The ferroelectric polarization stability and dielectric characteristics of ZrO 2 -HfO 2 superlattice (SL) ferroelectric layer Metal-Ferroelectric-Metal (MFM) capacitor fabricated with various ...post-metal annealing (PMA) temperatures were presented. It was demonstrated that ZrO 2 -HfO 2 SL MFM capacitors with increased post metallization PMA temperature (i.e., 600 °C) showed improved polarization stability with almost wake-up free and polarization fatigue free characteristics. In this work, we have shown that highly stable remanent polarization (2P r @ 3MV<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">/ </tex-math></inline-formula>cm) of ~<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">30 ~\mu \text{C}/ </tex-math></inline-formula>cm 2 with small variation (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\Delta 2\text{P}_{r} \le 2 ~\mu \text{C}/ </tex-math></inline-formula>cm 2 ; <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\Delta 2\text{P}_{r} / 2\text{P}_{r,pristine} \le9 </tex-math></inline-formula> %) up to 10 11 cycles of field cycling were exhibited by the atomic layer deposition (ALD) deposited ZrO 2 -HfO 2 superlattice with 600 °C PMA. To our knowledge, the nearly " wake-up"-free and fatigue-free polarization behavior up to 10 11 cycles are among the best polarization stability for the hafnium zirconium oxide based MFM capacitors sustained endurance tests for more than 10 10 cycles.
Childhood cancer survivors are at higher risk of developing neurocognitive deficits due to the intensive treatment they received at an early age. Most studies on childhood cancer survivorship have so ...far focused on the Western populations. Due to the ethnic, genetic, environmental, and cultural differences, clinical data of the Western populations may not be representative of Asian countries. This scoping review systematically summarized the existing clinical evidence of the neurocognitive impairment of Asian childhood cancer survivors. We searched the Embase and Medline databases for studies assessing the neurocognitive functions of survivors in Asia, who were diagnosed with cancer before the age of 19 and completed active treatment. The literature search identified 13 studies involving 2212 participants from five Asian countries: South Korea (
n
= 4, 30.8%), Taiwan (
n
= 3, 23.1%), Japan (
n
= 3, 23.1%), Hong Kong (
n
= 2, 15.4%), and Thailand (
n
= 1, 7.7%). The included studies focused on CNS tumors (
n
= 10, 76.9%), hematological malignancies (
n
= 7, 53.8%), or heterogeneous cancer diagnoses (
n
= 3, 23.1%). Collectively, mild-to-moderate impairment in intelligence was observed in 10.0 to 42.8% of survivors, which seemed higher than the reported rate in Western survivors. We speculate that the ethnic and genetic variations in drug responses and susceptibility to adverse chronic toxicities may have contributed to the differences in the prevalence and severity of neurocognitive impairment between these two populations. To better understand the effects of culturally relevant and region-specific environmental risk factors on the post-treatment neurocognitive development in cancer survivors, a holistic approach that addresses the complex interactions between biological, physical, and psychosocial factors is needed. This will aid the development of effective intervention strategies to improve the functional and psychosocial outcomes of cancer survivors in Asian societies.
Electrochemical synthesis of valuable chemicals and feedstocks through carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction in acidic electrolytes can surmount the considerable CO2 loss in alkaline and neutral conditions. ...However, achieving high productivity, while operating steadily in acidic electrolytes, remains a big challenge owing to the severe competing hydrogen evolution reaction. Here, we show that vertically grown bismuth nanosheets on a gas-diffusion layer can create numerous cavities as electrolyte reservoirs, which confine in situ–generated hydroxide and potassium ions and limit inward proton diffusion, producing locally alkaline environments. Based on this design, we achieve formic acid Faradaic efficiency of 96.3% and partial current density of 471 mA cm−2 at pH 2. When operated in a slim continuous-flow electrolyzer, the system exhibits a full-cell formic acid energy efficiency of 40% and a single pass carbon efficiency of 79% and performs steadily over 50 h. We further demonstrate the production of pure formic acid aqueous solution with a concentration of 4.2 weight %.
Sex-reversed females are the fathers of all-female fish and their sperm quality directly affects the quality of all-female fish. In this study, fecundity, physiological characteristics, biochemical ...characteristics, ultrastructure, and viability of sex-reversed female sperm after cryopreservation were investigated to understand sperm quality. (1) The sex-reversed female sperm had a lower fertilization rate, hatching rate, and larval survival rate of 72 hr and higher larval deformation rate compared with normal male sperm. (2) The changes in activation rate between normal male and sex-reversed female sperm under different salinity and pH conditions were the same; the optimum salinity was between 0 and 4%, and the optimum pH was 5.5. (3) The preservation time of sex-reversed female sperm is significantly shorter than that of normal male sperm at room temperature. (4) Sex-reversed female sperm had lower ATPase content and c/p value than normal male sperm. (5) Ultrastructural injury including damaged membranes of the head and mitochondria, broken flagella, greater mitochondrial damage, and mitochondrial membrane expansion were found in the sex-reversed female sperm. (6) The most suitable antifreeze for cryopreservation of sex-reversed female and normal male sperm was 10% ethylene glycol and dilution was D-15, but the activation rate, movement, and life span of sex-reversed female sperm were reduced after cryopreservation. It was speculated that the sperm mitochondria of the sex-reversed female were more damaged than those of the normal male, which led to differences in fertility and cryopreservation.
By enhancing vagal activity, auricle transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation (TENS) is developed as a non-invasive therapy for heart failure. Nevertheless, though shoulder TENS used for treating ...adhesive capsulitis could affect vagal tone, its potential impact on heart functions remains unclear. In this study, electrocardiogram (ECG) and heart rate (HR) of subjects in response to sham, right-sided, or left-sided shoulder TENS (TENS-S, TENS-R, and TENS-L, respectively; 5 min) were recorded and analyzed. During the stimulation period, TENS-R constantly and TENS-L transiently decreased the HR of subjects; both TENS-R and TENS-L increased powers of the low- and high-frequency spectra. While TENS-R exhibiting no effect, TENS-L increased the ratio of low/high-frequency power spectrum indicating TENS-R decreased the HR through potentiating cardiac vagal tone. Collectively, these results suggest TENS could be an early and non-invasive therapy for heart failure patients before considering implant devices or devices are not feasible; moreover, therapists/physicians need to carefully monitor the potential adverse events during treatment for patient safety.Trial registration: The study protocol was registered in ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03982472; 11/06/2019).
More than 150 cellular networks worldwide have rolled out LTE-M (LTE-Machine Type Communication) and/or NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) technologies to support massive IoT services such as ...smart metering and environmental monitoring. Such cellular IoT services share the existing cellular network architecture with non-IoT (e.g., smartphone) ones. When they are newly integrated into the cellular network, new security vulnerabilities may happen from imprudent integration. In this work, we explore the security vulnerabilities of the cellular IoT from both system-integrated and service-integrated aspects. We discover several vulnerabilities spanning cellular standard design defects, network operation slips, and IoT device implementation flaws. Threateningly, they allow an adversary to remotely identify IP addresses and phone numbers assigned to cellular IoT devices, interrupt their power saving services, and launch various attacks, including data/text spamming, battery draining, device hibernation against them. We validate these vulnerabilities over five major cellular IoT carriers in the U.S. and Taiwan using their certified cellular IoT devices. The attack evaluation result shows that the adversary can raise an IoT data bill by up to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{\}226 </tex-math></inline-formula> with less than 120 MB spam traffic, increase an IoT text bill at a rate of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{\}5 </tex-math></inline-formula> per second, and prevent an IoT device from entering/leaving power saving mode; moreover, cellular IoT devices may suffer from denial of IoT services. We finally propose, prototype, and evaluate recommended solutions.
By extending the conventional scattering canceling theory, we propose a new design method for thermal cloaks based on isotropic materials. When the objects are covered by the designed cloaks, they ...will not disturb the temperature profile in the background zone. In addition, if different inhomogeneity coefficients are selected in the thermal cloak design process, these cloaks can manipulate the temperature gradient of the objects, i.e., make the temperature gradients higher, lower, or equal to the thermal gradient in the background zone. Therefore, thermal transparency, heat concentration or heat shield effects can be realized under a unified framework.
Purpose
Survivorship in children with cancer comes at a cost of developing chronic treatment-related complications. Yet, it is still an under-researched area in Asia, which shares the largest ...proportion of the global childhood cancer burden given its vast population. This systematic review summarizes existing literature on clinically ascertained health outcomes in Asian survivors of childhood cancer.
Methods
A search was conducted on Ovid Medline and EMBASE for studies that focused on survivors of childhood cancer from countries in East and Southeast Asia; adopted post-treatment clinical ascertainment of organ-specific toxicities or/and secondary malignancy. Studies were excluded if health outcomes were assessed during the acute treatment.
Results
Fifty-nine studies, enrolling a total of 13,442 subjects, were conducted on survivors of leukemia (34%), CNS tumor (14%), and cohorts of survivors with heterogeneous cancer diagnoses (52%). The studies used different medical evaluation methods to assess cardiovascular (15%), metabolic and infertility (32%), and neurological/neurocognitive (20%) outcomes in survivors. The collective findings suggest potential differences in the prevalence of certain late effects (e.g., secondary malignancy and obesity) among Asian and non-Asian populations, which may reflect differences in treatment regimens, practice, genetic variations, or/and socioeconomic disparity.
Conclusions
We recommend developing collaborative initiatives to build a regional repository of systematically assessed health outcomes and biospecimens to investigate treatment, social-environmental and genetic predictors, and interventions for late effects in this population.
Implications for Cancer Survivors
The existing types of chronic health problems identified in this review suggest the need for active screening, better access to survivorship care, and promotion of protective health behavior in Asia.
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