Anisotropic optical response of nanocrystalline v2O5 thin films and effects of oxygen vacancy formation

We report a high sensitivity to oxygen vacancy formation as well as the temperature dependence of anisotropic optical properties of a nanocrystalline V2O5 thin film. Spectroscopic ellipsometry data show that the film has a uniaxial optical anisotropy due to a highly ordered nanocrystalline layer structure. The anisotropic optical properties of the film begin to change at 400 K in a high vacuum and can be linked to the changes in the electronic structure of the film upon reduction. An increase in the refractive indices, anisotropic changes of the optical conductivities, and a decrease in film thickness are observed after vacuum heating and are recovered to original values by heating in air up to 480 K. The experimental results are supported by the previous theoretical studies on the stability of reduced V2O5 surface through the formation of oxygen vacancies. We discuss the formation of oxygen vacancies, vacancy-induced structural relaxations, and changes in the electronic structure of V2O5 in conjunction with the experimental results.1441sciescopu

Impacts of Reforestation on Stabilization of Riverine Water Levels in South Korea

We investigate how reforestation contributed to stabilization of riverine water levels in South Korea. For the purpose, we estimate an equation capturing dynamic relationships among rainfall, upstream-area tree stock, and downstream water levels in three river systems of Hongcheon, Mangyeong, and Hyeongsan, using daily observations of precipitation and water levels for the period from 1985 to 2005. Simulation based on estimation results shows that increase in the tree stock in a river basin leads to a significantly suppressed peaking in riverine water levels in response to an abrupt and concentrated rain in the upstream area. For instance, an hour-long concentration of 100mm rain results in 0.7m rise in water level if the volume of growing stock is 1 million m3 , whereas the rise in water level stays below 0.27m with 5 million m3 in the growing-stock volume

2.45 GHz Active Isolator based on asymmetric coupler

An active isolator achieving both high isolation and low insertion loss at 2.45 GHz is proposed. The isolator is based on an asymmetric coupler and is designed to leverage the gain and reverse isolation of an amplifier and coupling coefficients between the input and output of the coupler. The insertion loss and isolation of the isolator are enhanced by using the coefficients, and the power level with optimal isolation can be determined for a target specification. The asymmetric coupler increases the power handling capability of the proposed isolator that has a low coupling coefficient and achieves highly efficient isolation with a high coupling coefficient. Electromagnetic-circuit co-simulation results show that the proposed isolator with operation stability has ≥40 dB isolation and <1 dB insertion loss for input power between 0−8 dBm

Development of carbon-based adsorbent for separation of impurities such as siloxane and ammonia from land-fill gas

Land-fill gas or bio-gas is composed of large portion of methane and carbon dioxide, and small amount of impurities such as nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, siloxane and ammonia. These gases can be used as a gas-fuel after upgrading treatment. For the application of the land-fill gas and bio-gas as a fuel, we developed highly-performing carbon-based adsorbent which can separate siloxane and ammonia residue from these gases. It was quite necessary to consider the chemical properties of siloxane and ammonia for development of suitable adsorbent of each component. The siloxane can be polymerized in acidic or basic condition to form bulkier species which causes adsorbent deactivation and difficult regeneration. The ammonia gas is well known as basic molecules which have strong affinity to acidic species. In these reasons, we prepared neutral carbon materials by various methods for siloxane adsorption. In addition, we developed carbon-based basic ammonia-adsorbent by simple methods such as the chemical treatment of commercial activated carbon or the impregnation of organic molecules into the activated carbon. And then, adsorption-desorption isotherms and breakthrough curve of siloxane and ammonia were measured for thus synthesized adsorbents. Detail results for synthesis and the adsorption measurement of the studied adsorbents will be presented in the conference

Successful Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery for Recurrent Uterine Fibroid Previously Treated with Uterine Artery Embolization

A 45-year-old premenopausal woman was referred to our clinic due to recurring symptoms of uterine fibroids, nine years after a uterine artery embolization (UAE). At the time of screening, the patient presented with bilateral impairment and narrowing of the uterine arteries, which increased the risk of arterial perforation during repeated UAE procedures. The patient was subsequently referred for magnetic resonance imaging-guided focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS) treatment. Following the treatment, the patient experienced a significant improvement in symptoms (symptom severity score was reduced from 47 to 12 by 1 year post-treatment). MR images at 3 months showed a 49% decrease in fibroid volume. There were no adverse events during the treatment or the follow-up period. This case suggests that MRgFUS can be an effective treatment option for patients with recurrent fibroids following previous UAE treatment

Magnetic Nanoparticles and microNMR for Diagnostic Applications

Sensitive and quantitative measurements of clinically relevant protein biomarkers, pathogens and cells in biological samples would be invaluable for disease diagnosis, monitoring of malignancy, and for evaluating therapy efficacy. Biosensing strategies using magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have recently received considerable attention, since they offer unique advantages over traditional detection methods. Specifically, because biological samples have negligible magnetic background, MNPs can be used to obtain highly sensitive measurements in minimally processed samples. This review focuses on the use of MNPs for in vitro detection of cellular biomarkers based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) effects. This detection platform, termed diagnostic magnetic resonance (DMR), exploits MNPs as proximity sensors to modulate the spin-spin relaxation time of water molecules surrounding the molecularly-targeted nanoparticles. With new developments such as more effective MNP biosensors, advanced conjugational strategies, and highly sensitive miniaturized NMR systems, the DMR detection capabilities have been considerably improved. These developments have also enabled parallel and rapid measurements from small sample volumes and on a wide range of targets, including whole cells, proteins, DNA/mRNA, metabolites, drugs, viruses and bacteria. The DMR platform thus makes a robust and easy-to-use sensor system with broad applications in biomedicine, as well as clinical utility in point-of-care settings

Impact of Reforestation on Stabilization of Water Level of River in Korea

The main objective of this study is to investigate whether and to what extent reforestation contributes on stabilization of water level in river, one of the expected benefits from forest, using both time series and panel data obtained from three rivers in Korea. The time series analysis using daily data collected from each river for the period from 1985 to 2005 show that the impacts of lagged water level and rainfall decrease as the volume of growing stock in adjacent forest increases. However, it is not certain whether that change is contribution of reforestation or contribution of unknown variables with trend. The estimations using panel data of six water level observatories and five rainfall observatories in the three rivers for the same period confirms that the changes in impacts of lagged water level and rainfall cannot be explained by a trend but my reforestation. According to simulations based on the estimation results, when it rains one hundred millimeter per day at time zero, the water level rises by 16.7% on that day, if the volume of growing stock is 1 million m3. In contrast, the water level rises by 10.7%, if the volume of growing stock is 5 million m3. Then, the effects of rainfall gradually vanish

Clinicopathological Risk Factors and Biochemical Predictors of Safe Discharge after Total Thyroidectomy and Central Compartment Node Dissection for Thyroid Cancer: A Prospective Study

To determine the clinicopathological risk factors and reliable biochemical predictors of the development of hypocalcemic symptoms after total thyroidectomy on the basis of serum calcium and intact parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels measured 1 hour after surgery, a prospective study was performed on 817 patients who underwent a total thyroidectomy with central compartment node dissection (CCND) due to well-differentiated thyroid cancer. We evaluated the correlations between hypocalcemic symptom development and clinicopathological factors. And the predictability for hypocalcemic symptom development of intact PTH cut-offs (<10 pg/mL and <20 pg/mL, resp.) according to serum calcium level subgroup was analyzed. Female gender (P<0.001) was the only independent risk factor for hypocalcemic symptom development in multivariate regression analysis. The negative predictive value (NPV) of intact PTH, signifying nondevelopment of hypocalcemic symptoms, was higher than the positive predictive value (PPV) which signified development of hypocalcemic symptoms. In addition, when we applied the different adoption of the intact PTH cut-off according to serum calcium level, we could obtain more increased NPVs. A female gender and the application of more specific cut-offs for intact PTH according to the serum calcium levels measured 1 hour after surgery may help the patients to be more safely discharged

Image-Object-Specific Prompt Learning for Few-Shot Class-Incremental Learning

While many FSCIL studies have been undertaken, achieving satisfactory performance, especially during incremental sessions, has remained challenging. One prominent challenge is that the encoder, trained with an ample base session training set, often underperforms in incremental sessions. In this study, we introduce a novel training framework for FSCIL, capitalizing on the generalizability of the Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training (CLIP) model to unseen classes. We achieve this by formulating image-object-specific (IOS) classifiers for the input images. Here, an IOS classifier refers to one that targets specific attributes (like wings or wheels) of class objects rather than the image's background. To create these IOS classifiers, we encode a bias prompt into the classifiers using our specially designed module, which harnesses key-prompt pairs to pinpoint the IOS features of classes in each session. From an FSCIL standpoint, our framework is structured to retain previous knowledge and swiftly adapt to new sessions without forgetting or overfitting. This considers the updatability of modules in each session and some tricks empirically found for fast convergence. Our approach consistently demonstrates superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods across the miniImageNet, CIFAR100, and CUB200 datasets. Further, we provide additional experiments to validate our learned model's ability to achieve IOS classifiers. We also conduct ablation studies to analyze the impact of each module within the architecture.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 4 table