Soft Nanopatterning on Light‐Emitting Inorganic–Organic Composites

In this work we demonstrate the nanopatterning of nanocomposites made by luminescent zinc oxide nanoparticles and light‐emitting conjugated polymers by means of soft molding lithography. Vertical nanofluidics is exploited to overcome the polymer transport difficulties intrinsic in materials incorporating nanocrystals, and the rheology, fluorescence, absolute quantum yield, and emission directionality of the nanostructured composites are investigated. We study the effect of patterned gratings on the directionality of light emitted from the nanocomposites, finding evidence of the enhancement of forward emitted light, due to the printed wavelength‐scale periodicity. These results open new possibilities for the realization of nanopatterned devices based on hybrid organic‐inorganic systems.     

JPEG Pleno: Providing representation interoperability for holographic applications and devices

Guaranteeing interoperability between devices and applications is the core role of standards organizations. Since its first JPEG standard in 1992, the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) has published several image coding standards that have been successful in a plethora of imaging markets. Recently, these markets have become subject to potentially disruptive innovations owing to the rise of new imaging modalities such as light fields, point clouds, and holography. These so‐called plenoptic modalities hold the promise of facilitating a more efficient and complete representation of 3D scenes when compared to classic 2D modalities. However, due to the heterogeneity of plenoptic products that will hit the market, serious interoperability concerns have arisen. In this paper, we particularly focus on the holographic modality and outline how the JPEG committee has addressed these tremendous challenges. We discuss the main use cases and provide a preliminary list of requirements. In addition, based on the discussion of real‐valued and complex data representations, we elaborate on potential coding technologies that range from approaches utilizing classical 2D coding technologies to holographic content‐aware coding solutions. Finally, we address the problem of visual quality assessment of holographic data covering both visual quality metrics and subjective assessment methodologies.     

A radius and ulna TW3 bone age assessment system

An end-to-end system to automate the well-known Tanner--Whitehouse (TW3) clinical procedure to estimate the skeletal age in childhood is proposed. The system comprises the detailed analysis of the two most important bones in TW3: the radius and ulna wrist bones. First, a modified version of an adaptive clustering segmentation algorithm is presented to properly semi-automatically segment the contour of the bones. Second, up to 89 features are defined and extracted from bone contours and gray scale information inside the contour, followed by some well-founded feature selection mathematical criteria, based on the ideas of maximizing the classes' separability. Third, bone age is estimated with the help of a Generalized Softmax Perceptron (GSP) neural network (NN) that, after supervised learning and optimal complexity estimation via the application of the recently developed Posterior Probability Model Selection (PPMS) algorithm, is able to accurately predict the different development stages in both radius and ulna from which and with the help of the TW3 methodology, we are able to conveniently score and estimate the bone age of a patient in years, in what can be understood as a multiple-class (multiple stages) pattern recognition approach with posterior probability estimation. Finally, numerical results are presented to evaluate the system performance in predicting the bone stages and the final patient bone age over a private hand image database, with the help of the pediatricians and the radiologists expert diagnoses.     

Evaluation of graded-channel SOI MOSFET operation at high temperatures

This paper presents a comparative analysis between graded-channel (GC) and conventional fully depleted SOI MOSFETs devices operating at high temperatures (up to 300 °C). The electrical characteristics such as threshold voltage and subthreshold slope were obtained experimentally and by two-dimensional numerical simulations. The results indicated that GC transistors present nearly the same behavior as the conventional SOI MOSFET devices with similar channel length. Experimental analysis of the g_m/I_DS ratio and Early voltage demonstrated that in GC devices the low-frequency open-loop gain is significantly improved in comparison to conventional SOI devices at room and at high-temperature due to the Early voltage increase. The multiplication factor and parasitic bipolar transistor gain obtained by two-dimensional numerical simulations allowed the analysis of the breakdown voltage, which was demonstrated to be improved in the GC as compared to conventional SOI transistors in thin silicon layer devices in the whole temperature range under analysis.     

Bacteria-Responsive Self-Assembly of Antimicrobial Peptide Nanonets for Trap-and-Kill of Antibiotic-Resistant Strains

Bacterial trapping using nanonets is a ubiquitous immune defense mechanism against infectious microbes. These nanonets can entrap microbial cells, effectively arresting their dissemination and rendering them more vulnerable to locally secreted microbicides. Inspired by this evolutionarily conserved anti-infective strategy, a series of 15 to 16 residue-long synthetic β-hairpin peptides is herein constructed with the ability to self-assemble into nanonets in response to the presence of bacteria, enabling spatiotemporal control over microbial killing. Using amyloid-specific K114 assay and confocal microscopy, the membrane components lipoteichoic acid and lipopolysaccharide are shown to play a major role in determining the amyloid-nucleating capacity as triggered by Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria respectively. These nanonets displayed both trapping and killing functionalities, hence offering a direct improvement from the trap-only biomimetics in literature. By substituting a single turn residue of the non-amyloidogenic BTT1 peptide, the nanonet-forming BTT1-3A analog is produced with comparable antimicrobial potency. With the same sequence manipulation approach, BTT2-4A analog modified from BTT2 peptide showed improved antimicrobial potency against colistin-resistant clinical isolates. The peptide nanonets also demonstrated robust stability against proteolytic degradation, and promising in vivo efficacy and biosafety profile. Overall, these bacteria-responsive peptide nanonets are promising clinical anti-infective alternatives for circumventing antibiotic resistance.     

Dosage individualization of erythropoietin using a profile-dependent support vector regression

The external administration of recombinant human erythropoietin is the chosen treatment for those patients with secondary anemia due to chronic renal failure in periodic hemodialysis. The objective of this paper is to carry out an individualized prediction of the EPO dosage to be administered to those patients. The high cost of this medication, its side-effects and the phenomenon of potential resistance which some individuals suffer all justify the need for a model which is capable of optimizing dosage individualization. A group of 110 patients and several patient factors were used to develop the models. The support vector regressor (SVR) is benchmarked with the classical multilayer perceptron (MLP) and the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (ARCH) model. We introduce a priori knowledge by relaxing or tightening the epsilon-insensitive region and the penalization parameter depending on the time period of the patients' follow-up. The so-called profile-dependent SVR (PD-SVR) improves results of the standard SVR method and the MLP. We perform sensitivity analysis on the MLP and inspect the distribution of the support vectors in the input and feature spaces in order to gain knowledge about the problem.     

Integrated Inductors Modeling for Library Development and Layout Generation

In this work we propose a modification to the conventional lumped equivalent circuit model for integrated inductors. Also the widely used parametric model is modified. The proposed models expand the frequency range where the integrated inductor behavior is accurately predicted. They are useful in developing automatic tools to assist the designers in selecting and automatically laying-out integrated inductors [1]. This work is based on measurements from integrated inductors fabricated in a standard silicon process.     

PbS/CdS/ZnS Quantum Dots: A Multifunctional Platform for In Vivo Near‐Infrared Low‐Dose Fluorescence Imaging

Over the past decade, near‐infrared (NIR)‐emitting nanoparticles have increasingly been investigated in biomedical research for use as fluorescent imaging probes. Here, high‐quality water‐dispersible core/shell/shell PbS/CdS/ZnS quantum dots (hereafter QDs) as NIR imaging probes fabricated through a rapid, cost‐effective microwave‐assisted cation exchange procedure are reported. These QDs have proven to be water dispersible, stable, and are expected to be nontoxic, resulting from the growth of an outer ZnS shell and the simultaneous surface functionalization with mercaptopropionic acid ligands. Care is taken to design the emission wavelength of the QDs probe lying within the second biological window (1000–1350 nm), which leads to higher penetration depths because of the low extinction coefficient of biological tissues in this spectral range. Furthermore, their intense fluorescence emission enables to follow the real‐time evolution of QD biodistribution among different organs of living mice, after low‐dose intravenous administration. In this paper, QD platform has proven to be capable (ex vivo and in vitro) of high‐resolution thermal sensing in the physiological temperature range. The investigation, together with the lack of noticeable toxicity from these PbS/CdS/ZnS QDs after preliminary studies, paves the way for their use as outstanding multifunctional probes both for in vitro and in vivo applications in biomedicine.     

包含热模型的大功率MOSFET新型电路模型

功率转换器的功率密度越来越高，发热问题越来越严重，这种功率转换器的设计对现代大功率半导体技术提出了新的挑战；因而，热问题的优化设计和核实变得比大功率器件的电模型更加重要，本文提出一种新的PSPICE模型，可以利用它计算MOSFET芯片在瞬变过程中的温度。其中的热阻可以从制造商提供的产品使用说明书得到。本文介绍的模型提供发热和电气参数之间的动态关系。它建立了与许可的热环境的关系，例如，栅极驱动电路、负载、以及散热器的分析与优化设计。利用这个模型可以改善散热器的设计。由于决定功率损耗的参数是分布在一定范围内，受生产制造的影响很大，因而散热器的设计往往由于无法预先知道功率损耗而无法进行。