Chemically Mediated Arrestment of the Bed Bug, Cimex lectularius, by Volatiles Associated with Exuviae of Conspecifics.

Extracts of the exuviae (cast skins) of nymphal bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) were analyzed for volatile compounds that might contribute to arrestment of adult bed bugs. Four volatile aldehydes, (E)-2-hexenal, 4-oxo-(E)-2-hexenal, (E)-2-octenal, and 4-oxo-(E)-2-octenal were consistently detected in the headspace of freshly shed exuviae regardless of the developmental stages from which the exuviae were obtained. Quantification of the aldehydes in the solvent extracts of homogenized fresh, 45- or 99-d aged 5th instar exuviae indicated that the aldehydes are present in the exuviae and dissipate over time, through evaporation or degradation. Microscopic observation of the fifth instar exuviae indicated that the dorsal abdominal glands on the exuviae maintained their pocket-like structures with gland reservoirs, within which the aldehydes might be retained. Two-choice olfactometer studies with the volatiles from exuviae or a synthetic blend mimicking the volatiles indicated that adult bed bugs tend to settle close to sources of the aldehydes. Our results imply that the presence and accumulation of bed bug exuviae and the aldehydes volatilizing from the exuviae might mediate bed bugs' interaction with their microhabitats

I-gel as a first-line airway device in the emergency room for patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Aim. The optimal method for advanced airway management during cardiac arrest remains controversial. Most patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in Korea are managed with a bag-valve mask by paramedics, while physicians perform advanced airway management in emergency departments (ED). Endotracheal intubation (ETI) has a risk of failure at the first attempt. By contrast, I-gel, a supraglottic airway device, is easier to insert than an endotracheal tube and shows a higher first-attempt success rate than ETI in out-of-hospital settings by paramedics in the United States. We reviewed the use of ETI and I-gel by ED physicians to assess the first attempt success rate in a hospital setting. Methods. We conducted a retrospective chart review of patients with non-traumatic OHCA who were managed with either ETI using a Macintosh laryngoscope, or I-gel in the ED of Korean hospital from January 2012 to January 2014. Results. Of 322 adult patients with non-traumatic OHCA, 160 received I-gel and 162 received ETI. The first-attempt success rate was higher in the I-gel group (96.9%) than in the ETI group (84.6%, p < 0.001). The time from arrival to obtaining advanced airway management was shorter in the I-gel group than in the ETI group. Conclusions. I-gel showed a better first-attempt success rate and shorter insertion time compared with ETI when performed by physicians in a hospital setting

Enhanced light harvesting in bulk heterojunction photovoltaic devices with shape-controlled Ag nanomaterials: Ag nanoparticles versus Ag nanoplates

Enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE(%)) with improved optical path length from two types of shape controlled silver (Ag) materials (Ag nanoplates versus Ag nanoparticles (NPs)) was studied in poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT)/[6,6]-phenyl C 71 butyric acid methyl-ester (PC 71BM) or poly[N-9′′-hepta-decanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4′, 7′-di-2-thienyl-2′,1′,3′-benzothiadiazole)] (PCDTBT)/[6,6]-phenyl C 71 butyric acid methyl-ester (PC 71BM) bulk heterojunction (BHJ) devices. The Ag nanoplates and Ag NPs can be synthesized by simple solution polyol chemistry with well defined size and shape. A BHJ with a 0.5 wt% optimized blend ratio of Ag nanoplates shows improved cell performance and photo-current density than a BHJ with Ag NPs owing to the enhanced light absorption with the results of an excitation of localized surface plasmon and efficient light scattering by the Ag nanoplates embedded BHJ film. When the BHJ is combined with the Ag nanoplates at an optimized ratio of 0.5 wt%, the PCE (%) increases from 3.2% to 4.4% in P3HT/PC 71BM, and from 5.9% to 6.6% in PCDTBT/PC 71BM BHJ devices. © 2012 The Royal Society of Chemistry.1

Photo Quality Assessment based on a Focusing Map to Consider Shallow Depth of Field

Proliferation and advances in digital cameras encourage people to take many photos. However, the number of photos that people can access is increasing exponentially. Good quality photo selection is becoming burdensome. In this paper, we propose a novel method to evaluate photo quality considering DoF (Depth of Field) based on a focusing map. The focusing map is a form of saliency map classified into four levels based on the spatial distribution of Canny edges. We implemented it in a CUDA environment to improve the speed of focusing map generation. In order to evaluate our method, we tested our feature on the four classified 206 photos; then, we compare our method to a photo set manually classified by a user. The proposed measure efficiently assesses the photos with DoF. Especially, the expert group who used DSLR camera agreed that our photo assessment measure is useful

Placenta Therapy: Its Biological Role of Anti-Inflammation and Regeneration

Human placental extract has been used to treat fatigue, postmenopausal symptoms, wound healing, and growth retardation in Korea. Combined with acupuncture therapy, placental extract extends its therapeutic limit to pain control. Recently, we have reported acupuncture point injection (API) with placental extract modulated inflammation-involving pain symptoms in chronic pain diseases. In order to rehabilitate patients suffering from chronic pain and restricted joint mobility, placental extract was injected into acupuncture points localized on the joints, surrounding muscles acting in concert with the joints, and paravertebral muscles affecting the innervation of the joints. Here, we describe the pathology of pain syndromes including neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, knee arthritis, fibromyalgia, and complex regional pain syndrome and propose methodology of APIs with placental extract in treating these pain diseases

Real-time data-driven and multi-scale model-guided system for bioproccess digital twin platform

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A New Practical Identity-Based Encryption System

We present a new practical Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) system that can be another candidate for standard IBE techniques. Our construction is based on a new framework for realizing an IBE trapdoor from pairing-based groups, which is motivated from the `two equation\u27 revocation technique suggested by Lewko, Sahai, and Waters. The new framework enables our IBE system to achieve a tight security reduction to the Decision Bilinear Diffie-Hellman assumption. Due to its the tightness, our system can take as input the shorter size of security parameters than the previous practical BF, SK, and BB$_{1}$ systems, which provides better efficiency to our system in terms of computational cost. With appropriate parametrization at 80-bit security level (considering security loss), our IBE system can obtain 11 times faster decryption than the previous ones and 77 times faster encryption than the BF system. We prove that our system is fully secure against chosen ciphertext attacks in the random oracle model. From computational variant of Naor\u27s observation, we can also suggest a new signature scheme that features a tight security reduction to the Computational Diffie-Hellman assumption and provides strong unforgeability simultaneously

Electric-dipole matrix-element formulas in hyperspherical coordinates with applications to H\u3csup\u3e-\u3c/sup\u3e and He

Theoretical formulas for the length, velocity, and acceleration forms of the electric-dipole matrix element within the adiabatic hyperspherical coordinate representation are presented. The length and acceleration formulas are used to calculate the photoionization cross section for He up to 1.0 a.u. above threshold and the photodetachment cross section for H- up to 0.35 a.u. above threshold. Length- and acceleration-form results for the dipole oscillator strengths for the discrete He transitions, 1sns(1Se)→1smp(1P0), where n=1, 2, and 3 and m=2, 3, and 4, are also presented. The accuracy of the length- and acceleration-form adiabatic hyperspherical coordinate approximation results is discussed

Development of real-time monitoring system and Data-driven digital twin models for forecasting multi-step ahead cell culture performance

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