Cryopreservation is a key technology in biology and clinical practice. This paper presents a digital microfluidic device that automates sample preparation for mammalian embryo vitrification. Individual micro droplets manipulated on the microfluidic device were used as micro-vessels to transport a single mouse embryo through a complete vitrification procedure. Advantages of this approach, compared to manual operation and channel-based microfluidic vitrification, include automated operation, cryoprotectant concentration gradient generation, and feasibility of loading and retrieval of embryos.

This paper proposes a new biometric identifier for humans based on eye blinking waveform extracted from brain waves. Brain waves were recorded using Neurosky Mindwave headset from 25 volunteers. Two approaches are adopted for the pre-processing stage; the first approach uses empirical mode decomposition to isolate electro-oculogram signal from brain waves, then, extracts eye blinking signal. The second approach extracts eye blinking signal directly from brain waves. Features are extracted based on time delineation of the eye blinking waveform and classified using linear discriminant analysis. The best correct identification and equal error rates achieved are 98.51% and 2.5% for identification and verification modes respectively. The obtained results in this paper confirm that eye blinking waveform carries discriminant information and is therefore appropriate as a basis for human recognition task.