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells temporarily retard the progression of osteoarthritis in a rat model', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RHEUMATIC DISEASES.
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Yang, Y, Xing, D, Wang, Y, Jia, H, Li, B & Li, JJ 2020, 'A long non-coding RNA, HOTAIR, promotes cartilage degradation in osteoarthritis by inhibiting WIF-1 expression and activating Wnt pathway', BMC Molecular and Cell Biology, vol. 21, no. 1.
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Zhang, S, Lin, M, Zou, X, Su, S, Zhang, W, Zhang, X & Guo, Z 2020, 'LSTM-based air quality predicted model for large cities in China', Nature Environment and Pollution Technology, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 229-236.
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© 2020 Technoscience Publications. All rights reserved. In this paper, the LSTM model is used to predict the PM2.5 concentrations in five representative Chinese cities with the GDP exceeding 1 trillion Yuan, including Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Wuhan. The PM2.5 concentration data in 2015-2017 are selected for training, and the results are optimized to achieve an efficient solution by adjusting the parameters. Based on the optimized solution, a test is carried out to predict the PM2.5 concentration in 2018, and the results are compared with the real value obtained from the monitoring centre. According to the comparison results, the correlation coefficient of Wuhan and Chengdu is 0.86724 and 0.80070, which are the highest in these five cities. While the correlation coefficient of Shenzhen and Shanghai, are 0.78225, 0.72147, Beijing, as the capital city of China achieved the lowest correlation coefficient which is 0.64118. The LSTM-based predictive model has relatively good reliability and transferability. More effective predictive results can be achieved by implementing deep learning to analyse PM2.5 concentration.

Zhang, Y, Feng, W, Shi, G, Jiang, F, Chowdhury, M & Ling, SH 2020, 'UAV Swarm Mission Planning in Dynamic Environment Using Consensus-Based Bundle Algorithm', SENSORS, vol. 20, no. 8.
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Zheng, D, Zhang, H, Zhang, JA, Zheng, W & Su, SW 2020, 'Stability of asynchronous switched systems with sequence-based average dwell time approaches', Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 357, no. 4, pp. 2149-2166.
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© 2019 The Franklin Institute This paper studies the stability problem of asynchronous switched systems and proposes novel sequence-based average dwell time approaches. Both continuous-time and discrete-time systems are considered. The proposed approaches exploit the switching sequences of subsystems which were seldom utilized in the literature. More specifically, our approaches exploit the differences between different switching sequences, including the maximal asynchronous switching time, the energy changing degree at switching times, and the increasing speed of energy functions in asynchronous time intervals. As a result, the proposed approaches can reduce the threshold value of average dwell time significantly. We also propose an approach to counterbalance the increasing of energy functions in asynchronous time intervals by prolonging the preceding rather than subsequent subsystem. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approaches can improve the performance significantly in comparison with a well-known method.

Zhu, Y, Li, JJ, Reng, J, Wang, S, Zhang, R & Wang, B 2020, 'Global trends of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm research in the past two decades: A bibliometric study', MICROBIOLOGYOPEN.
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Al-Tae, AA & Al-Jumaily, A 2020, 'Electrogastrogram Based Medical Applications an Overview and Processing Frame Work', Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, pp. 511-520.
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© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Surface Electrogastrogram (sEGG) examination is a noninvasive method based on recording the electrical signals of stomach muscles that can be used for investigation of a stomach wave propagation. sEGG records by placing electrodes on the abdominal skin. The recording of gastric dysrhythmias is an important tool for the clinician when patients have symptoms that suggest gastric dysfunction such as unexplained nausea, bloating, postprandial fullness, and early satiety. On the other hand, these upper gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms are nonspecific, and diseases or disorders of other organ such as esophagus, gallbladder, small bowel, colon, and non-GI diseases also can be considered. The progress of the EGG based application is very slow as EGG still suffers from several limitations. The aim of this study is to review the Electrogastrogram detection, analyzing methods and its application to enter the clinical world with recommendations for future study.

Anam, K, Nuh, M & Al-Jumaily, A 2019, 'Comparison of EEG pattern recognition of motor imagery for finger movement classification', International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics (EECSI), International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics, IEEE, Bandung, Indonesia,, pp. 24-27.
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© 2019, Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved. The detection of a hand movement beforehand can be a beneficent tool to control a prosthetic hand for upper extremity rehabilitation. To be able to achieve smooth control, the intention detection is acquired from the human body, especially from brain signal or electroencephalogram (EEG) signal. However, many constraints hamper the development of this brain-computer interface (BCI), especially for finger movement detection. Most of the researchers have focused on the detection of the left and right-hand movement. This article presents the comparison of various pattern recognition method for recognizing five individual finger movements, i.e., the thumb, index, middle, ring, and pinky finger movements. The EEG pattern recognition utilized common spatial pattern (CSP) for feature extraction. As for the classifier, four classifiers, i.e., random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighborhood (kNN), and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) were tested and compared to each other. The experimental results indicated that the EEG pattern recognition with RF achieved the best accuracy of about 54%. Other published publication reported that the classification of the individual finger movement is still challenging and need more efforts to achieve better performance.

Ganesan, B, Yip, J, Luximon, A, Choukou, MA & Al-Jumaily, A 2020, 'Kinect-based 3D assessment for clubfoot deformity: An exploratory study', ACM International Conference Proceeding Series.
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© 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. Congenital talipes equinovarus is a musculoskeletal pediatric foot deformity, which is characterized by midfoot cavus, forefoot adductus, hindfoot varus and equinus (CAVE). A standardized objective assessment is essential to measure the severity of the clubfoot. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a three-dimensional assessment method to evaluate the clubfoot severity.

Khalil, R & Al-Jumaily, A 2019, 'Hybridization of Local Search Optimization and Support Vector Machine Algorithms for Classification Problems Enhancement', Intelligent Computing Paradigm and Cutting-edge Technologies, International Conference on Innovative Computing and Cutting-edge Technologies, Springer, Istanbul, Turkey, pp. 209-217.
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The classification technique is defined as a task of supervised learning aims to identify the set for which a new input element is classified. SVM is a classifier, which is simple in structure, easy for training and often applied in classification problems. In the paper introduced, we improved SVM model that employs local search (LS) to enhance the accuracy of the classification. The proposed approach was experimented by eleven standard benchmark datasets from UCI repository. The results show enhancement in classification accuracy of proposed SVM model in comparison with that of the conventional SVM model. Our proposed new technique combines local search optimizer and support vector machine classifier as a reasonable solution to handle classification problems. SVM was utilized and then optimized by investing the LS optimization technique. Results of experiments drove using 10 benchmark datasets showed that the proposed LS-SVM outperformed the original SVM on all datasets. Also, when comparing the accuracy of LS-SVM to the accuracy of other approaches detailed in the literature, LS-SVM’s classification accuracy was the highest on most of eleven datasets.

Masood, A & Al-Jumaily, A 2020, 'Orientation Sensitive Fuzzy C Means Based Fast Level Set Evolution for Segmentation of Histopathological Images to Detect Skin Cancer', Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, pp. 501-510.
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© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Malignant Melanoma in one of the most deadly skin cancer. In latest cancer diagnosis, pathologists examine biopsies for analysing cell morphology and tissue distribution for making diagnostic assessments. However, this process is quite subjective and has considerable variability. Automated computational diagnostic tools based on quantitative measures can help the diagnosis done by pathologists. The first and foremost step in automated histopathological image analysis is to properly segment the tissue structures such as nest, irregular distribution and melanocytic cells which indicate some disorder or potential cancer. This paper presents a novel technique for automatic segmentation of histopathological skin images, without user intervention. It is based on an innovative approach for utilizing the concepts of clustering and level set evolution. Firstly, the image is pre-processed to enhance the differentiating structural details. Then a novel orientation sensitive Fuzzy C mean clustering is used to generate the initial coarse segmentation and to calculate the controlling parameters for level set evolution. Later, refined fast level set based algorithm is used to finalize the segmentation process. Experimental analysis on a database of 150 histopathological images display the accuracy of the proposed method for detecting the melanocytic areas of the image, with true detection rate of 87.66% and Dice similarity coefficient of 0.88, when segmentation results are compared with images marked by expert pathologists.

Mursalin, M, Islam, SMS & Al-Jumaily, A 2019, 'A cost-effective method for epileptic seizure classification', 2019 IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Communications and Computing, ICSPCC 2019, IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Communications and Computing, IEEE, Dalian, China.
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© 2019 IEEE. The ongoing development of various lightweight and portable EEG signal acquisition devices provides the opportunity to implement home-based epilepsy monitoring. However, it is essential to apply a highly effective method to handle the limited computational power of such devices. In this paper, we propose a cost-effective method to classify epileptic seizure using stratified sampling technique. Additionally, to reduce the required computational power, this paper proposes a novel correlation and threshold-based feature selection algorithm. For evaluating the performance of our proposed method, five different classification algorithms are applied to classify the epileptic seizure from the reduced feature set. In our experiment, the random forest classifier shows the highest accuracy compared to other classifiers.

Sofela, S, Sahloul, S, Kwon, T, Han, J, Warkiani, ME & Song, YA 2020, 'Synchronization of C. Elegans through high-throughput separation of eggs in a spiral microfluidic chip', 21st International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences, MicroTAS 2017, pp. 1100-1101.
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© 17CBMS-0001. In this work, we report a high-throughput sorting of C. elegans embryos from a mixed-age worm population in a spiral microfluidic chip for synchronization. Using inertial forces in the spiral chip, C. elegans eggs could efficiently be focused along the inner channel wall and separated out with high sorting efficiency and purity.

Syed, MS, Rafeie, M, Vandamme, D, Henderson, R & Warkiani, ME 2020, 'Selective separation of microalgae cells using inertial microfluidics', 21st International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences, MicroTAS 2017, pp. 1375-1376.
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© 17CBMS-0001. Microalgae are considered to be the most promising new source of biomass to meet world's growing demands. However, microalgal cultures are often contaminated, by bacteria or invading diatoms. The invasion of diatoms in a cell culture results in an overall decrease of biomass productivity and quality. This work demonstrates the application of inertial microfluidics for the selective separation and sorting of green microalgae cells from diatoms to obtain monocultures, at optimum conditions.

Taylor, CN & Bishop, AN 2019, 'Distributed Power Mean Fusion', FUSION 2019 - 22nd International Conference on Information Fusion, International Conference on Information Fusion, IEEE, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
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© 2019 ISIF-International Society of Information Fusion. The problem of distributed information (data) fusion is considered in this paper. Using a new class of functionals to perform data fusion-the power mean-information fusion can be performed in a dependency/correlation-agnostic manner while achieving better fusion results than many classical fusion techniques (i.e. linear or log-linear pooling). In addition, power mean techniques converge much more rapidly (even in finite time) in distributed network settings. Computing the power mean on generic probability distribution functions is specifically addressed in this paper, including a distributed protocol and specific steps for ensuring distributed convergence to the global power mean. Results demonstrate: 1). convergence to the global power mean even in a distributed setting, 2). the ability for certain power means to converge in finite time, and 3). the improved fusion results achieved by using the power mean over more traditional fusion techniques, even with relatively complex distributions.

Wedyan, M, Al-Jumaily, A & Crippa, A 2020, 'Early Diagnose of Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Machine Learning Based on Simple Upper Limb Movements', Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, pp. 491-500.
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© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The importance of early diagnosis of autism that leads to early intervention such thing shall increase the results of treating it. The Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects the children activities and caused difficulties in interaction, impairments in communication, delayed speech, and weak eye contact. These activities used as the base for ASD diagnosis decision. Children move their upper limb before some of the other activities. Moving upper limb can be based for ASD diagnosis decision for autistic children. Such paper examines diagnosing the ASD that depends on motioning the children’s upper-limb aged between two and four years based on executing specific procedures and machine learning. The approach that such study utilized is both (LDA) Linear Discriminant Analysis in order to elicit the features and (SVM) Support Vector Machines for classifying thirty children such study selected fifteen autistic children out of fifteen non-autistic children by testing the collected data that are collected from doing an easy task. The results of such study have accomplished an optimal sortation accuracy of 100% and the average accuracy of 93.8%. Such outcomes provide more proof of simple brachium motioning that might be utilized in sorting poor performance of autistic children precisely.