The self-limiting Cabrera-Mott oxidation reaction on metal surfaces provides an effective pathway for synthesizing atomically thin 2D metal oxide. Inspired by this reaction, it is proposed that solid bismuth metals can react with dissolved oxygen and water molecules in an aqueous environment, forming an ultrathin oxyhydroxide layer on their surfaces. The lattice mismatch between the surface oxyhydroxide layer and the underlying pure metal enables the mechanical exfoliation of detached 2D oxyhydroxide nanosheets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Hemiptera: Gennadius) is a notorious and highly polyphagous agricultural pest that is well known for its ability to transmit a wide range of serious plant pathogenic viruses. The field populations of B. tabaci in some areas have developed resistance to thiamethoxam.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aims: Resident satisfaction is a critical indicator of the quality of care in long-term care facilities (LTCFs). Yet, the relative importance quality of care factors in predicting resident satisfaction remains unclear for guiding resident support initiatives. This study aims to identify the relative contribution of personal and facility care service factors as predictors of satisfaction LTCF residents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2001, Tang's team discovered a unique type of luminogens with substantial enhanced fluorescence upon aggregation and introduced the concept of "aggregation-induced emission (AIE)". Unlike conventional fluorescent materials, AIE luminogens (AIEgens) emit weak or no fluorescence in solution but become highly fluorescent in aggregated or solid states, due to a mechanism known as restriction of intramolecular motions (RIM). Initially considered a purely inorganic chemical phenomenon, AIE was later applied in biomedicine to improve the sensitivity of immunoassays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOccupational exposures comprise of a broad range of factors in constant and direct contact with the ocular surface. Cataract, a leading cause of visual impairment globally, has been associated with various occupational exposures. This review critically examines existing literature on the relationship between occupational exposures and cataract development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrimary cutaneous amyloidosis (PCA) is a chronic pruritic skin disease. The apple-green birefringence of Congo red-stained amyloid under a polarized light microscope (CR-PLM) remains the gold standard in the diagnosis of PCA. However, there are some limitations to this approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOptical differential operation is an ultra-fast edge information extraction technology that enables identifying the image features, whereas current optical differentiators mainly operate along one or two differential orientations and is incompetent for switching the differential orientation. A reflection-type orientation-switchable optical differentiator is proposed and the BK7-MoS interface is used as an example to analyze the edge detection performance. Theory suggests that there are dual modulation methods, one is tuning the incident polarization angle with a Brewster incident angle, and the other one is altering the incident angle with a nearly vertical incident polarization angle.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTime-reversal imaging struggles to detect plate-like structures due to interference from Lamb wave mode conversion and the processing demands, leading to less effective outcomes. This paper proposes a sign coherence factor and time reversal fusion (SCF-TR) imaging method based on amplitude and phase estimation. This method removes the coherence of array signals during signal reversal and refocusing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study explores COVID-19 emergency admission and length of hospital stay hospitalization outcomes for Long-Term Care Facility (LTCF) residents with dementia. Utilizing a cross-sectional case control design, we employed logistic regression to analyze Texas Inpatient Public Use Data File (PUDF) for 1,413 dementia patients and 1,674 non-dementia patients (>60 years) to predict emergency admission and length of hospital stay with mediation by pre-existing conditions. LTCF residents with dementia have a higher likelihood of COVID-19 emergency admission and shorter hospital stays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurovascular compression syndrome (NVCS), characterized by cranial nerve compression due to adjacent blood vessels at the root entry zone, frequently presents as trigeminal neuralgia (TN), hemifacial spasm (HFS), or glossopharyngeal neuralgia (GN). Despite its prevalence in NVCS assessment, Magnetic Resonance Tomographic Angiography (MRTA)'s limited sensitivity to small vessels and veins poses challenges. This study aims to refine vessel localization and surgical planning for NVCS patients using a novel 3D multimodal fusion imaging (MFI) technique incorporating computed tomography angiography and venography (CTA/CTV).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The early identification and diagnosis of transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy (TA-TMA) are essential yet difficult in patients underwent hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). To develop an evidence-based, nurse-leading early warning model for TA-TMA, and implement the healthcare quality review and improvement project.
Methods: This study was a mixed-methods, before-and-after study.
Objective: This study aimed to explore whether famine exposure during early life are associated with a high risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) in adulthood and the role of socioeconomic status (SES) on this effect.
Materials And Methods: We conducted a secondary data analysis based on data from a cross-sectional survey, collected 3,355 participants born between January 1, 1941 and December 31, 1966. Participants were categorized into four groups based on their date of birth, unexposed (individuals born in 1963-1966), infant exposed (individuals born in 1959-1962), childhood exposed (individuals born in 1949-1958), and adolescent exposed (born in 1941-1948).
Soft ionic elastomers that are self-healable, fatigue-free, and environment-tolerant are ideal structural and sensing materials for artificial prosthetics, soft electronics, and robotics to survive unpredictable service conditions. However, most synthetic strategies failed to unite rapid healing, fatigue resistance, and environmental robustness, limited by their singular compositional/structural designs. Here, we present a soft, tough, fatigue-resistant, and self-healable ionic elastomer (STFSI elastomer), which fuses skin-like binary assembly and Bouligand helicoidal structure into a composite of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) fibers and a supramolecular ionic biopolymer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Chinese populations have an increasingly high prevalence of cardiac arrest. This study aimed to investigate the prehospital associated factors of survival to hospital admission and discharge among out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) adult cases in Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), China.
Methods: Baseline characteristics as well as prehospital factors of OHCA patients were collected from publicly accessible medical records and Macao Fire Services Bureau, China.
The phenomenon of flexoelectricity, wherein mechanical deformation induces alterations in the electron configuration of metal oxides, has emerged as a promising avenue for regulating electron transport. Leveraging this mechanism, stress sensing can be optimized through precise modulation of electron transport. In this study, the electron transport in 2D ultra-smooth InO crystals is modulated via flexoelectricity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn recent years, flexible strain sensors have gradually come into our lives due to their superiority in the field of biomonitoring. However, these sensors still suffer from poor durability, high hysteresis, and difficulty in calibration, resulting in great hindrance of practical application. Herein, starting with interfacial interaction regulation and structure-induced cracking, flexible strain sensors with high performance are successfully fabricated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVectorial optical fields (VOFs) with extra degrees of freedom hold promise for many photonic applications. However, current methods to generate VOFs are either bulky in size or exhibit limited functionalities. Here, we demonstrate a tunable VOF generator by exciting plasmonic surface lattice resonances (SLRs) with axial symmetry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The prevalence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in Taiwan is among the highest in the world. Although kidney transplant is the most effective treatment for ESRD, the willingness of patients with ESRD to undergo kidney transplantation is low in Taiwan. The factors associated with willingness to accept kidney transplantation remain unclear, and studies on kidney transplant willingness and associated factors among Taiwanese patients with ESRD are scarce.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile family and friendship relationship qualities are associated with life satisfaction, evidence on how these types of relationships interact to contribute to older adults' life satisfaction is sparse. This study examined how family and friendship relationship qualities may be supportive of (compensatory) or conflict with (competing) older adults' life satisfaction. We adopted a cross-sectional design to analyze data from the Health and Retirement Study (n = 1178, females = 54.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCellulose nanofiber (CNF) holds great promise in applications such as surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), catalysis, esthesia, and detection. This study aimed to build novel CNF-based SERS substrates through a facile synthetic method. Citrate-reduced gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were adsorbed on the cationized CNF surface due to electrostatic interactions, and uniform AuNPs@(2,3-epoxypropyl trimethylammonium chloride)EPTMAC@CNF flexible SERS substrates were prepared by a simple vacuum-assisted filtration method.
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