Thermoelectric and structural properties of transparent Sb-Doped ZnO thin films sputtered in a confocal geometry

This study focuses on understanding the influence of low Sb doping on ZnO’s electrical, optical, and thermoelectrical properties, while also studying its structural and morphological parameters. For this, several ZnO films with varying Sb target current densities, in the range of 0–0.27 mA/cm2, were produced by DC magnetron sputtering in a confocal geometry. As a result, thin ZnO:Sb films with an average transparency in the visible region greater than 80% are obtained, revealing for optimized conditions an absolute Seebeck coefficient of 100 µV/K and a respective power factor of 1.1 mW·m−1·K−2 at 300 K, effectively modifying the electrical, optical, and thermoelectrical properties of the material and ensuring its suitability for heat harvesting applications. From atom probe tomography experiments, a larger Zn content is registered at triple junctions of the grain boundary, which matches the approximately 25 nm crystallite grain size derived from the X-ray diffraction analysis.This research is funded by FCT/PIDDAC through the Strategic Funds project reference UIDB/04650/2020-2023. Joana M. Ribeiro is grateful to the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) for the Ph.D grant SFRH/BD/147221/2019. This work (proposal ID 2021-025-030112) was carried out with the support of the Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility (KNMFi, www.knmf.kit.edu, accessed on 8 March 2023), a Helmholtz Research Infrastructure at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, www.kit.edu, accessed on 8 March 2023)

Oxytocin Normalizes Approach-Avoidance Behavior in Women With Borderline Personality Disorder

Background: Interpersonal deficits are a core symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD), which could be related to increased social threat sensitivity and a tendency to approach rather than avoid interpersonal threats. The neuropeptide oxytocin has been shown to reduce threat sensitivity in patients with BPD and to modify approach–avoidance behavior in healthy volunteers. Methods: In a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled between-subject design, 53 unmedicated women with BPD and 61 healthy women participated in an approach–avoidance task 75 min after intranasal substance administration (24 IU of oxytocin or placebo). The task assesses automatic approach–avoidance tendencies in reaction to facial expressions of happiness and anger. Results: While healthy participants responded faster to happy than angry faces, the opposite response pattern, that is, faster reactions to angry than happy faces, was found in patients with BPD. In the oxytocin condition, the “congruency effect” (i.e., faster avoidance of facial anger and approach of facial happiness vice versa) was increased in both groups. Notably, patients with BPD exhibited a congruency effect toward angry faces in the oxytocin but not in the placebo condition. Conclusions: This is the second report of deficient fast, automatic avoidance responses in terms of approach behavior toward interpersonal threat cues in patients with BPD. Intranasally administered oxytocin was found to strengthen avoidance behavior to social threat cues and, thus, to normalize fast action tendencies in BPD. Together with the previously reported oxytocinergic reduction of social threat hypersensitivity, these results suggest beneficial effects of oxytocin on interpersonal dysfunctioning in BPD

Measuring, Understanding, and Classifying News Media Sympathy on Twitter after Crisis Events

This paper investigates bias in coverage between Western and Arab media on Twitter after the November 2015 Beirut and Paris terror attacks. Using two Twitter datasets covering each attack, we investigate how Western and Arab media differed in coverage bias, sympathy bias, and resulting information propagation. We crowdsourced sympathy and sentiment labels for 2,390 tweets across four languages (English, Arabic, French, German), built a regression model to characterize sympathy, and thereafter trained a deep convolutional neural network to predict sympathy. Key findings show: (a) both events were disproportionately covered (b) Western media exhibited less sympathy, where each media coverage was more sympathetic towards the country affected in their respective region (c) Sympathy predictions supported ground truth analysis that Western media was less sympathetic than Arab media (d) Sympathetic tweets do not spread any further. We discuss our results in light of global news flow, Twitter affordances, and public perception impact.Comment: In Proc. CHI 2018 Papers program. Please cite: El Ali, A., Stratmann, T., Park, S., Sch\"oning, J., Heuten, W. & Boll, S. (2018). Measuring, Understanding, and Classifying News Media Sympathy on Twitter after Crisis Events. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.317413

Vorhersage des räumlichen Auftretens von Schadstoffen in Überschwemmungsgebieten mittels morphologischer und hydrologischer Parameter von Flussauen

Ziel eines laufenden UFOPLAN-Projektes ist die Weiterentwicklung einer Methode zur Kennzeichnung des stofflichen Zustands von Auenböden für Flüsse 1. und 2. Ordnung für einen bundesweiten Kartenmaßstab. Bislang wurden als wichtige Einflussfaktoren im Geodaten identifiziert, die auf die Herkunft von Schadstoffen aus natürlichen und anthropogenen Quellen fokussieren (z.B. Landnutzung, Rezente oder Altlaue, Einfluss von Bergbau, Einwohnerdichte, Lithologie, das Flussgebiet selbst, Eigenschaften der Einzugsgebiete von Zuflüssen). Auf Grundlage dieser Daten wurden bereits Raumeinheiten abgeleitet, die jeweils für spezifische Stoffmuster und -konzentrationen repräsentativ sind. Hierfür flossen bundesweit rund 11.400 Oberbodenproben in Auen ein. Fließgewässerauen stehen jedoch im permanenten stofflichen Austausch mit ihrer Umgebung und sind durch Erosions- und Sedimentationsprozesse von der Umlagerung erheblicher Mengen an Bodenmaterial und daran gebundener Schadstoffe vor allem innerhalb der Auengebiete geprägt. Das Ausmaß dieser Transportprozesse variiert zeitlich stark und ist u. a. von der Hydrodynamik des Fließgewässers abhängig. Da sich sowohl organische Schadstoffe bevorzugt an Partikel wie z. B. organisches Material oder Tonminerale anlagern, ist das Schadstoffmuster und der -gehalt von Auenböden mit dem Sedimentationsverhalten eng verknüpft. Der Sedimentrückhalt ist wiederum im Wesentlichen von der Häufigkeit und Dauer der Hochwasserereignisse, der Fließgeschwindigkeit des Wassers und der Auentopografie abhängig. Aus diesen Gründen wurden geeignete morphologische und hydrologische Parameter für die Charakterisierung von Flussauen (nach Koenzen 2005) in die Methode integriert. Ziel war es zum einen, Aussagen für Auenabschnitte ohne Daten zu ermöglichen und zum anderen die Sicherheit der Vorhersage für Stoffmuster und -konzentration in Gebieten mit wenig Messpunkten signifikant zu erhöhen

Molecular weight of hydroxyethyl starch: is there an effect on blood coagulation and pharmacokinetics?

Background. The development of hydroxyethyl starches (HES) with low impact on blood coagulation but higher volume effect compared with the currently used HES solutions is of clinical interest. We hypothesized that high molecular weight, low-substituted HES might possess these properties. Methods. Thirty pigs were infused with three different HES solutions (20 ml kg−1) with the same degree of molar substitution (0.42) but different molecular weights (130, 500 and 900 kDa). Serial blood samples were taken over 24 h and blood coagulation was assessed by Thromboelastograph® analysis and analysis of plasma coagulation. In addition, plasma concentration and in vivo molecular weight were determined and pharmacokinetic data were computed based on a two-compartment model. Results. Thromboelastograph analysis and plasma coagulation tests did not reveal a more pronounced alteration of blood coagulation with HES 500 and HES 900 compared with HES 130. In contrast, HES 500 and HES 900 had a greater area under the plasma concentration-time curve [1542 (142) g min litre−1, P<0.001, 1701 (321) g min litre−1, P<0.001] than HES 130 [1156 (223) g min litre−1] and alpha half life (\batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} $\mathrm{t}_{{\alpha}}^{{\frac{1}{2}}}$ \end{document}) was longer for HES 500 [53.8 (8.6) min, P<0.01] and HES 900 [57.1 (12.3) min, P<0.01] than for HES 130 [39.9 (10.7) min]. Beta half life (\batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} $\mathrm{t}_{{\beta}}^{{\frac{1}{2}}}$ \end{document}), however, was similar for all three types of HES [from 332 (100) to 381 (63) min]. Conclusions. In low-substituted HES, molecular weight is not a key factor in compromising blood coagulation. The longer initial intravascular persistence of high molecular weight low-substituted HES might result in a longer lasting volume effec

Multimedia Vocabularies on the Semantic Web

This document gives an overview on the state-of-the-art of multimedia metadata formats. Initially, practical relevant vocabularies for developers of Semantic Web applications are listed according to their modality scope. In the second part of this document, the focus is set on the integration of the multimedia vocabularies into the Semantic Web, that is to say, formal representations of the vocabularies are discussed

Regional Differences in Susceptibility to Hypoxic-Ischemic Injury in the Preterm Brain: Exploring the Spectrum from White Matter Loss to Selective Grey Matter Injury in a Rat Model

Models of premature brain injury have largely focused on the white matter injury thought to underlie periventricular leukomalacia (PVL). However, with increased survival of very low birth weight infants, injury patterns involving grey matter are now recognized. We aimed to determine how grey matter lesions relate to hypoxic-ischemic- (HI) mediated white matter injury by modifying our rat model of PVL. Following HI, microglial infiltration, astrocytosis, and neuronal and axonal degeneration increased in a region-specific manner dependent on the severity of myelin loss in pericallosal white matter. The spectrum of injury ranged from mild, where diffuse white matter abnormalities were dominant and were associated with mild axonal injury and local microglial activation, to severe HI injury characterized by focal MBP loss, widespread neuronal degeneration, axonal damage, and gliosis throughout the neocortex, caudate putamen, and thalamus. In sum, selective regional white matter loss occurs in the preterm rat concomitantly with a clinically relevant spectrum of grey matter injury. These data demonstrate an interspecies similarity of brain injury patterns and further substantiates the reliable use of this model for the study of preterm brain injury

Low-dimensional modeling of hillslope subsurface flow: Relationship between rainfall, recharge, and unsaturated storage dynamics

We present a coupling between the one-dimensional Richards equation for vertical unsaturated flow and the one-dimensional hillslope-storage Boussinesq equation (HSB) for lateral saturated flow along complex hillslopes. Here the capillary fringe is included in the flow domain as an integral part of the Boussinesq aquifer. The coupling allows quantitative investigation of the role of unsaturated storage in the relationship between rainfall and recharge. The coupled model (HSB coupled) is compared to the original HSB model (HSB original) and a three-dimensional Richards equation (RE) based model (taken to be the benchmark) on a set of seven synthetic hillslopes, ranging from convergent to divergent. Using HSB original, the water tables are overestimated and the outflow rates are generally underestimated, and there is no delay between rainfall and recharge. The coupled model, however, shows a remarkably good match with the RE model in terms of outflow rates, and the delay between rainfall and recharge is captured well. We also see a clear improvement in the match to the water tables, even though the values are still overestimated for some hillslope shapes, in particular the convergent slopes. We show that for the hillslope configurations and scenarios examined in this paper it is possible to reproduce hydrographs and water table dynamics with a good degree of accuracy using a low-dimensional hydrological model