Droplet and Microchamber‐Based Digital Loop‐Mediated Isothermal Amplification (dLAMP)

Digital loop‐mediated isothermal amplification (dLAMP) refers to compartmentalizing nucleic acids and LAMP reagents into a large number of individual partitions, such as microchambers and droplets. This compartmentalization enables dLAMP to be an excellent platform to quantify the absolute number of the target nucleic acids. Owing to its low requirement for instrumentation complexity, high specificity, and strong tolerance to inhibitors in the nucleic acid samples, dLAMP has been recognized as a simple and accurate technique to quantify pathogenic nucleic acid. Herein, the general process of dLAMP techniques is summarized, the current dLAMP techniques are categorized, and a comprehensive discussion on different types of dLAMP techniques is presented. Also, the challenges of the current dLAMP are illustrated together with the possible strategies to address these challenges. In the end, the future directions of the dLAMP developments, including multitarget detection, multisample detection, and processing nucleic acid extraction are outlined. With recently significant advances in dLAMP, this technology has the potential to see more widespread use beyond the laboratory in the future.     

Colloidal synthesis of ultrathin two-dimensional semiconductor nanocrystals

2D semiconductor quantum wells have been recognized as potential candidates for various quantum devices. In quantum wells, electrons and holes are spatially confined within a finite thickness and freely move in 2D space. Much effort has focused on shape control of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals(NCs), and synthesis of 2D colloidal NCs has been achieved very recently. Here, recent advances in colloidal synthesis of uniform and ultrathin 2D CdSeNCs are highlighted. Structural and optical property characterization of these quantum-sized 2D CdSe NCs is discussed. Additionally, 2D CdSe NCs doped with Mn 2+ ions for dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) are presented.These 2D CdSe-based NCs can be used as model systems for studying quantum-well structures.     

A facile synthesis, in vitro and in vivo MR studies of d-glucuronic acid-coated ultrasmall Ln₂O₃ (Ln = Eu, Gd, Dy, Ho, and Er) nanoparticles as a new potential MRI contrast agent

A facile one-pot synthesis of d-glucuronic acid-coated ultrasmall Ln(2)O(3) (Ln = Eu, Gd, Dy, Ho, and Er) nanoparticles is presented. Their water proton relaxivities were studied to address their possibility as a new potential MRI contrast agent. We focused on the d-glucuronic acid-coated ultrasmall Dy(2)O(3) nanoparticle because it showed the highest r(2) relaxivity among studied nanoparticles. Its performance as a T(2) MRI contrast agent was for the first time proved in vivo through its 3 T T(2) MR images of a mouse, showing that it can be further exploited for the rational design of a new T(2) MRI contrast agent at high MR fields.     

Optimisation on the two-layer stack gamma detectors of CsI(Tl) coupled with a pin photodiode for non-destructive testing

This paper proposed the two-layer stack scintillator-coupled photodiode detector to improve the measurement accuracy of the gamma-ray scanning. Both MCNPX and DETECT97 code were used to design the detector. The two manufactured two-layer stack gamma detectors were used to measure the density profile of the distillation column of the radiographic non-intrusive process diagnostic area. To compare the measurement accuracy of the density profile through the non-destructive transmission test, the relative error of the four fluids used for the process diagnostics was analysed. To summarise the measurement results with regard to the relative error of the NaI(Tl) detector and the manufactured detector by material as well as the total relative error, the total relative error of the NaI(Tl) detector was about 15.7 %, whereas that of the two-layer stack CsI(Tl) with photodiode detectors were about 5 %. This paper confirmed that the measurement accuracy of the detector proposed was improved by about three times as compared with the NaI(Tl) detector mostly used for non-destructive testing.     

Vacuum-deposited planar heterojunction polymer solar cells

The vacuum thermal evaporation of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) for application in photovoltaic cells is demonstrated. Structural changes before and after evaporation are determined using GPC, UV-vis absorption spectroscopy, NMR, and FTIR. GPC showed that the polymer molecular weight is reduced during evaporation, leading to a blue-shift of the absorption spectra. FTIR and NMR were used to examine the change in chemical structure: it was found that conjugation remains mostly intact; however, the conjugation length decreases and side chains dissociate from the backbone. Bilayer heterojunction solar cells were fabricated by sequential deposition of P3HT and C?? and the photovoltaic response measured.     

A bibliometric and citation analysis of stroke-related research in Taiwan

As the population ages in Taiwan, stroke research has received greater attention in recent years. Strokes have significant impacts on the health and well-being of the elderly. To formulate future research policy, information on stroke publications should be collected. In this research, we studied stroke-related research articles published by Taiwan researchers which were indexed in the Science Citation Index from 1991 to 2005. We found that the quantity of publications has increased at a quicker pace than the worldwide trend. Over the years, there has been an increase in international collaboration, mainly with researchers in the U.S. Article visibility, measured as the frequency of being cited, also increased during the period. It appears that stroke research in Taiwan has become more globally connected and has also improved in quality. The publication output was concentrated in a few institutes, but there was a wide variation among these institutes in the ability to independently conduct research. A wide array of keywords indicated a probable lack of continuity in research. Nevertheless, there was an inverse relationship between stroke mortality and number of published articles in Taiwan. To improve the quality and efficiency of stroke research, continuity in research focuses needs to be maintained, and thus funding should be allocated on a long-term basis to institutes with a proven record of success.     

Development of a microelectromechanical system pressure sensor for rehabilitation engineering applications

Based on computer finite-element analysis ANSYS 5.3 and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies, a micropressure sensor was designed and fabricated. The sensor can be used to measure the distribution of normal stress between soft tissues on an above-knee amputee's skin and the contacting surface of a rehabilitation device. A square membrane with dimensions 2400 µm × 2400 µm × 80 µm is formed by backside photolithography and wet etching of an n-type ?100? monolithic silicon wafer. On the middle of the membrane edge, an X-shaped silicon wafer was implanted with boron ions and then enhanced by diffusion to form a piezoresistive strain gauge. In the design process, a finite-element method is used to analyse the effects of pressure sensitivity and its temperature coefficients. The developed micropressure sensors, which have smaller weight and volume than a conventional machine type, perform well and fit our design specifications.     

Blind adaptive multiuser detection for DS/SSMA communications withgeneralized random spreading

A new spreading scheme and an accompanying blind adaptive receiver structure are proposed for direct-sequence spread-spectrum multiple-access communications in a slowly-varying, frequency-selective fading channel. Each user's spreading sequence is given by the Kronecker product of a long-period pseudonoise (PN) sequence, which is accurately modeled by a random sequence, and a short-length deterministic signature code. This spreading scheme bridges the gap between pure PN spreading and pure short-code spreading schemes. It is shown that with this spreading scheme, the channel response to the desired signal component is easily estimated without relying on the spectral decomposition of the signal correlation matrix. With the estimate of the channel response, the receiver suppresses interference based on the maximum signal-to-interference ratio criterion. The blind adaptive receiver requires only coarse timing information and a priori knowledge of the desired user's PN sequence for adaptation. Numerical results show that the adaptive receiver significantly suppresses interference by successfully estimating the channel response and the interference statistics with a low computational complexity. An extension to spatio-temporal processing using an array antenna is also discussed     

Controller optimization for minimum position error signals of harddisk drives

In order to reduce the position error signal (PES) and track misregistration (TMR) of disk drives, it is generally believed that the bandwidth of a disk drive servo system has to be increased. However, increase of the bandwidth is limited by available sampling frequency and mechanical resonances of a head-disk assembly. Hence, for a given servo-mechanical system, optimization of a servo controller is a crucial and economical way to get the best TMR performance. In this paper, optimization of a servo controller that yields minimum PES is presented. The equivalent position-mode disturbance is estimated by the error transfer function inversion method. The estimated disturbance is injected into the servo system to evaluate PES. The optimization process will select the best controller that minimizes PES under the specified constraints. It has been demonstrated that the minimization has been achieved by shaping the error transfer function rather than increase of the servo bandwidth, PES reduction has been confirmed by simulation and experiments