The use of organic materials presents a tremendous opportunity to significantly impact the functionality and pervasiveness of large-area electronics. Commercialization of this technology requires ...reduction in manufacturing costs by exploiting inexpensive low-temperature deposition and patterning techniques, which typically lead to lower device performance. We report a low-cost approach to control the microstructure of solution-cast acene-based organic thin films through modification of interfacial chemistry. Chemically and selectively tailoring the source/drain contact interface is a novel route to initiating the crystallization of soluble organic semiconductors, leading to the growth on opposing contacts of crystalline films that extend into the transistor channel. This selective crystallization enables us to fabricate high-performance organic thin-film transistors and circuits, and to deterministically study the influence of the microstructure on the device characteristics. By connecting device fabrication to molecular design, we demonstrate that rapid film processing under ambient room conditions and high performance are not mutually exclusive.
We report the synthesis and photoelectrochemical assessment of phase pure tetragonal matlockite structured BiOX (where X = Cl, Br, I) films. The materials were deposited using aerosol-assisted ...chemical vapour deposition. The measured optical bandgaps of the oxyhalides, supported by density functional theory calculations, showed a red shift with the increasing size of halide following the binding energy of the anion p-orbitals that form the valence band. Stability and photoelectrochemical studies carried out without a sacrificial electron donor showed the n-type BiOBr film to have the highest photocurrent reported for BiOBr in the literature to date (0.3 mA cm
at 1.23 V
RHE), indicating it is an excellent candidate for solar fuel production with a very low onset potential of 0.2 V
RHE. The high performance was attributed to the preferred growth of the film in the 011 direction, as shown by X-ray diffraction, leading to internal electric fields that minimize charge carrier recombination.
To compare the efficacy and safety of pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) and topotecan in patients with epithelial ovarian carcinoma that recurred after or didn't respond to first-line, ...platinum-based chemotherapy.
Patients with measurable and assessable disease were randomized to receive either PLD 50 mg/m(2) as a 1-hour infusion every 4 weeks or topotecan 1.5 mg/m(2)/d for 5 consecutive days every 3 weeks. Patients were stratified prospectively for platinum sensitivity and for the presence or absence of bulky disease.
A total of 474 patients were treated (239 PLD and 235 topotecan). They comprised the intent-to-treat population. The overall progression-free survival rates were similar between the two arms (P =.095). The overall response rates for PLD and topotecan were 19.7% and 17.0%, respectively (P =.390). Median overall survival times were 60 weeks for PLD and 56.7 weeks for topotecan. Data analyzed in platinum-sensitive patients demonstrated a statistically significant benefit from PLD for progression-free survival (P =.037), with medians of 28.9 for PLD versus 23.3 weeks for topotecan. For overall survival, PLD was significantly superior to topotecan (P =.008), with a median of 108 weeks versus 71.1 weeks. The platinum-refractory subgroup demonstrated a nonstatistically significant survival trend in favor of topotecan (P =.455). Severe hematologic toxicity was more common with topotecan and was more likely to be associated with dosage modification, or growth factor or blood product utilization.
The comparable efficacy, favorable safety profile, and convenient dosing support the role of PLD as a valuable treatment option in this patient population.
We describe the synthesis of charge-stabilised gold and silver nanoparticles by a modified Turkevich method and their interaction with a selection of cationic and anionic dyes. It was found that gold ...nanoparticles interact strongly with cationic dyes and in some cases enhanced absorption was observed by UV-visible spectroscopy. It is also shown that addition of cationic dyes to gold nanoparticles triggers aggregation of the nanoparticles into large, micrometre-scale clusters. Simultaneous fragmentation and agglomeration of the gold nanoparticles was observed at high concentrations of cationic dye in the solution. These effects were not observed when gold nanoparticles were mixed with anionic dyes, nor for silver nanoparticles with either cationic or anionic dyes.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common, debilitating neuropsychiatric illness with complex genetic etiology. The International OCD Foundation Genetics Collaborative (IOCDF-GC) is a ...multi-national collaboration established to discover the genetic variation predisposing to OCD. A set of individuals affected with DSM-IV OCD, a subset of their parents, and unselected controls, were genotyped with several different Illumina SNP microarrays. After extensive data cleaning, 1465 cases, 5557 ancestry-matched controls and 400 complete trios remained, with a common set of 469,410 autosomal and 9657 X-chromosome single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Ancestry-stratified case-control association analyses were conducted for three genetically-defined subpopulations and combined in two meta-analyses, with and without the trio-based analysis. In the case-control analysis, the lowest two P-values were located within DLGAP1 (P=2.49 × 10(-6) and P=3.44 × 10(-6)), a member of the neuronal postsynaptic density complex. In the trio analysis, rs6131295, near BTBD3, exceeded the genome-wide significance threshold with a P-value=3.84 × 10(-8). However, when trios were meta-analyzed with the case-control samples, the P-value for this variant was 3.62 × 10(-5), losing genome-wide significance. Although no SNPs were identified to be associated with OCD at a genome-wide significant level in the combined trio-case-control sample, a significant enrichment of methylation QTLs (P<0.001) and frontal lobe expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) (P=0.001) was observed within the top-ranked SNPs (P<0.01) from the trio-case-control analysis, suggesting these top signals may have a broad role in gene expression in the brain, and possibly in the etiology of OCD.
Tourette's syndrome (TS) is a developmental disorder that has one of the highest familial recurrence rates among neuropsychiatric diseases with complex inheritance. However, the identification of ...definitive TS susceptibility genes remains elusive. Here, we report the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of TS in 1285 cases and 4964 ancestry-matched controls of European ancestry, including two European-derived population isolates, Ashkenazi Jews from North America and Israel and French Canadians from Quebec, Canada. In a primary meta-analysis of GWAS data from these European ancestry samples, no markers achieved a genome-wide threshold of significance (P<5 × 10(-8)); the top signal was found in rs7868992 on chromosome 9q32 within COL27A1 (P=1.85 × 10(-6)). A secondary analysis including an additional 211 cases and 285 controls from two closely related Latin American population isolates from the Central Valley of Costa Rica and Antioquia, Colombia also identified rs7868992 as the top signal (P=3.6 × 10(-7) for the combined sample of 1496 cases and 5249 controls following imputation with 1000 Genomes data). This study lays the groundwork for the eventual identification of common TS susceptibility variants in larger cohorts and helps to provide a more complete understanding of the full genetic architecture of this disorder.
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