Endophytes, which are receiving increasing attention, have been found to be potential sources of bioactive metabolites following the discovery of paclitaxel producing endophytic fungi. In the present study, a total of 348 endophytes were isolated from different parts of 24 Malaysian medicinal plants. Three selected endophytes (HAB10R12, HAB11R3 and HAB21F25) were investigated for their antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities. For antimicrobial activity, HAB10R12 and HAB11R3 were found to be most active against bacteria and fungi, respectively. Their antimicrobial effects were comparable to, if not better than, a number of current commercial antibacterial and antifungal agents. Both HAB10R12 and HAB21F25 were found to be potential anticancer drug candidates, having potent activity against MCF-7 and HCT116 cell lines and warrant further investigation.

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Breathing rate monitoring is a must for hospitalized patients with the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We review in this paper recent implementations of breathing monitoring techniques, where both contact and remote approaches are presented. It is known that with non-contact monitoring, the patient is not tied to an instrument, which improves patients' comfort and enhances the accuracy of extracted breathing activity, since the distress generated by a contact device is avoided. Remote breathing monitoring allows screening people infected with COVID-19 by detecting abnormal respiratory patterns. However, non-contact methods show some disadvantages such as the higher set-up complexity compared to contact ones. On the other hand, many reported contact methods are mainly implemented using discrete components. While, numerous integrated solutions have been reported for non-contact techniques, such as continuous wave (CW) Doppler radar and ultrawideband (UWB) pulsed radar. These radar chips are discussed and their measured performances are summarized and compared. Index Terms-Chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), COVID-19, breathing monitoring techniques, Doppler radar, ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse radar. I. INTRODUCTIONT TE main function of the respiratory system is gas exchange. Oxygen is transferred from the external ambient into our bloodstream, while carbon dioxide is expelled outside [1]. Fig. 1 illustrates the respiratory system including the upper and lower respiratory tract regions. When inhaling, the air flow passes through the larynx and the trachea, and then splits into two bronchi. Each bronchus is divided into two Manuscript

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In this paper, we present a new Carrier Width Modulation (CWM) scheme for simultaneous transfer of power and data over a single inductive link. An ultra-low power CWM demodulator is also proposed. Unlike conventional demodulators for a similar modulation scheme, the proposed CWM circuit allows higher-speed demodulation and simple implementation. It works well as a generic demodulator operating at a frequency range between 10 and 31 MHz. It also supports a wide range of data rates under any selected frequency from the operating range. A CWM-based scheme encoding two-bit-per-symbol, called Quad-level CWM (QCWM) is also proposed. The latter allows high data-rates-to-frequency ratios. Using a 0.13-µm CMOS process and 1.2 V power supply, both CWM and QCWM demodulators were implemented and fabricated. They respectively occupy die sizes of 2137 and 3256 µm 2 and dissipate, in worst conditions, 16.9 and 35.5 µW. Compared with state-of-the-art demodulators used for inductive forward data transmission, the proposed demodulators are distinctive given their low-energy efficiency and small silicon areas. INDEX TERMS Carrier width modulation, demodulator, downlink data transmission, inductive link.

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