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Human gait is a significant health indicator used in a wide range of applications, including diagnosis, monitoring, rehabilitation, and sport. Among all the human joints movements, the knee flexion/extension is a crucial movement, and its evaluation may provide valuable information related to pathologies, walking disorders, to evaluate the efficiency of prescribed therapies and the rehabilitation of patients, and to improve performances of athletes. In this work, we designed, fabricated, and tested a wearable system (i.e., an instrumented knee brace) for monitoring knee movements under static and dynamic conditions. The system consists of a single fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor encapsulated in a soft and flexible polymer matrix in contact with the knee brace. The metrological characterization of two sensors (dimensions 50 mm × 30mm × 10mm and 40mm × 30mm × 10mm) has been performed by applying strains up to 2% which correspond to max length variations (ΔL MAX ) of 0.76 mm and 0.55 mm for the big and the small sensors, respectively. Additionally, pilot trials have been carried to preliminary test the instrumented knee brace for monitoring flexion/extension movements during walking at different speeds (i.e., 3 km/h, 4 km/h, 5 km/h). Both the sensors showed an approximately linear response in the range of interest and sensitivities up to 3.944 nm-mm−1, The wearable system was able to monitor the number of gait cycles and to discriminate the knee flexion and extension movements during walking.

Clinical scenarios could be characterized by several adverse conditions. For this reason, it is important to ensure a safety interaction between medical equipment and patients. In this context, optical fiber-based technologies are becoming very popular because they are considered intrinsically safe and immune to electromagnetic interferences. Among them, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors are gaining in importance for the monitoring of physiological parameters like breathing rate (BR), heart rate, and body temperature. Moreover, among many procedures, polymer functionalization of the fiber optic allows making FBG sensitive to chemical parameters, including: relative humidity (RH), pH, gas, and biomolecules. In this study, we investigated the possibility of using a FBG-based needle for monitoring both RH and BR during mechanical ventilation. Regarding RH estimation, we performed a qualitative analysis to assess if the probe is able to follow RH changes, during mechanical ventilation. The proposed systems experienced a Bragg wavelength shift of ~0.38 nm for RH changes from ~20% to ~90% and vice versa. The performance of the needle for BR estimation was investigated at different minute volumes (MV) and BR set by using the ventilator, covering the values used in the adult ventilation. The BR values estimated by the system were compared to the ones provided by the mechanical ventilator, and used as reference. The absolute value of the percentage errors $(\varepsilon _{\mathrm {e}\mathrm {r}\mathrm {r}}\%)$ was always lower than 3.7% (in the 90% of cases it was

article i nfo Background: Sweet-seeded domesticated almonds were brought to the Mediterranean Basin from central Asia about 4000 years ago. In Italy, most of the almonds produced are cultivated in the southern part of the country. Local populations of the tree in Sardinia are largely seed-derived and mostly self-incompatible, so have developed extensive genetic diversity. The need to protect biodiversity has prompted a revived interest in local genetic materials in almond. Two Italian collections have been established, one in Sardinia and the other in Apulia. These collections were the focus of the present evaluation of genetic diversity. Results: Eleven SSRs (microsatellites) were used for fingerprinting. The Sardinian germplasm was highly polymorphic, revealing a mean of 14.5 alleles per locus and a mean heterozygosity of 0.71. Using a model-based clustering approach, two genetic clusters were distinguished: one included all the commercial varieties and most of the Sardinian accessions, and the other most of the Apulian accessions. A similar structure was produced using a distance-based cluster analysis. The Sardinian accessions could still be distinguished from the commercial germplasm with few exceptions. Conclusion: The extensive genetic variability present in the Sardinian and Apulian almond germplasm indicates that these materials represent an important source of genes for the improvement of the crop.

Author(s): Resta, P; Zhang, HB; Dubcovsky, J; Dvořak, J | Abstract: The origins of the genomes of allotetraploid species Triticum biunciale, T. ovatum, T. neglectum, and T. columnare, and allohexaploid T. rectum were investigated by examining the presence of specific restriction fragments of repeated nucleotide sequencies in DNAs of the polyploid species. The restriction fragments were detectable either in a single diploid Triticum species (unique characters) or a group of diploid species (unique shared characters). The analysis showed that Triticum biunciale and T. ovatum are closely related. In both species, one pair of genomes is closely related to the genome of T. umbellulatum and the other is a modified genome of T. comosum. The same genome formula, UUM°M°, is proposed for T. biunciale and T. ovatum. Potential reasons for the modification of the M°genome are discussed. Triticum neglectum and T. columnare are also closely related to each other and have the same genomes. They share the U genome with T. biunciale and T. ovatum, but their second pair of genomes is unrelated to the M°genome. No relationship was found of this genome to a genome of any extant diploid species of Triticum or any phylogenetic lineage leading to the extant diploid species. This unknown genome is designated X1. The proposed genome formula for T. neglectum and T. columnare is UUX1X1. Hexaploid T. rectum originated from hybridization of one of the tetraploid species with the formula UUX1X1, likely T. neglectum, with T. umaristatum (genome N), and its genome formula is UUX1X1NN.

Cytogenetic work has shown that the tetraploid wheats, Triticum turgidum and T. timopheevii, and the hexaploid wheat T. aestivum have one pair of A genomes, whereas hexaploid T. zhukovskyi has two. Variation in 16 repeated nucleotide sequences was used to identify sources of the A genomes. The A genomes of T. turgidum, T. timopheevii, and T. aestivum were shown to be contributed by T. urartu. Little divergence in the repeated nucleotide sequences was detected in the A genomes of these species from the genome of T. urartu. In T. zhukovskyi one A genome was contributed by T. urartu and the other was contributed by T. monococcum. It is concluded that T. zhukovskyi originated from hybridization of T. timopheevii with T. monococcum. The repeated nucleotide sequence profiles in the A genomes of T. zhukovskyi showed reduced correspondence with those in the genomes of both ancestral species, T. urartu and T. monococcum. This differentiation is attributed to heterogenetic chromosome pairing and segregation among chromosomes of the two A genomes in T. zhukovskyi.Key words: phylogeny, Triticum, Aegilops, repeated nucleotide sequences.