Human activities are increasingly contaminating surface and groundwater reserves. Among various pollutants, ethylene glycol (EG) contamination in water is particularly dangerous. At low concentrations it can enter the body undetected and causes serious health problems such as kidney failure and gastrointestinal disorders. This study demonstrates the use of symmetrically etched single-mode plastic optical fiber (POF) sensor model operating at 1550 nm for detecting EG presence in water using COMSOL Multiphysics. The working of the sensor is based on evanescent field interactions with surrounding medium to detect refractive index (RI) changes, while transmission variations through etched POF serving as the sensing metric. Simulations were conducted for aqueous EG solutions ranging from 0 to 0.15 weight fraction, corresponding to RI values ranging between 1.316 and 1.330. The sensor design was optimized by examining the impact of etched cladding diameter and etched length on sensitivity. These parameters were varied from 60 to 7.05 and 1 to 30 μm, respectively. This in turn lead to sensitivity values in the range of 0.39 × 10 ⁻³ to 99.50 × 10 ⁻³ Trans. (A.U)/RIU. Highlighting the importance of evanescent field-surrounding interaction for etched POF sensors, these findings revealed that sensitivity has direct relation with the length of etched region and inverse relation with cladding diameter. The maximum sensitivity of 99.50 × 10 ⁻³ Trans. (A.U)/RIU was achieved with a 30 μm etched length and 7.05 μm cladding diameter. The proposed POF-based sensor demonstrates strong potential for applications in biomedical engineering, biochemical monitoring, and beverage industry offering a compact and sensitive solution for EG contamination detection in water.

The possibility of tightly controlling the cellular microenvironment within microfluidic devices represents an important step toward precision analysis of cellular phenotypes in vitro. Microfluidic platforms that allow both long-term mammalian cell culture and dynamic modulation of the culture environment can support quantitative studies of cells’ responses to drugs. Here, we report the design and testing of a novel microfluidic device of simple production (single Polydimethylsiloxane layer), which integrates a micromixer with vacuum-assisted cell loading for long-term mammalian cell culture and dynamic mixing of four different culture media. Finite element modeling was used to predict flow rates and device dimensions to achieve diffusion-based fluid mixing. The device showed efficient mixing and dynamic exchange of media in the cell-trapping chambers, and viability of mammalian cells cultured for long-term in the device. This work represents the first attempt to integrate single-layer microfluidic mixing devices with vacuum-assisted cell-loading systems for mammalian cell culture and dynamic stimulation.

Among the commonly occurring medical emergencies such as heart attack, arrhythmia, valve diseases and high blood pressure, reduction in blood flow to the heart prevents the reception of sufficient oxygen to the heath muscles known as myocardial ischemia caused the partial of complete blockage of coronary arteries. Myocardial ischemia prevents the heart muscles to pump the blood efficiently that can ultimately lead to the heart attack or may cause abnormal heart rhythms. Electrocardiogram (ECG) an electrical activity of the heart is mostly used by the cardiologist for diagnosing MI patients. Identifying the MI manually is time consuming and a possibility of misinterpretation exists to the changes in the patient ECG. An automated method for the detection of MI pattern in the ECG is proposed using wavelet transform. It is observed that the difference in the height of PR segment and J-point allows to distinguish between a normal ECG and abnormal MI ECG. Furthermore, this study also finds that there is a significant difference in the J-point, R-peak amplitude and ST- wave of the MI patient than the normal healthy person when the patients ECG is recorded using MAX30001.