2,954 research outputs found
Strain response of stretchable micro-electrodes: Controlling sensitivity with serpentine designs and encapsulation
The functionality of flexible electronics relies on stable performance of thin film micro-electrodes. This letter investigates the behavior of gold thin films on polyimide, a prevalent combination in flexible devices. The dynamic behavior of gold micro-electrodes has been studied by subjecting them to stress while monitoring their resistance in situ. The shape of the electrodes was systematically varied to examine resistive strain sensitivity, while an additional encapsulation was applied to characterize multilayer behavior. The realized designs show remarkable tolerance to repetitive strain, demonstrating that curvature and encapsulation are excellent approaches for minimizing resistive strain sensitivity to enable durable flexible electronics
Recommended from our members
A robust and forward-Looking industrial production indicator
Against the backdrop of growing criticism of the index of industrial production, which provides information only about the past and sometimes fl uctuates wildly, this article seeks to provide a more robust and forward-looking economic indicator of industrial growth. Such an indicator, based on past IIP numbers, can also serve as a benchmark for future IIP numbers when they are released. Using data on the IIP's three sub-series - manufacturing, mining, and electricity - it seeks to isolate the "noise" from the "signal" in two steps, enabling predictions for the two past months and four months into the future using the latest available IIP numbers in any given month
YALE OBSERVATION SCALE AS A PREDICTOR OF BACTEREMIA AND FINAL OUTCOME IN 3-36 MONTHS OLD FEBRILE CHILDREN ADMITTED IN TERTIARY HEALTH CENTRES: A HOSPITAL-BASED CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY
ABSTRACTObjectives: The objective of the study was to assess predictability of bacteremia in febrile children in the age group of 3-36 months by application ofYale observation scale (YOS) and to predict clinical course during hospital stay and final outcome by YOS.Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was carried out at Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Karnataka, for a period of 2 years(September 2013-September, 2015) in 100 febrile children in the age group of 3-36 months with probable infectious etiology admitted in ward/PICU.Children with any non-infectious causes of fever (vaccination, autoimmune, and immunodeficiency disorder) were excluded from the study. Caseswere selected by simple random sampling. The primary study outcome was bacteremia based on positivity on blood culture and sensitivity sampledrawn at admission. Secondary outcomes are clinical course in the hospital, use of antibiotics, need for mechanical ventilation, hospital stay, andmortality.Results: 100 cases were included in the study out of which 18 cases were bacteremic with a mean YOS of 26 (non-bacteremic - 11), mean hospitalstay 19.5 days (non-bacteremic - 12 days). All 18 bacteremic children had YOS ≥20, but YOS ≥20 had 8 false positives cases. There was no significantinterobserver variability in YOS assessment (Cronbach's alpha - 0.993 showing good correlation with intraclass correlation coefficient - 0.986).Higher YOS scores had good sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratios, and area under curve for prediction of bacteremia atYOS >20 (100%, 90.2%, 10.2, 0.00, and 0.970), need for mechanical ventilation at YOS >21 (100%, 91.7%, 12.04, 0.00, and 0.969), need for scaling upantibiotics at YOS >21 (70.4%, 94.4%, 12.5, 0.31, and 0.822), and mortality at YOS >21 (90.9%, 85.4%, 6.2, 0.106, 0.878).Conclusion: YOS is a good tool to rule out bacteremia and to prognosticate the clinical course at the first visit. This simple scale can be of value inmonitoring admitted patients for deteriorating clinical state and for assessing the need for referral to higher centers for further management.Keywords: Yale observation scale, Bacteremia, Febrile patients
Comparing genomic expression patterns across plant species reveals highly diverged transcriptional dynamics in response to salt stress
BackgroundRice and barley are both members of Poaceae (grass family) but have a marked difference in salt tolerance. The molecular mechanism underlying this difference was previously unexplored. This study employs a comparative genomics approach to identify analogous and contrasting gene expression patterns between rice and barley.ResultsA hierarchical clustering approach identified several interesting expression trajectories among rice and barley genotypes. There were no major conserved expression patterns between the two species in response to salt stress. A wheat salt-stress dataset was queried for comparison with rice and barley. Roughly one-third of the salt-stress responses of barley were conserved with wheat while overlap between wheat and rice was minimal. These results demonstrate that, at transcriptome level, rice is strikingly different compared to the more closely related barley and wheat. This apparent lack of analogous transcriptional programs in response to salt stress is further highlighted through close examination of genes associated with root growth and development.ConclusionThe analysis provides support for the hypothesis that conservation of transcriptional signatures in response to environmental cues depends on the genetic similarity among the genotypes within a species, and on the phylogenetic distance between the species
Sb2Te3 and Bi2Te3 based thermopower wave sources
Exothermic chemical reactions from nitrocellulose are coupled onto Sb2Te3 (antimony telluride) and Bi2Te3 (bismuth telluride) layers to generate self-propagating oscillating thermopower waves. P-type Sb2Te3 and N-type Bi2Te3 are employed due to their large Seebeck coefficients, high electrical conductivities and their complementary semiconducting properties. Sources based on both materials exhibit high power to mass ratios: up to 0.6 kW kg-1 for Sb2Te3 and 1.0 kW kg-1 for Bi2Te3. Having both P- and N-type semiconductors in the system, the combination of the outputs can be used for generating sources with polarities alternating in time
Prediction of Rapid Early Progression and Survival Risk with Pre-Radiation MRI in WHO Grade 4 Glioma Patients
Recent clinical research describes a subset of glioblastoma patients that
exhibit REP prior to start of radiation therapy. Current literature has thus
far described this population using clinicopathologic features. To our
knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the potential of conventional
ra-diomics, sophisticated multi-resolution fractal texture features, and
different molecular features (MGMT, IDH mutations) as a diagnostic and
prognostic tool for prediction of REP from non-REP cases using computational
and statistical modeling methods. Radiation-planning T1 post-contrast (T1C) MRI
sequences of 70 patients are analyzed. Ensemble method with 5-fold cross
validation over 1000 iterations offers AUC of 0.793 with standard deviation of
0.082 for REP and non-REP classification. In addition, copula-based modeling
under dependent censoring (where a subset of the patients may not be followed
up until death) identifies significant features (p-value <0.05) for survival
probability and prognostic grouping of patient cases. The prediction of
survival for the patients cohort produces precision of 0.881 with standard
deviation of 0.056. The prognostic index (PI) calculated using the fused
features suggests that 84.62% of REP cases fall under the bad prognostic group,
suggesting potentiality of fused features to predict a higher percentage of REP
cases. The experimental result further shows that mul-ti-resolution fractal
texture features perform better than conventional radiomics features for REP
and survival outcomes
Recommended from our members
Genetically Encoded Biosensors in Plants: Pathways to Discovery.
Genetically encoded biosensors that directly interact with a molecule of interest were first introduced more than 20 years ago with fusion proteins that served as fluorescent indicators for calcium ions. Since then, the technology has matured into a diverse array of biosensors that have been deployed to improve our spatiotemporal understanding of molecules whose dynamics have profound influence on plant physiology and development. In this review, we address several types of biosensors with a focus on genetically encoded calcium indicators, which are now the most diverse and advanced group of biosensors. We then consider the discoveries in plant biology made by using biosensors for calcium, pH, reactive oxygen species, redox conditions, primary metabolites, phytohormones, and nutrients. These discoveries were dependent on the engineering, characterization, and optimization required to develop a successful biosensor; they were also dependent on the methodological developments required to express, detect, and analyze the readout of such biosensors.Gatsby Research Fellowship awarded to A.M.J
- …