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The isolation of sperm cells from background cell populations and debris is an essential step in all assisted reproductive technologies. Conventional techniques for sperm recovery from testicular sperm extractions stagnate at the sample processing stage, where it can take several hours to identify viable sperm from a background of collateral cells such as white bloods cells (WBCs), red blood cells (RBCs), epithelial cells (ECs) and in some cases cancer cells. Manual identification of sperm from contaminating cells and debris is a tedious and time-consuming operation that can be suitably addressed through inertial microfluidics. Microfluidics has proven an effective technology for high-quality sperm selection based on motility. However, motility-based selection methods cannot cater for viable, non-motile sperm often present in testicular or epididymal sperm extractions and aspirations. This study demonstrates the use of a 3D printed inertial microfluidic device for the separation of sperm cells from a mixed suspension of WBCs, RBCs, ECs, and leukemic cancer cells. This technology presents a 36-fold time improvement for the recovery of sperm cells (> 96%) by separating sperm, RBCS, WBCs, ECs and cancer cells into tight bands in less than 5 min. Furthermore, microfluidic processing of sperm has no impact on sperm parameters; vitality, motility, morphology, or DNA fragmentation of sperm. Applying inertial microfluidics for non-motile sperm recovery can greatly improve the current processing procedure of testicular sperm extractions, simplifying the fertility outcomes for severe forms of male infertility that warrant the surgery.

A Walrasian Market can be modeled as a distributed system consisting a set of independent buyers and sellers. The Walrasian equilibrium theorem proves the existence of the optimal price that results in the market clean state or Walrasian Equilibrium where the sum of absolute excess demand is zero. It is proved that finding this equilibrium price is an NP-hard problem. In this paper, we present an efficient distributed control-theoretic approach for finding the Walrasian equilibrium in an exchange economy. We have modeled the price adjustment process as a closed-loop control system where the sum of absolute excess demand is measured as the system error that is fed to commodity moderators in a distributed schema simultaneously, and then each commodity moderator adjusts the price of its related commodity. We devised a controller algorithm with low complexity and fast convergence that iteratively moves the error value to zero. The proposed scheme, finds the equilibrium price and Pareto efficient allocation without knowing the shape of user utility functions or their preferences. It is scalable and is usable for exchange economies with multiple goods and many types of users.

Liver transplantation remains the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage liver disease. However, allograft availability continues to be a problem, and extending the criteria for organ acceptance is key. Deceased donors after electrical accidents, as well as electricity-traumatized allografts, are not common but should be considered suitable. This study describes 2 cases of heart-beating organ donors with electrical injury to the liver. In 1 case, the electric shock was the cause of death; in the second case, the injury was caused by defibrillation at organ procurement. Both allografts had sustained sizeable electrical injury, and both resulted in excellent early posttransplant outcomes. These cases demonstrate that electrocution is not a contraindication to donation and that electricity-traumatized allografts may remain transplantable after careful assessment. Education of all staff in the management of such donors can optimize utility of such allografts.