Tunable Electrochemical Entropy through Solvent Ordering by a Supramolecular Host.

An aqueous electrochemically controlled host-guest encapsulation system demonstrates a large and synthetically tunable redox entropy change. Electrochemical entropy is the basis for thermally regenerative electrochemical cycles (TRECs), which utilize reversible electrochemical processes with large molar entropy changes for thermogalvanic waste-heat harvesting and electrochemical cooling, among other potential applications. A supramolecular host-guest system demonstrates a molar entropy change of 4 times that of the state-of-the-art aqueous TREC electrolyte potassium ferricyanide.

: Intelligent Wireless System for Cost-Effective Rapid Condition Assessment of Bridges under Impacts.

Bridge strikes by over-height vehicles or ships are critical sudden events. Due to their unpredictable nature, many events go unnoticed or unreported, but they can induce structural failures or hidden damage that accelerates the bridge's long-term degradation. Therefore, always-on monitoring is essential for deployed systems to enhance bridge safety through the reliable detection of such events and the rapid assessment of bridge conditions.

Projections and the Potential Societal Impact of the Future of Neurotechnologies.

Traditionally, recording from and stimulating the brain with high spatial and temporal resolution required invasive means. However, recently, the technical capabilities of less invasive and non-invasive neuro-interfacing technology have been dramatically improving, and laboratories and funders aim to further improve these capabilities. These technologies can facilitate functions such as multi-person communication, mood regulation and memory recall.

Pixel-Level Fatigue Crack Segmentation in Large-Scale Images of Steel Structures Using an Encoder-Decoder Network.

Fatigue cracks are critical types of damage in steel structures due to repeated loads and distortion effects. Fatigue crack growth may lead to further structural failure and even induce collapse. Efficient and timely fatigue crack detection and segmentation can support condition assessment, asset maintenance, and management of existing structures and prevent the early permit post and improve life cycles.

Minimal Cardinality Diagnosis in Problems with Multiple Observations.

Model-Based Diagnosis (MBD) is a well-known approach to diagnosis in medical domains. In this approach, the behavior of a system is modeled and used to identify faulty components, i.e.

Micro-coil probes for magnetic intracortical neural stimulation: Trade-offs in materials and design.

Neural probes for intracortical neuromodulation in the brain have advanced with the developments in micro- and nanofabrication technologies. Most of these technologies for the intracortical stimulation have relied on the direct electrical stimulation via electrodes or arrays of electrodes. Generating electric fields using time-varying magnetic fields is a more recent neuromodulation technique that has proven to be more specifically effective for the intracortical stimulation.

XAI-Explainable artificial intelligence.

Explainability is essential for users to effectively understand, trust, and manage powerful artificial intelligence applications.

Industry Review of Distributed Production in Discrete Manufacturing.

Distributed production paradigms have grown in discrete manufacturing as discrete products are increasingly made by global, distributed networks. Challenges faced by discrete manufacturing, such as increased globalization, market volatility, workforce shortages, and mass personalization have necessitated scalable solutions that improve the agility of production systems. These challenges have driven the need for better collaboration and coordination in production via improved integration of production systems across the product lifecycle.

Network Reconfiguration for Increasing Transportation System Resilience Under Extreme Events.

Evacuating residents out of affected areas is an important strategy for mitigating the impact of natural disasters. However, the resulting abrupt increase in the travel demand during evacuation causes severe congestions across the transportation system, which thereby interrupts other commuters' regular activities. In this article, a bilevel mathematical optimization model is formulated to address this issue, and our research objective is to maximize the transportation system resilience and restore its performance through two network reconfiguration schemes: contraflow (also referred to as lane reversal) and crossing elimination at intersections.

Deep Synthesis of Realistic Medical Images: A Novel Tool in Clinical Research and Training.

Making clinical decisions based on medical images is fundamentally an exercise in statistical decision-making. This is because in this case, the decision-maker must distinguish between image features that are clinically diagnostic (i.e.

Making Expert Decisions Easier to Fathom: On the Explainability of Visual Object Recognition Expertise.

In everyday life, we rely on human experts to make a variety of complex decisions, such as medical diagnoses. These decisions are typically made through some form of weakly guided learning, a form of learning in which decision expertise is gained through labeled examples rather than explicit instructions. Expert decisions can significantly affect people other than the decision-maker (for example, teammates, clients, or patients), but may seem cryptic and mysterious to them.

Leveraging Self-Affirmation to Improve Behavior Change: A Mobile Health App Experiment.

Background: mHealth interventions can help to improve the physical well-being of participants. Unfortunately, mHealth interventions often have low adherence and high attrition. One possible way to increase adherence is instructing participants to complete self-affirmation exercises.

Optical calorimetry in microfluidic droplets.

A novel microfluidic calorimeter that measures the enthalpy change of reactions occurring in 100 μm diameter aqueous droplets in fluoropolymer oil has been developed. The aqueous reactants flow into a microfluidic droplet generation chip in separate fluidic channels, limiting contact between the streams until immediately before they form the droplet. The diffusion-driven mixing of reactants is predominantly restricted to within the droplet.

Dynamic and Tunable Threshold Voltage in Organic Electrochemical Transistors.

In recent years, organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) have found applications in chemical and biological sensing and interfacing, neuromorphic computing, digital logic, and printed electronics. However, the incorporation of OECTs in practical electronic circuits is limited by the relative lack of control over their threshold voltage, which is important for controlling the power consumption and noise margin in complementary and unipolar circuits. Here, the threshold voltage of OECTs is precisely tuned over a range of more than 1 V by chemically controlling the electrochemical potential at the gate electrode.

Neural Decoding of Robot-Assisted Gait During Rehabilitation After Stroke.

Objective: Advancements in robot-assisted gait rehabilitation and brain-machine interfaces may enhance stroke physiotherapy by engaging patients while providing information about robot-induced cortical adaptations. We investigate the feasibility of decoding walking from brain activity in stroke survivors during therapy using a powered exoskeleton integrated with an electroencephalography-based brain-machine interface.

Design: The H2 powered exoskeleton was designed for overground gait training with actuated hip, knee, and ankle joints.

Wax Spreading in Paper under Controlled Pressure and Temperature.

This work describes a novel rapid method to fabricate high-resolution paper-based microfluidic devices using wax-ink-based printing. This study demonstrates that both temperature and pressure are important knobs in controlling the device resolution. High-resolution lines and patterns were obtained by heating the paper asymmetrically from one side up to 110 °C while applying pressure up to 49 kPa.

Implementation Intention and Reminder Effects on Behavior Change in a Mobile Health System: A Predictive Cognitive Model.

Background: Implementation intentions are mental representations of simple plans to translate goal intentions into behavior under specific conditions. Studies show implementation intentions can produce moderate to large improvements in behavioral goal achievement. Human associative memory mechanisms have been implicated in the processes by which implementation intentions produce effects.

Next-generation probes, particles, and proteins for neural interfacing.

Bidirectional interfacing with the nervous system enables neuroscience research, diagnosis, and therapy. This two-way communication allows us to monitor the state of the brain and its composite networks and cells as well as to influence them to treat disease or repair/restore sensory or motor function. To provide the most stable and effective interface, the tools of the trade must bridge the soft, ion-rich, and evolving nature of neural tissue with the largely rigid, static realm of microelectronics and medical instruments that allow for readout, analysis, and/or control.

Implantable microcoils for intracortical magnetic stimulation.

Neural prostheses that stimulate the neocortex have the potential to treat a wide range of neurological disorders. However, the efficacy of electrode-based implants remains limited, with persistent challenges that include an inability to create precise patterns of neural activity as well as difficulties in maintaining response consistency over time. These problems arise from fundamental limitations of electrodes as well as their susceptibility to implantation and have proven difficult to overcome.

A computational cognitive model of self-efficacy and daily adherence in mHealth.

Mobile health (mHealth) applications provide an excellent opportunity for collecting rich, fine-grained data necessary for understanding and predicting day-to-day health behavior change dynamics. A computational predictive model (ACT-R-DStress) is presented and fit to individual daily adherence in 28-day mHealth exercise programs. The ACT-R-DStress model refines the psychological construct of self-efficacy.

Controlling the mode of operation of organic transistors through side-chain engineering.

Electrolyte-gated organic transistors offer low bias operation facilitated by direct contact of the transistor channel with an electrolyte. Their operation mode is generally defined by the dimensionality of charge transport, where a field-effect transistor allows for electrostatic charge accumulation at the electrolyte/semiconductor interface, whereas an organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) facilitates penetration of ions into the bulk of the channel, considered a slow process, leading to volumetric doping and electronic transport. Conducting polymer OECTs allow for fast switching and high currents through incorporation of excess, hygroscopic ionic phases, but operate in depletion mode.

N-type organic electrochemical transistors with stability in water.

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are receiving significant attention due to their ability to efficiently transduce biological signals. A major limitation of this technology is that only p-type materials have been reported, which precludes the development of complementary circuits, and limits sensor technologies. Here, we report the first ever n-type OECT, with relatively balanced ambipolar charge transport characteristics based on a polymer that supports both hole and electron transport along its backbone when doped through an aqueous electrolyte and in the presence of oxygen.

Molecular Design of Semiconducting Polymers for High-Performance Organic Electrochemical Transistors.

The organic electrochemical transistor (OECT), capable of transducing small ionic fluxes into electronic signals in an aqueous environment, is an ideal device to utilize in bioelectronic applications. Currently, most OECTs are fabricated with commercially available conducting poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT)-based suspensions and are therefore operated in depletion mode. Here, we present a series of semiconducting polymers designed to elucidate important structure-property guidelines required for accumulation mode OECT operation.