Engineering multifunctionality graphene-based nanocomposites with epoxy-silane functionalized cardanol for next-generation microwave absorber.

As technology advances, the demand for effective microwave-absorbing materials (MAM) to mitigate electromagnetic wave interference is growing. Two-dimensional (2D) materials are increasingly favored across various fields for their high specific surface area, electrical conductivity, low density, and dielectric loss properties. This study presents lightweight nanocomposites composed of graphene nanoplatelets blended with epoxy resin (ER) and cardanol with silane-functionalized (SFC) as a toughening agent.

Underground Ink: Printed Electronics Enabling Electrochemical Sensing in Soil.

Improving agricultural production relies on the decisions and actions of farmers and land managers, highlighting the importance of efficient soil monitoring techniques for better resource management and reduced environmental impacts. Despite considerable advancements in soil sensors, their traditional bulky counterparts cause difficulty in widespread adoption and large-scale deployment. Printed electronics emerge as a promising technology, offering flexibility in device design, cost-effectiveness for mass production, and a compact footprint suitable for versatile deployment platforms.

Empowering the Participant Voice (EPV): Design and implementation of collaborative infrastructure to collect research participant experience feedback at scale.

Empowering the Participant Voice (EPV) is an NCATS-funded six-CTSA collaboration to develop, demonstrate, and disseminate a low-cost infrastructure for collecting timely feedback from research participants, fostering trust, and providing data for improving clinical translational research. EPV leverages the validated Research Participant Perception Survey (RPPS) and the popular REDCap electronic data-capture platform. This report describes the development of infrastructure designed to overcome identified institutional barriers to routinely collecting participant feedback using RPPS and demonstration use cases.

Addressing Signal Drift and Screening for Detection of Biomarkers with Carbon Nanotube Transistors.

Electrical biosensors, including transistor-based devices (i.e., BioFETs), have the potential to offer versatile biomarker detection in a simple, low-cost, scalable, and point-of-care manner.

Evaluation of the diagnostic accuracy of exome sequencing and its impact on diagnostic thinking for patients with rare disease in a publicly funded health care system: A prospective cohort study.

Purpose: To evaluate the diagnostic utility of publicly funded clinical exome sequencing (ES) for patients with suspected rare genetic diseases.

Methods: We prospectively enrolled 297 probands who met eligibility criteria and received ES across 5 sites in Ontario, Canada, and extracted data from medical records and clinician surveys. Using the Fryback and Thornbury Efficacy Framework, we assessed diagnostic accuracy by examining laboratory interpretation of results and assessed diagnostic thinking by examining the clinical interpretation of results and whether clinical-molecular diagnoses would have been achieved via alternative hypothetical molecular tests.

Solution Processed Schottky Diodes Enabled by Silicon Carbide Nanowires for Harsh Environment Applications.

Silicon carbide nanowires (SiC NWs) exhibit promising features to allow solution-processable electronics to be deployed in harsh environments. By utilizing a nanoscale form of SiC, we were able to disperse the material into liquid solvents, while maintaining the resilience of bulk SiC. This letter reports the fabrication of SiC NW Schottky diodes.

"Not-so-popular" orthogonal pairs in genetic code expansion.

During the past decade, genetic code expansion has been proved to be a powerful tool for protein studies and engineering. As the key part, a series of orthogonal pairs have been developed to site-specifically incorporate hundreds of noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs) into proteins by using bacteria, yeast, mammalian cells, animals, or plants as hosts. Among them, the pair of tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA from Methanococcus jannaschii and the pair of pyrrolysyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA from Methanosarcina species are the most popular ones.

Hybrid nanomaterial inks for printed resistive temperature sensors with tunable properties to maximize sensitivity.

Nanomaterial-based inks are one of the essential building blocks for printed electronics. Inks consisting of silver nanoparticles have been well received as conductive inks for printed electronics among researchers and industry due to their good electrical performance, relatively low sintering temperature, and wide range of commercial availability. However, homogenous silver nanoparticle inks can lack the appropriate attributes required for robust printed physical sensors.

Imaging Biomarkers in Prostate Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy: A Review and Clinical Trial Protocol.

Advances in imaging have changed prostate radiotherapy through improved biochemical control from focal boost and improved detection of recurrence. These advances are reviewed in the context of prostate stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) and the ARGOS/CLIMBER trial protocol. ARGOS/CLIMBER will evaluate 1) the safety and feasibility of SBRT with focal boost guided by multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) and F-PSMA-1007 PET and 2) imaging and laboratory biomarkers for response to SBRT.

ReGARDD (Regulatory Guidance for Academic Research of Drugs and Devices): The evolution of a collaborative regional CTSA-funded forum and website for regulatory support.

Availability of trained professionals to assist researchers navigating regulatory pathways for new drug and device development is limited within academic institutions. We created ReGARDD (Regulatory Guidance for Academic Research of Drugs and Devices), a regional forum initially involving regulatory professionals from four Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA)-funded institutions, to build and capitalize on local expertise and to develop a regulatory guidance website geared toward academic researchers. Since 2015, members organized 15 forums covering topics such as FDA premarket submissions, gene therapy, and intellectual property for devices and therapeutics.

Tritium labelling of two potent dopamine D receptor agonists at high specific activity.

An efficient method is described to radiolabel several dopamine D receptor agonists with tritium at high specific activity.

Flexible, Print-in-Place 1D-2D Thin-Film Transistors Using Aerosol Jet Printing.

Semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNTs) printed into thin films offer high electrical performance, significant mechanical stability, and compatibility with low-temperature processing. Yet, the implementation of low-temperature printed devices, such as CNT thin-film transistors (CNT-TFTs), has been hindered by relatively high process temperature requirements imposed by other device layers-dielectrics and contacts. In this work, we overcome temperature constraints and demonstrate 1D-2D thin-film transistors (1D-2D TFTs) in a low-temperature (maximum exposure ≤80 °C) full print-in-place process (, no substrate removal from printer throughout the entire process) using an aerosol jet printer.

TBX3 promotes progression of pre-invasive breast cancer cells by inducing EMT and directly up-regulating SLUG.

The acquisition of cellular invasiveness by breast epithelial cells and subsequent transition from ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) to invasive breast cancer is a critical step in breast cancer progression. Little is known about the molecular dynamics governing this transition. We have previously shown that overexpression of the transcriptional regulator TBX3 in DCIS-like cells increases survival, growth, and invasiveness.

Delivery of the research participant perception survey through the patient portal.

Introduction: The patient portal may be an effective method for administering surveys regarding participant research experiences but has not been systematically studied.

Methods: We evaluated 4 methods of delivering a research participant perception survey: mailing, phone, email, and patient portal. Participants of research studies were identified (n=4013) and 800 were randomly selected to receive a survey, 200 for each method.

An Institutional Program to Increase Compliance with Clinicaltrials.gov Requirements.

Recent National Institutes of Health policy changes have expanded the number of research studies that must be registered in clinicaltrials.gov beyond the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has also adopted a policy that requires registration of research in a public database.

Patterned Liquid Metal Contacts for Printed Carbon Nanotube Transistors.

Flexible and stretchable electronics are poised to enable many applications that cannot be realized with traditional, rigid devices. One of the most promising options for low-cost stretchable transistors are printed carbon nanotubes (CNTs). However, a major limiting factor in stretchable CNT devices is the lack of a stable and versatile contact material that forms both the interconnects and contact electrodes.

Ensuring respect for persons in COMPASS: a cluster randomised pragmatic clinical trial.

Unlabelled: Cluster randomised clinical trials present unique challenges in meeting ethical obligations to those who are treated at a randomised site. Obtaining informed consent for research within the context of clinical care is one such challenge. In order to solve this problem it is important that an informed consent process be effective and efficient, and that it does not impede the research or the healthcare.

Drop spreading on a superhydrophobic surface: pinned contact line and bending liquid surface.

In this study, we employ molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to probe the spreading of a drop on a superhydrophobic (SH) surface. The SH surface consists of nanopillars and the drop spreads while being in the Cassie-Baxter (CB) state on the nanopillared surface. Most remarkably, unlike the spreading on non-SH surfaces, we witness that the spreading on SH surfaces is not dominated by the motion of the three-phase contact line (TPCL).

Poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate) Brushes on High-κ Metal Oxide Dielectric Surfaces for Bioelectrical Environments.

Advances in electronics and life sciences have generated interest in "lab-on-a-chip" systems utilizing complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuitry for low-power, portable, and cost-effective biosensing platforms. Here, we present a simple and reliable approach for coating "high-κ" metal oxide dielectric materials with "non-fouling" (protein- and cell-resistant) poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (POEGMA) polymer brushes as biointerfacial coatings to improve their relevance for biosensing applications utilizing advanced electronic components. By using a surface-initiated "grafting from" strategy, POEGMA films were reliably grown on each material, as confirmed by ellipsometric measurements and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis.

Wetting dynamics of a water nanodrop on graphene.

Water-graphene wetting interactions are central to several applications such as desalination, water filtration, electricity generation, biochemical sensing, fabrication of fuel cells, and many more. While substantial attention has been devoted to probe the wetting statics of a water drop on graphene, unraveling the possible wetting translucency nature of graphene, very little research has been done on the dynamics of wetting of water drops on graphene-coated solids or free-standing graphene layers. In this paper, we employ molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study the contact and the spreading of a water nanodrop, quantifying its wetting dynamics, on supported and free-standing graphene.

Improving Contact Interfaces in Fully Printed Carbon Nanotube Thin-Film Transistors.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) printed into thin films have been shown to yield high mobility, thermal conductivity, mechanical flexibility, and chemical stability as semiconducting channels in field-effect, thin-film transistors (TFTs). Printed CNT-TFTs of many varieties have been studied; however, there has been limited effort toward improving overall CNT-TFT performance. In particular, contact resistance plays a dominant role in determining the performance and degree of variability in the TFTs, especially in fully printed devices where the contacts and channel are both printed.

Harms, benefits, and the nature of interventions in pragmatic clinical trials.

To produce evidence capable of informing healthcare decision making at all critical levels, pragmatic clinical trials are diverse both in terms of the type of intervention (medical, behavioral, and/or technological) and the target of intervention (patients, clinicians, and/or healthcare system processes). Patients and clinicians may be called on to participate as designers, investigators, intermediaries, or subjects of pragmatic clinical trials. Other members of the healthcare team, as well as the healthcare system itself, also may be affected directly or indirectly before, during, or after study implementation.