Episiotomy is still a controversy issue among physicians, despite the enormous growth of clinical research. Therefore, the potential of numerical modeling of anatomical structures to simulate biomechanical processes was exploited to realize quantitatively the real effects of the episiotomy and its consequences on the pelvic floor muscle. As such, a numerical model was used composed of pelvic floor muscles, a surface delimiting the anterior region, and a fetus body. A normal vaginal delivery without and with different episiotomies was simulated with the fetus in vertex presentation and occipitoanterior position. According to our numerical results, a mediolateral episiotomy has a protective effect, reducing the stress on the muscles, and the force required to delivery successfully up to 52.2 %. The intervention also has benefits on muscle injury, reducing the damage to a small zone. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using a computational modeling approach to study parturition, namely the capability to isolate and evaluate the mechanical significance of a single feature. It must, however, be taken into account that the numerical model does not assess problems that may occur as blood loss, infections and others, so it is necessary to examine whether the benefits of an intervention outweigh the risks.

In this paper, a novel algorithm is proposed with application in sleep/awake detection and in multiclass sleep stage classification (awake, non rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and REM sleep). In turn, NREM is further divided into three stages denoted here by S1, S2, and S3. Six electroencephalographic (EEG) and two electro-oculographic (EOG) channels were used in this study. The maximum overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT) with the multi-resolution Analysis is applied to extract relevant features from EEG and EOG signals. The extracted feature set is transformed and normalized to reduce the effect of extreme values of features. A set of significant features are selected by mRMR which is a powerful feature selection method. Finally the selected feature set is classified using support vector machines (SVMs). The system achieved 95.0% of average accuracy for sleep/awake detection. As concerns the multiclass case, the average accuracy of sleep stages classification was 93.0%.

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Persistent urinary tract infections (UTI) are often caused by E. coli adhered to urothelium. This type of cells is generally recognized as very tolerant to antibiotics which renders difficult the treatment of chronic UTI. This study investigates the use of lytic bacteriophages as alternative antimicrobial agents, particularly the interaction of phages with E. coli adhered to urothelium and specifically determines their efficiency against this type of cells. The bacterial adhesion to urothelium was performed varying the bacterial cell concentrations and the period and conditions (static, shaken) of adhesion. Three collection bacteriophages (T1, T4, and phiX174 like phages) were tested against clinical E. coli isolates and only one was selected for further infection experiments. Based on the lytic spectrum against clinical isolates and its ability to infect the highest number of antibiotic resistant strains, the T1-like bacteriophage was selected. This bacteriophage caused nearly a 45% reduction of the bacterial population after 2 h of treatment. This study provides evidence that bacteriophages are effective in controlling suspended and adhered cells and therefore can be a viable alternative to antibiotics to control urothelium-adhered bacteria.

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Vaginal childbirth is the leading cause of pelvic floor muscles injury, which contributes to pelvic floor dysfunction, being enhanced by fetal malposition. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to verify the influence of mediolateral episiotomies in the mechanics of the pelvic floor with the fetus in occiput posterior position when compared to the occiput anterior position. Numerical simulations of vaginal deliveries, with and without episiotomy, are performed based on the Finite Element Method. The biomechanical model includes the pelvic floor muscles, a surface to delimit the anterior region of the birth canal and a fetus. Fetal malposition induces greater extension of the muscle compared to the normal position, leading to increases of stretch. The faster enlargement may be responsible for a prolonged second stage of labor. Regarding the force required to achieve delivery, the difference between the analyzed cases are 35 N, which might justify the increased need of surgical interventions. Furthermore, episiotomy is essential in reducing the damage to values near the ones obtained with normal position, making the fetal position irrelevant. These biomechanical models have become extremely useful tools to provide some understanding of pelvic floor function during delivery helping in the development of preventative strategies.