Effectiveness of Integrated Digital Solutions to Empower Older Adults in Aspects Related to Their Health: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: Digital solutions, such as mobile apps or telemonitoring devices, are frequently considered facilitators in the process of empowering older adults, but they can also act as a source of digital exclusion or disempowerment if they are not adequate for older adults' needs and characteristics.

Objective: This study aimed to synthesize and critically evaluate existing evidence on the effectiveness of integrated digital solutions that enable interaction for empowering older adults in aspects related to their health and to explore potential factors (eg, type of technology, participants' characteristics) impacting effectiveness.

Methods: A systematic search was carried out in PubMed, ScienceDirect, SCOPUS, EBSCO, and SciELO using a combination of terms informed by previous reviews on empowerment.

Improving the Thermal Stability of Indium Oxide n-Type Field-Effect Transistors by Enhancing Crystallinity through Ultrahigh-Temperature Rapid Thermal Annealing.

Ultrathin indium oxide films show great potential as channel materials of complementary metal oxide semiconductor back-end-of-line transistors due to their high carrier mobility, smooth surface, and low leakage current. However, it has severe thermal stability problems (unstable and negative threshold voltage shifts at high temperatures). In this paper, we clarified how the improved crystallinity of indium oxide by using ultrahigh-temperature rapid thermal O annealing could reduce donor-like defects and suppress thermal-induced defects, drastically enhancing thermal stability.

Temperature-Dependent Cytokine Neutralization Induced by Magnetoelectric Nanoparticles: An In Silico Study.

Inflammatory cytokines cooperate to maintain normal immune homeostasis, performing both a protective and a pro-inflammatory action in different body districts. However, their excessive persistence or deregulated expression may degenerate into tissue chronic inflammatory status. Advanced therapies should be designed to deploy selective cytokine neutralizers in the affected tissues.

Synergistic effect of alkane and membrane lipid alteration in Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 under salt and light stresses.

Salinity and light markedly influence cyanobacterial viability. High salinity disrupts the osmotic balance, while excess light energy affects redox potential in the cells. Regulating the ratio of saturated and unsaturated alka(e)ne and fatty acids in cyanobacteria is thought to have crucial roles in coping with these stresses by regulating membrane fluidity.

Fabrication of hafnium-based nanoparticles and nanostructures using picosecond laser ablation.

This work presents a unique and straightforward method to synthesise hafnium oxide (HfO) and hafnium carbide (HfC) nanoparticles (NPs) and to fabricate hafnium nanostructures (NSs) on a Hf surface. Ultrafast picosecond laser ablation of the Hf metal target was performed in three different liquid media, namely, deionised water (DW), toluene, and anisole, to fabricate HfO and HfC NPs along with Hf NSs. Spherical HfO NPs and nanofibres were formed when Hf was ablated in DW.

A high-efficient electrochemical degradation of diclofenac in water on planar and microstructured 2D, and macroporous 3D boron-doped diamond electrodes: Identification of degradation and transformation products.

The highly efficient degradation of persistent organic substances by electrochemical advanced oxidation processes (EAOPs), which don't result in the formation of potentially harmful by-products, is crucial for the future of water management. In this study, boron-doped diamond electrodes (BDDE) with three morphologies (planar 2D, microstructured 2D, and macroporous 3D) were employed for the anodic oxidation of diclofenac (DCF) in two working electrolytes (NaCl and NaSO). In total, 11 by-products formed during the electrochemical oxidation of DCF were identified via HPLC-HRMS.

HfO Memristor-Based Flexible Radio Frequency Switches.

Flexible and wearable electronics are experiencing rapid growth due to the increasing demand for multifunctional, lightweight, and portable devices. However, the growing demands of interactive applications driven by the rise of AI reveal the inadequate connectivity of current connection technologies. In this work, we successfully leverage memristive technology to develop a flexible radio frequency (RF) switch, optimized for 6G-compatible communication systems and adaptable to flexible applications.

Effect of osmotic pressure on membrane permeation through antimicrobial peptide-induced pores.

Most antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) induce membrane damage such as pore formation in bacterial cells, resulting in rapid cell death. On the other hand, bacterial cells have a large intracellular turgor pressure, i.e.

Enhanced Performance of Sn-Based Perovskite Photodetectors Through Double-Sided Passivation for Near-Infrared Applications.

The development of high-performance Sn-based perovskite photodetectors is presented with double-sided passivation using large alkylammonium interlayers of PEAI and BDAI₂. This dual passivation strategy, applied to the top and bottom of FASnI₃ films, effectively improves film quality by reducing defect density, enhancing carrier mobility, and minimizing non-radiative energy losses at the interfaces. At 720 nm, the photodetectors demonstrate a responsivity of 0.

Prosodic changes with age: a longitudinal study with three public figures in European Portuguese.

Purpose: The analysis of acoustic parameters contributes to the characterisation of human communication development throughout the lifetime. The present paper intends to analyse suprasegmental features of European Portuguese in longitudinal conversational speech samples of three male public figures in uncontrolled environments across different ages, approximately 30 years apart.

Participants And Methods: Twenty prosodic features concerning intonation, intensity, rhythm, and pause measures were extracted semi-automatically from 360 speech intervals (3-4 interviews from each speaker x 30 speech intervals x 3 speakers) lasting between 3 to 6 s.

Development of blue-light GaN based micro light-emitting diodes using ion implantation technology.

This study fabricated 10 μm chip size μLEDs of blue-light GaN based epilayers structure with different mesa processes using dry etching and ion implantation technology. Two ion sources, As and Ar, were applied to implant into the LED structure to achieve material isolation and avoid defects on the mesa sidewall caused by the plasma process. Excellent turn-on behavior was obtained in both ion-implanted samples, which also exhibited lower leakage current compared to the sample fabricated by the dry etching process.

Context-Aware Trust and Reputation Routing Protocol for Opportunistic IoT Networks.

In opportunistic IoT (OppIoT) networks, non-cooperative nodes present a significant challenge to the data forwarding process, leading to increased packet loss and communication delays. This paper proposes a novel Context-Aware Trust and Reputation Routing (CATR) protocol for opportunistic IoT networks, which leverages the probability density function of the beta distribution and some contextual factors, to dynamically compute the trust and reputation values of nodes, leading to efficient data dissemination, where malicious nodes are effectively identified and bypassed during that process. Simulation experiments using the ONE simulator show that CATR is superior to the Epidemic protocol, the so-called beta-based trust and reputation evaluation system (denoted BTRES), and the secure and privacy-preserving structure in opportunistic networks (denoted PPHB+), achieving an improvement of 22%, 15%, and 9% in terms of average latency, number of messages dropped, and average hop count, respectively, under varying number of nodes, buffer size, time to live, and message generation interval.

An Efficient Anomalous Sound Detection System for Microcontrollers.

Anomalous Sound Detection (ASD) systems are pivotal in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Through the early detection of machines' anomalies, these systems facilitate proactive maintenance, thereby mitigating potential losses. Although prior studies have improved system accuracy using various advanced machine learning technologies, they frequently neglect the associated substantial computing and storage demands, which are crucial in resource-constrained IIoT environments.

Nanoparticle-Composed Photosensitive Thin Films Based on ZnO.

In this work, atmospheric pulsed laser deposition was used to prepare photosensitive elements. This technology is a practical and relatively inexpensive way of obtaining highly porous nanostructures composed of nanoparticles or nanoaggregates characterized by a large surface-to-volume ratio. Samples were produced via laser nanosecond or picosecond laser ablation of pure ZnO or mixed ZnO-TiO targets on quartz substrates with pre-deposited gold electrodes.

Nanostructured Boron-Doped Ultra-Nanocrystalline Diamond Micro-Pyramids: Efficient Electrochemical Supercapacitors.

The miniaturization of electrochemical supercapacitors (EC-SCs) requires electrode materials that are both durable and efficient. Boron-doped diamond (BDD) films are an ideal choice for EC-SC due to their durability and exceptional electrochemical performance. In this study, nanostructured boron-doped ultra-nanocrystalline diamonds (NBUNCD) are fabricated on Si micro-pyramids (Si) using a simple reactive ion etching (RIE) process.

Ferroelastic Domain Switching and Time-Resolved Negative Capacitance in Polar-Axis-Oriented HfZrO Grown by Atomic Layer Epitaxy.

Ferroelectric properties of HfZrO are strongly correlated with its crystallographic orientation, with the [001] direction serving as the polar axis. However, the epitaxial growth of highly polar-axis-oriented HfZrO layers with pronounced ferroelectricity is rarely reported. Here epitaxial (001)-oriented HfZrO thin films grown by atomic layer epitaxy (ALE) is demonstrated, which achieve a state-of-the-art ferroelectric polarization up to 78.

JARVIS3: an efficient encoder for genomic data.

Motivation: Large-scale genomic projects grapple with the complex challenge of reducing medium- and long-term storage space and its associated energy consumption, monetary costs, and environmental footprint.

Results: We present JARVIS3, an advanced tool engineered for the efficient reference-free compression of genomic sequences. JARVIS3 introduces a pioneering approach, specifically through enhanced table memory models and probabilistic lookup-tables applied in repeat models.

Application of natural solar photocatalytic and DSSC's studies AC loaded on Ag-InO nanoparticles by hydrothermal approach.

Contaminants are repeatedly being released into the land, water and air about the world as a consequence of the high levels of human movement and development, which causes a fast an increase in the growing of pollution. In this assessment, activated charcoals supported on Ag-InO nanomaterials were blended by hydrothermal system. The morphology constitution, surface assets and optical description of synthesized nanomaterials were characterized by XRD, UV-DRS, PL, HR-SEM and EDAX, HR-TEM, SAED pattern, FT-IR, XPS, BET, CV and VSM techniques.

Emerging 2D Materials and Van der Waals Heterostructures for Advanced NIR, SWIR, and MWIR Emitters.

Infrared (IR) emitters have drawn considerable attention for applications in deep-tissue imaging, optical communication, and thermal sensing. While III-V and II-VI semiconductors are traditionally used in these emitters, their reliance on complex epitaxial growth to overcome lattice mismatch and thermal expansion challenges leads to intricate device structures and limits their integrability. In contrast, 2D materials provide a more flexible solution, offering diverse optical bandgaps and the ability to be vertically restacked in arbitrary crystal orientations to form complex van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures, which can be further integrated onto diverse device platforms.

Integrating accelerometry, GPS, GIS and molecular data to investigate mechanistic pathways of the urban environmental exposome and cognitive outcomes in older adults: a longitudinal study protocol.

Introduction: Maintaining cognitive health in later life is a global priority. Encouraging individuals to make health behaviour changes, such as regular physical activity, and providing supportive urban environments can help maintain cognitive health, thereby preventing or delaying the progress of dementia and cognitive decline. However, the mechanistic pathways by which the urban environmental exposome influences cognitive health outcomes are poorly understood.

Estimation of gait parameters in healthy and hemiplegic individuals using Azure Kinect: a comparative study with the optoelectronic system.

Introduction: Walking ability is essential for maintaining functional independence, but it can be impaired by conditions like hemiplegia resulting from a stroke event. In post-stroke populations, accurately assessing gait anomalies is crucial for rehabilitation to promote functional recovery, and to prevent falls or injuries.

Methods: The aim of this study is to evaluate gait-related parameters using a solution based on a single RGB-D camera, specifically Microsoft Azure Kinect DK (MAK), on a short walkway in both healthy (n= 27) and post-stroke individuals with hemiplegia (n= 20).

Breaking the Trade-Off Between Mobility and On-Off Ratio in Oxide Transistors.

Amorphous oxide semiconductors (AOS) are pivotal for next-generation electronics due to their high electron mobility and excellent optical properties. However, InO, a key material in this family, encounters significant challenges in balancing high mobility and effective switching as its thickness is scaled down to nanometer dimensions. The high electron density in ultra-thin InO hinders its ability to turn off effectively, leading to a critical trade-off between mobility and the on-current (I)/off-current (I) ratio.

Prediction of antigenic peptides of SARS- CoV-2 pathogen using machine learning.

Antigenic peptides (APs), also known as T-cell epitopes (TCEs), represent the immunogenic segment of pathogens capable of inducing an immune response, making them potential candidates for epitope-based vaccine (EBV) design. Traditional wet lab methods for identifying TCEs are expensive, challenging, and time-consuming. Alternatively, computational approaches employing machine learning (ML) techniques offer a faster and more cost-effective solution.