RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The rise in single-person households has resulted in social problems like loneliness and isolation, commonly known as "death by loneliness." Various factors contribute to this increase, including a desire for independent living and communication challenges within families due to societal changes. Older individuals living alone are particularly susceptible to loneliness and isolation due to limited family communication and a lack of social activities. Addressing these issues is crucial, and proactive solutions are needed. It is important to explore diverse measures to tackle the challenges of single-person households and prevent deaths due to loneliness in our society. OBJECTIVE: Non-face-to-face health care service systems have gained widespread interest owing to the rapid development of smart home technology. Particularly, a health monitoring system must be developed to manage patients' health status and send alerts for dangerous situations based on their activity. Therefore, in this study, we present a novel health monitoring system based on the auto-mapping method, which uses real-time position sensing mats. METHODS: The smart floor mats are operated as piezo-resistive devices, which are composed of a carbon nanotube-based conductive textile, electrodes, main processor circuit, and a mat. The developed smart floor system acquires real-time position information using a multiconnection method between the modules based on the auto-mapping algorithm, which automatically creates a spatial map. The auto-mapping algorithm allows the user to freely set various activity areas through floor mapping. Then, the monitoring system was evaluated in a room with an area of 41.3 m2, which is embedded with the manufactured floor mats and monitoring application. RESULTS: This monitoring system automatically acquires information on the total number, location, and direction of the mats and creates a spatial map. The position sensing mats can be easily configured with a simple structure by using a carbon nanotube-based piezo-resistive textile. The mats detect the activity in real time and record location information since they are connected through auto-mapping technology. CONCLUSIONS: This system allows for the analysis of patients' behavior patterns and the management of health care on the web by providing important basic information for activity patterns in the monitoring system. The proposed smart floor system can serve as the foundation for smart home applications in the future, which include health care, intelligent automation, and home security, owing to its advantages of low cost, large area, and high reliability.
RESUMO
Among the various wearable electronic devices, textile-based piezo sensors have emerged as the most attractive sensors for practical application. In this study, a conductive nonwoven fabric is fabricated to develop a textile-based piezo sensor. This high-performance fabric is fabricated by depositing multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) on cellulose nonwoven composites with carbon fibers (CNwCa) through a spray process to assign conductivity, followed by electrospinning thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) on the MWCNT-coated CNwCa to improve surface durability. Each component is optimized through experiments to control the electrical and physical characteristics of the conductive nonwoven fabric. The static and dynamic piezoresistive properties of the fabricated MWCNT composite conductive nonwoven are measured using a source meter and the fabricated sensor driving circuitry. In addition, a prototype bag with a touch sensor is developed using the fabricated conductive nonwoven fabric and its touchpad function is demonstrated using an Android application. The operation as a mode-switchable touch sensor was experimentally verified by inserting the sensor into a bag so that it can be used without direct manipulation on a mobile device. The findings of this study suggest that the developed flexible textile-based conductive nonwoven fabric can be effectively used in wearable devices with piezoresistive sensors.
RESUMO
Physical dormancy, a structural feature of the seed coat known as hard seededness, is an important characteristic for adaptation of plants against unstable and unpredictable environments. To dissect the molecular basis of qHS1, a quantitative trait locus for hard seededness in soybean (Glycine max (L) Merr.), we developed a near-isogenic line (NIL) of a permeable (soft-seeded) cultivar, Tachinagaha, containing a hard-seed allele from wild soybean (G. soja) introduced by successive backcrossings. The hard-seed allele made the seed coat of Tachinagaha more rigid by increasing the amount of ß-1,4-glucans in the outer layer of palisade cells of the seed coat on the dorsal side of seeds, known to be a point of entrance of water. Fine-mapping and subsequent expression and sequencing analyses revealed that qHS1 encodes an endo-1,4-ß-glucanase. A single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) introduced an amino acid substitution in a substrate-binding cleft of the enzyme, possibly reducing or eliminating its affinity for substrates in permeable cultivars. Introduction of the genomic region of qHS1 from the impermeable (hard-seeded) NIL into the permeable cultivar Kariyutaka resulted in accumulation of ß-1,4-glucan in the outer layer of palisade cells and production of hard seeds. The SNP allele found in the NIL was further associated with the occurrence of hard seeds in soybean cultivars of various origins. The findings of this and previous studies may indicate that qHS1 is involved in the accumulation of ß-1,4-glucan derivatives such as xyloglucan and/or ß-(1,3)(1,4)-glucan that reinforce the impermeability of seed coats in soybean.
