Role of deep levels and interface states in the capacitance characteristics of all‐sputtered CuInSe2/CdS solar cell heterojunctions

All‐sputtered CuInSe2/CdS solar cellheterojunctions have been analyzed by means of capacitance‐frequency (C‐F) and capacitance‐bias voltage (C‐V) measurements. Depending on the CuInSe2 layer composition, two kinds of heterojunctions were analyzed: type 1 heterojunctions (based on stoichiometric or slightly In‐rich CuInSe2 layers) and type 2 heterojunctions (based on Cu‐rich CuInSe2 layers). In type 1 heterojunctions, a 80‐meV donor level has been found. Densities of interface states in the range 101 0–101 1 cm2 eV− 1 (type 1) and in the range 101 2–101 3 cm− 2 eV− 1 (type 2) have been deduced. On the other hand, doping concentrations of 1.6×101 6 cm− 3 for stoichiometric CuInSe2 (type 1 heterojunction) and 8×101 7 cm− 3 for the CdS (type 2 heterojunction) have been deduced from C‐Vmeasurements

Bladder and upper urinary tract cancers as first and second primary cancers

Background Previous population-based studies on second primary cancers (SPCs) in urothelial cancers have focused on known risk factors in bladder cancer patients without data on other urothelial sites of the renal pelvis or ureter. Aims To estimate sex-specific risks for any SPCs after urothelial cancers, and in reverse order, for urothelial cancers as SPCs after any cancer. Such two-way analysis may help interpret the results. Methods We employed standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) to estimate bidirectional relative risks of subsequent cancer associated with urothelial cancers. Patient data were obtained from the Swedish Cancer Registry from years 1990 through 2015. Results We identified 46 234 urinary bladder cancers (75% male), 940 ureteral cancers (60% male), and 2410 renal pelvic cancers (57% male). After male bladder cancer, SIRs significantly increased for 9 SPCs, most for ureteral (SIR 41.9) and renal pelvic (17.2) cancers. In the reversed order (bladder cancer as SPC), 10 individual FPCs were associated with an increased risk; highest associations were noted after renal pelvic (21.0) and ureteral (20.9) cancers. After female bladder cancer, SIRs of four SPCs were significantly increased, most for ureteral (87.8) and pelvic (35.7) cancers. Female bladder, ureteral, and pelvic cancers associated are with endometrial cancer. Conclusions The risks of recurrent urothelial cancers were very high, and, at most sites, female risks were twice over the male risks. Risks persisted often to follow-up periods of >5 years, motivating an extended patient follow-up. Lynch syndrome-related cancers were associated with particularly female urothelial cancers, calling for clinical vigilance.Peer reviewe

A thermosensitive electromechanical model for detecting biological particles

Miniature electromechanical systems form a class of bioMEMS that can provide appropriate sensitivity. In this research, a thermo-electro-mechanical model is presented to detect biological particles in the microscale. Identification in the model is based on analyzing pull-in instability parameters and frequency shifts. Here, governing equations are derived via the extended Hamilton’s principle. The coupled effects of system parameters such as surface layer energy, electric field correction, and material properties are incorporated in this thermosensitive model. Afterward, the accuracy of the present model and obtained results are validated with experimental, analytical, and numerical data for several cases. Performing a parametric study reveals that mechanical properties of biosensors can significantly affect the detection sensitivity of actuated ultra-small detectors and should be taken into account. Furthermore, it is shown that the number or dimension of deposited particles on the sensing zone can be estimated by investigating the changes in the threshold voltage, electrode deflection, and frequency shifts. The present analysis is likely to provide pertinent guidelines to design thermal switches and miniature detectors with the desired performance. The developed biosensor is more appropriate to detect and characterize viruses in samples with different temperatures

AWSD:adaptive weighted spatiotemporal distillation for video representation

Abstract We propose an Adaptive Weighted Spatiotemporal Distillation (AWSD) technique for video representation by encoding the appearance and dynamics of the videos into a single RGB image map. This is obtained by adaptively dividing the videos into small segments and comparing two consecutive segments. This allows using pre-trained models on still images for video classification while successfully capturing the spatiotemporal variations in the videos. The adaptive segment selection enables effective encoding of the essential discriminative information of untrimmed videos. Based on Gaussian Scale Mixture, we compute the weights by extracting the mutual information between two consecutive segments. Unlike pooling-based methods, our AWSD gives more importance to the frames that characterize actions or events thanks to its adaptive segment length selection. We conducted extensive experimental analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed method and compared our results against those of recent state-of-the-art methods on four benchmark datatsets, including UCF101, HMDB51, ActivityNet v1.3, and Maryland. The obtained results on these benchmark datatsets showed that our method significantly outperforms earlier works and sets the new state-of-the-art performance in video classification. Code is available at the project webpage: https://mohammadt68.github.io/AWSD

Attitude of nurses towards euthanasia: a cross-sectional study in Iran

Background: Nurses play a major role in providing end-of-life care, and euthanasia is considered to be one of the most important ethical challenges that care providers can face. Aim: To assess the nurses' attitude towards euthanasia in Iran. Methods: The cross-sectional study included nurses who worked in intensive and critical care, as well as dialysis units of a teaching hospital affiliated to Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, who were selected by the census sampling technique. Data were collected using a two-part questionnaire encompassing the demographic characteristics of nurses and the 20-item Euthanasia Attitude Scale. Results: The overall score of nurses' attitudes towards euthanasia, ranging from one to five, was 2.71 +/- 0.45, indicating a negative attitude and opposition towards euthanasia. Alongside this, the results demonstrated that there was no significant relationship between demographic characteristics and nurses' attitudes toward euthanasia. Conclusion: In general, nurses in Iran oppose euthanasia. This can be attributed to the context of religious beliefs and culture in Iran as an Islamic country