Selective Undercut of Undoped Optical Membranes for Spin-Active Color Centers in 4H- Silicon Carbide.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a semiconductor used in quantum information processing, microelectromechanical systems, photonics, power electronics, and harsh environment sensors. However, its high-temperature stability, high breakdown voltage, wide bandgap, and high mechanical strength are accompanied by a chemical inertness, which makes complex micromachining difficult. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) etching is a simple, rapid means of wet processing SiC, including the use of dopant-selective etch stops that take advantage of the mature SiC homoepitaxy.

Did the COVID-19 consortium recommendations impact the treatment of breast cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Purpose: We examined the impact of the COVID-19 consortium recommendations on the surgical management of breast cancer during the first year of the pandemic.

Methods: Patients with newly diagnosed ER + DCIS, ER- DCIS, AJCC Stage cT1-2N0-1 ER + , HER2-, HER2 + , and triple negative breast cancer were identified from the National Cancer Database from 2018 to 2021. An interrupted time series design evaluated differences in surgical delay and use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy/immunotherapy (NAC) and endocrine therapy (NET) before and after the pandemic.

Mechanistic Insights into Synaptotagmin-1 Mediated Membrane Fusion and Interactions.

We present two innovative approaches to investigate the dynamics of membrane fusion and the strength of protein-membrane interactions. The first approach employs pore-spanning membranes (PSMs), which allow for the observation of protein-assisted fusion processes. The second approach utilizes colloidal probe microscopy with membrane-coated probes with reconstituted proteins.

Detection of Hepatitis C Virus Infection from Patient Sera in Cell Culture Using Semi-Automated Image Analysis.

The study of hepatitis C virus (HCV) replication in cell culture is mainly based on cloned viral isolates requiring adaptation for efficient replication in Huh7 hepatoma cells. The analysis of wild-type (WT) isolates was enabled by the expression of SEC14L2 and by inhibitors targeting deleterious host factors. Here, we aimed to optimize cell culture models to allow infection with HCV from patient sera.

Evaluating Medical Image Segmentation Models Using Augmentation.

Background: Medical imagesegmentation is an essential step in both clinical and research applications, and automated segmentation models-such as TotalSegmentator-have become ubiquitous. However, robust methods for validating the accuracy of these models remain limited, and manual inspection is often necessary before the segmentation masks produced by these models can be used.

Methods: To address this gap, we have developed a novel validation framework for segmentation models, leveraging data augmentation to assess model consistency.