Correction: Causal role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in modulating the balance between Pavlovian and instrumental systems in the punishment domain.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286632.]

Plasmon-Enhanced Electrocatalysis

Exploiting essentially free renewable electricity sources has been italicized as an environmental-friendly and promising response to ever-rising energy consumptions, decreasing oil supplies, and imposing environmental concerns. Directly reflecting this strategy, the development of electrocatalytic technologies has gathered increasing notice. Employing plasmonic nanostructures and profiting from their light-responsivity and tunable surface plasmon resonance (SPR) absorption has found cumulative interest to enhance the energy efficiency of renewable electricity-driven catalytic systems. This approach strikingly opposes the methodologies in which the integration of plasmonic nanostructures as light harvesters to simultaneously extend the light absorption of wide bandgap semiconductors is primarily underlined. Here, we meticulously survey the potential application of plasmonic nanostructures in emerging exploratory works converting earth-abundant feedstocks such as water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and molecular nitrogen (N2) into value-added fuels by using simple redox chemistry. Key scientific principles, mechanistic aspects, and benchmark systems coupling plasmonic architectures and state-of-the-art electrocatalysts in the development of plasmon-enhanced technologies are revised here in detail. In addition, this chapter sheds light on the operating plasmonic effects of the representative systems herein revised, and create future guidelines to disentangle the electrocatalytic properties, plasmonic effects, and electrochemical interactions established between neighboring nanocomponents

A 76fs rms Jitter and -40dBc Integrated-Phase-Noise 28-to-31GHz Frequency Synthesizer Based on Digital Sub-Sampling PLL Using Optimally Spaced Voltage Comparators and Background Loop-Gain Optimization

The generation of mm-wave (mmW) signals that have ultra-low phase noise (PN) is very important for the design of RF transceivers (TRXs) for high-data-rate 5G systems. Direct-RF-sampling TRXs also require high-frequency clock signals, having extremely low integrated PN (IPN) [1]. To satisfy such stringent noise requirements, the rms jitter of mmW-band signals must be reduced to sub-100fs. Recently, a charge-pump (CP) PLL in [1] achieved a very low rms jitter of less than 60fs at 14GHz. However, to suppress the in-band PN of PLL building blocks, that design used a reference clock that had an impractically high frequency, f-{{REF}}, of 500MHz. To avoid the use of such a high f-{{REF}} while minimizing in-band PN, sub-sampling PLLs (SSPLLs) are seen as a promising solution. However, conventional SSPLLs are not suitable for generating mmW-band signals directly, since, as the frequency increases, the capture range of their sampling operation is reduced rapidly, thereby hindering the reliable operation. To extend the capture range, a prescaler can be used after the VCO [2], but it increases the in-band PN and power consumption. Direct-mmW SSPLLs are limited even at suppressing out-of-band PN, since their PN skirt is determined by an mmW VCO that has a relatively low Q. To overcome the problems of analog SSPLLs, such as a large area and a PVT-sensitive loop gain, digital SSPLLs using ADCs to digitize the sampled voltage have been developed recently [3]. However, digital SSPLLs suffer from another problem in that, to reduce the quantization noise (Q-noise) and improve the overall IPN, they must use high-performance ADCs that concurrently have high-sampling frequencies, fine resolutions, and wide dynamic ranges. Thus, they demand high power and occupy larger area

Affordable Healthcare for All of Illinois Act

In the state of Illinois, there is undoubtedly a large number of people who are uninsured and therefore are battling the consequences of lacking access to healthcare. In fact, in 2018, there were 862,214 uninsured non elderly individuals in Illinois. Given this reason, we have chosen to target this issue with the Affordable Healthcare for All of Illinois Act, a bill aimed at improving access to affordable healthcare for all residents of Illinois, regardless of age, income, pre-existing conditions, or employment status. We hope to target this issue by implementing state-wide programs funded by progressive taxes and large corporations. The execution of this act will ideally address this problem by providing access to affordable healthcare for the residents of Illinois

An Ultra-Low-Jitter, mmW-Band Frequency Synthesizer Based on Digital Subsampling PLL Using Optimally Spaced Voltage Comparators

This article presents a cascaded architecture of a frequency synthesizer to generate ultra-low-jitter output signals in a millimeter-wave (mmW) frequency band from 28 to 31 GHz. The mmW-band injection-locked frequency multiplier (ILFM) placed at the second stage has a wide bandwidth so that the performance of the jitter of this frequency synthesizer is determined by the GHz-band, digital subsampling phase-locked loop (SSPLL) at the first stage. To suppress the quantization noise of the digital SSPLL while using a small amount of power, the optimally spaced voltage comparators (OSVCs) are presented as a voltage quantizer. This article was designed and fabricated using 65-nm CMOS technology. In measurements, this prototype frequency synthesizer generated output signals in the range of 28-31 GHz, with an rms jitter of less than 80 fs and an integrated phase noise (IPN) of less than -40 dBc. The active silicon area was 0.32 mm², and the total power consumption was 41.8 mW

MicroRNAs Modulate Oxidative Stress in Hypertension through PARP-1 Regulation

Oxidative stress is thought to contribute to aging and age-related diseases, such as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, and is a risk factor for systemic arterial hypertension. Previously, we reported differential mRNA and microRNA (miRNA) expression between African American (AA) and white women with hypertension. Here, we found that the poly-(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP-1), a DNA damage sensor protein involved in DNA repair and other cellular processes, is upregulated in AA women with hypertension. To explore this mechanism, we identified two miRNAs, miR-103a-2-5p and miR-585-5p, that are differentially expressed with hypertension and were predicted to target PARP1. Through overexpression of each miRNA-downregulated PARP-1 mRNA and protein levels and using heterologous luciferase reporter assays, we demonstrate that miR-103a-2-5p and miR-585-5p regulate PARP1 through binding within the coding region. Given the important role of PARP-1 in DNA repair, we assessed whether overexpression of miR-103a-2-5p or miR-585-5p affected DNA damage and cell survival. Overexpression of these miRNAs enhanced DNA damage and decreased both cell survival and colony formation. These findings highlight the role for PARP-1 in regulating oxidative DNA damage in hypertension and identify important new miRNA regulators of PARP-1 expression. These insights may provide additional avenues to understand hypertension health disparities