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Urinary tract infections (UTIs) make up a significant proportion of the global burden of disease in vulnerable groups and tend to substantially impair the quality of life of those affected, making timely detection of UTIs a priority for public health. However, economic and societal barriers drastically reduce accessibility of traditional lab-based testing methods for critical patient groups in low-resource areas, negatively affecting their overall healthcare outcomes. As a result, cellulose-based materials such as paper and thread have garnered significant interest among researchers as substrates for so-called frugal analytical devices which leverage the material's portability and adaptability for facile and reproducible diagnoses of UTIs. Although the field may be only in its infancy, strategies aimed at commercial penetration can appreciably increase access to more healthcare options for at-risk people. In this review, we catalogue recent advances in devices that use cellulose-based materials as the primary housing or medium for UTI detection and chart out trends in the field. We also explore different modalities employed for detection, with particular emphasis on their ability to be ported onto discreet casings such as sanitary products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wired and wireless communications both play an important role in the blend of communications technologies necessary to enable future smart grid communications. Hybrid networks exploit independent mediums to extend network coverage and improve performance. However, whereas individual technologies have been applied in simulation networks, as far as we know there is only limited attention that has been paid to the development of a suite of hybrid communication simulation models for the communications system design. Hybrid simulation models are needed to capture the mixed communication technologies and IP address mechanisms in one simulation. To close this gap, we have developed a suite of hybrid communication system simulation models to validate the critical system design criteria for a distributed solar Photovoltaic (PV) communications system, including a single trip latency of 300 ms, throughput of 9.6 Kbps, and packet loss rate of 1%. The results show that three low-power wireless personal area network (LoWPAN)-based hybrid architectures can satisfy three performance metrics that are critical for distributed energy resource communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]