Characterization of Composition and Structure-Property Relationships of Commercial Post-Consumer Polyethylene and Polypropylene Recyclates.

The current efforts in moving closer towards a circular plastics economy puts massive pressure on recycled plastics, especially recycled polyethylene (rPE) and recycled polypropylene (rPP) to enter new markets. Their market penetration remained low so far, despite PE and PP constituting the largest share of plastic wastes. However, with the current imperative of more circularity comes a new focus on performance of recyclates. Hence, a detailed understanding of composition and structure-property relationships of post-consumer recyclates has to be developed. Five recycling companies from the Austrian and German markets were asked to supply their purest high-quality rPE and rPP grades. These were characterized by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and micro-imaging. Technological characterization included density measurements, determination of the melt flow rate (MFR), and Charpy impact testing. All recyclates contained diverse contaminants and inclusions ranging from legacy fillers like calcium carbonate to polymeric contaminants like polyamides or polyolefin cross-contamination. The overall amount, size, and distribution of contaminants varied significantly among suppliers. Furthermore, first structure-property relationships for polyolefin recyclates that link inorganic content and polymeric purity with density and impact performance could be derived.

Development of an LC-MS method for the semiquantitative determination of polyamide 6 contaminations in polyolefin recyclates.

Recycling will be of increasing importance in the future, especially for plastic packaging waste mainly consisting of polyolefins. One major problem of recyclates comprises impurities which can have a significant negative impact on future product properties. Polyamide 6 can be found widely as contaminant in recycled polyolefins, leading to a need of quantification methods thereof. In this paper, a method development for the quantitative analysis of polyamide 6 is presented based on analysing ε-caprolactam and related cyclic oligomers as marker compounds in model recyclates of high- and low-density polyethylene and polypropylene compounded with low amounts of polyamide 6. For the method development and tentative identification of the different cyclic compounds, a HPLC-QTOF-MS was used and it was possible to detect six different compounds, ε-caprolactam and the corresponding cyclic di- to hexamer. The quantification was performed with a HPLC-QQQ-MS, equipped with a HILIC column, after sample preparation via microwave-assisted extraction. It could be shown that a good linearity from 0.2 up to 5 wt% polyamide 6 in the different polyolefins can be achieved. The cyclic trimer and tetramer show a low limit of quantification and are therefore well-suited for the quantification, whereas the other cyclic compounds can be then used as qualifiers to avoid false positives. To guarantee the applicability of the method, six real recyclate materials were analysed, whereby in three of them low amounts of polyamide 6 could be detected. Graphical abstract.

Automated 3D video analysis of lower limb movements during REM sleep: a new diagnostic tool for isolated REM sleep behavior disorder.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: The differentiation of isolated rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) or its prodromal phase (prodromal RBD) from other disorders with motor activity during sleep is critical for identifying α-synucleinopathy in an early stage. Currently, definite RBD diagnosis requires video polysomnography (vPSG). The aim of this study was to evaluate automated 3D video analysis of leg movements during REM sleep as objective diagnostic tool for iRBD. METHODS: A total of 122 participants (40 iRBD, 18 prodromal RBD, 64 participants with other disorders with motor activity during sleep) were recruited among patients undergoing vPSG at the Sleep Disorders Unit, Department of Neurology, Medical University of Innsbruck. 3D videos synchronous to vPSG were recorded. Lower limb movements rate, duration, extent, and intensity were computed using a newly developed software. RESULTS: The analyzed 3D movement features were significantly increased in subjects with iRBD compared to prodromal RBD and other disorders with motor activity during sleep. Minor leg jerks with a duration < 2 seconds discriminated with the highest accuracy (90.4%) iRBD from other motor activity during sleep. Automatic 3D analysis did not differentiate between prodromal RBD and other disorders with motor activity during sleep. CONCLUSIONS: Automated 3D video analysis of leg movements during REM sleep is a promising diagnostic tool for identifying subjects with iRBD in a sleep laboratory population and is able to distinguish iRBD from subjects with other motor activities during sleep. For future application as a screening, further studies should investigate usefulness of this tool when no information about sleep stages from vPSG is available and in the home environment.

Contactless detection of periodic leg movements during sleep: A 3D video pilot study.

In clinical practice, the quality of polysomnographic recordings in children and patients with neurodegenerative diseases may be affected by sensor displacement and diminished total sleep time due to stress during the recording. In the present study, we investigated if contactless three-dimensional (3D) detection of periodic leg movements during sleep was comparable to polysomnography. We prospectively studied a sleep laboratory cohort from two Austrian sleep laboratories. Periodic leg movements during sleep were classified according to the standards of the World Association of Sleep Medicine and served as ground truth. Leg movements including respiratory-related events (A1) and excluding respiratory-related events (A2 and A3) were presented as A1, A2 and A3. Three-dimensional movement analysis was carried out using an algorithm developed by the Austrian Institute of Technology. Fifty-two patients (22 female, mean age 52.2 ± 15.1 years) were included. Periodic leg movement during sleep indexes were significantly higher with 3D detection compared to polysomnography (33.3 [8.1-97.2] vs. 30.7 [2.9-91.9]: +9.1%, p = .0055/27.8 [4.5-86.2] vs. 24.2 [0.00-88.7]: +8.2%, p = .0154/31.8 [8.1-89.5] vs. 29.6 [2.4-91.1]: +8.9%, p = .0129). Contactless automatic 3D analysis has the potential to detect restlessness mirrored by periodic leg movements during sleep reliably and may especially be suited for children and the elderly.

A Novel Approach to Assess Sleep-Related Rhythmic Movement Disorder in Children Using Automatic 3D Analysis.

Background: Unlike other episodic sleep disorders in childhood, there are no agreed severity indices for rhythmic movement disorder. While movements can be characterized in detail by polysomnography, in our experience most children inhibit rhythmic movement during polysomnography. Actigraphy and home video allow assessment in the child's own environment, but both have limitations. Standard actigraphy analysis algorithms fail to differentiate rhythmic movements from other movements. Manual annotation of 2D video is time consuming. We aimed to develop a sensitive, reliable method to detect and quantify rhythmic movements using marker free and automatic 3D video analysis. Method: Patients with rhythmic movement disorder (n = 6, 4 male) between age 5 and 14 years (M: 9.0 years, SD: 4.2 years) spent three nights in the sleep laboratory as part of a feasibility study (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03528096). 2D and 3D video data recorded during the adaptation and baseline nights were analyzed. One ceiling-mounted camera captured 3D depth images, while another recorded 2D video. We developed algorithms to analyze the characteristics of rhythmic movements and built a classifier to distinguish between rhythmic and non-rhythmic movements based on 3D video data alone. Data from 3D automated analysis were compared to manual 2D video annotations to assess algorithm performance. Novel indices were developed, specifically the rhythmic movement index, frequency index, and duration index, to better characterize severity of rhythmic movement disorder in children. Result: Automatic 3D video analysis demonstrated high levels of agreement with the manual approach indicated by a Cohen's kappa >0.9 and F1-score >0.9. We also demonstrated how rhythmic movement assessment can be improved using newly introduced indices illustrated with plots for ease of visualization. Conclusion: 3D video technology is widely available and can be readily integrated into sleep laboratory settings. Our automatic 3D video analysis algorithm yields reliable quantitative information about rhythmic movements, reducing the burden of manual scoring. Furthermore, we propose novel rhythmic movement disorder severity indices that offer a means to standardize measurement of this disorder in both clinical and research practice. The significance of the results is limited due to the nature of a feasibility study and its small number of samples. A larger follow up study is needed to confirm presented results.

Computer-aided position planning of miniplates to treat facial bone defects.

In this contribution, a software system for computer-aided position planning of miniplates to treat facial bone defects is proposed. The intra-operatively used bone plates have to be passively adapted on the underlying bone contours for adequate bone fragment stabilization. However, this procedure can lead to frequent intra-operatively performed material readjustments especially in complex surgical cases. Our approach is able to fit a selection of common implant models on the surgeon's desired position in a 3D computer model. This happens with respect to the surrounding anatomical structures, always including the possibility of adjusting both the direction and the position of the used osteosynthesis material. By using the proposed software, surgeons are able to pre-plan the out coming implant in its form and morphology with the aid of a computer-visualized model within a few minutes. Further, the resulting model can be stored in STL file format, the commonly used format for 3D printing. Using this technology, surgeons are able to print the virtual generated implant, or create an individually designed bending tool. This method leads to adapted osteosynthesis materials according to the surrounding anatomy and requires further a minimum amount of money and time.

Interactive reconstructions of cranial 3D implants under MeVisLab as an alternative to commercial planning software.

In this publication, the interactive planning and reconstruction of cranial 3D Implants under the medical prototyping platform MeVisLab as alternative to commercial planning software is introduced. In doing so, a MeVisLab prototype consisting of a customized data-flow network and an own C++ module was set up. As a result, the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software prototype guides a user through the whole workflow to generate an implant. Therefore, the workflow begins with loading and mirroring the patients head for an initial curvature of the implant. Then, the user can perform an additional Laplacian smoothing, followed by a Delaunay triangulation. The result is an aesthetic looking and well-fitting 3D implant, which can be stored in a CAD file format, e.g. STereoLithography (STL), for 3D printing. The 3D printed implant can finally be used for an in-depth pre-surgical evaluation or even as a real implant for the patient. In a nutshell, our research and development shows that a customized MeVisLab software prototype can be used as an alternative to complex commercial planning software, which may also not be available in every clinic. Finally, not to conform ourselves directly to available commercial software and look for other options that might improve the workflow.

HTC Vive MeVisLab integration via OpenVR for medical applications.

Virtual Reality, an immersive technology that replicates an environment via computer-simulated reality, gets a lot of attention in the entertainment industry. However, VR has also great potential in other areas, like the medical domain, Examples are intervention planning, training and simulation. This is especially of use in medical operations, where an aesthetic outcome is important, like for facial surgeries. Alas, importing medical data into Virtual Reality devices is not necessarily trivial, in particular, when a direct connection to a proprietary application is desired. Moreover, most researcher do not build their medical applications from scratch, but rather leverage platforms like MeVisLab, MITK, OsiriX or 3D Slicer. These platforms have in common that they use libraries like ITK and VTK, and provide a convenient graphical interface. However, ITK and VTK do not support Virtual Reality directly. In this study, the usage of a Virtual Reality device for medical data under the MeVisLab platform is presented. The OpenVR library is integrated into the MeVisLab platform, allowing a direct and uncomplicated usage of the head mounted display HTC Vive inside the MeVisLab platform. Medical data coming from other MeVisLab modules can directly be connected per drag-and-drop to the Virtual Reality module, rendering the data inside the HTC Vive for immersive virtual reality inspection.

Computer-aided planning and reconstruction of cranial 3D implants.

In this contribution, a prototype for semiautomatic computer-aided planning and reconstruction of cranial 3D Implants is presented. The software prototype guides the user through the workflow, beginning with loading and mirroring the patient's head to obtain an initial curvature of the cranial implant. However, naïve mirroring is not sufficient for an implant, because human heads are in general too asymmetric. Thus, the user can perform Laplacian smoothing, followed by Delaunay triangulation, for generating an aesthetic looking and well-fitting implant. Finally, our software prototype allows to save the designed 3D model of the implant as a STL-file for 3D printing. The 3D printed implant can be used for further pre-interventional planning or even as the final implant for the patient. In summary, our findings show that a customized MeVisLab prototype can be an alternative to complex commercial planning software, which may not be available in a clinic.

Improved thermostability of a Bacillus subtilis esterase by domain exchange.

A moderately thermostable esterase from Geobacillus stearothermophilus (BsteE) and its homolog from Bacillus subtilis (BsubE) show a high structural similarity with more than 95% homology and 74% amino acid identity. Interestingly, their thermal stability differs significantly by 30 °C in their melting temperature. In order to identify the positions that are responsible for this difference, most of the flexible amino acids assumed to confer instability were found to be in the cap region. For this reason, a 30 amino acid long cap domain fragment containing ten differing positions derived from BsteE was incorporated into the homologous gene encoding for the more labile BsubE by spliced overlap-extension PCR. The melting temperature of the two wild-type esterases and the mutant was evaluated by circular dichroism spectroscopy, while the kinetic parameters and the stability were determined with a photometric assay. The cap domain mutant maintained its activity, with a catalytic efficiency more similar to BsteE, while it exhibited an increase of the melting temperature by 4 °C compared to BsubE. Additional point mutations based on the differences of the parent enzymes gave a further increase of the thermostability up to 11 °C compared to BsubE; however, a significant reduction in activity was observed.

Use of 'small but smart' libraries to enhance the enantioselectivity of an esterase from Bacillus stearothermophilus towards tetrahydrofuran-3-yl acetate.

Two libraries of simultaneous double mutations in the active site region of an esterase from Bacillus stearothermophilus were constructed to improve the enantioselectivity in the hydrolysis of tetrahydrofuran-3-yl acetate. As screening of large mutant libraries is hampered by the necessity for GC/MS analysis, mutant libraries were designed according to a 'small but smart' concept. The design of focused libraries was based on data derived from a structural alignment of 3317 amino acid sequences of α/ß-hydrolase fold enzymes with the bioinformatic tool 3DM. In this way, the number of mutants to be screened was substantially reduced as compared with a standard site-saturation mutagenesis approach. Whereas the wild-type esterase showed only poor enantioselectivity (E = 4.3) in the hydrolysis of (S)-tetrahydrofuran-3-yl acetate, the best variants obtained with this approach showed increased E-values of up to 10.4. Furthermore, some variants with inverted enantiopreference were found.