Temporal sinus node modification by high-dose continuous intravenous administration of landiolol in a patient with persistent inappropriate sinus tachycardia

AbstractA 20-year-old woman underwent an electrophysiological study for drug-resistant persistent inappropriate sinus tachycardia (IST). Use of a high-dose continuous intravenous administration of landiolol, a short-acting beta-adrenoreceptor blocker, made the patient׳s heart rate suddenly drop with a slight change in the P-wave morphology. Three-dimensional right atrial (RA) activation mapping revealed that the earliest activation site moved 8mm to a lower anterior site around the high lateral RA. Radiofrequency energy applied to the earliest activation site during tachycardia was successful. A temporal sinus node modification with landiolol administration was useful for mapping and for safe catheter ablation of IST

Influence of coil current modulation on TiO2 nanoparticle synthesis using pulse-modulated induction thermal plasmas

This paper describes the relation between the size of synthesized nanoparticles and the temperature variation of the surrounding plasma in TiO2 nanoparticle synthesis using pulse-modulated induction thermal plasmas (PMITP). The Ar-O2 PMITP at 20 kW was used to obtain repetitional temperature fields at pressure of 200 Torr. The TiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by direct injection of Ti powder with mean diameter of 45 μm. Dependence of the nanoparticle size on modulation parameters such as the duty factor and the shimmer current level of the PMITP were investigated experimentally. Instantaneous temperature evolution was evaluated through spectroscopic observation. Experimental results show that the temperature decay rate in the PMITP reached 105106 K/s, and that the mean diameter of synthesized particles decreased with the temperature decay rate. © 2010 Elsevier B.V

Nanoparticle synthesis using high-powered pulse-modulated induction thermal plasma

金沢大学理工研究域電子情報学系Nanoparticle synthesis was performed using the high-powered pulse-modulated induction thermal plasma (PMITP) technique to study the effect of coil current modulation on synthesized nanoparticles. This is the first paper to present a summary of results of TiO2 nanoparticle synthesis using high-power Ar-O2 PMITP at 20 kW. The synthesized particles were analysed using field emission scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffractometry. In addition, optical emission spectroscopy was used during nanoparticle synthesis experiments to measure TiO spectra and to determine the time-averaged vibrational and rotational temperatures of TiO in the reaction chamber. The results showed that the PMITP produced smaller nanoparticles and a narrower size distribution of particles. Moreover, PMITP provided a lower temperature region in the reaction chamber downstream of the plasma torch than such regions in non-modulated thermal plasmas. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd

Semi-automatic staging area for high-quality structured data extraction from scientific literature

In this study, we propose a staging area for ingesting new superconductors' experimental data in SuperCon that is machine-collected from scientific articles. Our objective is to enhance the efficiency of updating SuperCon while maintaining or enhancing the data quality. We present a semi-automatic staging area driven by a workflow combining automatic and manual processes on the extracted database. An anomaly detection automatic process aims to pre-screen the collected data. Users can then manually correct any errors through a user interface tailored to simplify the data verification on the original PDF documents. Additionally, when a record is corrected, its raw data is collected and utilised to improve machine learning models as training data. Evaluation experiments demonstrate that our staging area significantly improves curation quality. We compare the interface with the traditional manual approach of reading PDF documents and recording information in an Excel document. Using the interface boosts the precision and recall by 6% and 50%, respectively to an average increase of 40% in F1-score.Comment: 5 tables, 9 figures, 31 page

Bilayer Indium Tin Oxide Electrodes for Deformation-Free Ultrathin Flexible Perovskite Solar Cells

The superior electrical conductivity and optical transparency of indium tin oxide (ITO) make it an ideal electrode material for use in optoelectronic devices such as solar cells. When ITO electrodes are fabricated on very thin plastic substrates, however, the internal stress of the ITO layer causes the substrate to deform, severely limiting the device's performance. Herein, it is shown that ITO bilayers composed of an amorphous base layer and a crystalline overlayer lead to deformation-free ITO electrodes. It is shown that an optimized bilayer structure is achieved when the internal stresses of the amorphous and crystalline layers approximately cancel. With this approach, mixed composition metal halide perovskite solar cells with ITO electrodes are successfully fabricated on 4 μm polyethylene naphthalate films. A power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 18.2% is obtained for the reference cell design, corresponding to a power-to-weight ratio of 24 W g−1 before encapsulation. The devices retain 95% of the original PCE after 1000 bend cycles, while under simulated indoor lighting (white LED, 200 lux, 5000 K) the PCE reaches 28.3%. A 3-cell module with a designated area of 2.3 cm² is realized with a power output of 28.1 mW and an open-circuit voltage of 3.17 V

Impact of Insulin Resistance on Neointimal Tissue Proliferation after 2nd-Generation Drug-Eluting Stent Implantation

Percutaneous coronary intervention is established as an effective treatment for patients with ischemic heart disease; in particular, drug-eluting stent implantation is known to suppress in-stent restenosis. Diabetes mellitus is an independent risk factor for restenosis, so reducing insulin resistance is being studied as a new treatment approach. In this prospective study, we sought to clarify the factors associated with in-stent restenosis after percutaneous coronary intervention, and we evaluated the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) index as a predictor of restenosis. We enrolled 136 consecutive patients who underwent elective percutaneous coronary intervention at our hospital from February 2010 through April 2013. All were implanted with a 2nd-generation drug-eluting stent. We distributed the patients in accordance with their HOMA-IR index values into insulin-resistant Group P (HOMA-IR, ≥2.5; n=77) and noninsulin-resistant Group N (HOMA-IR, \u3c2.5; n=59). Before and immediately after stenting, we measured reference diameter, minimal lumen diameter, and percentage of stenosis, and after 8 months we measured the last 2 factors and late lumen loss, all by means of quantitative coronary angiography. After 8 months, the mean minimal lumen diameter was smaller in Group P than that in Group N (1.85 ± 1.02 vs 2.37 ± 0.66 mm; P=0.037), and the mean late lumen loss was larger (0.4 ± 0.48 vs 0.16 ± 0.21 mm; P=0.025). These results suggest that insulin resistance affects neointimal tissue proliferation after 2nd-generation drug-eluting stent implantation