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We developed a disposable paper battery aiming to reduce the environmental impact of single-use electronics for applications such as point of care diagnosis, smart packaging and environmental sensing. The battery uses Zinc as a biodegradable metal anode, graphite as a nontoxic cathode material and paper as a biodegradable substrate. To facilitate additive manufacturing, we developed electrodes and current collector inks that can be stencil printed on paper to create water-activated batteries of arbitrary shape and size. The battery remains inactive until water is provided and absorbed by the paper substrate, taking advantage of its natural wicking behavior. Once activated, a single cell provides an open circuit potential of 1.2 V and a peak power density of 150 µW/cm2 at 0.5 mA. As a proof of concept, we fabricated a two cell battery and used it to power an alarm clock and its liquid crystal display. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robotic automation is proving itself indispensable in the modern Chemistry laboratory, but adoption is slowed down by the technical challenges of implementing such systems. This paper reports on a novel adaptive gripper mechanism that can easily and reliably grasp cylindrical and prismatic objects of various sizes with limited clearance required. The proposed design exploits the inherent compliance of a cable that is driven to fully envelope the target object. The cable is run through a rigid finger, allowing the loop to be placed around objects with minimal clearance required and to provide support for the object once the grip is complete. Thanks to the compliant nature of the mechanism, the gripper requires minimal control effort to complete a gasping task. A prototype of the gripper has been designed and built for chemistry automation tasks, where it showed very high grasp reliability with ≤ 1 % grasp failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many biomechanical analyses, the forces acting on a body during dynamic and static activities are often simplified as point loads. However, it is usually more accurate to characterize these forces as distributed loads, varying in magnitude and direction, over a given contact area. Evaluating these pressure distributions while they are applied to different parts of the body can provide effective insights for clinicians and researchers when studying health and disease conditions, for example when investigating the biomechanical factors that may lead to plantar ulceration in diabetic foot disease. At present, most processing and analysis for pressure data is performed using proprietary software, limiting reproducibility, transparency, and consistency across different studies. This paper describes an open-source software package, 'pressuRe', which is built in the freely available R statistical computing environment and is designed to process, analyze, and visualize pressure data collected on a range of different hardware systems in a standardized manner. We demonstrate the use of the package on pressure dataset from patients with diabetic foot disease, comparing pressure variables between those with longer and shorter durations of the disease. The results matched closely with those from commercially available software, and individuals with longer duration of diabetes were found to have higher forefoot pressures than those with shorter duration. By utilizing R's powerful and openly available tools for statistical analysis and user customization, this package may be a useful tool for researchers and clinicians studying plantar pressures and other pressure sensor array based biomechanical measurements. With regular updates intended, this package allows for continued improvement and we welcome feedback and future contributions to extend its scope. In this article, we detail the package's features and functionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, tri-phase Fe2O3–MgO–CuO nanocomposites (NCs) and pure CuO, Fe2O3 and MgO nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared using sol–gel technique. The physical properties of the prepared products were examined using SEM, XRD, and UV–visible. The XRD data indicated the formation of pure CuO, Fe2O3 and MgO NPs, as well as nanocomposite formation with Fe2O3 (cubic), MgO (cubic), and CuO (monoclinic). The crystallite size of all the prepared samples was calculated via Scherrer's formula. The energy bandgap of CuO, Fe2O3 and MgO and Fe2O3–MgO–CuO NCs were computed from UV–visible spectroscopy as following 2.13, 2.29, 5.43 and 2.96 eV, respectively. The results showed that Fe2O3–MgO–CuO NCs is an alternative material for a wide range of applications as optoelectronics devices due to their outstanding properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated learning enables multiple nodes to perform local computations and collaborate to complete machine learning tasks without centralizing private data of nodes. However, the frequent model gradients upload/download operations required by the framework result in high communication costs, which have become the main bottleneck for federated learning as deep models scale up, hindering its performance. In this paper, we propose a two-layer accumulated quantized compression algorithm (TLAQC) that effectively reduces the communication cost of federated learning. TLAQC achieves this by reducing both the cost of individual communication and the number of global communication rounds. TLAQC introduces a revised quantization method called RQSGD, which employs zero-value correction to mitigate ineffective quantization phenomena and minimize average quantization errors. Additionally, TLAQC reduces the frequency of gradient information uploads through an adaptive threshold and parameter self-inspection mechanism, further reducing communication costs. It also accumulates quantization errors and retained weight deltas to compensate for gradient knowledge loss. Through quantization correction and two-layer accumulation, TLAQC significantly reduces precision loss caused by communication compression. Experimental results demonstrate that RQSGD achieves an incidence of ineffective quantization as low as 0.003% and reduces the average quantization error to 1.6 × 10 - 5 . Compared to full-precision FedAVG, TLAQC compresses uploaded traffic to only 6.73% while increasing accuracy by 1.25%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel highly fluorescent cadmium metal–organic framework, [Cd (DPTTZ) (OBA)] (IUST-3), synthesized by using two linkers 2, 5-di (pyridine-4-yl) thiazolo [5, 4-d] thiazole (DPTTZ) and 4, 4′-oxybis (benzoic acid) (OBA) simultaneously, which exhibits a two-dimensional framework. The characteristics of this Cd-MOF were investigated by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis, powder X-ray diffraction, and thermogravimetry analysis. The IUST-3 exhibits excellent luminescence property and good stability in water. Luminescent experiments indicate that the IUST-3 has remarkable sensitivity and selectivity for the detection of 4-nitroaniline (4-NA), and CrO42− anion with KSV = 1.03 × 105 M-1 (4-NA) and KSV = 2.93 × 104 M-1 (CrO42−) and low limit of detection 0.52 µM (4-NA) and 1.37 µM (CrO42−). In addition, the possible fluorescence quenching mechanism was explored in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cases of arthroscopic surgery have increased over the past two decades, and arthroscopic shaver systems have become a commonly used orthopedic tool. Nevertheless, most shavers generally have problems such as the cutting edge is not sharp enough and easy to wear. This paper aims to discuss the structural characteristics of BJKMC's (Bojin◊ Kinetic Medical) novel arthroscopic shaver, the double serrated blade. The product's design and verification process are outlined. BJKMC's articular arthroscopy shaver has a "tube in a tube" structure, comprising a stainless steel outer sleeve and a rotating hollow inner tube. The outer sleeve and inner tube have corresponding suction and cutting windows, and there are serrated teeth on the inner and outer casing. To verify the design rationality, it was compared to Dyonics◊'s equivalent product, the Incisor◊ Plus Blade. The appearance, cutting tool hardness, metal pipe roughness, cutting tool wall thickness, tooth profile, and angle, overall structure, and the key dimensions were examined and compared. Compared with Dyonics◊'s Incisor◊ Plus Blade, BJKMC's Double Serrated Blade had a smoother working surface, harder and thinner blade head. Therefore, BJKMC's product may have satisfactory performance when it comes to surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]