Localized Liquid-Phase Synthesis of Porous SnO_2 Nanotubes on MEMS Platform for Low Power, High Performance Gas Sensors

We have developed highly sensitive, low-power gas sensors through the novel integration method of porous SnO_2 nanotubes (NTs) on a micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) platform. As a template material, ZnO nanowires (NWs) were directly synthesized on beam-shaped, suspended microheaters through an in situ localized hydrothermal reaction induced by local thermal energy around the Joule-heated area. Also, the liquid-phase deposition process enabled the formation of a porous SnO_2 thin film on the surface of ZnO NWs and simultaneous etching of the ZnO core, eventually to generate porous SnO_2 NTs. Because of the localized synthesis of SnO_2 NTs on the suspended microheater, very low power for the gas sensor operation (<6 mW) has been realized. Moreover, the sensing performance (e.g., sensitivity and response time) of synthesized SnO_2 NTs was dramatically enhanced compared to that of ZnO NWs. In addition, the sensing performance was further improved by forming SnO_2–ZnO hybrid nanostructures due to the heterojunction effect

Ga-doped Pt-Ni Octahedral Nanoparticles as a Highly Active and Durable Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Bimetallic PtNi nanoparticles have been considered as a promising electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) owing to their high catalytic activity. However, under typical fuel cell operating conditions, Ni atoms easily dissolve into the electrolyte, resulting in degradation of the catalyst and the membrane-electrode assembly (MEA). Here, we report gallium-doped PtNi octahedral nanoparticles on a carbon support (Ga-PtNi/C). The Ga-PtNi/C shows high ORR activity, marking an 11.7-fold improvement in the mass activity (1.24 A mgPt-1) and a 17.3-fold improvement in the specific activity (2.53 mA cm-2) compare to the commercial Pt/C (0.106 A mgPt-1 and 0.146 mA cm-2). Density functional theory calculations demonstrate that addition of Ga to octahedral PtNi can cause an increase in the oxygen intermediate binding energy, leading to the enhanced catalytic activity toward ORR. In a voltage-cycling test, the Ga-PtNi/C exhibits superior stability to PtNi/C and the commercial Pt/C, maintaining the initial Ni concentration and octahedral shape of the nanoparticles. Single cell using the Ga-PtNi/C exhibits higher initial performance and durability than those using the PtNi/C and the commercial Pt/C. The majority of the Ga-PtNi nanoparticles well maintain the octahedral shape without agglomeration after the single cell durability test (30,000 cycles). This work demonstrates that the octahedral Ga-PtNi/C can be utilized as a highly active and durable ORR catalyst in practical fuel cell applications

Seawater Battery-Based Wireless Marine Buoy System with Battery Degradation Prediction and Multiple Power Optimization Capabilities

This paper presents a wireless marine buoy system based on the seawater battery (SWB), providing self-powered operation, power-efficient management, and degradation prediction and fault detection. Since conventional open circuit voltage (OCV) methods cannot be applied due to inherent cell characteristics of SWB, the coulomb counting (CC) method is adopted for the state of charge (SOC) monitoring. For the state of health (SOH), a variance-based detection scheme is proposed to provide degradation prediction and fault detection of the SWB. The self-powered operation is augmented by two proposed power optimization schemes such as multiple power management and three-step LED light control. A wireless buoy system prototype is manufactured, and its functional feasibility is experimentally verified, where its location and SOC are periodically monitored in a smartphone-based wireless platform

Ga-doped Pt-Ni Octahedral Nanoparticles as a Highly Active and Durable Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Reduction Reaction

Bimetallic PtNi nanoparticles have been considered as a promising electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) owing to their high catalytic activity. However, under typical fuel cell operating conditions, Ni atoms easily dissolve into the electrolyte, resulting in degradation of the catalyst and the membrane-electrode assembly (MEA). Here, we report gallium-doped PtNi octahedral nanoparticles on a carbon support (Ga-PtNi/C). The Ga-PtNi/C shows high ORR activity, marking an 11.7-fold improvement in the mass activity (1.24 A mgPt-1) and a 17.3-fold improvement in the specific activity (2.53 mA cm-2) compare to the commercial Pt/C (0.106 A mgPt-1 and 0.146 mA cm-2). Density functional theory calculations demonstrate that addition of Ga to octahedral PtNi can cause an increase in the oxygen intermediate binding energy, leading to the enhanced catalytic activity toward ORR. In a voltage-cycling test, the Ga-PtNi/C exhibits superior stability to PtNi/C and the commercial Pt/C, maintaining the initial Ni concentration and octahedral shape of the nanoparticles. Single cell using the Ga-PtNi/C exhibits higher initial performance and durability than those using the PtNi/C and the commercial Pt/C. The majority of the Ga-PtNi nanoparticles well maintain the octahedral shape without agglomeration after the single cell durability test (30,000 cycles). This work demonstrates that the octahedral Ga-PtNi/C can be utilized as a highly active and durable ORR catalyst in practical fuel cell applications

Regulation of synaptic Rac1 activity, long-term potentiation maintenance, and learning and memory by BCR and ABR Rac GTPase-activating proteins

Rho family small GTPases are important regulators of neuronal development. Defective Rho regulation causes nervous system dysfunctions including mental retardation and Alzheimer's disease. Rac1, a member of the Rho family, regulates dendritic spines and excitatory synapses, but relatively little is known about how synaptic Rac1 is negatively regulated. Breakpoint cluster region (BCR) is a Rac GTPase-activating protein known to form a fusion protein with the c-Abl tyrosine kinase in Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myelogenous leukemia. Despite the fact that BCR mRNAs are abundantly expressed in the brain, the neural functions of BCR protein have remained obscure. We report here that BCR and its close relative active BCR-related (ABR) localize at excitatory synapses and directly interact with PSD-95, an abundant postsynaptic scaffolding protein. Mice deficient for BCR or ABR show enhanced basal Rac1 activity but only a small increase in spine density. Importantly, mice lacking BCR or ABR exhibit a marked decrease in the maintenance, but not induction, of long-term potentiation, and show impaired spatial and object recognition memory. These results suggest that BCR and ABR have novel roles in the regulation of synaptic Rac1 signaling, synaptic plasticity, and learning and memory, and that excessive Rac1 activity negatively affects synaptic and cognitive functions.This work was supported by the National Creative Research Initiative Program of the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (E.K.), Neuroscience Program Grant 2009-0081468 (S.-Y.C.), 21st Century Frontier R&D Program in Neuroscience Grant 2009K001284 (H.K.), Basic Science Research Program Grant R13-2008-009-01001-0 (Y.C.B.), and United States Public Health Service Grants HL071945 (J.G.) and HL060231 (J.G., N.H.)

2023 Korean Endocrine Society Consensus Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Primary Aldosteronism

Primary aldosteronism (PA) is a common, yet underdiagnosed cause of secondary hypertension. It is characterized by an overproduction of aldosterone, leading to hypertension and/or hypokalemia. Despite affecting between 5.9% and 34% of patients with hypertension, PA is frequently missed due to a lack of clinical awareness and systematic screening, which can result in significant cardiovascular complications. To address this, medical societies have developed clinical practice guidelines to improve the management of hypertension and PA. The Korean Endocrine Society, drawing on a wealth of research, has formulated new guidelines for PA. A task force has been established to prepare PA guidelines, which encompass epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care. The Korean clinical guidelines for PA aim to deliver an evidence-based protocol for PA diagnosis, treatment, and patient monitoring. These guidelines are anticipated to ease the burden of this potentially curable condition

ProFeat: Unsupervised image clustering via progressive feature refinement

Unsupervised image clustering is a chicken-and-egg problem that involves representation learning and clustering. To resolve the inter-dependency between them, many approaches that iteratively perform the two tasks have been proposed, but their accuracy is limited due to inaccurate intermediate representations and clusters. To overcome this, this paper proposes ProFeat, a novel iterative approach to unsupervised image clustering based on progressive feature refinement. To learn discriminative features for clustering while avoiding adversarial influence from inaccurate intermediate clusters, ProFeat rigorously divides representation learning and clustering by modeling a neural network for clustering as a composition of an embedding and a clustering function and introducing an auxiliary embedding function. ProFeat progressively refines representations using confident samples from intermediate clusters using an extended contrastive loss. This paper also proposes ensemble-based feature refinement for more robust clustering. Our experiments demonstrate that ProFeat achieves superior results compared to previous methods. © 202211Nsciescopu