ESR, raman and conductivity studies on fractionated poly(2-methoxyaniline-5-sulfonic acid)

Synthesis methods used to produce poly(2-methoxyaniline-5-sulfonic acid) (PMAS), a water soluble, self-doped conducting polymer, have been shown to form two distinctly different polymer fractions with molecular weights of approximately 2 kDa and 8 -10 kDa. The low molecular weight (LMWT) PMAS fraction is redox inactive and non-conducting while the high molecular weight (HMWT) PMAS is electro-active with electrical conductivities of 0.94 0.05 S cm-1. Previous investigations have illustrated the different photochemical and electrochemical properties of these fractions, but have not correlated these properties with the structural and electronic interactions that drive them. Incomplete purification of the PMAS mixture, typically via bag dialysis, has been shown to result in a mixture of approximately 50:50 HMWT:LMWT PMAS with electrical conductivity significantly lower at approximately 0.10 to 0.26 S cm-1. The difference between the electrical conductivities of these fractions has been investigated by the controlled addition of the non-conducting LMWT PMAS fraction into the HMWT PMAS composite film with the subsequent electronic properties investigated by solid-state ESR and Raman spectroscopies. These studies illustrate strong electronic intereactions of the insulating LMWT PMAS with the emeraldine salt HMWT PMAS to substantially alter the population of the electronic charge carriers in the conducting polymer. ESR studies on these mixtures, when compared to HMWT PMAS, exhibited a lower level of electron spin in the presence of LMWT PMAS indicative of the the formation of low spin bipolarons without a change the oxidation state of the conducting HMWT fraction

Impact of COVID-19 on 1-year survival outcomes in hepatocellular carcinoma: a multicenter cohort study

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe disruption of healthcare services worldwide and interrupted patients' access to essential services. During the first lockdown, many healthcare services were shut to all but emergencies. In this study, we aimed to determine the immediate and long-term indirect impact of COVID-19 health services utilisation on hepatocellular cancer (HCC) outcomes. METHODS: A prospective cohort study was conducted from 1 March 2020 until 30 June 2020, correlating to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients were enrolled from tertiary hospitals in the UK and Germany with dedicated HCC management services. All patients with current or past HCC who were discussed at a multidisciplinary meeting (MDM) were identified. Any delay to treatment (DTT) and the effect on survival at one year were reported. RESULTS: The median time to receipt of therapy following MDM discussion was 49 days. Patients with Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stages-A/B disease were more likely to experience DTT. Significant delays across all treatments for HCC were observed, but delay was most marked for those undergoing curative therapies. Even though severe delays were observed in curative HCC treatments, this did not translate into reduced survival in patients. CONCLUSION: Interruption of routine healthcare services because of the COVID-19 pandemic caused severe delays in HCC treatment. However, DTT did not translate to reduced survival. Longer follow is important given the delay in therapy in those receiving curative therapy

Hospital mortality among major trauma victims admitted on weekends and evenings: a cohort study

Article deposited according to publisher policy posted on SHERPA/RoMEO, 14/09/2010.YesFunding provided by the Open Access Authors Fund

A spontaneous ad hoc network to share www access

In this paper, we propose a secure spontaneous ad-hoc network, based on direct peer-to-peer interaction, to grant a quick, easy, and secure access to the users to surf the Web. The paper shows the description of our proposal, the procedure of the nodes involved in the system, the security algorithms implemented, and the designed messages. We have taken into account the security and its performance. Although some people have defined and described the main features of spontaneous ad-hoc networks, nobody has published any design and simulation until today. Spontaneous networking will enable a more natural form of wireless computing when people physically meet in the real world. We also validate the success of our proposal through several simulations and comparisons with a regular architecture, taking into account the optimization of the resources of the devices. Finally, we compare our proposal with other caching techniques published in the related literature. The proposal has been developed with the main objective of improving the communication and integration between different study centers of low-resource communities. That is, it lets communicate spontaneous networks, which are working collaboratively and which have been created on different physical places.Authors want to give thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions, useful comments, and proofreading of this paper. This work was partially supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, Spain, under Grant no. TIN2008-06441-C02-01, and by the "Ayudas complementarias para proyectos de I+D para grupos de calidad de la Generalitat Valenciana" (ACOMP/2010/005).Lacuesta Gilaberte, R.; Lloret, J.; García Pineda, M.; Peñalver Herrero, ML. (2010). A spontaneous ad hoc network to share www access. 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On metallic characteristics in some conducting polymers

Polyaniline (PANI) exhibits a dc conductivity σ ≈ 10−1 S/cm when it is doped with poly(styrenesulfonic acid) (PSSA) such that the number of sulfonate groups per two-ring PANI unit (y) is 2. On increasing the dopant amount to y = 12, σ drops to 10−5 S/cm. The EPR-derived magnetic susceptibility of these two conducting polymers gives nearly the same density of states at the Fermi level N(EF) ≈ 0.65 ± 0.05 states/eV 2-rings. The corresponding electronic specific heat coefficient as calculated from this N(EF) value does not appear to be inconsistent with the results from low temperature calorimetric measurements. Similarly, with y′ defined as the number of sulfonate groups per three-ring PEDOT unit, PSSA-doping of poly(ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) yields different σ ≈ 10−1 and 10−5 S/cm at y′ = 5.7 and 45.9, respectively, but the same N(EF) ≈ 0.55 ± 0.05 states/eV 3-rings. These observations suggest that the additional dopants, which help with dispersion in processing conducting polymers, do not alter the metallic domains but are located in the disordered regions surrounding them. The N(EF) values also remain practically the same between p-toluenesulfonic acid (PTSA) doped PANI and its dispersed blend in poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), as well as for PEDOT–PTSA before and after its being subjected to an additional dispersion step