Transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) require high transparency and low sheet resistance for applications in photovoltaics, photodetectors, flat panel displays, touch screen devices and imagers. ...Indium tin oxide (ITO), or other transparent conductive oxides, have typically been used, and provide a baseline sheet resistance (RS) vs. transparency (T) relationship. However, ITO is relatively expensive (due to limited abundance of Indium), brittle, unstable, and inflexible; moreover, ITO transparency drops rapidly for wavelengths above 1000 nm. Motivated by a need for transparent conductors with comparable (or better) RS at a given T, as well as flexible structures, several alternative material systems have been investigated. Single‐layer graphene (SLG) or few‐layer graphene provide sufficiently high transparency (≈97% per layer) to be a potential replacement for ITO. However, large‐area synthesis approaches, including chemical vapor deposition (CVD), typically yield films with relatively high sheet resistance due to small grain sizes and high‐resistance grain boundaries (HGBs). In this paper, we report a hybrid structure employing a CVD SLG film and a network of silver nanowires (AgNWs): RS as low as 22 Ω/□ (stabilized to 13 Ω/□ after 4 months) have been observed at high transparency (88% at λ = 550 nm) in hybrid structures employing relatively low‐cost commercial graphene with a starting RS of 770 Ω/□. This sheet resistance is superior to typical reported values for ITO, comparable to the best reported TCEs employing graphene and/or random nanowire networks, and the film properties exhibit impressive stability under mechanical pressure, mechanical bending and over time. The design is inspired by the theory of a co‐percolating network where conduction bottlenecks of a 2D film (e.g., SLG, MoS2) are circumvented by a 1D network (e.g., AgNWs, CNTs) and vice versa. The development of these high‐performance hybrid structures provides a route towards robust, scalable and low‐cost approaches for realizing high‐performance TCE.
Single layer graphene‐silver nanowire network co‐percolating 2D‐1D hybrid transparent conducting electrodes (TCE) with very low sheet resistance‐optical transparency values (22 Ω/□ (stabilized to 13 Ω/□ after 4 months) at 88% transmittance at λ = 550 nm) are achieved. The development of such a high performance (chemically/mechanically/optically stable) material is inspired by a theoretical prediction of co‐percolating transport in graphene‐wrapped silver nanowire network.
Three-dimensional printed polymeric lattice structures have recently gained interests in several engineering applications owing to their excellent properties such as low-density, energy absorption, ...strength-to-weight ratio, and damping performance. Three-dimensional (3D) lattice structure properties are governed by the topology of the microstructure and the base material that can be tailored to meet the application requirement. In this study, the effect of architected structural member geometry and base material on the viscoelastic response of 3D printed lattice structure has been investigated. The simple cubic lattice structures based on plate-, truss-, and shell-type structural members were used to describe the topology of the cellular solid. The proposed lattice structures were fabricated with two materials, i.e., PLA and ABS using the material extrusion (MEX) process. The quasi-static compression response of lattice structures was investigated, and mechanical properties were obtained. Then, the creep, relaxation and cyclic viscoelastic response of the lattice structure were characterized. Both material and topologies were observed to affect the mechanical properties and time-dependent behavior of lattice structure. Plate-based lattices were found to possess highest stiffness, while the highest viscoelastic behavior belongs to shell-based lattices. Among the studied lattice structures, we found that the plate-lattice is the best candidate to use as a creep-resistant LS and shell-based lattice is ideal for damping applications under quasi-static loading conditions. The proposed analysis approach is a step forward toward understanding the viscoelastic tolerance design of lattice structures.
The northern Pakistan is attributed with rough terrain, active seismicity, monsoon rains, and therefore hosts to variety of geohazards. Among the geohazards, landslides are the most frequent hazard ...with devastating impacts on economy and society. However, for most of the northern Pakistan, landslide susceptibility maps are not available which can be used for landslide hazard mitigation. This study aims to develop a remote sensing based landslide inventory, analysing their spatial distribution and develop the landslide susceptibility map. The area, selected for this study is comprised of Haramosh valley, Bagrote valley and some parts of Nagar valley, in the Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) in Gilgit-Baltistan, northern Pakistan. The SPOT-5 satellite image was used to develop a landslide inventory which was subsequently verified in the field. The landslide causative factors of topographic attributes (slope and aspect), geology, landcover, distances from fault, road and streams were used to evaluate their influence on the spatial distribution of landslides. The study revealed that the distance to road, slope gradient has the significant influence on the spatial distribution of the landslides, followed by the geology. The derived results were used in the Frequency ratio technique to develop a landslide susceptibility map. The developed landslide susceptibility map can be utilized for landslide mitigation in the study area.
Oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) is a group of skin depigmentation disorders. Clinical presentation of OCA includes defects in melanocyte differentiation, melanin biosynthesis, and melanosome maturation ...and transport.
A molecular diagnostics study of families presenting oculocutaneous albinism.
In this study, 17 consanguineous OCA families consisting of 93 patients were investigated. Whole Exome Sequencing (WES) of the index patient in each family were performed. Short listed variants of WES were Sanger validated for Mendelian segregation in obligate carriers and other available family members. Variant prioritization and pathogenicity were classified as per the criteria of American College Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG). Comparative computational modelling was performed to predict the potential damaging effect of the altered proteins.
15 pathogenic variations: c.132 T > A, c.346C > T, c.488C > G, c.1037G > A in TYR, c.1211C > T, c.1441G > A, c.1706_1707insT, c.2020C > G, c.2402G > C, c.2430del, in OCA2, c.1067G > A in TYRP1 and c.451C > T, c.515G > T, c.766C > T, c.917G > A in MC1R genes were identified. Three variants in OCA2 gene were characterized: c.1706_1707insT, c.2430del, and c.2402G > C, all of which were not reported before in OCA families.
A few studies focusing on mutation screening of OCA patients have been reported before; however, this study has uniquely presents the Pakhtun ethnic population residing on the North-Western boarder. It explains that TYR, OCA2, TYRP1, and MC1R variations lead to non-syndromic OCA phenotype The overlapping phenotypes of OCA can precisely be diagnosed for its molecular pathogenicity using WES. This study recommends WES as a first-line molecular diagnostic tool, and provides a basis for developing customized genetic tests i.e. pre-marital screening to reduce the disease burden in the future generations.
•Preprocessing is proposed to compensate inherent noise and low contrast.•A minimal set of highly representative regional features are employed.•The problem of class imbalance at a regional level is ...addressed for the first time.•Random Forest performance is much better than Support Vector Machine.
This paper presents a fully automated brain tissue classification method for normal and abnormal tissues and its associated region from Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery modality of Magnetic Resonance (MR) images. The proposed regional classification method is able to simultaneously detect and segment tumours to pixel-level accuracy. The region-based features considered in this study are statistical, texton histograms, and fractal features. This is the first study to address the class imbalance problem at the regional level using Random Majority Down-sampling-Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (RMD-SMOTE). A comparison of benchmark supervised techniques including Support Vector Machine, AdaBoost and Random Forest (RF) classifiers is presented, where the RF-based regional classifier is selected in the proposed approach due to its better generalization performance. The robustness of the proposed method is evaluated on the standard publicly available BRATS 2012 dataset using five standard benchmark measures. We demonstrate that the proposed method consistently outperforms three benchmark tumour classification methods in terms of Dice score and obtains significantly better results as compared to its SVM and AdaBoost counterparts in terms of precision and specificity at the 5% confidence interval. The promising results of the proposed method support its application for early detection and diagnosis of brain tumours in clinical settings.
The increasing numbers of patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty (THA) or total knee arthroplasty (TKA), combined with the rapidly growing repertoire of surgical techniques and interventions ...available have put considerable pressure on surgeons and other healthcare professionals to produce excellent results with early functional recovery and short hospital stays. The current economic climate and the restricted healthcare budgets further necessitate brief hospitalization while minimizing costs.Clinical pathways and protocols introduced to achieve these goals include a variety of peri-operative interventions to fulfill patient expectations and achieve the desired outcomes.In this review, we present an evidence-based summary of common interventions available to achieve enhanced recovery, reduce hospital stay, and improve functional outcomes following THA and TKA. It covers pre-operative patient education and nutrition, pre-emptive analgesia, neuromuscular electrical stimulation, pulsed electromagnetic fields, peri-operative rehabilitation, modern wound dressings, standard surgical techniques, minimally invasive surgery, and fast-track arthroplasty units.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Display omitted
•Efficient insolation model combining meteorological data and clear-sky model.•Non-uniform illumination on panels from direct, diffused, and albedo light.•Non-uniform illumination ...combined with circuit model to find hourly energy-output.•Global, location specific optimization and output of vertical bifacial solar farm.•Vertical bifacial outperforms monofacial farm by 10–20% globally (2m row spacing).
There have been sustained interest in bifacial solar cell technology since 1980s, with prospects of 30–50% increase in the output power from a stand-alone panel. Moreover, a vertical bifacial panel reduces dust accumulation and provides two output peaks during the day, with the second peak aligned to the peak electricity demand. Recent commercialization and anticipated growth of bifacial panel market have encouraged a closer scrutiny of the integrated power-output and economic viability of bifacial solar farms, where mutual shading will erode some of the anticipated energy gain associated with an isolated, single panel. Towards that goal, in this paper we focus on geography-specific optimization of ground-mounted vertical bifacial solar farms for the entire world. For local irradiance, we combine the measured meteorological data with the clear-sky model. In addition, we consider the effects of direct, diffuse, and albedo light. We assume the panel is configured into sub-strings with bypass-diodes. Based on calculated light collection and panel output, we analyze the optimum farm design for maximum yearly output at any given location in the world. Our results predict that, regardless of the geographical location, a vertical bifacial farm will yield 10–20% more energy than a traditional monofacial farm for a practical row-spacing of 2m (corresponding to 1.2m high panels). With the prospect of additional 5–20% energy gain from reduced soiling and tilt optimization, bifacial solar farm do offer a viable technology option for large-scale solar energy generation.
Myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported after COVID‐19 vaccine administration in children and adolescents, raising the concern about their possible association with these vaccines. The ...objective was to explore the incidence, clinical presentation, and association of myocarditis and pericarditis with COVID‐19 vaccines in children and adolescents. We conducted a systematic literature search on three databases, that is, Cochrane, MEDLINE/PubMed, and EMBASE from inception till March 2022. A total of three case reports, four case series, and six observational studies were included in the review. For case reports and case series, the mean age of the patients was 17.4 years, with 96.9% being male. Chest pain (n = 31, 93.9%), fever (n = 18, 54.5%), myalgias (n = 15, 45.4%) and headache (n = 9, 27.2%) were the most common presentations. Out of 33 patients, 32 (96.9%) of patients received Pfizer‐BioNTech whereas only one (3.03%) received Moderna (mRNA 1273). Clinical investigations revealed ST elevation (n = 32, 97%), and elevated CRP (n = 9, 27.2%) and cardiac troponin (n = 29, 87.8%). The pooled incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis from observational studies was (0.00063%) and (0.000074%) %, respectively. Myocarditis and pericarditis in children and adolescents after the COVID‐19 vaccines were more prevalent among males and more commonly observed after the second dose of Pfizer. Though the overall incidence was low, however, the clinicians should consider myocarditis and pericarditis as probable diagnosis when encountering young patients, with a history of vaccine administration, presenting with suggestive findings.
Purpose of Review
This publication updates an earlier review on the ever increasing knowledge about genetic polymorphism of
HLA-B*27
and discusses its clinical relevance.
Recent Findings
As of ...January 1, 2017, there are 213 known alleles of
HLA-B*27
at nucleotide sequence level, while at the translated protein level, there are 160 known subtypes based on one or more amino acid sequence differences. Some of these subtypes exhibit differential association with ankylosing spondylitis, and there may even be some level of hierarchy in this regard. On the other hand, HLA-B*27 has a protective effect against HCV, and this effect is also influenced by some of the subtypes of HLA-B*27. This may have important implications for designing anti-viral vaccines for global population and also for developing individualized treatments and vaccines.
Summary
Disease association and disease protective roles of HLA-B*27 suggest a common ground, i.e., promoting a more pronounced immune/inflammatory response for effective clearance of some pathogens, but that might, on the other hand, lead to autoimmunity and tissue injury in some circumstances.
A high-efficiency dual-purpose plasmonic perfect absorber sensor based on LiNbO3 and graphene layers was investigated in this paper for the refractive index and thermal sensing. The sensor design was ...kept simple for easy fabrication, comprising a LiNbO3 substrate with a quartz layer, thin layer of graphene, four gold nanorods, and a nanocavity in each unit cell. The nanocavity is located in the middle of the cell to facilitate the penetration of EM energy to the subsurface layers. The proposed sensor design achieved an output response of 99.9% reflection, which was easy to detect without having any specialized conditions for operability. The performance of the device was numerically investigated for the biomedical refractive index range of 1.33 to 1.40, yielding a sensitivity value of 981 nm/RIU with a figure-of-merit of 61.31 RIU−1. By including an additional polydimethylsiloxane polymer functional layer on the top, the device was also tested as a thermal sensor, which yielded a sensitivity level of −0.23 nm/°C.
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