Multilayer bipolar field-effect transistors

Field-effect transistors comprising a layer of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (rr-P3HT) separated from a parallel layer of the soluble fullerene,[6,6]-phenyl C-61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) by a layer of titanium suboxide (TiOx), are fabricated by solution processing. Because the TiOx is an electron transporting material and a hole blocking material, this multilayer architecture operates either in the p-channel mode with holes in the rr-P3HT layer or in the n-channel mode with electrons in the PCBM layer.open201

Blood pressure and dementia risk by physical frailty in the elderly: a nationwide cohort study

Background Midlife hypertension has been recognized as a modifiable risk factor for dementia, but association between blood pressure (BP) in late life and dementia has been inconclusive. In addition, few studies have investigated effects of BP control on dementia incidence in the frail elderly. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the association of BP and dementia incidence with concomitant consideration of physical frailty in the young elderly population. Methods Using the Korean National Health Information Database, we identified 804,024 subjects without history of dementia at age 66. Dementia diagnosis was defined with prescription records of anti-dementia drugs and dementia-related diagnostic codes. Physical frailty was measured using the Timed Up and Go test. Association of BP and dementia incidence with concomitant consideration of physical frailty was investigated using Cox hazards analyses. Results The risks of Alzheimers and vascular dementia increased from systolic BP ≥ 160 and 130–139mmHg, respectively; a significant association of dementia incidence with low BP was not observed. In the analyses stratified by the physical frailty status, low BP was not associated with increased risks of dementia within the groups both with and without physical frailty. Conclusions High BP was associated with increased risks of dementia, especially for vascular dementia, while low BP was not associated with increased risks of any type of dementia in young elderly people, even in those with physical frailty. This study suggests the need for tight BP control in young elderly people, irrespective of frailty status, to prevent dementia and supports the current clinical guidelines of hypertension treatment

NICE 2023 Zero-shot Image Captioning Challenge

In this report, we introduce NICE project\footnote{\url{https://nice.lgresearch.ai/}} and share the results and outcomes of NICE challenge 2023. This project is designed to challenge the computer vision community to develop robust image captioning models that advance the state-of-the-art both in terms of accuracy and fairness. Through the challenge, the image captioning models were tested using a new evaluation dataset that includes a large variety of visual concepts from many domains. There was no specific training data provided for the challenge, and therefore the challenge entries were required to adapt to new types of image descriptions that had not been seen during training. This report includes information on the newly proposed NICE dataset, evaluation methods, challenge results, and technical details of top-ranking entries. We expect that the outcomes of the challenge will contribute to the improvement of AI models on various vision-language tasks.Comment: Tech report, project page https://nice.lgresearch.ai

Branching Ratio Study of Resonant X-Ray Scattering Intensities of GdB4

Resonant X-ray scattering measurements for a GdB4 single crystal have been carried out at Gd L-3- and L-2-edges. Branching ratios between x-ray scattering intensities at two x-ray energies are different for resonance peaks. Their analysis shows different anisotropic characters of 5d electron states of Gd ions corresponding to the peaks.11sciescopuskc

Skin-Inspired Hierarchical Polymer Architectures with Gradient Stiffness for Spacer-Free, Ultrathin, and Highly Sensitive Triboelectric Sensors

The gradient stiffness between stiff epidermis and soft dermis with interlocked microridge structures in human skin induces effective stress transmission to underlying mechanoreceptors for enhanced tactile sensing. Inspired by skin structure and function, we fabricate hierarchical nanoporous and interlocked microridge structured polymers with gradient stiffness for spacer-free, ultrathin, and highly sensitive triboelectric sensors (TESs). The skin-inspired hierarchical polymers with gradient elastic modulus enhance the compressibility and contact areal differences due to effective transmission of the external stress from stiff to soft layers, resulting in highly sensitive TESs capable of detecting human vital signs and voice. In addition, the microridges in the interlocked polymers provide an effective variation of gap distance between interlocked layers without using the bulk spacer and thus facilitate the ultrathin and flexible design of TESs that could be worn on the body and detect a variety of pressing, bending, and twisting motions even in humid and underwater environments. Our TESs exhibit the highest power density (46.7 mu W/cm(2)), pressure (0.55 V/kPa), and bending (similar to 0.1 V/degrees) sensitivities ever reported on flexible TESs. The proposed design of hierarchical polymer architectures for the flexible and wearable TESs can find numerous applications in next-generation wearable electronics

Phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitor mirodenafil ameliorates Alzheimer-like pathology and symptoms by multimodal actions

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology is associated with complex interactions among multiple factors, involving an intertwined network of various signaling pathways. The polypharmacological approach is an emerging therapeutic strategy that has been proposed to overcome the multifactorial nature of AD by targeting multiple pathophysiological factors including amyloid-beta (A beta) and phosphorylated tau. We evaluated a blood-brain barrier penetrating phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitor, mirodenafil (5-ethyl-2-7-n-propyl-3,5-dihydrro-4H-pyrrolo[3,2-d]pyrimidin-4-one), for its therapeutic effects on AD with polypharmacological properties. Methods: To evaluate the potential of mirodenafil as a disease-modifying AD agent, mirodenafil was administered to test its effects on the cognitive behaviors of the APP-C105 AD mouse model using the Morris water maze and passive avoidance tests. To investigate the mechanisms of action that underlie the beneficial disease-modifying effects of mirodenafil, human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells and mouse hippocampal HT-22 cells were used to show mirodenafil-induced alterations associated with the cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP)/cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG)/cAMP-responsive element-binding protein (CREB) pathway, apoptotic cell death, tau phosphorylation, amyloidogenesis, the autophagy-lysosome pathway, glucocorticoid receptor (GR) transcriptional activity, and the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling. Results: Here, mirodenafil is demonstrated to improve cognitive behavior in the APP-C105 mouse model. Mirodenafil not only reduced the A beta and phosphorylated tau burdens in vivo, but also ameliorated AD pathology induced by A beta through the modulation of the cGMP/PKG/CREB signaling pathway, glycogen synthase kinase 3 beta (GSK-3 beta) activity, GR transcriptional activity, and the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling in neuronal cells. Interestingly, homodimerization and nuclear localization of GR were inhibited by mirodenafil, but not by other PDE5 inhibitors. In addition, only mirodenafil reduced the expression levels of the Wnt antagonist Dickkopf-1 (Dkk-1), thus activating the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling. Conclusions: These findings strongly suggest that the PDE5 inhibitor mirodenafil shows promise as a potential polypharmacological drug candidate for AD treatment, acting on multiple key signaling pathways involved in amyloid deposition, phosphorylated tau burden, the cGMP/PKG/CREB pathway, GSK-3 beta kinase activity, GR signaling, and the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling. Mirodenafil administration to the APP-C105 AD mouse model also improved cognitive behavior, demonstrating the potential of mirodenafil as a polypharmacological AD therapeutic agent.N

Origin of extremely large magnetoresistance in the candidate type-II Weyl semimetal MoTe2-x

The recent observation of extremely large magnetoresistance (MR) in the transition-metal dichalcogenide MoTe2 has attracted considerable interest due to its potential technological applications as well as its relationship with novel electronic states predicted for a candidate type-II Weyl semimetal. In order to understand the origin of the MR, the electronic structure of MoTe2-x (x = 0.08) is systematically tuned by application of pressure and probed via its Hall and longitudinal conductivities. With increasing pressure, a monoclinic-to-orthorhombic (1T' to T-d) structural phase transition temperature (T*) gradually decreases from 210 K at 1 bar to 58 K at 1.1 GPa, and there is no anomaly associated with the phase transition at 1.4 GPa, indicating that a T = 0 K quantum phase transition occurs at a critical pressure (P-c) between 1.1 and 1.4 GPa. The large MR observed at 1 bar is suppressed with increasing pressure and is almost saturated at 100% for P > P-c. The dependence on magnetic field of the Hall and longitudinal conductivities of MoTe2-x shows that a pair of electron and hole bands are important in the low-pressure T-d phase, while another pair of electron and hole bands are additionally required in the high-pressure 1T' phase. The MR peaks at a characteristic hole-to-electron concentration ratio (n(c)) and is sharply suppressed when the ratio deviates from n(c) within the T-d phase. These results establish the comprehensive temperature-pressure phase diagram of MoTe2-x and underscore that its MR originates from balanced electron-hole carrier concentrations. © The Author(s) 201

Ultra-stretchable yet tough, healable, and biodegradable triboelectric devices with microstructured and ionically crosslinked biogel

To reduce the environmental impact of non-biodegradable electronic waste, developing sustainable technology with biomass-derived biodegradable materials are essential. However, the insufficient mechanical and electrical performances of the conventional biodegradable materials with planar structures often limit their use in bioelectronics. Here, we develop a high-performance ionic biogel device based on three-dimensional (3D) microstructured design of completely healable yet fully biodegradable biogel by using ionically cross-linked biomass resource, gelatin. The stress-absorbing geometry of 3D microstructure improves the mechanical resilience and facilitates highly elastic (similar to 4000%), notch-tolerable and extremely tough (similar to 10,998 J/m(2)) ionic biogels. In addition, the interlocked feature of 3D architecture provides the ionic diode characteristics of the biogel that enhances the triboelectric energy harvesting capability from external stimuli of pressure and temperature, even under an extreme stretching condition. Our triboelectric nanogenerator based on 3D ionic biogels exhibits excellent power output (similar to 325 mW/m(2)), superior energy conversion efficiency (similar to 70.7%) and high-resolution mechano- (similar to 9 Pa) as well as thermo- (similar to 0.03 K) transduction functionalities with long-term stability. The 3D ionic biogel recovers its original electrical properties even after mechanical damage through self-healing. For proof-of-concept demonstrations, the gelatin biogel serve in soft and conformable electronic skins to monitor low-frequency vital signs and high-frequency acoustic waves, for haptic perception of surface textures, and in robotic tactile skins, providing a new benchmark as a clean and green technology for soft bio-electronic devices with zero waste