Polarization modulation by vanadium dioxide on metallic substrates

Vanadium dioxide (VO2) undergoing phase transition is known alters the polarization state of light in reflection owing to large changes in complex refractive indices. While this effect is promising for optical modulation applications, the usual VO2 films on dielectric substrates tend to offer limited tunability for polarization modulation. In this paper, we show that metallic under-layers greatly enhance the performance by widening the spectral range and include visible wavelengths, by increasing the polarization modulation amplitude, and by widening the range of workable incidence angles. The imaginary part of the refractive index in the metallic layer is found to increase the relative phase shifts between s- and p-components of polarization as well as increasing the reflectance

Evaluation of a liquid biopsy protocol using ultra-deep massive parallel sequencing for detecting and quantifying circulation tumor DNA in colorectal cancer patients

The identification and quantification of actionable mutations are critical for guiding targeted therapy and monitoring drug response in colorectal cancer. Liquid biopsy (LB) based on plasma cell-free DNA analysis has emerged as a non-invasive approach with many clinical advantages over conventional tissue sampling. Here, we developed a LB protocol using ultra-deep massive parallel sequencing and validated its clinical performance for detection and quantification of actionable mutations in three major driver genes ( and ). The assay showed a 92% concordance for mutation detection between plasma and paired tissues and great reliability in quantification of variant allele frequency

Synthesis of oxime from a renewable resource for metal extraction

A new method for semi-synthesis of alkyl salicylaldoximes from cardanol is reported. Cardanol was extracted from decarboxylation process of cashew nutshell liquid, an abundant agricultural by-product. Molecular structures, physical and chemical properties of cardanol and oxime derivatives were confirmed by spectroscopic analyses. The produced oximes were successfully employed to extract copper(II) cation from aqueous copper salt solutions, offering a practical and economical pathway to effectively recover metals using agricultural by-products

Multimodal analysis of methylomics and fragmentomics in plasma cell-free DNA for multi-cancer early detection and localization

Despite their promise, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)-based assays for multi-cancer early detection face challenges in test performance, due mostly to the limited abundance of ctDNA and its inherent variability. To address these challenges, published assays to date demanded a very high-depth sequencing, resulting in an elevated price of test. Herein, we developed a multimodal assay called SPOT-MAS (screening for the presence of tumor by methylation and size) to simultaneously profile methylomics, fragmentomics, copy number, and end motifs in a single workflow using targeted and shallow genome-wide sequencing (~0.55×) of cell-free DNA. We applied SPOT-MAS to 738 non-metastatic patients with breast, colorectal, gastric, lung, and liver cancer, and 1550 healthy controls. We then employed machine learning to extract multiple cancer and tissue-specific signatures for detecting and locating cancer. SPOT-MAS successfully detected the five cancer types with a sensitivity of 72.4% at 97.0% specificity. The sensitivities for detecting early-stage cancers were 73.9% and 62.3% for stages I and II, respectively, increasing to 88.3% for non-metastatic stage IIIA. For tumor-of-origin, our assay achieved an accuracy of 0.7. Our study demonstrates comparable performance to other ctDNA-based assays while requiring significantly lower sequencing depth, making it economically feasible for population-wide screening

Portable and non-invasive blood glucose monitoring over a prolonged period using whispering gallery modes at 2.4 GHz

Invasive measurement of blood glucose is not appropriate for everyone, particularly the patients with leukemia. Here, we demonstrate how the blood glucose can be non-invasively monitored over a prolonged period in the absence of any expensive equipment. Method: A portable and non-invasive glucose sensor capable of monitoring blood glucose at real-time has been successfully constructed and tested in the absence of any vector network analyzer. Using vacuum suction, the sensor head of the proposed non-invasive glucose sensor forms a whispering gallery resonator out of a skin tissue on an arm during the measurement process. The architecture of the proposed glucose sensor is equipped with standard components, including a WiFi transmitter, an RSSI sensor and a microcontroller based computer display. Results: Using the proposed glucose sensor, a healthy volunteer has been his blood glucose levels monitored over 72 minutes after consuming a loaf of bread and a cup of cow milk. The measured blood glucose rose shortly after the meal until it peaked at 40 minutes and finally fell to the initial value at around 72 minutes. Conclusion: The overall results were in general consistent with the expected results. The proposed glucose sensor is expected to be instrumental for the individuals who dislike the traditional lancets