Laser and radiofrequency ablations for benign and malignant thyroid tumors

A growing body of evidence is being published regarding the safety and efficacy of minimally invasive image-guided ablation techniques. While clinical applications of these techniques are increasing, international societies have started to publish treatment guidelines and to make efforts to standardize both terminology and reporting criteria for image-guided thyroid ablations. Laser ablation and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) are among the most common ablation techniques either for benign and malignant thyroid nodules. Unlike laser ablation and RFA in the treatment of benign thyroid nodules, where safety and efficacy have been widely demonstrated, evidence regarding local tumor control of thyroid malignancies is still limited. However, preliminary results are encouraging and image-guided thermal ablation techniques can be considered a valid alternative to surgery for the treatment of benign thyroid nodules and recurrent thyroid cancers. This review evaluates the basic concept of RFA and laser ablations, their techniques, clinical outcomes, and complications based on the suggestions of several society guidelines. Multidisciplinary collaboration remains critical to identify patients which may benefit from minimally invasive image-guided thermal ablations, especially if surgery or radioiodine therapy are not feasible options

Performance of RF MEMS switches at low temperatures

The actuation voltage of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) \ud metal switches was investigated at temperatures ranging from 10 to 290 K. The investigation shows a 50% increase in the actuation voltage at low temperature. A comparison has been made using a published model and showed similar increment of actuation voltage at low temperature

Fully supersymmetric CP violations in the kaon system

We show that, on the contrary to the usual claims, fully supersymmetric CP violations in the kaon system are possible through the gluino mediated flavor changing interactions. Both $\epsilon_K$ and ${\rm Re} (\epsilon' / \epsilon_K)$ can be accommodated for relatively large $\tan\beta$ without any fine tunings or contradictions to the FCNC and EDM constraints.Comment: Contribution to the Proceedings of ICHEP2000, Osaka, 200

Beneficial immunostimulatory effect of short-term Chlorella supplementation: enhancement of natural Killer cell activity and early inflammatory response (Randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial)

Background - In vitro and animal studies have demonstrated that Chlorella is a potent biological response modifier on immunity. However, there were no direct evidences for the effect of Chlorella supplementation on immune/inflammation response in healthy humans. Methods - This study was designed for an 8-week randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial: 5g of Chlorella (n=23) or Placebo (n=28) as form of tablets. Mainly, cytotoxic activities of Natural killer (NK) cells and serum concentrations of interferon-¿, interleukin-1ß and interleukin-12 were measured. Results - After the 8-week, serum concentrations of interferon-¿ (

Polar vs. nonpolar InGaN/GaN quantum heterostructures: Opposite quantum confined electroabsorption and carrier dynamics behavior

We present a study of quantum confined electroabsorption and carrier dynamics in polar c-plane and nonpolar a-plane InGaN/GaN quantum heterostructures. We demonstrate red-shifting absorption edge, due to quantum confined Stark effect, in nonpolar InGaN/GaN quantum structures in response to increased electric field, while we show the opposite effect with blue-shifting absorption spectra in polar quantum structures. Moreover, confirmed by time-resolved photoluminescence measurements, we prove that carrier lifetimes increase with increasing electric field for nonpolar structures, whereas the opposite occurs for polar ones

Top-quark spin correlation at Linear Colliders with anomalous couplings

We investigate the feasibility of probing anomalous top-quark couplings of $Wtb$, $Z t \bar{t}$, and $\gamma t \bar{t}$ in terms of an effective Lagrangian with dimension-six operators at future $e^+e^-$ linear colliders with a c. m. energy $\sqrt s \sim 500-800$ GeV. We first examine the constraints on these anomalous couplings from the $Z\to b \bar{b}$ data at LEP I and from unitarity considerations. We then consider in detail the effects of anomalous couplings on $t \bar{t}$ spin correlations in the top-pair production and decay with three spin bases: the helicity, beamline and off-diagonal bases. Our results show that the polarized beams are more suitable for exploring the effects of different new operators. For polarized beams, the helicity basis yields the best sensitivity.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, references adde

Controlled growth and characterization of epitaxially-laterally-overgrown InGaN/GaN quantum heterostructures

Crystal material quality is fundamentally important for optoelectronic devices including laser diodes and light emitting diodes. To this end epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) has proven to be a powerful technique for reducing dislocation density in GaN and its alloys [1,2]. Implementation and design of ELO process is, however, critical for obtaining high-quality material with high-efficiency quantum structures for light emitters [3]. ©2010 IEEE

Microstructural and electrochemical properties of impregnated La0.4Sr0.6Ti0.8Mn0.2O3±d into a partially removed Ni SOFC anode substrate

The microstructural and electrochemical properties of anodes obtained by impregnation of the La0.4Sr0.6Ti0.8Mn0.2O3±d (LSTM) oxide system into two types of anode substrates such as Ni/ 8YSZ substrate (Ni (E)/ 8YSZ) and partially Ni removed Ni/ 8YSZ substrate (Ni(R)/8YSZ) were investigated in order to apply them as anode material for solid oxide fuel cells. All of the samples with LSTM impregnated on Ni (R)/ 8YSZ show higher electrical conductivity values than those of unimpregnated Ni (E)/ 8YSZ under dry H2 condition. The highest electrical conductivity values of 2041.2, 1877.4, and 1764.3 S/cm at 700, 800 and 900 °C can be achieved by samples with 3 wt% impregnated LSTM on Ni (R)/ 8YSZ. From the XPS analysis, the existence of a Ti metal peak on the surface of LSTM was only measured for the LSTM (3 wt%)-Ni (R)/ 8YSZ sample, metallic titanium on the surface can improve the electrical catalytic reaction. LSTM (3 wt%)-Ni (R)/ 8YSZ showed higher electrical conductivity values then those of LSTM (3 wt%)-Ni (E)/ 8YSZ in all the temperature ranges measured in the case of dry CH4 supply. Finally, the electrical conductivity of LSTM (3 wt%)-Ni (R)/ 8YSZ was stably maintained even when exposed to dry CH4 condition at 900 °C for a long time (100 h). © 2020 Elsevier B.V

Investigation of excitonic effects in polar InGaN/GaN quantum heterostructures for enhanced quantum electroabsorption in blue

[No abstract available

Resumming the color-octet contribution to e+ e- -> J/psi + X

Recent observations of the spectrum of J/psi produced in e+ e- collisions at the Upsilon(4S) resonance are in conflict with fixed-order calculations using the Non-Relativistic QCD (NRQCD) effective field theory. One problem is that leading order color-octet mechanisms predict an enhancement of the cross section for J/psi with maximal energy that is not observed in the data. However, in this region of phase space large perturbative corrections (Sudakov logarithms) as well as enhanced nonperturbative effects are important. In this paper we use the newly developed Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) to systematically include these effects. We find that these corrections significantly broaden the color-octet contribution to the J/psi spectrum. Our calculation employs a one-stage renormalization group evolution rather than the two-stage evolution used in previous SCET calculations. We give a simple argument for why the two methods yield identical results to lowest order in the SCET power counting.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figure