Structural and electronic properties of hydrogen - functionalized armchair germanene nanoribbons: A first-principles study

Structural and electronic properties of armchair germanene nanoribbons functionalized by hydrogen atoms (H-AGeNR) are studied through density functional theory (DFT) method. The DFT quantities for analyzing the structural and electronic properties are fully developed through the DFT calculations, including the functionalization energy, relaxed geometric parameters, orbital- and atom-decomposed energy bands, electronic density of states, charge density, and charge density difference. Under hydrogen functionalization, the functionalization energy is achieved at -2.59 eV, and the structural parameters are slightly distorted. This provides evidence of good structural stability of the functionalized system. Besides, the very strong bonds of H-Ge are created because the electrons are transfered from Ge atoms to H adatoms, which induces hole density in the functionalized system, which is regarded as p-type doping. As a result, the π bonds of 4pz orbitals at low-lying energy are fully terminated by the strong H-Ge covalent bonds, in which the strong hybridizations of H-1s and Ge-(4s, 4px, 4py, and 4pz) orbitals have occurred at deep valence band. The termination of π bonds leads to the opened energy gap of 2.01 eV in the H-functionalized system that belongs to the p-type semiconductor. The enriched properties of the H-functionalized system identify that the H-functionalized system..

Study to Fabricate the Large Scale Buckypaper Based on Carbon Nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted great attention because of their unique structural, electrical, mechanical and thermal properties. Then CNTs have potential application as electrode for batteries and supercapacitors, especially binder-free electrodes. The major challenge is to fabricate the large scale electrode with the uniform thickness, electrical property. The large scale CNTs buckypaper can be fabricated via vacuum filtration technique. The characteristics of CNT dispersion and buckypaper depend on variety of factor such as sonication power, sonication time, dispersant…. In this study, we investigate the multiwall carbon nanotubes (MW CNTs) in Isopropanol (IPA) solvent with different sonication conditions, membrane filter size for paper with areal density of 3 mg/cm2 with different sizes such as 4, 10, 20 cm in diameter and large scale of 30x30 cm2. It is observed that the dispersion of CNTs are good and the thickness, conductivity are uniform over whole sample for above sizes. We also can get the highest conductivity of buckypaper was 3.9x103 S/m in 30 mins. It is found that the higher sonication power and higher sonication time are better for buckypaper

SIP-MBA: A secure IoT platform with brokerless and micro-service architecture

The Internet of Things is one of the most interesting technology trends today. Devices in the IoT network are often geared towards mobility and compact in size, thus having a rather weak hardware configuration. There are many light weight protocols, tailor-made suitable for limited processing power and low energy consumption, of which MQTT is the typical one. The current MQTT protocol supports three types of quality-of-service (QoS) and the user has to trade-off the security of the packet transmission by transmission rate, bandwidth and energy consumption. The MQTT protocol, however, does not support packet storage mechanisms which means that when the receiver is interrupted, the packet cannot be retrieved. In this paper, we present a broker-less SIP-MBA Platform, designed for micro-service and using gRPC protocol to transmit and receive messages. This design optimizes the transmission rate, power consumption and transmission bandwidth, while still meeting reliability when communicating. Besides, we implement users and things management mechanisms with the aim of improving security issues. Finally, we present the test results by implementing a collect data service via gRPC protocol and comparing it with streaming data by using the MQTT protocol.Web of Science12759358

IoHT-MBA: An Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) platform based on microservice and brokerless architecture

Internet of Thing (IoT), currently, is one of the technology trends that are most interested. IoT can be divided into five main areas including: Health-care, Environmental, Smart city, Commercial and Industrial. The IoHT-MBA Platform is considered the backbone of every IoT architecture, so the optimal design of the IoHT-MBA Platform is essential issue, which should be carefully considered in the different aspects. Although, IoT is applied in multiple domains, however, there are still three main features that are challenge to improve: i) data collection, ii) users, devices management, and iii) remote device control. Today's medical IoT systems, often too focused on the big data or access control aspects of participants, but not focused on collecting data accurately, quickly, and efficiently; power redundancy and system expansion. This is very important for the medical sector - which always prioritizes the availability of data for therapeutic purposes over other aspects. In this paper, we introduce the IoHT Platform for Healthcare environment which is designed by microservice and brokerless architecture, focusing strongly on the three aforementioned characteristics. In addition, our IoHT Platform considers the five other issues including (1) the limited processing capacity of the devices, (2) energy saving for the device, (3) speed and accurate of the data collection, (4) security mechanisms and (5) scalability of the system. Also, in order for the IoHT Platform to be suitable for the field of health monitoring, we also add realtime alerts for the medical team. In the evaluation section, moreover, we describe the evaluation to prove the effectiveness of the proposed IoHT Platform (i.e. the proof-of-concept) in the performance, non-error, and non affected by geographical distance. Finally, a complete code solution is publicized on the authors' GitHub repository to engage further reproducibility and improvement.Web of Science12760159

Host Transcription Profile in Nasal Epithelium and Whole Blood of Hospitalized Children Under 2 Years of Age With Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection.

BACKGROUND: Most insights into the cascade of immune events after acute respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection have been obtained from animal experiments or in vitro models. METHODS: In this study, we investigated host gene expression profiles in nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs and whole blood samples during natural RSV and rhinovirus (hRV) infection (acute versus early recovery phase) in 83 hospitalized patients <2 years old with lower respiratory tract infections. RESULTS: Respiratory syncytial virus infection induced strong and persistent innate immune responses including interferon signaling and pathways related to chemokine/cytokine signaling in both compartments. Interferon-α/β, NOTCH1 signaling pathways and potential biomarkers HIST1H4E, IL7R, ISG15 in NP samples, or BCL6, HIST2H2AC, CCNA1 in blood are leading pathways and hub genes that were associated with both RSV load and severity. The observed RSV-induced gene expression patterns did not differ significantly in NP swab and blood specimens. In contrast, hRV infection did not as strongly induce expression of innate immunity pathways, and significant differences were observed between NP swab and blood specimens. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that RSV induced strong and persistent innate immune responses and that RSV severity may be related to development of T follicular helper cells and antiviral inflammatory sequelae derived from high activation of BCL6

A Multi-Center Randomized Trial to Assess the Efficacy of Gatifloxacin versus Ciprofloxacin for the Treatment of Shigellosis in Vietnamese Children

The bacterial genus Shigella is the most common cause of dysentery (diarrhea containing blood and/or mucus) and the disease is common in developing countries with limitations in sanitation. Children are most at risk of infection and frequently require hospitalization and antimicrobial therapy. The WHO currently recommends the fluoroquinolone, ciprofloxacin, for the treatment of childhood Shigella infections. In recent years there has been a sharp increase in the number of organisms that exhibit resistance to nalidixic acid (an antimicrobial related to ciprofloxacin), corresponding with reduced susceptibility to ciprofloxacin. We hypothesized that infections with Shigella strains that demonstrate resistance to nalidixic acid may prevent effective treatment with ciprofloxacin. We performed a randomized controlled trial to compare 3 day ciprofloxacin therapy with 3 days of gatifloxacin, a newer generation fluoroquinolone with greater activity than ciprofloxacin. We measured treatment failure and time to the cessation of individual disease symptoms in 249 children with dysentery treated with gatifloxacin and 245 treated with ciprofloxacin. We could identify no significant differences in treatment failure between the two groups or in time to the cessation of individual symptoms. We conclude that, in Vietnam, ciprofloxacin and gatifloxacin are similarly effective for the treatment of acute dysentery

Comparison of seven prognostic tools to identify low-risk pulmonary embolism in patients aged <50 years

publishersversionPeer reviewe

The global burden of cancer attributable to risk factors, 2010-19 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background Understanding the magnitude of cancer burden attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors is crucial for development of effective prevention and mitigation strategies. We analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 to inform cancer control planning efforts globally. Methods The GBD 2019 comparative risk assessment framework was used to estimate cancer burden attributable to behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risk factors. A total of 82 risk-outcome pairs were included on the basis of the World Cancer Research Fund criteria. Estimated cancer deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in 2019 and change in these measures between 2010 and 2019 are presented. Findings Globally, in 2019, the risk factors included in this analysis accounted for 4.45 million (95% uncertainty interval 4.01-4.94) deaths and 105 million (95.0-116) DALYs for both sexes combined, representing 44.4% (41.3-48.4) of all cancer deaths and 42.0% (39.1-45.6) of all DALYs. There were 2.88 million (2.60-3.18) risk-attributable cancer deaths in males (50.6% [47.8-54.1] of all male cancer deaths) and 1.58 million (1.36-1.84) risk-attributable cancer deaths in females (36.3% [32.5-41.3] of all female cancer deaths). The leading risk factors at the most detailed level globally for risk-attributable cancer deaths and DALYs in 2019 for both sexes combined were smoking, followed by alcohol use and high BMI. Risk-attributable cancer burden varied by world region and Socio-demographic Index (SDI), with smoking, unsafe sex, and alcohol use being the three leading risk factors for risk-attributable cancer DALYs in low SDI locations in 2019, whereas DALYs in high SDI locations mirrored the top three global risk factor rankings. From 2010 to 2019, global risk-attributable cancer deaths increased by 20.4% (12.6-28.4) and DALYs by 16.8% (8.8-25.0), with the greatest percentage increase in metabolic risks (34.7% [27.9-42.8] and 33.3% [25.8-42.0]). Interpretation The leading risk factors contributing to global cancer burden in 2019 were behavioural, whereas metabolic risk factors saw the largest increases between 2010 and 2019. Reducing exposure to these modifiable risk factors would decrease cancer mortality and DALY rates worldwide, and policies should be tailored appropriately to local cancer risk factor burden. Copyright (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.Peer reviewe

Safety and efficacy of fluoxetine on functional outcome after acute stroke (AFFINITY): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Background Trials of fluoxetine for recovery after stroke report conflicting results. The Assessment oF FluoxetINe In sTroke recoverY (AFFINITY) trial aimed to show if daily oral fluoxetine for 6 months after stroke improves functional outcome in an ethnically diverse population. Methods AFFINITY was a randomised, parallel-group, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial done in 43 hospital stroke units in Australia (n=29), New Zealand (four), and Vietnam (ten). Eligible patients were adults (aged ≥18 years) with a clinical diagnosis of acute stroke in the previous 2–15 days, brain imaging consistent with ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke, and a persisting neurological deficit that produced a modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score of 1 or more. Patients were randomly assigned 1:1 via a web-based system using a minimisation algorithm to once daily, oral fluoxetine 20 mg capsules or matching placebo for 6 months. Patients, carers, investigators, and outcome assessors were masked to the treatment allocation. The primary outcome was functional status, measured by the mRS, at 6 months. The primary analysis was an ordinal logistic regression of the mRS at 6 months, adjusted for minimisation variables. Primary and safety analyses were done according to the patient's treatment allocation. The trial is registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, ACTRN12611000774921. Findings Between Jan 11, 2013, and June 30, 2019, 1280 patients were recruited in Australia (n=532), New Zealand (n=42), and Vietnam (n=706), of whom 642 were randomly assigned to fluoxetine and 638 were randomly assigned to placebo. Mean duration of trial treatment was 167 days (SD 48·1). At 6 months, mRS data were available in 624 (97%) patients in the fluoxetine group and 632 (99%) in the placebo group. The distribution of mRS categories was similar in the fluoxetine and placebo groups (adjusted common odds ratio 0·94, 95% CI 0·76–1·15; p=0·53). Compared with patients in the placebo group, patients in the fluoxetine group had more falls (20 [3%] vs seven [1%]; p=0·018), bone fractures (19 [3%] vs six [1%]; p=0·014), and epileptic seizures (ten [2%] vs two [<1%]; p=0·038) at 6 months. Interpretation Oral fluoxetine 20 mg daily for 6 months after acute stroke did not improve functional outcome and increased the risk of falls, bone fractures, and epileptic seizures. These results do not support the use of fluoxetine to improve functional outcome after stroke