Electrolyte Engineering with TFA Anion-Rich Solvation Structure to Construct Highly Stable Zn/Na Dual-Salt Batteries.

Electrolyte engineering is recognized as an effective technique for high-performance aqueous zinc-ion rechargeable batteries, addressing difficulties such as free water decomposition, zinc anode corrosion, and zinc dendrite growth. Different from traditional strategies in aqueous electrolyte systems, this work focuses on organic electrolytes involving zinc trifluoroacetate hydrate (Zn(TFA)·xHO), sodium trifluoroacetate (NaTFA) dual-salt and acetonitrile (AN) solvent, in which trifluoroacetate anions (TFA anions) have strong affinity toward zinc ions to form anion-rich solvates, thus inducing an inorganic-rich solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) to protect Zn from dendrite growth and side reactions. The Zn anode manifests long-term cycling over 2400 h at a current density of 0.

Early changes of fecal short-chain fatty acid levels in patients with mild cognitive impairments.

Aims: To compare the fecal levels of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and normal controls (NCs) and to examine whether fecal SCFAs could be used as the biomarker for the identification of patients with MCI. To examine the relationship between fecal SCFAs and amyloid-β (Aβ) deposition in the brain.

Methods: A cohort of 32 MCI patients, 23 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, and 27 NC were recruited in our study.

Plasma Exosomal Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Correlated with the Postural Instability and Gait Disturbance-Related Motor Symptoms in Patients with Parkinson's Disease.

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is an essential neurotrophin, responsible for neuronal development, function, and survival. Assessments of peripheral blood BDNF in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) previously yielded inconsistent results. Plasma exosomes can carry BDNF, so this study investigated the role of plasma exosomal BDNF level as a biomarker of PD.

Strain Rate Effect on the Ductile Brittle Transition in Grinding Hot Pressed SiC Ceramics.

Surface and subsurface damage are still persistent technical challenges for the abrasive machining hot pressed-silicon carbide (HP-SiC) ceramics. Therefore, an investigation of the material behavior and critical depth of ductile to brittle transition (DBT) is essential for improving high precision and quality grinding HP-SiC ceramics. In this paper, single-grit grinding experiments with different scratch speed were conducted to study strain rate effect on the critical depth of DBT.

Identification and segmentation of obscure pectoral muscle in mediolateral oblique mammograms.

Objective: X-ray mammography is a widely used and reliable method for detecting pre-symptomatic breast cancer. One of the difficulties in automatically computerized mammogram analysis is the presence of pectoral muscles in mediolateral oblique mammograms because the pectoral muscle does not belong to the scope of the breast. The objective of this study is to identify the boundary of obscure pectoral muscle in mediolateral oblique mammograms.

Temperature-dependence of the influence of the position-2-methyl group on the structure-directing effect of piperazine in the synthesis of open-framework aluminophosphates.

The temperature-dependence of the influence of the position-2-methyl group on the structure-directing effect of piperazine in the synthesis of open-framework aluminophosphates was investigated. By heating the initial mixture with the composition of Al2O3:1.5 P2O5:R:125 H2O at 160 °C, where R is the structure-directing agent of 2-methylpiperazine or piperazine, layered aluminophosphates APMeP150 (R = 2-methylpiperazine) and AP2pip (R = piperazine) were obtained.

Identification of breast contour for nipple segmentation in breast magnetic resonance images.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a method to simulate the breast contour and segment the nipple in breast magnetic resonance images.

Methods: This study first identifies the chest wall and removes the chest part from the breast MR images. Subsequently, the cleavage and its motion artifacts are removed, distinguishing the separate breasts, where the edge points are sampled for curve fitting.

Detection and construction of chest wall on breast magnetic resonance images.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to propose a method for detection and construction of chest wall for breast magnetic resonance images.

Methods: A volume of breast MR slices are firstly acquired and utilized to detect initial points of chest wall. To calibrate the chest wall curve, the points along the curve is set with reference to its neighboring points.

Estimation of breast density: an adaptive moment preserving method for segmentation of fibroglandular tissue in breast magnetic resonance images.

Purpose: Breast density has been found to be a potential indicator for breast cancer risk. The estimation of breast density can be seen as a segmentation problem on fibroglandular tissues from a breast magnetic resonance image. The classic moment preserving is a thresholding method, which can be applied to determine an appropriate threshold value for fibroglandular tissue segmentation.

Mammogram retrieval through machine learning within BI-RADS standards.

A content-based mammogram retrieval system can support usual comparisons made on images by physicians, answering similarity queries over images stored in the database. The importance of searching for similar mammograms lies in the fact that physicians usually try to recall similar cases by seeking images that are pathologically similar to a given image. This paper presents a content-based mammogram retrieval system, which employs a query example to search for similar mammograms in the database.