•The study examined the relationship between smartphone use and psychological well-being in China.•A framework integrating media richness theory and the Internet-enhanced self-disclosure hypothesis ...was tested.•Face-to-face and mobile voice communication directly predicted well-being.•Mobile email, Weibo and WeChat indirectly predicted well-being through social support and relationship satisfaction.
Drawing insights from media richness theory and the Internet-enhanced self-disclosure hypothesis, this study examined the direct and indirect relationships between multiple uses of the smartphone and psychological well-being. A national online survey of smartphone users in China (N = 908) was conducted. Findings based on structural equation modelling showed that face-to-face and mobile voice communication directly predicted well-being whereas the relationship was indirect for mobile email, Weibo and WeChat through social support and relationship satisfaction. The results demonstrated the importance of examining smartphone use more holistically and using theory-based perspectives to explain the contingent mechanisms linking smartphone use and well-being.
In this letter, the write disturb of Hf 0.5 Zr 0.5 O 2 -based 1T-FeFET nonvolatile AND memory array is experimentally investigated for <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{V}_{W} ...</tex-math></inline-formula>/2 and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{V}_{W} </tex-math></inline-formula>/3 inhibition bias schemes to determine the worst-case memory sensing condition. Read margin analysis reveals that the increased leakage current in the low-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{V}_{\textsf {TH}} </tex-math></inline-formula> erased state and the increased read current of the high-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{V}_{\textsf {TH}} </tex-math></inline-formula> programmed state are the key factors that limit the maximum array size.
Leveraging stereopsis for saliency analysis Yuzhen Niu; Yujie Geng; Xueqing Li ...
2012 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition,
2012-June
Conference Proceeding
Stereopsis provides an additional depth cue and plays an important role in the human vision system. This paper explores stereopsis for saliency analysis and presents two approaches to stereo saliency ...detection from stereoscopic images. The first approach computes stereo saliency based on the global disparity contrast in the input image. The second approach leverages domain knowledge in stereoscopic photography. A good stereoscopic image takes care of its disparity distribution to avoid 3D fatigue. Particularly, salient content tends to be positioned in the stereoscopic comfort zone to alleviate the vergence-accommodation conflict. Accordingly, our method computes stereo saliency of an image region based on the distance between its perceived location and the comfort zone. Moreover, we consider objects popping out from the screen salient as these objects tend to catch a viewer's attention. We build a stereo saliency analysis benchmark dataset that contains 1000 stereoscopic images with salient object masks. Our experiments on this dataset show that stereo saliency provides a useful complement to existing visual saliency analysis and our method can successfully detect salient content from images that are difficult for monocular saliency analysis methods.
In this paper, we describe an improved SPICE model for the negative capacitance field-effect transistor (NCFET). According to the law of conservation of charge, the model is built based on the ...relationship between the gate charge of the MOSFET and the charge reserved by the ferroelectric layer and includes the parasitic resistance and capacitance into consideration. Based on the model, the drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL) and the negative resistance (NR) of the NCFET are analyzed. Finally, taking two well-known analog blocks (the current mirror and the latch comparator) for example, impacts of the DIBL effect and the NR property on analog circuit performances are discussed. Thanks to utilization of the NR feature, not only can impacts of the DIBL effect and the channel-length modulation (CLM) effect be alleviated to improve the mirroring accuracy, but also the comparison speed of the latch comparator be accelerated.
Pain management is currently important in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The superiority in pain relief of the combined oral sucrose (OS) and nonnutritive sucking (NNS) to other single ...intervention has not been well established. The administration of sucrose has been considered to potentially induce adverse events, which has been controversial. This study aims to investigate the combined effects and safety in comparison with other single intervention methods, including NNS, OS alone, breast milk and oral glucose.
We searched databases including Medline (via Pubmed), Embase (via Ovid), web of science, and Cochrane Library for randomized controlled trials from Jan 1, 2000 to Mar 31, 2021. The data were analyzed in the meta-analysis using Review manager Version 5.3. Pain score was the primary outcome in this meta-analysis. The adverse events were assessed qualitatively.
A total of 16 studies were eligible in the meta-analysis. The results demonstrated a significant reduction in pain score in the NNS+OS group compared with NNS alone (SMD = -1.69, 95%CI, -1.69,-0.65) or sucrose alone (SMD = -1.39, 95% CI, -2.21,-0.57) during the painful procedures. When compared NNS+OS with breast milk, no significant difference was detected (SMD = -0.19, 95% CI: -0.5, 0.11).
The combined effects of NNS and OS might be superior to other single intervention method. However, the effects might be mild for moderate-to-severe pain.
As the use of pesticides increases year after year, so does the level of residual pesticides in the aquatic environment, posing a serious threat to non-target organisms. Difenoconazole (DFZ), a class ...of long-lasting fungicides and residues in the marine environment, has been shown to cause damaging effects on different organs of aquatic organisms. However, there is no research on the damage of DFZ to carp spleen tissue. This study aimed to investigate the acute toxic effects of DFZ on the spleen tissue of carp (Cyprinus carpio) by exposing juvenile carp to environmentally relevant concentrations of DFZ. We randomly selected 30 carp, divided them into the Control, Low, and High groups, and then exposed the three groups to 0, 0.488 mg/L DFZ, and 1.953 mg/L DFZ for 96 h respectively. We then investigated the toxic effects caused by DFZ on carp and spleen tissues by detecting changes in spleen histopathologic damage, apoptosis, oxidative stress, inflammation, and blood biochemical parameters. We found that DFZ causes severe histopathology in spleen tissue, including ballooning, structural relaxation, and giant mitochondria. In addition, we found that DFZ caused excessive apoptosis in spleen tissue by TUNEL staining and expression levels of apoptosis-related genes (caspase3, caspase8, caspase9, fas, bax, bcl-2, and p53). The activities and transcript levels of the antioxidant enzymes SOD, CAT, and GSH-Px were significantly down-regulated. In addition, DFZ led to a significant increase in activation of the NF-κB signaling pathway and mRNA levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines il-6, il-1β, and tnf-α, and a substantial decrease in mRNA levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines il-10 and tgf-β1 in spleen tissue. Blood biochemical parameters showed that DFZ exposure significantly reduced erythrocyte, leukocyte, hemoglobin, C3, and IgM levels. Collectively, DFZ exposure induced apoptosis, immunosuppression, oxidative stress, and inflammatory responses in the spleen tissue of carp, resulting in spleen tissue damage.
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•Difenoconazole (DFZ) triggers apoptosis of the mitochondrial pathway in carp spleen tissue.•DFZ causes disruption of the antioxidant system in the spleen tissue of carp.•DFZ mediates inflammatory responses in carp spleen tissue through activation of the NF-κB pathway.•DFZ exposure causes immunosuppression in carp.
Negative capacitance FETs (NCFETs) have attracted significant interest due to their steep-switching capability at a low voltage and the associated benefits for implementing energy-efficient Boolean ...logic. While most existing works aim to avoid the I D -V G hysteresis in NCFETs, this paper exploits this hysteresis feature for logic-memory synergy and presents a custom-designed nonvolatile NCFET D flip-flop (DFF) that maintains its state during power outages. This paper also presents an NCFET fabricated for this purpose, showing <;10 mV/decade steep hysteresis edges and high, up to seven orders in magnitude, RDS ratio between the two polarization states. With a device circuit codesign that takes advantage of the embedded non volatility and the high RDS ratio, the proposed DFF consumes negligible static current in backup and restore operations, and remains robust even with significant global and local ferroelectric material variations across a wide 0.3-0.8 V supply voltage range. Therefore, the proposed DFF achieves energy-efficient and low-latency backup and restore operations. Furthermore, it has an ultralow energydelay overhead, below 2.1% in normal operations, and operates using the same voltage supply as the Boolean logic elements with which it connects. This promises energy-efficient nonvolatile computing in energy-harvesting and power-gating applications.
Negative-capacitance FETs (NCFETs) are a promising candidate for low-power circuits with intrinsic features, e.g., the steep switching slope. Prior works have shown potential for enabling low-power ...digital logic and memory design with NCFETs. Yet, it is still not quite clear how to harness these new features of NCFETs for analog functionalities. This article provides more insights into the circuit design space with new device characteristics and investigates its deployment in analog circuits, specifically, time-domain analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and phase-locked loops (PLLs). We propose and optimize a novel digital-based clocked comparator and a capacitor-based voltage-to-time converter (VTC), which are essential building blocks in ADCs and PLLs. Evaluation results show beyond-FinFET comparison speed and enhanced linearity for the proposed NCFET-based clocked comparator and VTC, respectively. Such improvement is achieved by exploiting the steeper slope and increased output impedance of NCFETs. More details on design details and a discussion are provided in this article.
This paper analyzes the intermodulation between the element transition rate and the output-dependent unit switching distortion, i.e., the switching distortion of one switching unit, in ...current-steering digital-to-analog converters (DACs). The analysis and experimental results reveal how this intermodulation affects the DAC linearity. Based on this, we also propose a technique, termed random pairwise swapping (RPS) to improve the linearity of dynamic-element-matching-decoded DACs. Compared with existing techniques, RPS needs no half-cycle RZ operations and, thus, has no related vulnerabilities. In addition, the RPS could deal with the mismatch between different channels effectively. A 14-bit experimental DAC is fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process. Measured results at 1.0-GS/s show above 72-dBc SFDR within 422-MHz band-width and 8-10-dB image tone suppression by the proposed RPS technique. At 3.0 GS/s, the SFDR is over 60 dBc within 600-MHz bandwidth.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, is a chronic inflammatory disease in the lower gastrointestinal tract. Mounting evidence suggests that the ...predominance of the classically activated (M1) macrophages versus the alternatively activated (M2) macrophages plays a role in the progression of IBD. Thus, agents able to shift pro-inflammatory M1 macrophages to anti-inflammatory M2 macrophages may be beneficial to IBD. The pentacyclic triterpene Lup-20(29)-en-3β-ol (Lupeol), a potent anti-inflammatory natural product, has been shown to inhibit pro-inflammatory cytokine production, suggesting it is potentially able to modulate macrophage polarization, thereby beneficial to IBD.
CD4+ monocytes were differentiated to M1 or M2 macrophages, which were cocultured with epithelial cell lines, T84 and Caco-2, in the absence or presence of Lupeol (10μM). Experimental colitis was induced with dextran sodium sulfate (DSS), with or without oral administration of Lupeol (50mg/kg, q.d.). Cytokines were measured with Luminex kits. M1/M2 genes were measured with real-time polymerase chain reaction. Macrophage phenotypes were defined by measuring M1 and M2 markers with confocal microscopy. Proteins were measured with Western blotting, while cell surface markers were measured with confocal microscopy or flow cytometry. Histology was evaluated with H&E staining.
Treatment of M1 macrophages with Lupeol resulted in a marked decrease in the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, including IL-12, IL6, IL-1β and TNFα, and a marked increase in the production of IL-10, an anti-inflammatory cytokine. This was associated with a down-regulation of CD86, a typical marker of M1 macrophages, and an up-regulation of CD206, a typical M2 macrophage marker. IRF5, a transcription factor that is critically involved in M1 polarization, was down-regulated in M1 macrophages after being incubated with Lupeol, associated with a marked decrease in the phosphorylation of p38 mitogen activated protein kinase. Coculture of epithelial cells with M1 macrophages resulted in down-regulation of the tight junction protein ZO-1 and disruption of epithelial integrity, which were blocked by Lupeol treatment of the M1 macrophages. Moreover, oral administration of Lupeol to dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis mice resulted in mitigated intestinal inflammation and increased survival from lethal colitis, associated with decreased expression of M1-related genes and increased expression of M2-related genes.
Lupeol ameliorates experimental inflammatory bowel disease through, at least in part, inhibiting M1 and promoting M2 macrophages.
•The pentacyclic triterpene Lup-20(29)-en-3β-ol (Lupeol), a potent anti-inflammatory natural product, was able to switch macrophages from M1 to M2 phenotype.•Moreover, oral administration of Lupeol to dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis mice resulted in mitigated intestinal inflammation and increased survival from lethal colitis, associated with decreased expression of M1-related genes and increased expression of M2-related genes in the lesion.•Our data suggest Lupeol ameliorates experimental IBD through, at least in part, inhibiting M1 and promoting M2 macrophages.•Considering the very low toxicity of Lupeol, we believe that these findings are significant.