End-of-treatment anti-HBs levels and HBeAg status identify durability of HBsAg loss after PEG-IFN discontinuation

BackgroundHepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) loss, namely, the functional cure, can be achieved through the pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN)-based therapy. However, it is an unignorable fact that a small proportion of patients who achieved functional cure develop HBsAg reversion (HRV) and the related factors are not well described.MethodsA total of 112 patients who achieved PEG-IFN-induced HBsAg loss were recruited. HBV biomarkers and biochemical parameters were examined dynamically. HBV RNA levels were assessed in the cross-sectional analysis. The primary endpoint was HRV, defined as the reappearance of HBsAg after PEG-IFN discontinuation.ResultsHRV occurred in 17 patients during the follow-up period. Univariable analysis indicated that hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) status, different levels of hepatitis B surface antibody (anti-HBs), and hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc) at the end of PEG-IFN treatment (EOT) were significantly associated with the incidence of HRV through using the log-rank test. Additionally, time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the anti-HBs was superior to anti-HBc in predictive power for the incidence of HRV during the follow-up period. Multivariable Cox proportional hazard analysis found that anti-HBs ≥1.3 log10IU/L (hazard ratio (HR), 0.148; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.044-0.502) and HBeAg negativity (HR, 0.183; 95% CI, 0.052-0.639) at EOT were independently associated with lower incidence of HRV. Cross-sectional analysis indicated that the HBV RNA levels were significantly correlated with the HBsAg levels in patients with HRV (r=0.86, p=0.003).ConclusionsEOT HBeAg negativity and anti-HBs ≥1.3 log10IU/L identify the low risk of HRV after PEG-IFN discontinuation

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Design Method of Freeform Anamorphic Telescopes with an Ultrawide Field of View

An anamorphic telescope has different magnifications in the tangential and sagittal directions, and it can be applied to atmospheric remote sensing satellites to effectively improve the spectral sampling rate. However, the initial structure of an anamorphic system is rare and its optimization requires extensive experience, which brings a challenge to the design of anamorphic telescopes. In this study, we propose a design method that is effective in obtaining the initial structure of an anamorphic system and discuss the conversion relationship between the Biconic surface and the XY polynomial surface. The XY polynomial provides design capabilities with an ultrawide field of view (FOV). With this insight, an initial anamorphic system with XY polynomial surfaces is constructed as a good starting point for further ultrawide FOV optimization. Consequently, an off-axis freeform anamorphic telescope with a focal length of 34 mm × 68 mm, and an ultrawide FOV of 110° × 0.24° is designed as an example. The telescope is a Gregorian structure with two concave mirrors as anamorphic elements, and the simulated design exhibits excellent performance. The method provided in this study facilitates the design of remote sensing instruments

Design Method of Freeform Anamorphic Telescopes with an Ultrawide Field of View

An anamorphic telescope has different magnifications in the tangential and sagittal directions, and it can be applied to atmospheric remote sensing satellites to effectively improve the spectral sampling rate. However, the initial structure of an anamorphic system is rare and its optimization requires extensive experience, which brings a challenge to the design of anamorphic telescopes. In this study, we propose a design method that is effective in obtaining the initial structure of an anamorphic system and discuss the conversion relationship between the Biconic surface and the XY polynomial surface. The XY polynomial provides design capabilities with an ultrawide field of view (FOV). With this insight, an initial anamorphic system with XY polynomial surfaces is constructed as a good starting point for further ultrawide FOV optimization. Consequently, an off-axis freeform anamorphic telescope with a focal length of 34 mm × 68 mm, and an ultrawide FOV of 110° × 0.24° is designed as an example. The telescope is a Gregorian structure with two concave mirrors as anamorphic elements, and the simulated design exhibits excellent performance. The method provided in this study facilitates the design of remote sensing instruments

Scalable and sustainable synthesis of carbon dots from biomass as efficient friction modifiers for polyethylene glycol synthetic oil

Carbon dots (CDs) have lately inspired extensive interest in tribology, especially in the field of friction modifiers. However, it remains an enormous challenge to obtain satisfactory compatibility between CDs and base oils without laborious and tedious chemical modifications. In this work, for the first time, we reported a scalable and sustainable synthesis of CDs from easily and cheaply available biomass via a one-pot solvothermal route, which used ethanol as the renewable reaction medium and H2O2 as the clean oxidant. Typically, ginkgo leaves acting as the precursors were converted into CDs with an ultrahigh yield of 85.3%. As expected, the ginkgo leaf-derived CDs, abbreviated as GCDs, displayed excellent dispersibility, durable stability, and attractive fluorescence-emission behavior in PEG200. The as-prepared GCDs as additives for PEG200 exhibited remarkable lubricity, favorable load-carrying ability, and long operating life under boundary lubrication. Particularly, the antiwear and friction-reducing performances of PEG200 were promoted by 70.5% and 34.7%, respectively, when only 0.20 wt % of GCDs was blended. Confirmed by the tribological investigations and surface detection of wear tracks, the essential lubrication mechanism of GCDs was chiefly associated with the generation of GCD-inserted tribochemical films with a thickness of about 80 nm and their nanolubrication functions, that is, the synergistic effects of surface organic moieties and carbonaceous cores. This study establishes a technically simple, feasible, versatile, cost-effective, and green methodology to produce CD-based friction modifiers toward PEG synthetic base oils for tribological applications.The authors gratefully acknowledge the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52105173) and the New Faculty Start-up Funding (No. 2081921022) of Chengdu University for providing the financial support for this work

Nonpolar-Oriented Wurtzite InP Nanowires with Electron Mobility Approaching the Theoretical Limit

As an important semiconductor nanomaterial, InP nanowires (NWs) grown with a typical vapor-liquid-solid mechanism are still restricted from their low electron mobility for practical applications. Here, wnonpolaroriented defect-free wurtzite InP NWs with electron mobility of as high as 2000 cm(2) V-1 s(-1) can be successfully synthesized via Pd-catalyzed vapor-solid-solid growth. Specifically, PdIn catalyst particles are involved and found to expose their PdIn{210} planes at the InP nucleation frontier due to their minimal lattice mismatch with nonpolar InP{(2) over bar 110} and {(1) over bar 100} planes. This appropriate lattice registration would then minimize the overall free energy and enable the highly crystalline InP NW growth epitaxially along the nonpolar directions. Because of the minimized crystal defects, the record-high electron mobility of InP NVVs (i.e., 2000 cm(-2) V-1 s(-1) at an electron concentration of 10(17) cm(-3)) results, being close to the theoretical limit of their bulk counterparts. Furthermore, once the top-gated device geometry is employed, the device subthreshold slopes can be impressively reduced down to 91 mV dec(-1) at room temperature. In addition, these NWs exhibit a high photoresponsivity of 10(4) A W-1 with fast rise and decay times of 0.89 and 0.82 s, respectively, in photodetection. All these results evidently demonstrate the promise of nonpolar-oriented InP NWs for next-generation electronics and optoelectronics.</p

Controlled Growth of Heterostructured Ga/GaAs Nanowires with Sharp Schottky Barrier

Because of the inevitable Fermi level pinning on surface/interface states of nanowires, achieving high-performance nanowire devices with controllable nanoscale contacts is always challenging but important. Herein, single-crystalline heterostructured Ga/GaAs nanowires with sharp hetero-Schottky interfaces have been successfully synthesized on amorphous substrates by utilizing Au nanoparticles as catalytic seeds via chemical vapor deposition. These nanowires are found to grow with the hemispherical Au7Ga2 catalytic tips following the vapor-liquid-solid mechanism. During the growth, simply by manipulating the source and growth temperatures, the Ga precipitation rate from Au-Ga alloy tips as well as the reaction rate of Ga precipitates with As can be reliably controlled in order to tailor the length (0-170 nm) of Ga nanowire segments obtained in the heterostructure. When configured into field-effect transistors, these Ga/GaAs NWs exhibit the p-type conductivity with a sharp hetero-Schottky barrier of similar to 1.0 eV at the atomically connected Ga segment/ GaAs NW body interface, in which this barrier height is close to the theoretical difference between the GaAs Fermi level (5.15.3 eV) and the Ga work function (similar to 4.3 eV), suggesting the effective formation of nanoscale contact by minimizing the Fermi level pinning, being advantageous for advanced nanoelectronics

Two-Step Vapor Deposition of Self-Catalyzed Large-Size PbI2 Nanobelts for High-Performance Photodetectors

The grown lead iodide (PbI2) is usually a two-dimensional sheet with a finite size which necessitates sophisticated device metallization and the growth of quasi one-dimensional materials is still challenging. In this work, large-size (length 4 100 mm), single-crystalline and high-density PbI2 nanobelts are successfully synthesized by manipulating the microenvironment in a two-step vapor deposition process at a slow heating rate of B18 1C min 1. Firstly, PbI2 nanosheet seeds are grown by physical vapor deposition, and then PbI2 nanobelts are synthesized by a self-catalyzed vapor-liquid-solid growth mechanism, which is verified by the Pb nanoparticles on the nanobelt tips. Photoluminescence and ultraviolet-visible spectra show the uniform high-quality crystallinity of the as-prepared large-size PbI2 nanobelts with a bandgap of 2.36 eV. When configured into photodetectors with a shadow mask, the fabricated device exhibits a low dark current of 4 pA, an impressive ON/ OFF current ratio of 103-104, a photoresponsivity of 13 mA W 1, and a fast response with the rise and decay time constants of 425 and 41 ms, respectively. All these performances are comparable to those of state-of-the-art layered PbI2 nanostructure photodetectors, but the ease of synthesizing large-size PbI2 nanobelts may have a useful impact on next-generation easily-fabricated high-performance optoelectronics

Chalcogen passivation: an in-situ method to manipulate the morphology and electrical property of GaAs nanowires

Recently, owing to the large surface-area-to-volume ratio of nanowires (NWs), manipulation of their surface states becomes technologically important and being investigated for various applications. Here, an in-situ surfactant-assisted chemical vapor deposition is developed with various chalcogens (e.g. S, Se and Te) as the passivators to enhance the NW growth and to manipulate the controllable p-n conductivity switching of fabricated NW devices. Due to the optimal size effect and electronegativity matching, Se is observed to provide the best NW surface passivation in diminishing the space charge depletion effect induced by the oxide shell and yielding the less p-type (i.e. inversion) or even insulating conductivity, as compared with S delivering the intense p-type conductivity for thin NWs with the diameter of similar to 30 nm. Te does not only provide the surface passivation, but also dopes the NW surface into n-type conductivity by donating electrons. All of the results can be extended to other kinds of NWs with similar surface effects, resulting in careful device design considerations with appropriate surface passivation for achieving the optimal NW device performances.</p