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Objectives: To assess the safety and efficacy of superior laryngeal nerve block (SLNB) for microlaryngoscopic surgery (MLS). Data Sources: PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Ovid Medline, Cochrane Library, CNKI database, VIP database, Wanfang database, and trial registry databases. Methods: PICOS principles were performed: adults undergoing MLS receiving SLNB compared with no‐SLNB in randomized controlled trials were included. Primary outcome included the incidence of severe postoperative sore throat (POST). Secondary outcomes included perioperative mean arterial pressure (MAP) and heart rate (HR), incidence of severe postoperative cough, and anesthesia recovery time. Results: Eleven articles with 728 patients were included. Results indicated that SLNB provides lower incidence of severe POST in post‐extubation 30 min (relative ratio [RR] = 0.13; 95% confidence intervals [CIs]: 0.05 ~ 0.34), 2 h (RR = 0.09; 95% CI: 0.02 ~ 0.36), 4–6 h (RR = 0.11; 95% CI: 0.03 ~ 0.41), and 24 h (RR = 0.15; 95% CI: 0.03 ~ 0.83); lower MAP (tracheal intubation: standardized mean difference [SMD] = −1.59; 95% CI: −1.69 to −0.42); suspension laryngoscope insertion: (SMD = −0.98; 95% CI: −1.49 to −0.46); tracheal extubation: (SMD = −0.78; 95% CI:−1.24 to −0.31); post‐extubation 5 min: (SMD = −0.95; 95% CI: −1.41 to −0.49); lower HR (tracheal intubation: mean difference [MD] = −9.71; 95% CI: −17.16 to −2.27); suspension laryngoscope insertion: (MD = −8.64; 95% CI: −16.79 to −0.49); tracheal extubation: (MD = −10.13; 95% CI: −17.86 to −2.39); post‐extubation 5 min: (MD = −13.44; 95% CI: −22.53 to −4.35); lower incidence of severe postoperative cough in post‐extubation 30 min (RR = 0.18; 95% CI: 0.06 ~ 0.57) and 2 h (RR = 0.13; 95% CI: 0.02 ~ 0.69); and shorter anesthesia recovery time (MD = −5.34; 95% CI: −8.81 to −1.86) compared to controls. Conclusions: SLNB could provide lower incidence of severe POST, more stable perioperative MAP and HR, lower incidence of severe postoperative cough, and shorter anesthesia recovery time for MLS. Level of Evidence: I Laryngoscope, 134:3437–3446, 2024 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of COVID‐19 exposed the inadequacy of our technical tools for home health surveillance, and recent studies have shown the potential of smartphones as a universal optical microscopic imaging platform for such applications. However, most of them use laboratory‐grade optomechanical components and transmitted illuminations to ensure focus tuning capability and imaging quality, which keeps the cost of the equipment high. Here, we propose an ultra‐low‐cost solution for smartphone microscopy. To realize focus tunability, we designed a seesaw‐like structure capable of converting large displacements on one side into small displacements on the other (reduced to ∼9.1%), which leverages the intrinsic flexibility of 3D printing materials. We achieved a focus‐tuning accuracy of ∼5 휇m, which is 40 times higher than the machining accuracy of the 3D‐printed lens holder itself. For microscopic imaging, we used an off‐the‐shelf smartphone camera lens as the objective and the built‐in flashlight as the illumination. To compensate for the resulting image quality degradation, we developed a learning‐based image enhancement method. We used the CycleGAN architecture to establish the mapping from smartphone microscope images to benchtop microscope images without pairing. We verified the imaging performance on different biomedical samples. Except for the smartphone, we kept the full costs of the device under 4 USD. We think these efforts to lower the costs of smartphone microscopes will benefit their applications in various scenarios, such as point‐of‐care testing, on‐site diagnosis, and home health surveillance. Research Highlights: We propose a solution for ultra‐low‐cost smartphone microscopy.Utilizing the flexibility of 3D‐printed material, we can achieve focusing accuracy of ∼5 휇m.Such a low‐cost device will benefit point‐of‐care diagnosis and home health surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to grow properly sized and good quality crystals is one of the cornerstones of single-crystal diffraction, is advantageous in many industrial-scale chemical processes.sup.1-3, and is important for obtaining institutional approvals of new drugs for which high-quality crystallographic data are required.sup.4-7. Typically, single crystals suitable for such processes and analyses are grown for hours to days during which any mechanical disturbances--believed to be detrimental to the process--are carefully avoided. In particular, stirring and shear flows are known to cause secondary nucleation, which decreases the final size of the crystals (though shear can also increase their quantity.sup.8-14). Here we demonstrate that in the presence of polymers (preferably, polyionic liquids), crystals of various types grow in common solvents, at constant temperature, much bigger and much faster when stirred, rather than kept still. This conclusion is based on the study of approximately 20 diverse organic molecules, inorganic salts, metal-organic complexes, and even some proteins. On typical timescales of a few to tens of minutes, these molecules grow into regularly faceted crystals that are always larger (with longest linear dimension about 16 times larger) than those obtained in control experiments of the same duration but without stirring or without polymers. We attribute this enhancement to two synergistic effects. First, under shear, the polymers and their aggregates disentangle, compete for solvent molecules and thus effectively 'salt out' (that is, induce precipitation by decreasing solubility of) the crystallizing species. Second, the local shear rate is dependent on particle size, ultimately promoting the growth of larger crystals (but not via surface-energy effects as in classical Ostwald ripening). This closed-system, constant-temperature crystallization driven by shear could be a valuable addition to the repertoire of crystal growth techniques, enabling accelerated growth of crystals required by the materials and pharmaceutical industries. A method of growing crystals that does not require undisturbed solutions involves adding polyelectrolytes to the starter solution and shearing (that is, stirring)., Author(s): Jian-Ke Sun [sup.1] [sup.3] , Yaroslav I. Sobolev [sup.1] , Weiyi Zhang [sup.4] , Qiang Zhuang [sup.1] [sup.5] , Bartosz A. Grzybowski [sup.1] [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) Center for [...]

Microspheres are widely used as profile control and water plugging products at present. However, the current research on microspheres is mainly focused on oil displacement experiments. In order to solve this problem, based on the Bohai sea in the BZ of inhomogeneous reservoir conditions, this article has done the matching study on particle size and hole roar and the seepage research in porous medium by means of particle size analysis, pressure tests, single-phase block experiments, and the double tube parallel oil displacement experiments, revealing the characteristics of oil & water selective plugging and the mechanism of oil displacement in porous media. The results show that the average particle size of the microspheres increases from 4.857μm to 24.53μm, and the maximum expansion factor reaches 5.03 times after 72h of swelling in BZ25 oilfield water at 75 C. In the two-pipe parallel oil flooding experiment with the permeability of 1000mD and 3000mD respectively, the comprehensive recovery rate after the first water flooding is 28.06%, and the two-pipe average recovery rate is increased by 1.58% after the injection of 2000ppm microsphere with 0.3PV, and there is no significant increase in oil displacement efficiency. The comprehensive recovery rate reached 38.6% and increased by 8.99% after 4PV of subsequent water flooding, indicating that microsphere flooding effectively improved the water sweep efficiency of subsequent injection.

Along the development of ionic porous organic polymers, simple and efficient synthetic methods are actively pursued. Herein, the Debus–Radziszewski reaction is applied to synthesize ionic conjugated microporous polymers (iCMPs) in one step. A series of imidazolium‐linked iCMP‐X (X = 1, 2, 3) are developed for CO2 sorption and in situ conversion with epoxide into cyclic carbonates. The as‐synthesized iCMPs are characterized in detail by scanning electron microscope, solid‐state nuclear magnetic resonance, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X‐ray diffraction analysis, N2/CO2 sorption, and more. Among all synthesized iCMPs, iCMP‐1 possesses the highest specific surface area and in turn the strongest CO2 sorption capacity. Moreover, through a simple anion ion exchange reaction with halide, iCMP‐1 is transformed to iCMP‐1@Cl that embodies significant catalytic capability for converting CO2 into cyclic carbonates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a beam‐scanning holographic antenna composed of a substrate‐integrated waveguide (SIW) feeding structure and a rectangular microstrip array. The antenna innovatively combines holographic theory with liquid crystal electrical tunability to realize single‐frequency large‐angle beam scanning function which can effectively solve the problem of beamforming reconfiguration in traditional array antenna systems. In this paper, the variation of dielectric constant of liquid crystal under different bias voltages is quantitatively analyzed. Additionally, the beam forming technology is analyzed under hologram amplitude weighting theory. The relevant theories are verified by manufacturing and testing. The prototype antenna achieves the ultra‐wide beam scanning angle of −63° to 63° at 36 GHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]