Fabricating sensor devices directly on metallic component requires the use of an electrical insulating ceramic layer between the sensor and the metal. However, most ceramics lose their electrical ...insulation with the increasing temperature. In this paper, electrical insulation properties of ceramic thin film were extensively analyzed in high temperature environment up to 1300°C and a new ceramic coating with good high temperature insulation was developed. Results indicate that the ordinary YSZ ceramic film cannot maintain enough resistivity under high temperature above 600°C. A new methodology is therefore proposed to compensate the possible errors of the sensors brought by the reduced resistivity in the ceramic. Meanwhile an improved ceramic coating recipe was developed to improve the electrical insulation which can meet the high temperature insulation requirement up to 1300°C. Extensive numeric simulations considering electrical and thermal multi-physics interaction were conducted to analyze and estimate electrical performance under high temperature caused by the reduced resistivity of ceramic thin film onto which the thermal sensor is fabricated. Conduction current with the various thickness and defect situations in the ceramic thin film were studied through the extensive simulation, and a competitive behaviors of various current flows in this sensor/ceramic/metal composite structures is observed
To evaluate the performance of kidney-specific biomarkers (neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1), and cystatin-C) in early detection of acute kidney ...injury (AKI) following cardiac arrest (CA) when compared to serum creatinine.
Adult CA patients who had kidney-specific biomarkers of AKI collected within 12 h of return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) were included. The association between renal biomarker levels post-ROSC and the development of KDIGO stage III AKI within 7 days of enrollment were assessed as well as their predictive value of future AKI development, neurological outcomes, and survival to discharge.
Of 153 patients, 54 (35%) developed stage III AKI within 7 days, and 98 (64%) died prior to hospital discharge. Patients who developed stage III AKI, compared to those who did not, had higher median levels of creatinine, NGAL, and cystatin-C (p < 0.001 for all). There was no statistically significant difference in KIM-1 between groups. No biomarker outperformed creatinine in the ability to predict stage III AKI, neurological outcomes, or survival outcomes (p > 0.05 for all). However, NGAL, cystatin-C, and creatinine all performed better than KIM-1 in their ability to predict AKI development (p < 0.01 for all).
In post-CA patients, creatinine, NGAL, and cystatin-C (but not KIM-1) measured shortly after ROSC were higher in patients who subsequently developed AKI. No biomarker was statistically superior to creatinine on its own for predicting the development of post-arrest AKI.
PURPOSE:To evaluate the recurrence of Thiel-Behnke dystrophy (linked to the 10 q23-q24 locus) after phototherapeutic keratectomy or penetrating keratoplasty.
METHODS:This is a retrospective study of ...4 patients (8 eyes) who underwent phototherapeutic keratectomy and 1 patient (2 eyes) who underwent penetrating keratoplasty. Best corrected visual acuity was assessed, and biomicroscopic examinations for evidence of recurrent dystrophy were documented and photographed. The location, lesion distribution, and lesion pattern of any recurrence was noted.
RESULTS:Follow-up ranged from 8 months to 25 years (mean ± SD 9.7 ± 7.97 years). All 10 eyes showed biomicroscopic evidence of central recurrence. Six eyes showed an intermediate zone of honeycomb opacities as well as a peripheral zone of focal and geographic lesions. Despite the high incidence of recurrence, functional central visual acuity was maintained. All eyes maintained functional best corrected visual acuity (ranging from 20/25 to 20/80) despite the postoperative recurrence.
CONCLUSION:Recurrence of Thiel-Behnke corneal dystrophy is extremely high after either phototherapeutic keratectomy or penetrating keratoplasty. Despite the high incidence of recurrence, the central cornea is the last to be affected. The peripheral-to-central progression of the lesions points to an epithelial origin for the pathogenesis of the dystrophy. Phototherapeutic keratectomy in the treatment of Thiel-Behnke corneal dystrophy offers a safe and effective treatment modality, providing patients up to 8 years of improved vision ranging from 8 months to 8 years (mean ± SD 3.7 ± 2.7 years) and delaying or circumventing the need for more invasive intraocular surgical intervention.
•Although FBAR has already been used in industry product, study on RF performance on designs/process variations is still missing.•In this report various FBARs were designed, fabricated and analyzed ...to study wafer-level site-to-site RF variation on design and fabrication process.•Wafer-level and wafer-to-wafer variation of the device frequency response are fairly homogenous with the resonance frequency of the FBAR devices target ranging from 1.8 to 2.1 Ghz.•Simulation verified that this frequency variation correlates to the piezoelectric film variation of 1.6–1.9 μm variation.
Thin film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) plays a very important role in radio frequency (RF) filters used in cell phone and other wireless systems. Although FBAR is commercialized, the design/process interactions on the frequency response variation in FBAR device are still lacking. Design and fabrication are two crucial aspects affecting FBAR device performance. In this report, various solidly mounted resonators (SMR) were designed, fabricated and analyzed to study wafer-level site-to-site RF variation on design and fabrication process. As a key process step for SMR FBAR, the optimization process of Mg-doped ZnO piezoelectric thin film deposition was studied by varying thin film sputtering conditions using various sputtering targets and by post annealing treatment after the deposition. The quality of this crucial layer was verified by XRD on its (0 0 2) crystallization and wafer-level FBAR RF characterization. FBAR devices with high quality were fabricated with an excellent resonant behavior near 2 GHz and a maximum return loss of −15 to 25 dB. Quality factor Q ranges from 400 to 800, with a coupling coefficient keff2 of 1.5–3%. Wafer-level and wafer-to-wafer variation of central frequency are within 1.8–2.1 GHz. Computer simulation verified that this frequency variation correlates to the piezoelectric film variation of 1.6–1.9 μm. Process control on this piezoelectric thin film is essential to maintaining the resonator frequency-controlled value when building duplexer RF circuits. The dependency of RF performance on FBAR size, density and orientation is not obvious, compared to that of the wafer-level FBAR device variation on fabrication process. Regarding to the Mg-doping effect in MgxZn1-xO piezoelectric film, the amount of Mg in MgxZn1-xO film during the sputtering process must be properly controlled within 30% to keep the piezoelectric quality. The average acoustic speed of the Mg-doped ZnO film is 6870 m/s with the estimated range of 5760–7980 m/s, which is better than that of pure ZnO film (6330 m/s).
Face Recognition Assistant for People with Visual Impairments Kianpisheh, Mohammad; Li, Franklin Mingzhe; Truong, Khai N.
Proceedings of ACM on interactive, mobile, wearable and ubiquitous technologies,
09/2019, Letnik:
3, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Although there are many face recognition systems to help individuals with visual impairments (VIPs) recognize other people, almost all require a database with the pictures and names of the people who ...should be tracked. These solutions would not be able to help VIPs recognize people they might not know well. In this work, we investigate the requirements and challenges that must be addressed in the design of a face recognition system for helping VIPs recognize people with whom they have weak-ties. We first conducted a formative study with eight visually impaired people. Using insights learned from the formative study, we developed a research prototype that runs on a mobile phone worn around the user's neck. The developed prototype is a wearable face recognition system that opportunistically captures and stores undistorted face images and contextual information about the user's interaction with each person to a database, without the user intervention, as she interacts with new people. We then used this prototype application as a technology probe---asking VIP participants to use the device in a realistic scenario in which they meet and re-encounter several new people. We analyze and report feedback collected from VIPs about the design and use of such a service.
National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines for the treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer advocate neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by total mesorectal excision and adjuvant ...chemotherapy (AC). The aim of this retrospective study was to determine our local patterns of AC use and to examine factors that influenced initiation and completion of AC among patients with stage II/III rectal cancer.
The study population consisted of stage II/III rectal cancer patients who were treated at the University of Rochester from 2011 to 2014. Chart reviews were conducted to determine rates of AC initiation and completion. The documented reasons for failure to initiate or complete AC were examined. A multivariate analysis was also completed to evaluate factors that may have influenced the initiation and use of AC.
Eighty-one patients were included in the analysis. Median age was 62 years, and 53 (65.4%) were male. Median time from surgery to initiation of AC in those who received AC was 8.0 weeks. Forty-seven patients (58.0%) completed their prescribed AC course. Twenty-four patients (29.6%) did not start AC and 9 patients (11.1%) were unable to complete their course of AC. Primary reasons for not undergoing AC were patient preference (37.5%) and prolonged surgical recovery (33.3%). Primary reasons for not completing AC were treatment toxicities (55.5%) and patient preference (22.2%). Multivariate analysis identified a positive association between clinical stage III disease at diagnosis and initiation of AC. There was no independent association between pathologic response to neoadjuvant therapy at time of surgery and receipt of AC.
A large proportion of patients at a single academic center did not start or complete their prescribed postoperative AC for locally advanced rectal cancer. Ongoing studies are investigating a total neoadjuvant approach, which may result in better chemotherapy adherence and further improve the pathologic downstaging rate.
Adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) compliance is a known challenge in the treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). We performed a retrospective, single-center study to examine factors that influenced initiation and completion of AC among 81 patients with LARC. A total neoadjuvant approach may result in better AC adherence.
Myeloid cell leukemia 1 protein (MCL1) is an anti-apoptotic protein that is structurally related to Bcl-2. Unlike other Bcl-2 family proteins that are constitutively expressed, MCL1 is inducibly ...expressed in cells that are recently exposed to growth and differentiation stimuli. Here, we report the identification of fortilin as a novel MCL1-interacting protein by screening of a yeast two-hybrid library with MCL1 as bait. Fortilin specifically interacted with MCL1 both in vitro andin vivo. The intracellular localization of fortilin was predominantly nuclear and identical to that of MCL1, as shown by immunostaining and confocal microscopy analysis. Fortilin, like MCL1, was rapidly inducible in serum-stimulated human aortic vascular smooth muscle cells. Although the depletion of intracellular fortilin by small interfering RNA (siRNA) against fortilin (siRNA-fortilin) did not affect intracellular MCL1 level, the depletion of intracellular MCL1 by siRNA-MCL1 was associated with the significant reduction of the fortilin protein level, without affecting the fortilin transcript numbers. In addition, a pulse-chase experiment showed that the depletion of MCL1 by siRNA-MCL1 was associated with the rapid degradation of fortilin protein, which was found quite stable in the presence of MCL1. Furthermore, the half-life of fortilinR21A, a point mutant of fortilin lacking the binding to MCL1, was significantly shorter than that of wild-type fortilin as shown by a pulse-chase experiment. These data suggest that MCL1, in addition to being an anti-apoptotic molecule, serves as a chaperone of fortilin, binding and stabilizing fortilin in vivo. Taken together with our previous observation that fortilin overexpression prevents cells from undergoing apoptosis (Li, F., Zhang, D., and Fujise, K. (2001) J. Biol. Chem. 276, 47542–47549), it is likely that MCL1, an anti-apoptotic protein inducible by growth and differentiation stimuli, stabilizes another anti-apoptotic protein fortilin maximizing the prosurvival environment in cells.
Myeloid cell leukemia 1 protein (MCL1) is an anti-apoptotic protein that is structurally related to Bcl-2. Unlike other Bcl-2 family proteins that are constitutively expressed, MCL1 is inducibly ...expressed in cells that are recently exposed to growth and differentiation stimuli. Here, we report the identification of fortilin as a novel MCL1-interacting protein by screening of a yeast two-hybrid library with MCL1 as bait. Fortilin specifically interacted with MCL1 both in vitro and in vivo. The intracellular localization of fortilin was predominantly nuclear and identical to that of MCL1, as shown by immunostaining and confocal microscopy analysis. Fortilin, like MCL1, was rapidly inducible in serum-stimulated human aortic vascular smooth muscle cells. Although the depletion of intracellular fortilin by small interfering RNA (siRNA) against fortilin (siRNA-fortilin) did not affect intracellular MCL1 level, the depletion of intracellular MCL1 by siRNA-MCL1 was associated with the significant reduction of the fortilin protein level, without affecting the fortilin transcript numbers. In addition, a pulse-chase experiment showed that the depletion of MCL1 by siRNA-MCL1 was associated with the rapid degradation of fortilin protein, which was found quite stable in the presence of MCL1. Furthermore, the half-life of fortilin(R21A), a point mutant of fortilin lacking the binding to MCL1, was significantly shorter than that of wild-type fortilin as shown by a pulse-chase experiment. These data suggest that MCL1, in addition to being an anti-apoptotic molecule, serves as a chaperone of fortilin, binding and stabilizing fortilin in vivo. Taken together with our previous observation that fortilin overexpression prevents cells from undergoing apoptosis (Li, F., Zhang, D., and Fujise, K. (2001) J. Biol. Chem. 276, 47542-47549), it is likely that MCL1, an anti-apoptotic protein inducible by growth and differentiation stimuli, stabilizes another anti-apoptotic protein fortilin maximizing the prosurvival environment in cells.
People with Vision Impairments face various barriers in physical activities that are highly visual (e.g., cooking, visiting art museums), which strongly impact their agency, autonomy, and quality of ...life. Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) provide opportunities for people with vision impairments to better interact with physical space. In this research, we first explore current practices and challenges of the adaptation of CPS by people with vision impairments in physical activities. We then establish a comprehensive design space and design guidelines for CPS to satisfy the needs of blind individuals. Finally, we integrate the user-centered design guidelines, implement CPS for people with vision impairments to reduce the barrier of interacting with physical space, and conduct deployment studies to validate our design. Overall, our research provide a roadmap of augmenting accessible CPS for people with disabilities in the physical space.
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