Phase transition in thermoelectric (TE) material is a double‐edged sword—it is undesired for device operation in applications, but the fluctuations near an electronic instability are favorable. Here, ...Sb doping is used to elicit a spontaneous composition fluctuation showing uphill diffusion in GeTe that is otherwise suspended by diffusionless athermal cubic‐to‐rhombohedral phase transition at around 700 K. The interplay between these two phase transitions yields exquisite composition fluctuations and a coexistence of cubic and rhombohedral phases in favor of exceptional figures‐of‐merit zT. Specifically, alloying GeTe by Sb2Te3 significantly suppresses the thermal conductivity while retaining eligible carrier concentration over a wide composition range, resulting in high zT values of >2.6. These results not only attest to the efficacy of using phase transition in manipulating the microstructures of GeTe‐based materials but also open up a new thermodynamic route to develop higher performance TE materials in general.
The interplay between phase decomposition and athermal phase transition is leveraged in a Ge–Sb–Te ternary system to enable exquisite microstructure features by strong composition fluctuations and coexistence of rhombohedral and cubic GeTe. Specifically, alloying GeTe with Sb2Te3 significantly suppresses thermal conductivity while retaining eligible carrier concentration over a wide composition range, resulting in high zT values of >2.6.
Abstract Light is a popular choice as an indoor energy source for Internet of Things (IoT) end devices. However, indoor light sources are intermittent, which can disrupt the operation of IoT end ...devices, potentially leading to safety concerns or inaccurate data. Therefore, there is a growing need to develop a long‐duration power supply for IoT end devices. The energy from ambient light is harnessed to charge a supercapacitor through an energy manager chip. This supercapacitor serves as the power source for IoT nodes when the ambient light is unavailable. Nevertheless, as the voltage of the supercapacitor drops below the operating threshold, the IoT end node will eventually shut down. This paper proposes a circuit that utilizes a Joule Thief circuit, booster converter, and capacitor stack‐up circuit to extract the remaining energy from the supercapacitor and boost the voltage, thereby extending the operational lifespan of IoT end nodes. Additionally, capacitor stack‐up circuits significantly enhance charging efficiency. PSpice design and simulations confirm circuit feasibility. High‐efficiency charging and long‐duration IoT nodes suggest replacing traditional batteries with supercapacitors, reducing environmental impact.
Synergistic effects arising from the conjugation of organic dyes onto non‐luminescent metal nanoparticles (NPs) have greatly broadened their applications in both imaging and sensing. Herein, we ...report that conjugation of a well‐known pH‐insensitive dye, tetramethyl‐rhodamine (TAMRA), to pH‐insensitive luminescent gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can lead to an ultrasmall nanoindicator that can fluorescently report local pH in a ratiometric way. Such synergy originated from the dimerization of TAMRA on AuNPs, of which geometry was very sensitive to surface charges of the AuNPs and can be reversely modulated through protonation of surrounding glutathione ligands. Not limited to pH‐insensitive dyes, this pH‐dependent dimerization can also enhance the pH sensitivity of fluorescein, a well‐known pH‐sensitive dye, within a larger pH range, opening up a new pathway to design ultrasmall fluorescent ratiometric nanoindicators with tunable wavelengths and pH response ranges.
More than its parts: Dimerization of pH‐insensitive fluorophores on ultrasmall luminescent gold nanoparticles creates a highly sensitive ratiometric probe of local pH. This conjugation process can also extend the range of pH‐sensitive dyes, allowing for tunable sensing features.
Programmed death-1 (PD-1) and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) are the two most common immune checkpoints targeted in triple-negative breast cancer (BC). Refining patient selection for immunotherapy ...is non-trivial and finding an appropriate digital pathology framework for spatial analysis of theranostic biomarkers for PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors remains an unmet clinical need.
We describe a novel computer-assisted tool for three-dimensional (3D) imaging of PD-L1 expression in immunofluorescence-stained and optically cleared BC specimens (n = 20). The proposed 3D framework appeared to be feasible and showed a high overall agreement with traditional, clinical-grade two-dimensional (2D) staining techniques. Additionally, the results obtained for automated immune cell detection and analysis of PD-L1 expression were satisfactory.
The spatial distribution of PD-L1 expression was heterogeneous across various BC tissue layers in the 3D space. Notably, there were six cases (30%) wherein PD-L1 expression levels along different layers crossed the 1% threshold for admitting patients to PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors. The average PD-L1 expression in 3D space was different from that of traditional immunohistochemistry (IHC) in eight cases (40%). Pending further standardization and optimization, we expect that our technology will become a valuable addition for assessing PD-L1 expression in patients with BC.
Via a single round of immunofluorescence imaging, our approach may provide a considerable improvement in patient stratification for cancer immunotherapy as compared with standard techniques.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
One of the most common means for diagnosis is through medical laboratory testing, which primarily uses venous blood as a sample. This requires an invasive method by cannulation that needs proper vein ...selection. The use of a vein finder would help the phlebotomist to easily locate the vein, preventing possible pre-analytical error in the specimen collection and even more discomfort and pain to the patient. This paper is a review of the scientific publications on the different developed low-cost vein finder prototypes utilizing camera assisted near infrared (NIR) light technology.
: Electronic databases were searched online, these included PubMed (PMC), MEDLINE, Science Direct, ResearchGate, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Xplore digital library. Specifically, publications with the terms vein finder prototype, NIR technology, vein detection, and infrared imaging were screened. In addition, reference lists were used to further review related publications.
: Cannulation challenges medical practitioners because of the different factors that can be reduced by the utilization of a vein finder. A limited number of publications regarding the assessment of personnel performing cannulation were observed. Moreover, variations in methodology, number of patients, type of patients according to their demographics and materials used in the assessment of the developed prototypes were noted. Some studies were limited with regard to the actual human testing of the prototype.
: The development of a low-cost effective near infrared (NIR) vein finder remains in the phase of improvement. Since, it is being challenged by different human factors, increasing the number of parameters and participants/human for actual testing of the prototypes must also be taken into consideration for possible commercialization. Finally, it was noted that publications regarding the assessment of the performance of phlebotomists using vein finders were limited.
To derive shallow water bathymetry for coastal areas, a common approach is to deploy a scanning airborne bathymetric light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system or a shipborne echosounder for ground ...surveys. However, recent advancements in satellite remote sensing, including the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) offer new tools for generating satellite derived bathymetry (SDB). The key payload onboard ICESat-2 is the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), a micro-pulse, photon-counting LiDAR system, simultaneously emitting six separate 532 nm beams at 10 kHz pulse rate. However, despite its high resolution, the major limitation for bathymetry is that ICESat-2 only provides along-track height profiles, leaving observation gaps between the parallel ground tracks. Merging ICESat-2 observations with optical multispectral imagery, as demonstrated herein, provides an effective solution for deriving a full scene of water depth in light of the spectral attenuation behavior.
This study aims to combine ICESat-2 and Sentinel-2 optical data to derive shallow water bathymetry (depth <20 m) at six islands and reefs in the South China Sea. ICESat-2 ATL03 point clouds of georeferenced photons are first filtered to determine the seafloor elevation along the ground track. Results indicate a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.26–0.61 m as compared with independent observations from an airborne LiDAR campaign. Next, three semi-empirical functions, namely the Modified Linear/Polynomial/Exponential Ratio Models with its kernel formed by the log ratio between Sentinel-2′s green and blue bands, are used to fit the spectral data with ICESat-2 height profiles. After water depth mapping using the trained model, independent ICESat-2 point clouds are used to validate the Sentinel-2 derived bathymetry. The RMSE values of the three models using the weighted average of multiple images for these six islands are within 0.50–0.90 m in 0–15 m deep. We also demonstrate that a synthesis of satellite laser altimetry and optical remote sensing can produce SDB results that potentially meet the requirement of category C in Zones of Confidence (ZOC) of the Electronic Navigational Chart (ENC) in 0–8 m deep. It is foreseen that ICESat-2 will be a helpful tool for mapping coastal and shallow waters around the world especially where bathymetric data are unavailable.
This article presents a computing-in-memory (CIM) structure aimed at improving the energy efficiency of edge devices running multi-bit multiply-and-accumulate (MAC) operations. The proposed scheme ...includes a 6T SRAM-based CIM (SRAM-CIM) macro capable of: 1) weight-bitwise MAC (WbwMAC) operations to expand the sensing margin and improve the readout accuracy for high-precision MAC operations; 2) a compact 6T local computing cell to perform multiplication with suppressed sensitivity to process variation; 3) an algorithm-adaptive low MAC-aware readout scheme to improve energy efficiency; 4) a bitline header selection scheme to enlarge signal margin; and 5) a small-offset margin-enhanced sense amplifier for robust read operations against process variation. A fabricated 28-nm 64-kb SRAM-CIM macro achieved access times of 4.1-8.4 ns with energy efficiency of 11.5-68.4 TOPS/W, while performing MAC operations with 4- or 8-b input and weight precision.
Because of the growing number of clinical antibiotic resistance cases in recent years, novel antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) may be ideal for next-generation antibiotics. This study trained a ...Wasserstein generative adversarial network with gradient penalty (WGAN-GP) based on known AMPs to generate novel AMP candidates. The quality of the GAN-designed peptides was evaluated in silico, and eight of them, named GAN-pep 1-8, were selected by an AMP Artificial Intelligence (AI) classifier and synthesized for further experiments. Disc diffusion testing and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determinations were used to identify the antibacterial effects of the synthesized GAN-designed peptides. Seven of the eight synthesized GAN-designed peptides displayed antibacterial activity. Additionally, GAN-pep 3 and GAN-pep 8 presented a broad spectrum of antibacterial effects and were effective against antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains, such as methicillin-resistant
and carbapenem-resistant
. GAN-pep 3, the most promising GAN-designed peptide candidate, had low MICs against all the tested bacteria. In brief, our approach shows an efficient way to discover AMPs effective against general and antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains. In addition, such a strategy also allows other novel functional peptides to be quickly designed, identified, and synthesized for validation on the wet bench.
Abstract
Using batteries in low‐power Internet of Things (IoT) devices poses a risk of environmental pollution. Energy harvesting (EH) systems are needed to capture ambient energy and charge ...supercapacitors to address this issue. Indoor photovoltaic (PV) panels are a promising power source, but their weak ambient energy makes it challenging to activate IoT end nodes quickly. Here, an EH system enhanced charge circuitry with fast activation is proposed that reduces IoT end nodes activation time to less than 2 s, compared to the traditional 19.8 h, if an indoor PV panel supplying 28 µA to charge a 1 F capacity supercapacitor from 0 to 2 V. This system also offers high‐efficiency charging, enabling supercapacitors to replace batteries, particularly when charging from 0 to 1.2 V, with a charge time improvement ratio of 64%. These breakthroughs address long‐standing challenges in IoT power systems and reduce environmental pollution.
Psoriasis is a chronic autoimmune skin disease with a significant impact on quality of life and potential for severe comorbidities. Inflammation in the skin is induced by immune cells that ...overexpress pro-inflammatory cytokines, with the Th17 cell playing a crucial role. NLRP3 inflammasome activation is associated with inflammatory diseases and abnormal T cell differentiation. 3H-1,2-dithiole-3-thione (D3T), isolated from cruciferous vegetables, has anti-inflammatory effects and inhibits Th17 differentiation. This study aimed to investigate how D3T reduces skin inflammation and modulates Th17 cell differentiation by inhibiting NLRP3 inflammasome activation. In an imiquimod-induced psoriasis mouse model, D3T treatment demonstrated significant reductions in ear thickness, skin redness, and scaling compared to a control group. Our study also observed decreased expression of ki-67, NLRP3 inflammasome, and cleaved caspase-1 in skin samples, reduced levels of IL-6 and IL-17A in serum samples, and inhibition of Th17 differentiation after D3T application. D3T could also inhibit the expression of NLRP3, caspase-1, and IL-1β in TNF-α stimulated HaCaT cells. The mechanical study also revealed that D3T could inhibit NLRP3 inflammasome activation by inhibiting the JNK pathway in HaCaT cells. These results indicate that targeting NLRP3 inflammasome activation is a promising strategy in the treatment of psoriasis.
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