Selection of a Surgical Approach for Middle Ear Cholesteatoma Based on the Fusion Images of Non-Echo Planar Diffusion-Weighted MRI and CT.

Purpose: This study aimed to explore the ability of fusion images of non-echo planar diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (non-EPI-DWI MRI) and computed tomography (CT) to accurately locate cholesteatoma and plan the surgical approach.

Methods: In the first part, 41 patients were included. Their CT images and non-EPI DWMRI images were fused.

Otomastoiditis Caused by A Case Report and Literature Review.

usually infects people with impaired immune status and usually manifests in the lungs. Otomastoiditis caused by Nocardia infection is extremely rare, with only 4 cases reported to date. This report describes a case of otomastoid infection in an immunocompetent patient.

Identification of a novel variant from a Chinese family with auditory neuropathy.

Auditory neuropathy (AN) is a specific type of hearing loss characterized by impaired language comprehension. Apoptosis inducing factor mitochondrion associated 1 () is the most common gene associated with late-onset AN. In this study, we aimed to screen the pathogenic variant of in a Chinese family with AN and to explore the molecular mechanism underlying the function of such variant in the development of AN.

Notch signaling pathway plays a critical role in chemotherapeutic drug-induced vestibular injury.

The vestibule of the inner ear is susceptible to certain chemotherapeutic agents in clinical practice. Therefore, it is of great significance to discover molecular pathways and targets that can protect the vestibule from chemotherapeutic drugs. The Notch signaling pathway is closely related to hair cell regeneration in the inner ear.

Discrimination of vestibular function based on inertial sensors.

Background And Objective: Vestibular dysfunction, as a common disease or symptom, can cause abnormalities in gait and balance. Since the existing detection methods are static detection and cannot obtain the dynamic vestibular information of patients, this paper proposes a simple method for detecting vestibular dysfunction based on gait signals of subjects.

Methods: In our study, the walking patterns of dynamic gait index (DGI) and inertial sensor were adopted for the data acquisition.

The kapok petal: superhydrophobic surface induced by microscale trichomes.

For the first time it is reported that the kapok petal shows a superhydrophobic characteristic with a static water contact angle higher than 150°. Intriguingly, there exist single-scale micro-trichomes and no more nanocrystals on a kapok petal in contrast to most natural superhydrophobic surfaces with hierarchical morphologies, such as the lotus leaf and rose petal. Experimental results show that the kapok petal has an excellent self-cleaning ability either in air or oil.

Micro-Prism Patterned Remote Phosphor Film for Enhanced Luminous Efficiency and Color Uniformity of Phosphor-Converted Light-Emitting Diodes.

In this work, we propose micro-prism patterned remote phosphor (RP) films to enhance both luminous efficiency and color uniformity (CU) of remote phosphor-converted light-emitting diodes (rpc-LEDs) simultaneously. On the incident surface of the RP film, one micro-prism film is used to extract backward light by double reflection. On the exit surface, the other micro-prism film is adopted to retain blue light inside the RP film, thus enhancing the phosphor excitation.

Toward 200 Lumens per Watt of Quantum-Dot White-Light-Emitting Diodes by Reducing Reabsorption Loss.

In this study, we analyze the influence of the pore structure of an SBA-15 particle on the light emission from its inner adsorbed quantum dots (QDs) and outer light-emitting diode (LED) chips. It is found that the particle features of a high refractive index, comparable feature size of pore structure, and lower amount of QD adsorption help with QD light extraction, demonstrating a mechanism to suppress QD light propagating through pores and thus reducing the reabsorption loss. We consequently developed highly efficient QD white LEDs with wet-mixing QD/SBA-15 nanocomposite particles (NPs) by further optimizing the packaging methods and the introduced NP mass ratio.

A New Case of Endoscopic Resection of a Chorda Tympani Schwannoma.

Chorda tympani schwannoma is a very rare tumor, with only 12 reported cases in the English literature. There are few reports on the diagnosis of chorda tympani schwannoma, and it is easily misdiagnosed. At present, surgery is recognized as a treatment for chorda tympani schwannoma.

Reliability, internal consistency, and concurrent validity of a modified version of the dynamic gait index in people with vestibular disorders.

Background: People with vestibular disorders often have abnormalities in gait and balance. The Dynamic Gait Index (DGI) is a relatively effective clinical gait measure that has been validated for use in patients with vestibular disorders. The modified version of the DGI (M-DGI) is based on the original DGI.

Variation of the frictional anisotropy on ventral scales of snakes caused by nanoscale steps.

The ventral scales of most snakes feature micron-sized fibril structures with nanoscale steps oriented towards the snake's tail. We examined these structures by microtribometry as well as atomic force microscopy (AFM) and observed that the nanoscale steps of the micro-fibrils cause a frictional anisotropy, which varies along the snake's body in dependence of the height of the nanoscale steps. A significant frictional behavior is detected when a sharp AFM tip scans the nanoscale steps up or down.

Bioinspired high-scattering polymer films fabricated by polymerization-induced phase separation.

Inspired by the porous scale of the bright white beetle Cyphochilus, a polymerization-induced phase separation method is proposed to fabricate bioinspired high-scattering polymer films with porous structures. With an optimized formulation, the porous films with a mean pore size of ∼200 feature a broadband reflectance of ∼71 at a thickness of 16 µm and are measured to have a transport mean free path of ∼3µ. The porous films with high reflectivity enable the application on light-emitting diodes and have great potential in other similar optoelectronic fields.

Numerical study on the scattering property of porous polymer structures via supercritical CO microcellular foaming.

Disordered porous polymer structures have gained tremendous attention due to their wide applications in various fields. As a simple yet versatile technique, supercritical microcellular foaming has been proposed to fabricate highly scattering porous polymer films, which have been used to enhance the efficiency of quantum dots (QDs) films. In the foaming process, numerous enclosed pores are generated, which induce significant scattering, underpinning the efficiency enhancement in optoelectronic devices.

Pseudo-Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo: A Retrospective Study and Case Report.

Pseudo-benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (pseudo-BPPV) is a specific type of vestibular migraine disguised as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, which is characterized by recurrent different types of positional and atypical positional vertigo with migraine features. It is easy to be misdiagnosed with BPPV at the first visit, which means that the ideal therapeutic effects are not achieved. Twenty-five cases of pseudo-BPPV with frequent changing positional vertigo were retrospected and the following key features help to identify the disease: recurrent positional and atypical positional vertigo, migrainous accompanying symptoms or migraine history, mild or indistinctive headaches, with or without impaired vestibular function, ineffective for simply reposition.

White hairy layer on the Boehmeria nivea leaf-inspiration for reflective coatings.

Whiteness is an intriguing property in some creature surfaces and usually originates from broadband multi-scattering by the refined structures. In this article, we report that Boehmeria nivea, a widely distributed tropical and subtropical plant, has a highly reflective layer on the lower surface of the leaf. Morphological characterization demonstrates that the layer consists of numerous wrinkled micro-filaments, forming a disordered porous network to efficiently scatter visible light.

Characteristics and prognosis of idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss in aged people: a retrospective study.

Few studies focused on the prognosis of sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSHL) of aged people. The aim of this study is to analyze the characteristics, treatment, and prognostic factors of ISSHL in aged people. A total of 278 patients diagnosed of ISSHL in aged people from 2014 to 2019 were retrospectively analyzed.

A generalized superposition method for accurate free vibration analysis of rectangular plates and assemblies.

A generalized superposition method is presented in this paper for free bending vibration analysis of single rectangular plates and assemblies of rectangular plates with arbitrary boundary conditions. The method was developed on the basis of the Levy method, the principle of superposition, and the uniform convergence of half-range Fourier cosine series for continuous functions in a closed interval. Numerical results, obtained using the proposed method for thin isotropic plates and plate assemblies, show that the proposed method is accurate and rapidly convergent.

Highly Photoluminescent and Stable N-Doped Carbon Dots as Nanoprobes for Hg Detection.

We developed a microreactor with porous copper fibers for synthesizing nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) with a high stability and photoluminescence (PL) quantum yield (QY). By optimizing synthesis conditions, including the reaction temperature, flow rate, ethylenediamine dosage, and porosity of copper fibers, the N-CDs with a high PL QY of 73% were achieved. The PL QY of N-CDs was two times higher with copper fibers than without.

Improvement in Color-Conversion Efficiency and Stability for Quantum-Dot-Based Light-Emitting Diodes Using a Blue Anti-Transmission Film.

In this report, a blue anti-transmission film (BATF) has been introduced to improve the color-conversion efficiency (CCE) and the stability of quantum dot (QD) films. The results indicate that the CCE can be increased by as much as 93% using 15 layers of BATFs under the same QD concentration. Therefore, the same CCE can be achieved using BATF-QD hybrid films with a lower QD concentration when compared with standard QD films.

Slug inhibition increases radiosensitivity of nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell line C666-1.

Slug is associated with the radioresistance of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and the main current approach of treatment for NPC is radiotherapy. Hence, the aim of the current study was to determine the effect of Slug silencing on the radiosensitivity of NPC cells. Lentiviral-mediated transfection of Slug RNA interference (RNAi) in NPC cell line C666-1 was performed .

Butterfly-inspired micro-concavity array film for color conversion efficiency improvement of quantum-dot-based light-emitting diodes.

Inspired by the Papilio blumei butterfly, quantum-dot (QD) film coupled with micro-concavity array (MCA) films is proposed in this Letter to enhance color conversion efficiency (CCE) of QD-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The diameter, aspect ratio, and pitch of the MCA are optimized in the optical simulations. Both the simulation and experimental results show that the scattering and double reflection effects are the key to the CCE improvement of QD films.

The Efficacy of Venlafaxine, Flunarizine, and Valproic Acid in the Prophylaxis of Vestibular Migraine.

Background: Different types of medications are currently used in vestibular migraine (VM) prophylaxis, although recommendations for use are generally based on expert opinion rather than on solid data from randomized trials. We evaluated the efficacy and safety of venlafaxine, flunarizine, and valproic acid in a randomized comparison trial for VM prophylaxis.

Methods: Subjects were randomly allocated to one of three groups (venlafaxine group, flunarizine group, and valproic acid group).

Highly reflective nanofiber films based on electrospinning and their application on color uniformity and luminous efficacy improvement of white light-emitting diodes.

Based on electrospinning technology, in this study, we fabricated poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanofiber films with high reflectivity and scattering properties. Various films with different thicknesses and fiber diameters were fabricated by changing the electrospinning time and solution concentration, respectively. Detailed optical measurements demonstrate that the film reflectance and scattering ability increase with the thickness, whereas fiber diameter contributes little to both properties.