Development of Li0.33La0.56TiO3 based Solid Electrolyte Materials

As the increasing need for electronic products like smartphones, lithium-ion batteries have been a vital topic in this era. For developing batteries with higher electrochemical performance and safety, solid electrolytes play a significant role in increasing safety owing to less risk of electrolytes leakage and a wider electrochemical window for higher energy density. Among various materials, inorganic ceramic solid electrolytes lead the intention because of their high electrochemical performance, such as ionic conductivity. However, compared to traditional liquid electrolytes, the ionic conductivity of ceramic solid electrolytes is still below current requirements. To optimize ionic conductivity, strategies of decreasing grain and grain boundary resistance are required. In this thesis, three different strategies for optimizing Li0.33La0.56TiO3 materials’ ionic conductivity were developed. Lithium lanthanum titanate (LLTO) powder was prepared using a modified sol-gel process with three chelating agents. After initial structural characteristics, LLTO pellets were prepared by spark plasma sintering. To investigate alternation of grain and grain boundary resistance of the LLTO, Ag dopants were introduced to LLTO, and composite pellets of LLTO and silver nanowires were also fabricated. The LLTO synthesized by acetic acid was found to have the strongest intensity, minor impurity, and the biggest crystallite size from XRD patterns and Rietveld refinement compared with LLTO synthesized by citric acid and a mix of citric acid and glucose. According to the XRD patterns, Ag doping of LLTO (Li0.33-xLa0.56AgxTiO3) was positively proved by shifting away from the original target Li0.33La0.56TiO3. The composite pellet (LLTO/AgNWs) was successfully fabricated by spark plasma sintering, and the LLTO/AgNWs pellet showed a more apparent grain boundary from the SEM image. The modified sol-gel method has been proved that it is an efficient way to synthesize LLTO with low reaction temperature and short reaction time compared with the traditional physical reaction method. The pure LLTO pellet was fabricated with a 10(-4) S/cm grain conductivity via spark plasma sintering (SPS). Due to successful chemical composition alteration, the Ag-doped LLTO pellet reached higher grain conductivity by 2 *10(-5) S/cm than the pure LLTO pellet. The composite LLTO/AgNWs pellet was also efficiently fabricated through SPS

Scientific and Regulatory Perspective on Monoclonal Antibody Biosimilars

Similar biotherapeutic products (SBPs), also called biosimilars, exhibit similar biological and clinical properties to authorized reference products. Biosimilars, including small molecules like erythropoietin and complex macromolecules like monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), have been used extensively in disease treatment. Monoclonal antibody biosimilars have gradually become a dominant development in the global pharmaceutical industry since their patents or data protection have been expired or nearing expiration. Since the mAb biosimilars are complex biological macromolecules with various post-translation modifications, it is important to evaluate whether these tiny differences significantly affect the quality. From a regulatory perspective, the comparability study needs to be performed to demonstrate that the quality, safety, and efficacy are similar to the biological reference. Based on these comprehensive comparative results, the indicated extrapolation might be acceptable. Post-market surveillance is also required because of unexpected biological variation caused by slightly different manufacturing processes. This chapter presents the scientific and regulatory considerations for monoclonal antibody biosimilar products for manufactures and for the regulatory authorities to administrate wisely and comprehensively

(E,E)-3,3′-Dimethyl-1,1′-diphenyl-4,4′-{[3-aza­pentane-1,5-diylbis(aza­nedi­yl)]bis­(phenyl­methyl­idyne)}di-1H-pyrazol-5(4H)-one

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C38H37N7O2, contains one half-mol­ecule, situated on a twofold rotational axis, in which one amino group is involved in intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond and the two phenyl rings are twisted from the plane of pyrazolone ring by 26.69 (10) and 79.64 (8)°. The crystal packing exhibits no classical inter­molecular contacts

Correlation of the composite equilibrium score of computerized dynamic posturography and clinical balance tests

AbstractBackgroundThe computerized dynamic posturography has been widely used to access balance control in patients with balance dysfunction. A composite-equilibrium score (CS) can be calculated from the sensory organization test using the computerized dynamic posturography. However, the correlation between the composite equilibrium score and clinical tests and its ability to predict falls has rarely been explored in the past.MethodsA total of 60 patients with chief complaint of dizziness were enrolled in our study, and clinical assessments were done including the sensory organization test (SOT), Timed Up and Go test (TUG), Tinetti Performance-Oriented Mobility Assessment (POMA), and the dynamic gait index (DGI). The age and the subjective feeling of the severity of dizziness quantified by the visual analog scale (VAS) of each patient were also recorded.ResultsStatistical analysis revealed significant correlation between the composite equilibrium score and the TUG, POMA (gait, balance and total scores), and the DGI. However, there is statistically significant correlation between neither the CS and the age nor the VAS of dizziness. When grouping the DGI, POMA (total score), and the TUG cutoff to predict fall risks, the correlations to the CS can still be established except the TUG.ConclusionFrom the results of our study, the validity of the clinical tests was established in assessment of balance function, and clinicians can utilize these tools for preliminary evaluation of patient balance when computerized dynamic posturography is not available. In addition, CS can be used to predict the risk of falls

Preparation of a Counter Electrode with P

This study investigates the applicability of a counter electrode with a P-type semiconductor oxide (such as NiO) on a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). The counter electrode is fabricated by depositing an NiO film on top of a Pt film, which has been deposited on a Fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass using an ion-sputtering coater (or E-beam evaporator), using a simple spin coating method. This study also examines the effect of the average thickness of TiO2 film deposited on a working electrode upon the power conversion efficiency of a DSSC. This study shows that the power conversion efficiency of a DSSC with a Pt(E)/NiO counter electrode (4.28%) substantially exceeds that of a conventional DSSC with a Pt(E) counter electrode (3.16%) on which a Pt film was deposited using an E-beam evaporator. This result is attributed to the fact that the NiO film coated on the Pt(E) counter electrode improves the electrocatalytic activity of the counter electrode

An integrated analysis tool for analyzing hybridization intensities and genotypes using new-generation population-optimized human arrays

The cross-sample plot of the multipoint LOH/LCSH analyses of the three samples used in Fig. 5. The plot comprises four panels: (a) The top-left panel is a cross-sample and cross-chromosome plot. The vertical axis is the index of study samples, and the horizontal axis is the physical position (Mb) on each of the 23 chromosomes. The blue and red bars represent SNPs without and with LOH/LSCH, respectively. (b) The top-right panel is a histogram of cross-chromosome aberration frequency. The vertical axis is the index of study samples, and the horizontal axis is the cross-chromosome aberration frequency of the corresponding samples. The pink (skyblue) background represents that the genetic gender of a sample is female (male). The histogram represents the aberration frequency of LOH/LCSH SNPs across the chromosomes of the corresponding samples. (c) The bottom-left panel is a histogram of the cross-sample aberration frequency. The vertical axis is the cross-sample aberration frequency of a SNP, and the horizontal axis is the physical position (Mb) on each of the 23 chromosomes. The purple line represents the aberration proportion of samples carrying the SNPs with LOH/LCSH. (d) The bottom-right panel is the legend of the genetic gender that is used in panel (b), where the pink (skyblue) background represents that the genetic gender of a sample is female (male). (TIFF 1656 kb

Surgical treatment strategy for multiple injury patients in ICU

AbstractObjectiveTo investigate the surgical treatment for patients with multiple injuries in ICU.MethodsClinical data of 163 multiple injury patients admitted to ICU of our hospital from January 2006 to January 2009 were retrospectively studied, including 118 males and 45 females, with the mean age of 36.2 years (range, 5-67 years). The injury regions included head and neck (29 cases), face (32 cases), chest (89 cases), abdomen (77 cases), pelvis and limbs (91 cases) and body surface (83 cases). There were 57 cases combined with shock. ISS values varied from 10 to 54, 18.42 on average. Patients received surgical treatments in ICU within respectively 24 hours (10 cases), 24-48 hours (8 cases), 3-7 days (7 cases) and 8-14 days (23 cases).ResultsFor the 163 patients, the duration of ICU stay ranged from 2 to 29 days, with the average value of 7.56 days. Among them, 143 were cured (87.73%), 11 died in the hospital (6.75%) due to severe hemorrhagic shock (6 cases), craniocerebral injury (3 cases) and multiple organ failure (2 cases), and 9 died after voluntarily discharging from hospital (5.52%). The total mortality rate was 12.27%.ConclusionsThe damage control principle should be followed when multiple injury patients are resuscitated in ICU. Surgical treatment strategies include actively controlling hemorrhage, treating the previously missed injuries and related wounds or surgical complications and performing planned staging operations

Mobile Edge Computing Platform Deployment in 4G LTE Networks: A Middlebox Approach

This paper has been presented at : USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Edge Computing (Hot Edge '18)Low-latency demands for cellular networks have at-tracted much attention. Mobile edge computing (MEC), which deploys a cloud computing platform at the edge closer to mobile users, has been introduced as an enabler of low-latency performance in 4G and 5G networks. In this paper, we propose an MEC platform deployment so-lution in 4G LTE networks using a middlebox approach. It is standard-compliant and transparent to existing cel-lular network components, so they need not be modified. The MEC middlebox sits on the S1 interface, which con-nects an LTE base station to its core network, and does traffic filtering, manipulation and forwarding. It enables the MEC service for mobile users by hosting application servers. Such middlebox approach can save deployment cost and be easy to install. It is different from other stud-ies that require modifications on base stations or/and core networks. We have confirmed its viability through a pro-totype based on the OpenAirInterface cellular platform.We thank our shepherd Weisong Shi for his help, and also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on improving this paper. This work was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under grant numbers 106-2622-8-009-017 and 106-2218-E-009-018, and by the H2020 collaborative Europe/Taiwan research project 5G-CORAL (grant number 761586)