Evaluation of Residual Stress in Ag/Glass Thin Films Using Dispersion Characteristic of Rayleigh Wave

In this study, we suggest a method to measure residual stress of thin films nondestructively using dispersion characteristics of Rayleigh wave. Silver films were deposited on glass substrate by controlling the fabrication condition such as DC power and Ar pressure in order to verify a change of the surface acoustic wave velocity depending on the residual stress. The surface acoustic wave velocity of the thin films with different residual stress was measured using the V(z) curve method of scanning acoustic microscopy. To verify the actual residual stress in thin film, the X-ray diffraction method was applied. The change of the Rayleigh wave velocity and XRD results were agreed well with. The primary results indicate that suggested methods may be successfully applied to nondestructively measure the residual stress of thin films

Whole-genome association studies of alcoholism with loci linked to schizophrenia susceptibility

BACKGROUND: Alcoholism is a complex disease. There have been many reports on significant comorbidity between alcoholism and schizophrenia. For the genetic study of complex diseases, association analysis has been recommended because of its higher power than that of the linkage analysis for detecting genes with modest effects on disease. RESULTS: To identify alcoholism susceptibility loci, we performed genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) association tests, which yielded 489 significant SNPs at the 1% significance level. The association tests showed that tsc0593964 (P-value 0.000013) on chromosome 7 was most significantly associated with alcoholism. From 489 SNPs, 74 genes were identified. Among these genes, GABRA1 is a member of the same gene family with GABRA2 that was recently reported as alcoholism susceptibility gene. CONCLUSION: By comparing 74 genes to the published results of various linkage studies of schizophrenia, we identified 13 alcoholism associated genes that were located in the regions reported to be linked to schizophrenia. These 13 identified genes can be important candidate genes to study the genetic mechanism of co-occurrence of both diseases

Controlled open-cell two-dimensional liquid foam generation for micro- and nanoscale patterning of materials

Liquid foam consists of liquid film networks. The films can be thinned to the nanoscale via evaporation and have potential in bottom-up material structuring applications. However, their use has been limited due to their dynamic fluidity, complex topological changes, and physical characteristics of the closed system. Here, we present a simple and versatile microfluidic approach for controlling two-dimensional liquid foam, designing not only evaporative microholes for directed drainage to generate desired film networks without topological changes for the first time, but also microposts to pin the generated films at set positions. Patterning materials in liquid is achievable using the thin films as nanoscale molds, which has additional potential through repeatable patterning on a substrate and combination with a lithographic technique. By enabling direct-writable multi-integrated patterning of various heterogeneous materials in two-dimensional or three-dimensional networked nanostructures, this technique provides novel means of nanofabrication superior to both lithographic and bottom-up state-of-the-art techniques