The New Advertising Era

There used to be a simpler time when live news happened but twice a day. I obviously don’t mean that literally. But whatever happened around town and across the world throughout the day (and night), people in their bathrobes picked up their papers still moistened in the morning dew, with steaming cups of coffees in their hands. They would then actually sit down on a kitchen table, and read (imagine that!) news. That’s the first time of the day news broke to the public in the simpler era. Sure, the time did not freeze for the rest of the day, but whatever happened after the time that paper went to print at the break of dawn simply had to wait its turn for another day. There was no way to edit throughout the day and recirculate that information. Information on paper did not circulate instantaneously. This post was originally published on the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal website on November 12, 2017. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above

Ion Milling On Steps for Fabrication of Nanowires

Arrays of nanowires having controlled dimensions can now be fabricated on substrates, optionally as integral parts of multilayer structures, by means of a cost-effective, high-yield process based on ion milling on steps. Nanowires made, variously, of semiconductors or metals are needed as components of sensors and high-density electronic circuits. Unlike prior processes used to fabricate nanowires, the present process does not involve electron-beam lithography, manipulation of nanoscopic objects by use of an atomic-force microscope, or any other technique that is inherently unsuitable for scaling up to mass production. In comparison with the prior processes, this process is rapid and simple. Wires having widths as small as a few tens of nanometers and lengths as long as millimeters have been fabricated by use of this process. The figure depicts a workpiece at different stages of the process. A silicon dioxide substrate is coated with a photoresist or poly(methyl methacrylate) [PMMA] to a thickness of as much as 500 nm. The photoresist or PMMA is patterned to form edges where wires are to be formed. A metal - either Pt or Ti - is deposited, by sputtering, to a thickness of as much as 200 nm. By ion milling at normal incidence, the thickness of the metal deposit is reduced until the only metal that remains is in the form of wall-like nanowires along the edges of the photoresist or PMMA. Finally, an oxygen plasma is used to remove the photoresist or PMMA, leaving only the nanowires on the substrate

Materialization of single multicomposite nanowire: entrapment of ZnO nanoparticles in polyaniline nanowire

We present materialization of single multicomposite nanowire (SMNW)-entrapped ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) via an electrochemical growth method, which is a newly developed fabrication method to grow a single nanowire between a pair of pre-patterned electrodes. Entrapment of ZnO NPs was controlled via different conditions of SMNW fabrication such as an applied potential and mixture ratio of NPs and aniline solution. The controlled concentration of ZnO NP results in changes in the physical properties of the SMNWs, as shown in transmission electron microscopy images. Furthermore, the electrical conductivity and elasticity of SMNWs show improvement over those of pure polyaniline nanowire. The new nano-multicomposite material showed synergistic effects on mechanical and electrical properties, with logarithmical change and saturation increasing ZnO NP concentration

Concomitant enhancement of electron-phonon coupling and electron-electron interaction in graphene decorated with ytterbium

The interplay between electron-electron interaction and electron-phonon coupling has been one of the key issues in graphene as it can provide information on the origin of enhanced electron-phonon coupling in graphene by foreign atoms. In ytterbium-decorated graphene on SiC substrate, electron-phonon coupling exhibits strong enhancement compared to that of as-grown graphene. Based on angle-resolved photoemission study, the presence of ytterbium is also found to result in the decrease of Fermi velocity, revealing the enhancement of electron-electron interaction within the Fermi liquid theory. Our finding on the concomitant enhancement of electron-electron interaction and electron-phonon coupling suggests a possibility of the interplay between the two representative many-body interactions in graphene decorated with foreign atoms.Comment: 3 figure

Can Audio Reveal Music Performance Difficulty? Insights from the Piano Syllabus Dataset

Automatically estimating the performance difficulty of a music piece represents a key process in music education to create tailored curricula according to the individual needs of the students. Given its relevance, the Music Information Retrieval (MIR) field depicts some proof-of-concept works addressing this task that mainly focuses on high-level music abstractions such as machine-readable scores or music sheet images. In this regard, the potential of directly analyzing audio recordings has been generally neglected, which prevents students from exploring diverse music pieces that may not have a formal symbolic-level transcription. This work pioneers in the automatic estimation of performance difficulty of music pieces on audio recordings with two precise contributions: (i) the first audio-based difficulty estimation dataset -- namely, Piano Syllabus (PSyllabus) dataset -- featuring 7,901 piano pieces across 11 difficulty levels from 1,233 composers; and (ii) a recognition framework capable of managing different input representations -- both unimodal and multimodal manners -- directly derived from audio to perform the difficulty estimation task. The comprehensive experimentation comprising different pre-training schemes, input modalities, and multi-task scenarios prove the validity of the proposal and establishes PSyllabus as a reference dataset for audio-based difficulty estimation in the MIR field. The dataset as well as the developed code and trained models are publicly shared to promote further research in the field

Self-care use patterns in the UK, US, Australia, and Japan: a multinational web-based survey

AbstractBackgroundThe trend toward patient- or consumer-centered healthcare has been accelerated by advances in technology, consumer empowerment, and a shift from infectious to chronic diseases. The purpose of this study was to examine the growing self-care market by analyzing self-care patterns.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional, web-based survey involving adults from nine major cities in the UK, the USA, Australia, and Japan. This study examined the extent and frequency of self-care, self-care expenditure, sources of self-care information, and reasons for self-care in each country.ResultsThe results showed that the prevalence of self-care was highest in Japan (54.9%), followed by the UK (43.1%), the USA (42.5%), and Australia (40.4%). The primary reason for practicing self-care was “to manage my healthcare myself” (cited by 45.7%, 59.5%, 49.2%, and 4.1% of participants in Australia, Japan, the UK, and the USA, respectively). Significant linear associations were observed between age and the prevalence of self-care in all countries (p<0.05), indicating that self-care prevalence decreased with age in the UK, the USA, and Australia, and increased with age in Japan. The frequency with which self-care was practiced was positively correlated with age in the USA (p<0.05), Australia (p<0.01), and Japan (p<0.05). In addition to acquaintances, internet search engines and information obtained from pharmacies were considered reliable and widely used sources of self-care information.ConclusionWhen developing self-care products or services, healthcare providers and policymakers should consider self-care patterns