Design, fabrication and characterization of monolithic embedded parylene microchannels in silicon substrate

This paper presents a novel channel fabrication technology of bulk-micromachined monolithic embedded polymer channels in silicon substrate. The fabrication process favorably obviates the need for sacrifical materials in surface-micromachined channels and wafer-bonding in conventional bulk-micromachined channels. Single-layer-deposited parylene C (poly-para-xylylene C) is selected as a structural material in the microfabricated channels/columns to conduct life science research. High pressure capacity can be obtained in these channels by the assistance of silicon substrate support to meet the needs of high-pressure loading conditions in microfluidic applications. The fabrication technology is completely compatible with further lithographic CMOS/MEMS processes, which enables the fabricated embedded structures to be totally integrated with on-chip micro/nano-sensors/actuators/structures for miniaturized lab-on-a-chip systems. An exemplary process was described to show the feasibility of combining bulk micromachining and surface micromachining techniques in process integration. Embedded channels in versatile cross-section profile designs have been fabricated and characterized to demonstrate their capabilities for various applications. A quasi-hemi-circular-shaped embedded parylene channel has been fabricated and verified to withstand inner pressure loadings higher than 1000 psi without failure for micro-high performance liquid chromatography (µHPLC) analysis. Fabrication of a high-aspect-ratio (internal channel height/internal channel width, greater than 20) quasi-rectangular-shaped embedded parylene channel has also been presented and characterized. Its implementation in a single-mask spiral parylene column longer than 1.1 m in a 3.3 mm × 3.3 mm square size on a chip has been demonstrated for prospective micro-gas chromatography (µGC) and high-density, high-efficiency separations. This proposed monolithic embedded channel technology can be extensively implemented to fabricate microchannels/columns in high-pressure microfludics and high-performance/high-throughput chip-based micro total analysis systems (µTAS)

A fool proof carrier design for front access storage expansion board

Storage applications, by their very nature, need an expansion hardware to consolidate more hard drives to a controller. Typically the expansion hardware is designed as an independent printed circuit board and connect to the hard drive backplane in the opposite side of hard drives. When the system is installed in the rack, it requires users to move the whole system box from the position in order to open the lid. It also requires users to power off the system before disconnect the expansion board from the hard drive backplane

EFFECTS ON POSTURAL CONSTRAINTS ON OVERARM THROWING

This study explored the effects of postural constraints on overarm throwing. 10 participants were required to perform an overarm throwing movement by 3 tasks which under postural constraints. Tasks were including trunk-fixed, sitting, and standing. 10 pieces of 3D motion capture system were used to record the maximum velocity of body segments as data and one-way repeated measures ANOVA (a=.05) with HSD post-hoc tests was conducted to analysis the data. Therefore, the results indicated that the performance of overarm throwing by 3 tasks were different significantly, which proved the kinetic chain formed by links connected in series gave body segments more velocities. Moreover, it meat trunk and lower limbs played the roles to transport velocity as performing overarm throwing

A novel test of gravity via black hole eikonal correspondence

When adopted in black hole spacetimes, geometric-optics approximations imply a mapping between the quasinormal mode (QNM) spectrum of black holes in the eikonal limit and black hole images. In particular, the real part and the imaginary part of eikonal QNM frequencies are associated with the apparent size and the detailed structure of the ring images, respectively. This correspondence could be violated when going beyond general relativity. We propose a novel method to test the eikonal correspondence via the comparison of two sets of observables from a nonrotating black hole, one extracted from QNM spectra and the other from the lensed photon rings on the image plane. Specifically, the photon ring observables robustly capture the information of the black hole spacetime itself regardless of the surrounding emission models. Therefore, the proposed test of eikonal correspondence can be validated in quite broad scenarios.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. Matching published versio

Assessing the safety and efficacy of switching to brinzolamide/timolol fixed combination as a replacement therapy in patients with uncontrolled intraocular pressure in Taiwan

AbstractPurposeThe objective of this study is to assess the safety and efficacy of switching to brinzolamide 1% and timolol 0.5% fixed combination (BTFC) from prior pharmacotherapy in patients with open-angle glaucoma (OAG) or ocular hypertension (OH) in Taiwan.MethodsThis was a multicenter, open-labeled, interventional prospective study. The 8-week study involved patients with OAG or OH with uncontrolled intraocular pressure (IOP) and consisted of three study visits to the clinical site. Patients were instructed to discontinue their prior medications at the first visit, prior to starting the study medication. Enrolled patients were dosed with BTFC twice daily in both eyes for 8 weeks. IOP measurements and safety evaluations were conducted at both Week 4 and Week 8.ResultsA total of 74 patients were enrolled. The overall mean IOP reductions from baseline after Week 8 of BTFC was 3.45 mmHg (15.42%); when subgrouped by prior medication class (β-blockers vs. non-β-blockers), the reduction in mean IOP after transitioning to BTFC at Week 8 was as follows: subgroup β-blockers were 3.23 mmHg (14.9 %) and non-β-blockers were 3.58 mmHg (15.25%). All mean IOP changes from baseline were statistically significant (p < 0.001). Of the 69 patients (per protocol population) who were switched to BTFC regardless of prior therapy, 37 (53.6%) patients at Week 4 and 38 (55.1%) patients at Week 8 had IOP ≤ 18 mmHg. No treatment-related serious adverse events were reported in this study.ConclusionThe results of this study demonstrated the potential benefit of using BTFC as a replacement therapy in order to ensure adequate IOP control. BTFC administered twice daily was safe and effective in patients with uncontrolled IOP in Taiwan

Preparing random state for quantum financing with quantum walks

In recent years, there has been an emerging trend of combining two innovations in computer science and physics to achieve better computation capability. Exploring the potential of quantum computation to achieve highly efficient performance in various tasks is a vital development in engineering and a valuable question in sciences, as it has a significant potential to provide exponential speedups for technologically complex problems that are specifically advantageous to quantum computers. However, one key issue in unleashing this potential is constructing an efficient approach to load classical data into quantum states that can be executed by quantum computers or quantum simulators on classical hardware. Therefore, the split-step quantum walks (SSQW) algorithm was proposed to address this limitation. We facilitate SSQW to design parameterized quantum circuits (PQC) that can generate probability distributions and optimize the parameters to achieve the desired distribution using a variational solver. A practical example of implementing SSQW using Qiskit has been released as open-source software. Showing its potential as a promising method for generating desired probability amplitude distributions highlights the potential application of SSQW in option pricing through quantum simulation.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure