Cerebral Palsy (CP) poses substantial challenges to individuals, affecting their physical capabilities and daily functioning, and necessitates tailored interventions to enhance their quality of life and independence. Hand functionality is often affected in more than 60% of individuals with CP; they (mostly children) may spend up to 2-3 hours tightening their shoes perfectly. This includes the tightening of laces, standing up to determine if it is sufficient, and having to repeat the process many times till desired throughout the day. This paper focuses on the development of such a system that will assist them in effectively reducing this time to an approximate maximum time of 10 minutes. In its proposed form, this would reduce the shoe-tying process and make it ~18 times faster. The system will allow the user to perform the process with one hand and be simple and reliable. This additional freedom, among utilization of other systems, could lead to a betterment in mental health regarding the desire to perform outdoor activities among individuals with CP

In this study, we developed a lightweight shoe sensor system equipped with four high-capacity, compact triaxial force sensors and an inertial measurement unit. Remarkably, this system enabled measurements of localized three-directional ground reaction forces (GRFs) at each sensor position (heel, first and fifth metatarsal heads, and toe) and estimations of stride length and toe clearance during walking. Compared to conventional optical motion analysis systems, the developed sensor system provided relatively accurate results for stride length and minimum toe clearance. To test the performance of the system, 15 older and eight young adults were instructed to walk along a straight-line while wearing the system. The results revealed that compared to the young adults, older adults exhibited lower localized GRF contributions from the heel and greater localized GRF contribution from the toe and fifth metatarsal locations. Furthermore, the older adults exhibited greater variability in their stride length and smaller toe clearance with greater variability compared to the young adults. These results underscore the effectiveness of the proposed gait analysis system in distinguishing the gait characteristics of young and older adults, potentially replacing traditional motion capture systems and force plates in gait analysis.

Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) worldwide includes infections by ESKAPE-E pathogens. Environmental surfaces and fomites are important components in HAI transmission dynamics, and shoe soles are vectors of HAI. Ultraviolet (UV) disinfection is an effective method to inactivate pathogenic microorganisms. In this study, we investigated whether the SANITECH UVC shoe sole decontaminator equipment that provides germicidal UVC radiation could effectively reduce this risk of different pathogens. Six standard strains and four clinical MDR strains in liquid and solid medium were exposed to a UVC System at specific concentrations at other times. Bacterial inac-tivation (growth and cultivability) was investigated using colony counts and resazurin as meta-bolic indicators. SEM was performed to assess the membrane damage. Statistically significant reduction in cell viability for all ATCCs strains occurred after 10 sec of exposure to the UVC sys-tem, except for S enterica, which only occurred at 20 sec. The cell viability of P. aeruginosa (90.9%), E. faecalis and A. baumannii (85.3%), S. enterica (82.9%), E. coli (79.2%) and S. aureus (71.9%) was re-duced considerably at 20 sec. In colony count, after 12 sec of UVC exposure, all ATCC strains showed a 100% reduction in CFU counts, except for A. baumannii, which reduced 97.7%. A sub-stantial reduction of colonies above 3 log10 was observed at 12 and 20 sec in all bacterial strains tested, except for A. baumannii ATCC 19606 (12 sec). The exposure of ATCCs bacterial strains to the UVC system for only 2 sec was able to reduce 100% in the CFU count in all ATCCs strains, S. au-reus, P. aeruginosa, E. coli, A. baumannii, E. faecalis, except the S. enterica strain which had a statis-tically significant reduction of 99.7%. In ATCC strains, there was a substantial decrease in colonies after 4 sec (sec) of exposure to the UVC system, with a reduction ranging from 3.78-4.15 log10 CFU/mL. This reduction was observed in MDR/ESKAPE-E strains within 10 sec, showing that UVC could eliminate above 3.84 log10 CFU/mL. SEM showed a reduction of pili-like appendages after UVC treatment in all strains except for E. coli (ATCC 25922). The Sanitech UVC shoe sole decontaminator equipment from Astech Co. effectively killed in vitro a series of ATCCs and MDR/ESKAPE-E bacteria of sanitary interest, commonly found in the hospital environment.