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Vital signs monitoring is a fundamental component of ensuring the health and safety of women and newborns during pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. This monitoring is often the first step in early detection of pregnancy abnormalities, providing an opportunity for prompt, effective intervention to prevent maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. Contemporary pregnancy monitoring systems require numerous devices wired to large base units; at least five separate devices with distinct user interfaces are commonly used to detect uterine contractility, maternal blood oxygenation, temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and fetal heart rate. Current monitoring technologies are expensive and complex with implementation challenges in low-resource settings where maternal morbidity and mortality is the greatest. We present an integrated monitoring platform leveraging advanced flexible electronics, wireless connectivity, and compatibility with a wide range of low-cost mobile devices. Three flexible, soft, and low-profile sensors offer comprehensive vital signs monitoring for both women and fetuses with time-synchronized operation, including advanced parameters such as continuous cuffless blood pressure, electrohysterography-derived uterine monitoring, and automated body position classification. Successful field trials of pregnant women between 25 and 41 wk of gestation in both high-resource settings (n = 91) and low-resource settings (n = 485) demonstrate the systems performance, usability, and safety.

Itch is a common clinical symptom and major driver of disease-related morbidity across a wide range of medical conditions. A substantial unmet need is for objective, accurate measurements of itch. In this article, we present a noninvasive technology to objectively quantify scratching behavior via a soft, flexible, and wireless sensor that captures the acousto-mechanic signatures of scratching from the dorsum of the hand. A machine learning algorithm validated on data collected from healthy subjects (n = 10) indicates excellent performance relative to smartwatch-based approaches. Clinical validation in a cohort of predominately pediatric patients (n = 11) with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis included 46 sleep-nights totaling 378.4 hours. The data indicate an accuracy of 99.0% (84.3% sensitivity, 99.3% specificity) against visual observation. This work suggests broad capabilities relevant to applications ranging from assessing the efficacy of drugs for conditions that cause itch to monitoring disease severity and treatment response.

Standard clinical care in neonatal and pediatric intensive-care units (NICUs and PICUs, respectively) involves continuous monitoring of vital signs with hard-wired devices that adhere to the skin and, in certain instances, can involve catheter-based pressure sensors inserted into the arteries. These systems entail risks of causing iatrogenic skin injuries, complicating clinical care and impeding skin-to-skin contact between parent and child. Here we present a wireless, non-invasive technology that not only offers measurement equivalency to existing clinical standards for heart rate, respiration rate, temperature and blood oxygenation, but also provides a range of important additional features, as supported by data from pilot clinical studies in both the NICU and PICU. These new modalities include tracking movements and body orientation, quantifying the physiological benefits of skin-to-skin care, capturing acoustic signatures of cardiac activity, recording vocal biomarkers associated with tonality and temporal characteristics of crying and monitoring a reliable surrogate for systolic blood pressure. These platforms have the potential to substantially enhance the quality of neonatal and pediatric critical care.

This qualitative study explored how social workers experienced changes, responded to the changes, and adapted to challenges in the ever-changing COVID-19 situation. This study interviewed 10 Korean social workers entering the post-pandemic era after enduring about three years of pandemic social work practice. A maximum variation sampling strategy of purposive sampling was used to collect data from social workers in various social work practice settings in South Korea. In-depth interviews, either in-person or Zoom videoconferencing, were conducted, and inductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Three key themes were drawn from interviews: Catching the Two Rabbits of Quarantine and Service Provision, Social Work Practices More Vulnerable to Disaster Situations, and Growth and Lessons Learned through the COVID-19 Pandemic. Korean social workers' experiences with service delivery countermeasures and the role that commitment to the profession and vocational responsibility played in social worker endurance and adaptability are reflected in the named themes. Lessons learned from this research can inform future policies and assist in the development of best practice guidelines in the event of future disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UC San Diego Library is in the process of digitizing approximately 300 audio recordings from the Paul Blackburn Collection, which consists of readings from over 200 poets. This session will take a look at the risk assessment, rights and permissions process, and the reason the Library decided to take a risk-averse approach to this project in order to make parts of this collection available online through its Digital Collections website. The second part of the session will review the work the Library’s Copyright Policies Task Force has undertaken to incorporate Creative Commons licenses to its collections.

Background: Recent in vitro and in vivo studies have suggested that the elastin peptide improves the skin's biophysical properties, enhancing the proliferation of fibroblasts and elastin synthesis, resulting in anti‐aging properties. Therefore, we conducted a randomized, double‐blinded, placebo‐controlled study to clinically evaluate the effect of elastin peptide intake on human skin. Materials and Methods: Healthy adult participants (N = 100) were randomly assigned to receive a test product containing 100 mg of Bonito elastin peptide (VGPG Elastin®) or placebo. In this study, all participants were Asian from Korea. The parameters of skin wrinkles, hydration, and brightening (melanin index) were measured at baseline and 4, 8, and 12 weeks after intervention. Results: The average skin roughness, maximum peak‐to‐valley values, maximum peak height of the wrinkle, maximum valley depth of the wrinkle, average maximum height of the wrinkle, and eye wrinkle volume improved considerably in the test group compared with the placebo after 12 weeks of intervention. Skin hydration was enhanced, and the melanin index was significantly lower in the test group than in the placebo group. No participant experienced adverse events related to the test product. Conclusion: Oral consumption of Bonito elastin peptide (VGPG Elastin®) reduced fine wrinkles, enhanced skin moisture, and decreased melanin index without significant adverse effects and may be a promising anti‐wrinkle, anti‐dryness, and anti‐pigmentation treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Oral collagen peptides supplementation was reported to improve skin integrity and counteract skin aging. Aims: A randomized, double‐blinded, placebo‐controlled study was conducted to clinically evaluate the impact of low‐molecular‐weight collagen peptides on the human skin. Patients/Methods: Healthy adult participants (n = 100) were randomly assigned to receive a test product containing low‐molecular‐weight collagen peptides or a placebo. Parameters of skin wrinkles, elasticity, hydration, and whitening (melanin and erythema indexes) were measured at baseline and after 4, 8, and 12 weeks. Results: Compared with the placebo group, the average skin roughness, maximum of all peak‐to‐valley values, maximum peak height of the wrinkle, and average maximum height of the wrinkle were significantly improved in the test group. Parameters of skin elasticity, including overall elasticity, net elasticity, and biological elasticity, were also significantly improved in the test group at Week 12 as compared with the placebo group. Moreover, skin hydration and whitening parameters changed more significantly in the test group than in the placebo group. None of the participants experienced adverse events related to the test product. Conclusions: Taken together, these findings suggest that low‐molecular‐weight collagen peptides supplementation can safely ehance human skin wrinkling, hydration, elasticity, and whitening properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]