Patient-centered empirical research on ethically relevant psychosocial and cultural aspects of cochlear, glaucoma and cardiovascular implants - a scoping review.

Background: The significance of medical implants goes beyond technical functioning and reaches into everyday life, with consequences for individuals as well as society. Ethical aspects associated with the everyday use of implants are relevant for individuals' lifeworlds and need to be considered in implant care and in the course of technical developments.

Methods: This scoping review aimed to provide a synthesis of the existing evidence regarding ethically relevant psychosocial and cultural aspects in cochlear, glaucoma and cardiovascular implants in patient-centered empirical research.

Patient Preferences for Long-Term Implant Care in Cochlear, Glaucoma and Cardiovascular Diseases.

In the process of developing and implementing innovative implant technologies the consideration of patient preferences can be beneficial for patients, doctors and developers. Nevertheless, in existing literature, there is still scarce knowledge of patients' perspectives on long-term implant care. In this study, three discrete choice experiments (DCEs) were conducted in the context of cochlear implants (CI, = 92), glaucoma implants (GI, = 21) and cardiovascular implants (CVI, = 23), examining the relative importance of attributes of long-term implant care from the patients' perspective.

Phonon-driven intra-exciton Rabi oscillations in CsPbBr halide perovskites.

Coupling electromagnetic radiation with matter, e.g., by resonant light fields in external optical cavities, is highly promising for tailoring the optoelectronic properties of functional materials on the nanoscale.

Control of structure and spin texture in the van der Waals layered magnet CrSBr.

Controlling magnetism at nanometer length scales is essential for realizing high-performance spintronic, magneto-electric and topological devices and creating on-demand spin Hamiltonians probing fundamental concepts in physics. Van der Waals (vdW)-bonded layered magnets offer exceptional opportunities for such spin texture engineering. Here, we demonstrate nanoscale structural control in the layered magnet CrSBr with the potential to create spin patterns without the environmental sensitivity that has hindered such manipulations in other vdW magnets.

Health Literacy in the Context of Implant Care-Perspectives of (Prospective) Implant Wearers on Individual and Organisational Factors.

The continuous development of medical implants offers various benefits for persons with chronic conditions but also challenges an individual's, and the healthcare system's, ability to deal with technical innovation. Accessing and understanding new information, navigating healthcare, and appraising the role of the implant in body perceptions and everyday life requires health literacy (HL) of those affected as well as an HL-responsive healthcare system. The interconnectedness of these aspects to ethically relevant values such as health, dependence, responsibility and self-determination reinforces the need to address HL in implant care.

Electron Dynamics in a Two-Dimensional Nanobubble: A Two-Level System Based on Spatial Density.

Nanobubbles formed in monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) on top of a substrate feature localized potentials in which electrons can be captured. We show that the captured electronic density can exhibit a nontrivial spatiotemporal dynamics, whose movements can be mapped to states in a two-level system illustrated as points of an electronic Poincaré sphere. These states can be fully controlled, i.

The ticking time-bomb. Health literacy in the context of genetic risk prediction in familial breast-ovarian cancer; A qualitative study.

Personalised methods of predicting breast and ovarian cancer risk through genetic testing increasingly demand a person's understanding and critical appraisal of risk-related information, as well as decision-making and acting upon disclosure of a positive test result. The current study aims at understanding health literacy (HL) among persons at risk of developing familial breast-ovarian cancer (FBOC) from a bottom-up perspective-incorporating their viewpoints into the research process. Its qualitative design integrates an ethnographic-narrative approach and findings from 10 narrative interviews with women who have undergone genetic testing, analysed by using reflexive grounded theory.

The role of chalcogen vacancies for atomic defect emission in MoS.

For two-dimensional (2D) layered semiconductors, control over atomic defects and understanding of their electronic and optical functionality represent major challenges towards developing a mature semiconductor technology using such materials. Here, we correlate generation, optical spectroscopy, atomic resolution imaging, and ab initio theory of chalcogen vacancies in monolayer MoS. Chalcogen vacancies are selectively generated by in-vacuo annealing, but also focused ion beam exposure.

An individually adjusted endurance test reveals differences in physical fitness between young and old Beagles.

Objective: Aim was to establish an individually adapted endurance test for dogs on a treadmill, which takes the individual's physical condition into account. To check the applicability of the test, two age groups of clinically healthy beagles were examined.

Methods: A total of 10 clinically healthy Beagles were enrolled and divided in a younger (1-3 years, n = 5) and older group (> 8 years, n = 5).

Self-Consistent Potential Correction for Charged Periodic Systems.

Supercell models are often used to calculate the electronic structure of local deviations from the ideal periodicity in the bulk or on the surface of a crystal or in wires. When the defect or adsorbent is charged, a jellium counter charge is applied to maintain overall neutrality, but the interaction of the artificially repeated charges has to be corrected, both in the total energy and in the one-electron eigenvalues and eigenstates. This becomes paramount in slab or wire calculations, where the jellium counter charge may induce spurious states in the vacuum.

Gate-Switchable Arrays of Quantum Light Emitters in Contacted Monolayer MoS van der Waals Heterodevices.

We demonstrate electrostatic switching of individual, site-selectively generated matrices of single photon emitters (SPEs) in MoS van der Waals heterodevices. We contact monolayers of MoS in field-effect devices with graphene gates and hexagonal boron nitride as the dielectric and graphite as bottom gates. After the assembly of such gate-tunable heterodevices, we demonstrate how arrays of defects, that serve as quantum emitters, can be site-selectively generated in the monolayer MoS by focused helium ion irradiation.

Intrinsic defects of GaSe.

GaSe is a layered semiconductor with an optical band gap tunable by the number of layers in a thin film. This is promising for application in micro/optoelectronics and photovoltaics. However, for that, knowledge about the intrinsic defects are needed, since they may influence device behavior.

Health Literacy as Communicative Action-A Qualitative Study among Persons at Risk in the Context of Predictive and Preventive Medicine.

Predictive and preventive medicine play an increasingly important role in public debates on health, providing cutting-edge technologies with the potential to measure and predict individual risks of getting ill. This leads to an ever-expanding definitional space between being "healthy" and being "ill", challenging the individual's everyday life, attitudes and perceptions towards the self and the process of health-related decision-making. "How do the condition of 'being at risk' and individual health literacy interrelate?" is the leading question of the current contribution.

Effect of antioxidants, mitochondrial cofactors and omega-3 fatty acids on telomere length and kinematic joint mobility in young and old shepherd dogs - A randomized, blinded and placebo-controlled study.

In dogs, decreasing telomere length is a biomarker for cellular aging. On a systemic level, aging affects the locomotor system in particular, leading to restricted joint mobility. As aging is thought to be related to oxidative stress, it may be counteracted by a diet enriched with antioxidants, mitochondrial cofactors and omega-3 fatty acids.

Carrier multiplication in van der Waals layered transition metal dichalcogenides.

Carrier multiplication (CM) is a process in which high-energy free carriers relax by generation of additional electron-hole pairs rather than by heat dissipation. CM is promising disruptive improvements in photovoltaic energy conversion and light detection technologies. Current state-of-the-art nanomaterials including quantum dots and carbon nanotubes have demonstrated CM, but are not satisfactory owing to high-energy-loss and inherent difficulties with carrier extraction.

Site-selectively generated photon emitters in monolayer MoS via local helium ion irradiation.

Quantum light sources in solid-state systems are of major interest as a basic ingredient for integrated quantum photonic technologies. The ability to tailor quantum emitters via site-selective defect engineering is essential for realizing scalable architectures. However, a major difficulty is that defects need to be controllably positioned within the material.

Quantum-Dot-Like States in Molybdenum Disulfide Nanostructures Due to the Interplay of Local Surface Wrinkling, Strain, and Dielectric Confinement.

The observation of quantum light emission from atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides has opened a new field of applications for these material systems. The corresponding excited charge-carrier localization has been linked to defects and strain, while open questions remain regarding the microscopic origin. We demonstrate that the bending rigidity of these materials leads to wrinkling of the two-dimensional layer.

Prospects and Limitations of Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Laser Gain Materials.

Nanolasers operate with a minimal amount of active material and low losses. In this regime, single layers of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are being investigated as next generation gain materials due to their high quantum efficiency. We provide results from microscopic gain calculations of highly excited TMD monolayers and specify requirements to achieve lasing with four commonly used TMD semiconductors.

Comparative kinematic gait analysis in young and old Beagle dogs.

Age-related involution in dogs involves loss of muscle mass and changes in connective tissue and articular cartilage. The aim of this study was to examine whether an age-related influence on joint mobility can be detected in the absence of disease. Five young (mean age 2.

Two-Dimensional Heterojunctions from Nonlocal Manipulations of the Interactions.

We propose to create lateral heterojunctions in two-dimensional materials based on nonlocal manipulations of the Coulomb interaction using structured dielectric environments. By means of ab initio calculations for MoS2 as well as generic semiconductor models, we show that the Coulomb interaction-induced self-energy corrections in real space are sufficiently nonlocal to be manipulated externally, but still local enough to induce spatially sharp interfaces within a single homogeneous monolayer to form heterojunctions. We find a type-II heterojunction band scheme promoted by a laterally structured dielectric environment, which exhibits a sharp band gap crossover within less than 5 unit cells.

Intense intrashell luminescence of Eu-doped single ZnO nanowires at room temperature by implantation created Eu-Oi complexes.

Successful doping and excellent optical activation of Eu(3+) ions in ZnO nanowires were achieved by ion implantation. We identified and assigned the origin of the intra-4f luminescence of Eu(3+) ions in ZnO by first-principles calculations to Eu-Oi complexes, which are formed during the nonequilibrium ion implantation process and subsequent annealing at 700 °C in air. Our targeted defect engineering resulted in intense intrashell luminescence of single ZnO:Eu nanowires dominating the photoluminescence spectrum even at room temperature.

A comparison between experiment and theory on few-quantum-dot nanolasing in a photonic-crystal cavity.

We present an experimental and theoretical study on the gain mechanism in a photonic-crystal-cavity nanolaser with embedded quantum dots. From time-resolved measurements at low excitation power we find that four excitons are coupled to the cavity. At high excitation power we observe a smooth low-threshold transition from spontaneous emission to lasing.

Resonance fluorescence from semiconductor quantum dots: beyond the Mollow triplet.

We show that the resonance fluorescence spectrum of a quantum dot excited by a strong optical pulse contains multiple peaks beyond those of the Mollow triplet. We show that as the area of the optical pulse is increased, new side peaks split off the central peak and shift in frequency. A simple analytical theory has been derived, which quantitatively accounts for the appearance and position of the peaks.

[Manufacturing and stability of copper-histidine solution for treatment of Menkes' Kinky Hair Syndrome].

Menkes' Kinky Hair Syndrom is a rare, X-linked recessive multisystemic lethal disorder of copper metabolism. Male infants who are affected usually die at the age of 2-3 years. If the disease is diagnosed early, patients profit from subcutaneously administered copper salts.