84 research outputs found
Holographic colour prints for enhanced optical security by combined phase and amplitude control.
Conventional optical security devices provide authentication by manipulating a specific property of light to produce a distinctive optical signature. For instance, microscopic colour prints modulate the amplitude, whereas holograms typically modulate the phase of light. However, their relatively simple structure and behaviour is easily imitated. We designed a pixel that overlays a structural colour element onto a phase plate to control both the phase and amplitude of light, and arrayed these pixels into monolithic prints that exhibit complex behaviour. Our fabricated prints appear as colour images under white light, while projecting up to three different holograms under red, green, or blue laser illumination. These holographic colour prints are readily verified but challenging to emulate, and can provide enhanced security in anti-counterfeiting applications. As the prints encode information only in the surface relief of a single polymeric material, nanoscale 3D printing of customised masters may enable their mass-manufacture by nanoimprint lithography
The impact of dissection and re-entry versus wire escalation techniques on long-term clinical outcomes in patients with chronic total occlusion lesions following percutaneous coronary intervention: An updated meta-analysis
Background: The meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the effect of dissection and re-entry (DR) vs. wire escalation (WE) techniques on long-term clinical outcomes in patients with chronic total occlusion (CTO) lesions undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention.
Methods: Studies were searched in electronic databases from inception to September, 2019. Results were pooled using random effects model and fixed effects model and are presented as risk ratios (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).
Results: Pooled analyses revealed that patients with DR techniques had overall higher complexity CTO lesions than patients with WE techniques and required a greater number of stents and a greater mean stent length. The “extensive” DR techniques may have a higher incidence of target vessel revascularization (TVR) (RR = 2.30, 95% CI: 1.77–2.98), in-stent restenosis (RR = 1.71, 95% CI: 1.30–2.23), in-stent reocclusion (RR = 1.86, 95% CI: 1.03–3.3) and death/myocardial infarction/TVR (RR = 2.10, 95% CI: 1.71–2.58), when compared with WE techniques, during the long-term follow-up. However, “limited” DR techniques result in more promising outcomes, and are comparable to conventional WE techniques.
Conclusions: Dissection and re-entry techniques were associated with increased risk of long-term negative clinical events, especially “extensive” DR techniques. However, “limited” DR techniques resulted in good long-term outcomes, comparable to WE techniques
Electrochemically primed functional redox mediator generator from the decomposition of solid state electrolyte.
Recent works into sulfide-type solid electrolyte materials have attracted much attention among the battery community. Specifically, the oxidative decomposition of phosphorus and sulfur based solid state electrolyte has been considered one of the main hurdles towards practical application. Here we demonstrate that this phenomenon can be leveraged when lithium thiophosphate is applied as an electrochemically "switched-on" functional redox mediator-generator for the activation of commercial bulk lithium sulfide at up to 70 wt.% lithium sulfide electrode content. X-ray adsorption near-edge spectroscopy coupled with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and Raman indicate a catalytic effect of generated redox mediators on the first charge of lithium sulfide. In contrast to pre-solvated redox mediator species, this design decouples the lithium sulfide activation process from the constraints of low electrolyte content cell operation stemming from pre-solvated redox mediators. Reasonable performance is demonstrated at strict testing conditions
Structural Color 3D Printing By Shrinking Photonic Crystals
The rings, spots and stripes found on some butterflies, Pachyrhynchus
weevils, and many chameleons are notable examples of natural organisms
employing photonic crystals to produce colorful patterns. Despite advances in
nanotechnology, we still lack the ability to print arbitrary colors and shapes
in all three dimensions at this microscopic length scale. Commercial nanoscale
3D printers based on two-photon polymerization are incapable of patterning
photonic crystal structures with the requisite ~300 nm lattice constant to
achieve photonic stopbands/ bandgaps in the visible spectrum and generate
colors. Here, we introduce a means to produce 3D-printed photonic crystals with
a 5x reduction in lattice constants (periodicity as small as 280 nm), achieving
sub-100-nm features with a full range of colors. The reliability of this
process enables us to engineer the bandstructures of woodpile photonic crystals
that match experiments, showing that observed colors can be attributed to
either slow light modes or stopbands. With these lattice structures as 3D color
volumetric elements (voxels), we printed 3D microscopic scale objects,
including the first multi-color microscopic model of the Eiffel Tower measuring
only 39-microns tall with a color pixel size of 1.45 microns. The technology to
print 3D structures in color at the microscopic scale promises the direct
patterning and integration of spectrally selective devices, such as photonic
crystal-based color filters, onto free-form optical elements and curved
surfaces
Glassy Li Metal Anode for High-Performance Rechargeable Li Batteries
Controlling nanostructure from molecular, crystal lattice to the electrode
level remains as arts in practice, where nucleation and growth of the crystals
still require more fundamental understanding and precise control to shape the
microstructure of metal deposits and their properties. This is vital to achieve
dendrite-free Li metal anodes with high electrochemical reversibility for
practical high-energy rechargeable Li batteries. Here, cryogenic-transmission
electron microscopy was used to capture the dynamic growth and atomic structure
of Li metal deposits at the early nucleation stage, in which a phase transition
from amorphous, disordered states to a crystalline, ordered one was revealed as
a function of current density and deposition time. The real-time atomic
interaction over wide spatial and temporal scales was depicted by the
reactive-molecular dynamics simulations. The results show that the condensation
accompanied with the amorphous-to-crystalline phase transition requires
sufficient exergy, mobility and time to carry out, contrary to what the
classical nucleation theory predicts. These variabilities give rise to
different kinetic pathways and temporal evolutions, resulting in various
degrees of order and disorder nanostructure in nano-sized domains that dominate
in the morphological evolution and reversibility of Li metal electrode.
Compared to crystalline Li, amorphous/glassy Li outperforms in cycle life in
high-energy rechargeable batteries and is the desired structure to achieve high
kinetic stability for long cycle life.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure
Mammalian target of rapamycin regulates miRNA-1 and follistatin in skeletal myogenesis
mTOR induces MyoD-dependent miR-1 expression, leading to follistatin-mediated myocyte fusion
Potential candidates for liver resection in liver-confined advanced HCC: a Chinese multicenter observational study
BackgroundAdvanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is characterized as symptomatic tumors [performance status (PS) score of 1-2], vascular invasion and extrahepatic spread, but patients with PS1 alone may be eliminated from this stage. Although liver resection is used for liver-confined HCC, its role in patients with PS1 alone remains controversial. Therefore, we aimed to explore its application in such patients and identify potential candidates.MethodsEligible liver-confined HCC patients undergoing liver resection were retrospectively screened in 15 Chinese tertiary hospitals, with limited tumor burden, liver function and PS scores. Cox-regression survival analysis was used to investigate the prognostic factors and develop a risk-scoring system, according to which patients were substratified using fitting curves and the predictive values of PS were explored in each stratification.ResultsFrom January 2010 to October 2021, 1535 consecutive patients were selected. In the whole cohort, PS, AFP, tumor size and albumin were correlated with survival (adjusted P<0.05), based on which risk scores of every patient were calculated and ranged from 0 to 18. Fitting curve analysis demonstrated that the prognostic abilities of PS varied with risk scores and that the patients should be divided into three risk stratifications. Importantly, in the low-risk stratification, PS lost its prognostic value, and patients with PS1 alone achieved a satisfactory 5-year survival rate of 78.0%, which was comparable with that PS0 patients (84.6%).ConclusionSelected patients with PS1 alone and an ideal baseline condition may benefit from liver resection and may migrate forward to BCLC stage A
Identify optimal HAP series scores for unresectable HCC patients undergoing TACE plus sorafenib: A Chinese multicenter observational study
BackgroundHepatoma arterial-embolization prognostic (HAP) series scores have been proposed for prognostic prediction in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (uHCC) undergoing transarterial chemoembolization (TACE). However, their prognostic value in TACE plus sorafenib (TACE-S) remains unknown. Here, we aim to evaluate their prognostic performance in such conditions and identify the best model for this combination therapy.MethodsBetween January 2012 and December 2018, consecutive patients with uHCC receiving TACE-S were recruited from 15 tertiary hospitals in China. Cox regression analyses were used to investigate the prognostic values of baseline factors and every scoring system. Their prognostic performance and discriminatory performance were evaluated and confirmed in subgroup analyses.ResultsA total of 404 patients were enrolled. In the whole cohort, the median follow-up period was 44.2 (interquartile range (IQR), 33.2–60.7) months, the median overall survival (OS) time was 13.2 months, and 336 (83.2%) patients died at the end of the follow-up period. According to multivariate analyses, HAP series scores were independent prognostic indicators of OS. In addition, the C-index, Akaike information criterion (AIC) values, and time-dependent area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) indicated that modified HAP (mHAP)-III had the best predictive performance. Furthermore, the results remained consistent in most subsets of patients.ConclusionHAP series scores exhibited good predictive ability in uHCC patients accepting TACE-S, and the mHAP-III score was found to be superior to the other HAP series scores in predicting OS. Future prospective high-quality studies should be conducted to confirm our results and help with treatment decision-making
Plasmonic nanostructures : fabrication, optical properties and anti-counterfeiting application
This thesis involves my four-year graduate research studies on fabrication, optical properties and anti-counterfeiting applications of plasmonic nanostructures. In the beginning, recent works are summarized focusing on synthetic methods used to engineer the morphologies, parameters used to tune the plasmonic properties and applications of plasmonic nanoparticles (chapter 1). Two challenges are generalized in the field of plasmonic nanostructures: (i) to efficiently tune and understand the surface plasmonic properties of plasmonic nanoparticles at single-particle level and in the coupled system; (ii) to develop novel platforms using plasmonic nanoparticles for practical applications. Based on that, I aim to efficiently enhance the intensity and enlarge the densities of hot spots on individual plasmonic nanoparticles via precision synthesis (chapter 2), to understand the plasmon resonances that occur in the Ag nanocube dimers (chapter 3) and to develop plasmonic anti-counterfeiting platforms on both rigid (chapter 4) and flexible substrates (chapter 5).
We efficiently increase the volumes and intensities of localized fields on individual nanoparticles by introducing a “hot spots over hot spots” strategy that selectively depositing plasmonic active nanodots on edge and tip hot spots regions (chapter 1). Moreover, combining CL and EELS maps on Ag nanocube dimers, we acquire knowledge on localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) that occur in Ag nanocube dimers and diretly visualize how plasmon modes evolve with alteration of dimer orientations with nanoscale spatial resolution (chapter 3). Besides, we broaden the applications of plasmonic nanoparticles by introducing a novel anti-counterfeiting platform encoding five identifying layers in the form of SERS, fluorescence and their signal intensities on a single platform (chapter 4). We also develop a flexible plasmonic anti-counterfeiting platform giving stable SERS readouts over applying several cycles of external bending forces for practical applications (chapter 5). In the end, outlook of these research works in this field is proposed (chapter 6).Doctor of Philosophy (SPMS
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