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In this paper, the plasma glucose regulation problem for type 2 diabetic patients is studied. A nonlinear time-delay model of the glucose–insulin regulatory system is exploited to design a quantized sampled-data static output feedback control, using only glucose measurements. It is shown that the proposed control law achieves semiglobal practical stability of the related quantized sampled-data closed-loop glucose–insulin system with arbitrary small steady-state tracking error. The controller involves past values of the glucose, which may not be available in the buffer, for instance because of non-uniform sampling. Such a drawback is overcome by means of spline interpolation. Furthermore, quantization in both input and output channels are taken into account. A pre-clinical validation, concerning the performances of the proposed glucose regulator, is carried out by means of a well-known simulator of diabetic patients, broadly accepted for testing insulin infusion therapies. The simulation results pave the way for further clinical evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diagnosis of gastrointestinal nematodes in livestock and companion animals has been neglected for years and there has been an historical underinvestment in the development and improvement of diagnostic tools, undermining the undoubted utility of surveillance and control programmes. However, a new impetus by the scientific community and the quickening pace of technological innovations, are promoting a renaissance of interest in developing diagnostic capacity for nematode infections in veterinary parasitology. A cross-cutting priority for diagnostic tools is the development of pen-side tests and associated decision support tools that rapidly inform on the levels of infection and morbidity. This includes development of scalable, parasite detection using artificial intelligence for automated counting of parasitic elements and research towards establishing biomarkers using innovative molecular and proteomic methods. The aim of this review is to assess the state-of-the-art in the diagnosis of helminth infections in livestock and companion animals and presents the current advances of diagnostic methods for intestinal parasites harnessing (i) automated methods for copromicroscopy based on artificial intelligence, (ii) immunodiagnosis, and (iii) molecular- and proteome-based approaches. Regardless of the method used, multiple factors need to be considered before diagnostics test results can be interpreted in terms of control decisions. Guidelines on how to apply diagnostics and how to interpret test results in different animal species are increasingly requested and some were recently made available in veterinary parasitology for the different domestic species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]