Dual-emission red carbon dots for ATP real-time monitoring and quantification to reveal drug and cancer effects on lysosomes.

Monitoring and quantifying ATP levels in vivo is essential to understanding its role as a signaling molecule in tumor progression and therapy. Nevertheless, the real-time monitoring and quantitative assessment of lysosomal ATP remains challenging due to the lack of accurate tools in deep tissues. In this study, based on the crosslinking enhanced emission (CEE) effect, we successfully synthesized red carbon dots (R-CDs) with dual emission properties for efficient quantification of intracellular ATP.

Climber, mediator, and marathoner: narrative inquiry of career motivation changes of pre-service CSL teachers throughout teaching practicum.

Introduction: The growing global demand for foreign language learning contrasts sharply with the shortage of second language teachers. In Chinese as a second language (CSL) education, although the number of pre-service CSL teachers is increasing, few continue in the profession after completing their teacher education courses.

Methods: To investigate the reasons behind this trend, this longitudinal narrative inquiry examined the career motivations of three participants during their teaching practicum.

Self-Calibrating Lanthanide Infinite Coordination Polymer Constructs Fluorescent Probes: A Sensitive Approach for Early Diagnosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Environmental Analysis.

The development of a self-calibrating ratio fluorescence probe without the need for additional substrates is a major advancement in biosensing. In this study, at room temperature, a self-calibrating infinite coordination polymer (SSA-Tb-ATP ICPs) has been proposed by self-assembling adenosine triphosphate (ATP) with 5-sulfosalicylic acid (SSA) and Tb. Due to the antenna effect, SSA-Tb-ATP ICPs exhibited strong green fluorescence emission of Tb (at 547 nm) and blue fluorescence emission of SSA (at 407 nm).

Robot-Assisted Needle Insertion for CT-Guided Puncture: Experimental Study with a Phantom and Animals.

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy and safety of robotic CT-guided needle insertion in phantom and animal experiments.

Materials And Methods: A robotic system was developed for CT-guided needle insertion. For the phantom experiment, a specially made phantom containing multiple spherical was used.

Autostereoscopic 3D Augmented Reality Navigation for Laparoscopic Surgery: A Preliminary Assessment.

Objective: Since Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D visualization have proven to be of great significance to the safety and effectiveness of surgical outcomes, will autostereoscopic 3D AR without glasses bring new opportunities for surgical navigation of laparoscopic surgery?

Methods: We used the CPD-based deformation registration algorithm and the proposed virtual view generation algorithm, realizing a deformable autostereoscopic 3D AR navigation framework for laparoscopic surgery. The depth perception and user experience of the 3D AR navigation were evaluated compared with the 2D AR display using an in-vitro porcine heart and offline clinical partial nephrectomy laparoscopic images.

Results: The autostereoscopic 3D AR allowed participants to have a more consistent spatial perception as well as a shorter measuring time than 2D AR with significant difference of p < 0.

The roles of motivation, anxiety and learning strategies in online Chinese learning among Thai learners of Chinese as a foreign language.

The impact of motivation, anxiety and learning strategies on the achievement of foreign language proficiency has been widely acknowledged in the context of traditional offline classroom settings. However, this issue has not been extensively documented in relation to online learning, which has become the predominant form of language learning during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study was conducted to investigate the relative prediction of motivation, anxiety and learning strategies for second language achievement among 90 Thai adult learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) who took online Chinese courses.

Robotic system with programmable motion constraint for transurethral resection.

Purpose: We propose a tele-operated transurethral robotic system with programmable motion constraint for tissue resection.

Methods: The system consists of a surgeon console with an interaction device, a 7-degree-of-freedom manipulator, and a surgical end-effector. The surgical end-effector holds a resectoscope with a motor driven mechanism to perform electrocautery.

A robotic system for spine surgery positioning and pedicle screw placement.

Background: In recent years, surgeons have explored minimally invasive methods of percutaneous pedicle screw implantation which can effectively reduce human injuries. This article presents an accurate and efficient positioning method and robot system for percutaneous needle placement under c-arm fluoroscopy.

Methods: A simple five degree of freedom (DOF) robot with a unique end-effector is designed to perform perspective calibration and image space registration.

Transfer Learning for Nonrigid 2D/3D Cardiovascular Images Registration.

Cardiovascular image registration is an essential approach to combine the advantages of preoperative 3D computed tomography angiograph (CTA) images and intraoperative 2D X-ray/digital subtraction angiography (DSA) images together in minimally invasive vascular interventional surgery (MIVI). Recent studies have shown that convolutional neural network (CNN) regression model can be used to register these two modality vascular images with fast speed and satisfactory accuracy. However, CNN regression model trained by tens of thousands of images of one patient is often unable to be applied to another patient due to the large difference and deformation of vascular structure in different patients.

Assessment and application of the coherent point drift algorithm to augmented reality surgical navigation for laparoscopic partial nephrectomy.

Purpose: The surface-based registration approach to laparoscopic augmented reality (AR) has clear advantages. Nonrigid point-set registration paves the way for surface-based registration. Among current non-rigid point set registration methods, the coherent point drift (CPD) algorithm is rarely used because of two challenges: (1) volumetric deformation is difficult to predict, and (2) registration from intraoperative visible tissue surface to whole anatomical preoperative model is a "part-to-whole" registration that CPD cannot be applied directly to.

Octopus Arm-Inspired Tapered Soft Actuators with Suckers for Improved Grasping.

Octopuses can employ their tapered arms to catch prey of all shapes and sizes due to their dexterity, flexibility, and gripping power. Intrigued by variability in arm taper angle between different octopus species, we explored the utility of designing soft actuators exhibiting a distinctive conical geometry, compared with more traditional cylindrical forms. We find that these octopus-inspired conical-shaped actuators exhibit a wide range of bending curvatures that can be tuned by simply altering their taper angle and they also demonstrate greater flexibility compared with their cylindrical counterparts.

Preparation of Highly Active Monometallic Rhenium Catalysts for Selective Synthesis of 1,4-Butanediol from 1,4-Anhydroerythritol.

1,4-Butanediol can be produced from 1,4-anhydroerythritol through the co-catalysis of monometallic mixed catalysts (ReO /CeO +ReO /C) in the one-pot reduction with H . The highest yield of 1,4-butanediol was over 80 %, which is similar to the value obtained over ReO -Au/CeO +ReO /C catalysts. Mixed catalysts of CeO +ReO /C showed almost the same performance, giving 89 % yield of 1,4-butanediol.

Intensity-based 2D-3D registration for an ACL reconstruction navigation system.

To improve the positioning accuracy of tunnels for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, we proposed an intensity-based 2D-3D registration method for an ACL reconstruction navigation system. Methods for digitally reconstructed radiograph (DRR) generation, similarity measurement, and optimization are crucial to 2D-3D registration. We evaluated the accuracy, success rate, and processing time of different methods: (a) ray-casting and splating were compared for DRR generation; (b) normalized mutual information (NMI), Mattes mutual information (MMI), and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (SRC) were assessed for similarity between registrations; and (c) gradient descent (GD) and downhill simplex (DS) were compared for optimization.

New Calibrator with Points Distributed Conical Helically for Online Calibration of C-Arm.

To improve the accuracy of calibration of C-arm, and overcome the space limitation in surgery, we proposed a new calibrator for online calibration of C-arm. After the image rectification by a polynomial fitting-based global correction method, the C-arm was assumed as an ideal pinhole model. The relationships between two kinds of spatial calibration errors and the distribution of fiducial points were studied: the performance of FRE (Fiducial Registration Error) and TRE (Target Registration Error) were not consistent, but both were best at the 12 marked points; the TRE decreased with the increase of the uniformity of calibration points distribution, and with the decrease of the distance between the target point and the center of calibration points.

A markerless automatic deformable registration framework for augmented reality navigation of laparoscopy partial nephrectomy.

Unlabelled: Purpose Video see-through augmented reality (VST-AR) navigation for laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (LPN) can enhance intraoperative perception of surgeons by visualizing surgical targets and critical structures of the kidney tissue. Image registration is the main challenge in the procedure. Existing registration methods in laparoscopic navigation systems suffer from limitations such as manual alignment, invasive external marker fixation, relying on external tracking devices with bulky tracking sensors and lack of deformation compensation.

An Opposite-Bending-and-Extension Soft Robotic Manipulator for Delicate Grasping in Shallow Water.

Collecting seafood animals (such as sea cucumbers, sea echini, scallops, etc.) cultivated in shallow water (water depth: ~30 m) is a profitable and an emerging field that requires robotics for replacing human divers. Soft robotics have several promising features (e.

A Normal Sensor Calibration Method Based on an Extended Kalman Filter for Robotic Drilling.

To enhance the perpendicularity accuracy in the robotic drilling system, a normal sensor calibration method is proposed to identify the errors of the zero point and laser beam direction of laser displacement sensors simultaneously. The procedure of normal adjustment of the robotic drilling system is introduced firstly. Next the measurement model of the zero point and laser beam direction on a datum plane is constructed based on the principle of the distance measurement for laser displacement sensors.

Understanding Fish Linear Acceleration Using an Undulatory Biorobotic Model with Soft Fluidic Elastomer Actuated Morphing Median Fins.

Although linear accelerations are an important common component of the diversity of fish locomotor behaviors, acceleration is one of the least-understood aspects of propulsion. Analysis of acceleration behavior in fishes with both spiny and soft-rayed median fins demonstrates that fin area is actively modulated when fish accelerate. We implemented an undulatory biomimetic robotic fish model with median fins manufactured using multimaterial three-dimensional printing-a spiny-rayed dorsal fin, soft-rayed dorsal/anal fins, and a caudal fin-whose stiffnesses span three orders of magnitude.

A new hand-eye calibration approach for fracture reduction robot.

Objective: The hand-eye calibration is used to determine the transformation between the end-effector and the camera marker of the robot. But the robot movement in traditional method would be time-consuming, inaccurate and even unavailable in some conditions. The method presented in this article can complete the calibration without any movement and is more suitable in clinical applications.

A biorobotic adhesive disc for underwater hitchhiking inspired by the remora suckerfish.

Remoras of the ray-finned fish family Echeneidae have the remarkable ability to attach to diverse marine animals using a highly modified dorsal fin that forms an adhesive disc, which enables hitchhiking on fast-swimming hosts despite high magnitudes of fluid shear. We present the design of a biologically analogous, multimaterial biomimetic remora disc based on detailed morphological and kinematic investigations of the slender sharksucker (). We used multimaterial three-dimensional printing techniques to fabricate the main disc structure whose stiffness spans three orders of magnitude.

Hydrodynamics of a robotic fish tail: effects of the caudal peduncle, fin ray motions and the flow speed.

Recent advances in understanding fish locomotion with robotic devices have included the use of biomimetic flapping based and fin undulatory locomotion based robots, treating two locomotions separately from each other. However, in most fish species, patterns of active movements of fins occur in concert with the body undulatory deformation during swimming. In this paper, we describe a biomimetic robotic caudal fin programmed with individually actuated fin rays to mimic the fin motion of the Bluegill Sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus) and coupled with heave and pitch oscillatory motions adding to the robot to mimic the peduncle motion which is derived from the undulatory fish body.

A biomimetic underwater vehicle actuated by waves with ionic polymer-metal composite soft sensors.

The ionic polymer-metal composite (IPMC) is a soft material based actuator and sensor and has a promising potential in underwater application. This paper describes a hybrid biomimetic underwater vehicle that uses IPMCs as sensors. Propelled by the energy of waves, this underwater vehicle does not need an additional energy source.

Robot-musculoskeletal dynamic biomechanical model in robot-assisted diaphyseal fracture reduction.

A number of issues that exist in common fracture reduction surgeries can be mitigated by robot-assisted fracture reduction. However, the safety of patients and the performance of the robot, which are closely related to the muscle forces, are important indexes that restrict the development of robots. Though researchers have done a great deal of work on the biomechanics of the musculoskeletal system, the dynamics of the musculoskeletal system, particularly the aspects related to the function of the robot, is not well understood.

A visual servo-based teleoperation robot system for closed diaphyseal fracture reduction.

Common fracture treatments include open reduction and intramedullary nailing technology. However, these methods have disadvantages such as intraoperative X-ray radiation, delayed union or nonunion and postoperative rotation. Robots provide a novel solution to the aforementioned problems while posing new challenges.