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•Malignancies and autoimmune diseases are among the comorbidities of NMOSD.•Malignancy risks are significantly higher in NMOSD than in the general population.•The ARR is significantly higher in the first three years after diagnosis.•Within 3 years of diagnosis, neither malignancy nor autoimmune disease increased ARR.

ABSTRACTBased on the concept of directional solidification, several experimental models for the casting process of Sn-10wt%Pb alloy with different magnetic field arrangements are built in this work and the effects of the magnetic field on the solidification morphology are investigated. According to the experimental results, it has been found that the water-cooling chill located at the bottom of the casting mold can supply the sufficient temperature gradient to reach directional solidification. From the microstructure observation, the casting can be divided into three zones, the chill, columnar, and equiaxed zones. In the case of directional solidification with the lateral magnetic field and cyclic magnetic field, there are coarser columnar structures than without a magnetic field, but one obtains thinner columnar structures with a longitudinal magnetic field. This study can facilitate the successful and optimum utilization of the magnetic field in the solidification process of Sn-10 wt%Pb Alloy.

Acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ANE), a fulminant encephalopathy, is often found in childhood. It is still uncertain whether adult patients with ANE display clinical features different from patients with typical pediatric onset. Furthermore, alterations in neuroinflammatory factors in patients with ANE have not been well-characterized. Here, we present an adult patient with ANE, and review all reported adult ANE cases in the literature.

As a promising new molecular imaging technique, mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has attracted more and more attention in the field of biomedicine. A method of air flow assisted ionization-ultra high resolution mass spectrometry-based mass spectrometric imaging (AFAI-MSI) was developed to profile endogenous metabolites in rat kidney tissue in this study. Rat kidneys were collected and cut into frozen tissue sections, and then were analyzed on an AFAI-MSI system operated in positive ion mode using acetonitrile- isopropanol-water (4:4:2, V/V, 5 μL min−1) as spray solvent, nitrogen gas as spray gas (0.6 MPa) and air as assisting gas (45 L min−1). The mass range and resolution were set to be 70–1000 Da and 70000, respectively. As a result, a total of 38 metabolites, ranging from 103to 107in signal strength and belonging to different metabolite types, including organic amines, sugars, vitamins, peptides, neurotransmitters, organic acids, phospholipids, sphingolipids, glycerides, and cholesterol esters, were identified and imaged to characterize their tissue-specific distribution in kidney tissues. Some metabolites, such as choline, acetycholine, betaine, phosphocholine, and glycerolphosphocholin were found to have distinct distribution along the cortex-medulla axis, which may be involved in the formation of osmotic pressure gradient in the kidney. The proposed ultra high resolution mass spectrometry based AFAI-MSI method can work without sample pretreatment, showing high sensitivity and wide metabolite coverage, and is expected to provide a new analytical approach in the research of in situcharacterization and metabolic regulation mechanism of endogenous metabolites in kidney.

Walking entails orchestration of the sensory, motor, balance, and coordination systems, and walking disability is a critical concern after stroke. How and to what extent these systems influence walking disability after stroke and recovery have not been comprehensively studied.

ABSTRACTResolution of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is limited by imaging hardware. To improve SAR image resolution, interpolation needs to be carried out on a SAR image. An image interpolation algorithm with a good effect incurs a high computational cost and cannot be used in a real-time scenario. This paper applies Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) to speed up the piece-wise autoregressive model image interpolation algorithm for acquiring high-quality SAR images. A partial differential is used to carry out image de-noising. After de-noising, divide the image interpolation based on a local window of a piece-wise autoregressive model: the SAR image is first divided into many 9 × 9 small local windows. For each window, a CUDA thread is launched to interpolate using the autoregressive interpolation algorithm. Gradient descent algorithm is used to estimate parameters of the autoregressive model in the first- and second-round interpolation. Numerical simulation indicates that this GPU-based parallel algorithm can interpolate a 2592 × 1944 image within 1/110th of the time used by a CPU-based serial algorithm. Moreover, the computation time saved increases with the image size. The experimental results show that the method in this paper can achieve high-quality image interpolation in a low computation time.

Based on the MAP-CGE model, this paper simulated the impacts on the output, energy consumption and pollutant emissions of different cement production processes when implementing a low carbon cement standard in China. It also calculated the impacts on the marginal abatement cost and equilibrium price of the cement industry, and analyzed the co-abatement effects of different pollutants. The results showed that implementing the low carbon cement standard will be beneficial in promoting an upgrading of cement production processes, and strengthening the energy conservation and emission reduction in the cement industry. If there is no change in the existing technology, the cement industry will reduce SO2emissions by 1.17 kg and NOxemissions by 4.44 kg per ton of CO2emission reduction. Implementing low carbon cement standard can also promote NOxabatement in the cement industry. However, the cement industry will bear the abatement costs, and their equilibrium price will increase slightly.

In this paper, an experiment model for the directional solidification of Lead/Tin alloy is built and the effects of different-shape seeds on the microstructures on the solidification microstructure are investigated. In a casting process, the temperature and concentration fields will affect the microstructures of materials and this influence is the key point of improving their mechanical and physical properties. It is not easy to control the morphology of solidifying microstructures. The scheme of directional solidification can make the microstructures grow along a fixed direction and it is also the base of single-crystal growth. In the experiment, a poly-grain seed with the same initial concentration of the solidifying casting is used to induce the columnar growth at the bottom portion of the casting, which could avoid the equiaxed growth due to the high undercooling or cooling rate there. In the experimental analysis, we studied the influences of different geometry seeds on the constrained growth, the preferential growth direction of dendrite, the grain size, the temperature gradient, the growth rate, the primary arm spacing and the secondary arm spacing. From the microstructure observation, the adding seed casting reduced the chill-affected and extended the directional solidification zone. This is expected to have the better or more complete structure of directional solidification. Keywords: Directional Solidification, Seed, Heat Transfer and Microstructure

Using a femtosecond laser incident to an oxide-metal-oxide film engraved with a subwavelength annular aperture (SAA) structure, we generated a Bessel-like beam to ablate silicon. Experimental results show that the silicon can be ablated with a 0.05?J/cm^2 input ablation threshold at 120 fs pulse duration. We obtained a surface hole possessing a diameter less than 1?μm. Optical performance, including depth-of-focus and focal spot of the SAA structure, were simulated using finite-different time-domain calculations. We found that a far-field laser beam propagating through a SAA structure possesses a submicrometer focal spot and high focus intensity. Our method can be easily adopted for surface machining in microfabrication applications.

This work describes a portable microsensor for analyzing the silicate concentration in water. Conventionally adopted silicate analysis methods involve bulky instrumentation that are limited in portability and immediateness. The proposed silicate microsensor consists of a microliquid core waveguide, passive spiral micromixer, and bubble traps that possess excellent signal enhancement properties. The microsensor size is 52 × 26 mm, while each measurement requires only 115 μl of a sample and reagents, thereby reducing the sample requirement for a considerable amount of time and work to collect expensive reagents. The spiral micromixer has a mixing capability superior to that of a premix mixture. Bubble traps have been developed to trap air bubbles formed in the microchannel in order to prevent gas bubbles from interfering with the measurements. As a linear function of silicate concentration, the absorbance response ranges from 0 to 250 nM. Additionally, the linearity is excellent with a linear Rvalue of 0.9985 and the experimental detection limit is 8.9 nM. The proposed portable microsensor significantly contributes to aqueous inspection, subsequently creating a highly value-added technology for chemical sensors and microsystems.

In this work, an macro-micro model has been developed for the melting and resolidification of thin Si films induced by excimer-laser annealing. The macro-micro model, considering the formation of microstructures: nucleation and growth, can obtain the better results than macro-models. Except temperature distributions, the macro-micro models can offer more information about solidification process, such as undercooling, grain size, grain density etc. These data could help to predict the physical properties of materials. In this study, the finite difference method is utilized to solve the heat transfer problem. The specific heat/enthalpy method and the source term scheme are employed to handle the absorbed and released latent heat. The algorithm that allows for nucleation is based on classical nucleation theory. Accordingly, the model enables the prediction of grain size, as well as the calculation of other critical responses of the a-Si film, such as undercooling. From the computational results, it can be found that when the laser fluence is higher, the cooling rate after laser irradiation is lower, the maximum undercooling is smaller and the grain size is larger or the grain density is lower. The average grain sizes, obtained from the simulation results of the proposed model, agree fairly well with those from the experimental data reported in the literature. It can also be found that the reflectivity of the surface gives a good way to observe the phase changes and the melting duration.

This paper is to investigate a double splitting excimer laser technique for making poly Si films. In this research, a KrF excimer laser of 248 nm in wavelength is used to irradiate a-Si films of 0.1 m in thickness on glass substrate to produce poly-Si ones. The control parameters are laser intensity (200~500 mJ/cm2), laser pulse number (1~2 shots) and delay time between two shots (one nanosecond). Average grain sizes from SEM photos are used to analyze the effects of these parameters. Firstly, in the excimer laser experiment, different laser fluences are utilized to study the effect on the microstructure of the silicon film. Purely from the viewpoint of heat transfer, the Si film obtains more energy has the slower cooling or solidification rate, which results in the larger grain. From the experimental results, it can be found that the grain size increases until the laser fluence increases up to the critical value of complete melting, which limits the grain growth method of energy increase. In this work, a double-splitting-laser method is proposed. In the method, a laser pulse from an excimer laser is divided into two pulses by a beam splitter. The cyclic optical path is used to control the delay time of the second pulse. Optical mirrors and optical attenuators are utilized to adjust the energy density of these two laser pulses. The delay time between these two pulses is changeable and controlled in the order of nanosecond. The second pulse is applied when the Si film is solidifying after the irradiation of the first one. This could enhance the solidification time and enlarge the grain size of the poly-Si film.

Rather than designated directly as solid if the micromesh (or cell) larger than a nucleus is chosen as the nucleation site, the growth of a nucleus in the cell is considered in the application of the modified cellular automaton model to simulate the evolution of dendritic microstructures in the solidification of Al-Cu alloy. The growth velocity of a nucleus or a dendrite tip is calculated according to the KGT (Kurz-Giovanola-Trivedi) model, which is the function of the undercooling. In this study, the dendritic microstructures, such as the free dendritic growth in an undercooled melt and the dendritic growth in the directional solidification, are simulated with the modified growth algorithm in the nucleation cell. The simulated results for the temporal and final morphologies are shown and are in agreement with the experimental ones.

In this paper, an experimental model for the directional solidification of Pb-Sn alloy is built and the effects of five different initial concentrations on the solidification microstructure are investigated. In the experiment, the constant temperature gradient and growth rate are given by the designed control mechanism. These can lead to directional solidification, which can be seen in the macro and micro photos of the resulting microstructures. From the microstructure observation, the casting can be divided into three zones, the chill-affected, directional solidification and air-affected zones and the directional columnar structures can be obtained in the latter two zones. The non-lamellar eutectic structure is found in the case with the initial concentration closest to the eutectic one and it is also seen between the columnar structures, whose existence probability increases with the initial concentration. In the cases of low initial concentration, the columnar structures are cells, but in the cases of high concentration, they are dendrites. For either cellular or dendritic structure, the higher initial concentration has the smaller microstructure size. Due to the cooling effect of chill, as the location in the casting is farther from the chill, it has a slower cooling rate, which leads to larger microstructure size.

This paper reports a novel technique for fabricating polymeric microlens arrays based on micro-transfer molding with soft mold. The soft mold with a micro-holes array is made by casting a pre-polymer of PDMS against a silicon master. The silicon master of the micro-cylinders array is prepared using photolithography and deep reactive ion etching. During the micro-transfer molding operation, the surface of the soft mold of the micro-holes array is filled with liquid UV curable photopolymer, and the soft mold is then pressed against the flat substrate with a slight pressure for a period of time. After the soft mold is removed from the substrate, surface tension causes the liquid photopolymer cylinders to assume a spherical shape. Finally, the liquid photopolymer is cured by UV irradiation at room temperature. A substrate with a microlens array pattern can be successfully fabricated. In this study, a micro-transfer molding facility with UV exposure capacity has been designed, constructed and tested. The 100 × 100 arrays of a polymeric microlens have been successfully produced. Under the condition of 50 kPa stamping pressure, 6 s duration and 500 mJ cm?2UV curing dose, the microlenses were successfully formed on the plastic substrate. Their optical properties were verified with a beam profiler. In addition, microlenses of different curvatures and focal lengths can be obtained by using substrates with different surface wettabilities. This study shows that micro-transfer molding can be used for the fabrication of polymeric microlens arrays with high productivity and low cost.

In the fabrication of a poly-Si film, an a-Si thin layer on glass substrate is melted by the irradiation of an excimer laser with the duration of nanosecond scale, and then is cooled down to form the poly-Si one. For analyzing the fabricating process, an efficient two-dimensional numerical model has been developed in this work, based on the finite difference method and the specific heat/enthalpy method used to handle the release of latent heat. The model can simulate the heat transfer, melt and solidification behavors of a-Si films subjected to the laser irradiation. Numerical analysis was performed by solving the heat flow equation which incorporates the material properties of temperature dependence, the surface reflectivity of silicon film, the variation of the incident power density with time and heat lose by the radiation and convection from the film surfaces into the surroundings. From the analysis of temperature responses for different laser intensities, the thresholds corresponding to the surface and full melting of the Si film can be found. The temperature responses are essentially different in the partial-melting and the complete-melting regimes. The Ft (surface melting threshold) and Fc (full-melt threshold) obtained from the simulation results of the proposed model in this study agree fairly well with those from the experimental data reported in the literature. In the partial-melting regime, the maximum temperature is close to the melting point of amorphous Si, since it is the point where solid a-Si is transformed into liquid state and the high latent heat can absorb extra energy to keep the temperature at the melting point. The fluence larger than Fc is the complete-melting regime, the maximum temperature increases with fluence. It is also found that the variation of the surface reflectivity gives a good way to observe the phase change and the melting duration. When the a-Si melts, the reflectivity rapidly goes up to a steady value which is consistent with the reflectivity of liquid silicon, and stays there until the melt silicon begins to solidify. As the irradiation energy of laser increases, the melting duration in the silicon layer is prolonged.

This paper is to investigate the effects on grain size of different working conditions for making poly Si films by using the excimer laser annealing method. In this research, a KrF excimer laser of 248 nm in wavelength is used to irradiate a-Si films of 0.1 μm in thickness on glass substrate to produce poly-Si ones. The control parameters are laser intensity (200~500 mJ/cm2), pulse number (1~10 shots) and coverage fraction (0~100%). Besides, the effect of a SiO2 layer is also studied, which is utilized as a heat-isolated zone located between the Si film and glass substrate. Average grain sizes from SEM photos are used to analyze the effects of these parameters. Purely from the heat transfer view, the Si film obtains more energy would have the slower cooling or solidification rate, which results in the larger grain. From the experimental results, if the melt pool is within the range of Si film or does not contact its neighboring layer (SiO2 layer or glass substrate), the more absorbed energy from the higher energy intensity, the larger pulse number or the bigger coverage fraction can have the larger average grain size. However, with large enough energy, the melt pool could go through the Si film and touch the lower layer. This would induce much more nuclei due to the homogeneous nucleation in the pool and the heterogeneous nucleation near the interface between the film and the neighboring layer. The resulting grain size is much smaller than that of the former one. The transition points of these two cases for different control parameters can be obtained from the experimental results in this study. When the energy from the laser is small, the SiO2 layer acts like a heat absorber and makes the grain size smaller than that of not having the SiO2 layer. On the other hand, when the energy is large, the SiO2 layer becomes a heat insulator and makes the grain size larger.

Protein interactions with ligands or other proteins are controlled by a complex array of intermolecular forces. Although the interaction energies and intermolecular forces which contribute to the stabilization of the protein complex can be inferred indirectly from thermodynamic and kinetic approaches or be calculated with molecular simulation, recent progress in atomic force microscopy (AFM) has made it possible to quantify directly the ranges and magnitudes of the interaction forces between protein and other molecules. AFM has proved its value not only for resolving the topographical structure of protein samples, but also for probing the forces that control protein interactions or mechanical properties of proteins under physiological conditions. The objective of this review is to describe the uses of AFM in the determination of the forces that control biological interactions, focusing especially on protein-ligand and protein-protein interaction modes. We first consider measurements of the specific and the nonspecific forces that jointly control protein interactions. The review then indicates the theoretical background of AFM force curves and presents the great variety of force measurement modes that can be performed with this technique. In addition, some of the most recent studies in determining the unbinding forces and mechanical properties of proteins with AFM are reviewed and the available theoretical aspects necessary for the comprehension of the experiments have been provided.

The experimental determination of the binding constant of a drug for its target molecule is of considerable importance. It is a basic experimental parameter in a variety of studies, such as the prediction of drug efficiency, or in the pharmacokinetic drug interaction. DNA-binding drugs have been reported to be able to interfere in a sequence dependent manner with biological functions such as topoisomerase activity, restriction of enzyme cleavage of DNA, protein-DNA interactions and the activity of transcription factors, leading to alteration of gene expression. This effect could have important practical application in the experimental therapy of human pathologies, including neoplastic diseases and viral, or microbial infections. The assessment of the biological activity of DNA-binding drugs by polymerase chain reaction, footprinting, gel retardation and in vitro transcription studies was recently reported. However, most of these techniques are steady-state methodologies and therefore are not suitable for an easy determination of the binding activity of DNAbinding drugs to target DNA and the stability of drugs-DNA complexes. Direct real-time observation and measurement of the interaction between DNA-binding drug and target DNA sequence is a subject of interest for drug discovery and development. The recent development of biosensors, based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technology, enables monitoring of a variety of biospecific interactions of DNA-binding drugs with target DNA elements in real-time. The present review is designed to indicate the theoretical background of SPR-based biosensor technology as well as to present the great variety of measurements and modes of interaction kinetics that can be performed with these techniques. In addition, some of the most recent studies in determining the binding constant and stoichiometry of DNA-binding drugs to target DNA with SPR technology are reviewed and the available theoretical aspects necessary for the comprehension of the experiments are provided.

We investigated 16 patients with Fabry's disease (eight hemizygous men and eight heterozygous women) in one family. We used constant current perception threshold (CPT) testing, which evaluated three major sensory nerve fiber populations, to assess subjective complaints of pain and paresthesias. We also examined clinical and biochemical features and compared the values of CPTs and nerve conduction studies (NCS) in detecting the sensory neuropathy. Our results showed that CPT testing at low frequencies (5 and 250 Hz) was significantly more sensitive than at a higher frequency (2 kHz) and NCS in detecting sensory neuropathy in patients with Fabry's disease. However, there was no correlation between CPT testing and clinical symptom scores, duration of disease, creatinine clearance (Ccr) values or α‐galactosidase A (AGA) activities in either hemizygous or heterozygous patients. Hemizygous patients clinically demonstrated more severe symptom scores, poorer renal function, and higher prevalence of hypohidrosis and corpora angiokeratomas than did heterozygous patients, which indicates that detailed clinical examinations can differentiate the clinical status of hemizygous men from heterozygous women. There were no associations between the biochemical levels of serum AGA activity and renal function (Ccr values) or the symptom scores (grading of acroparesthesia), indicating that biochemical parameters do not predict clinical severity. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Muscle Nerve 22: 1531–1537, 1999

Our goal was to use currently available imaging methods to localize the fistulous tract of spinal dural arteriovenous malformations (SDAVMs) prior to arteriography.

We report serial MRI studies in a patient with Balò's concentric sclerosis, who presented with a progressive weakness in the right limbs of 10 day duration. Serial MR images revealed several concentric lesions characterized by layer by layer of demyelinated and myelinated appearance and multiple plaques in the white matter. Pathological study of a biopsy of a concentric lesion (which was performed to rule out neoplasm) further confirmed this diagnosis. These MR findings resolved in correspondence with clinical improvement. The patient was almost completely normal 1 year later. In conclusion, in this case, we found that MRI could show the striking feature reminiscent of the histopathologic findings of Balò's concentric sclerosis and played an important role in antemortem diagnosis of this rare demyelinating disease.

The relationships among small fiber neuropathy, age, sex and pain intensity in the context of Fabry's disease remain unclear. We aim to study the correlations of small fiber neuropathy, age, sex and pain intensity in Fabry patients.

We investigated whether the intensity of cancer pain differs for malignant tumors that have spread to anterior or anterolateral/lateral portions of the vertebral body. We hypothesize that tumor spread to the anterolateral/lateral vertebral body elicits more serious pain due to increased irritation of the spinal nerve. The selection criteria were as follows: (1) advanced or metastatic solid tumor; (2) radicular pain without extremity weakness; (3) malignant lesions anteriorly, anterolaterally, or laterally located at the vertebral body either spread locoregionally or over a greater distance via metastasis based on CT scan diagnosis; and (4) patient needs to use opioids for pain relief. Severe spinal pain intensity was defined as spinal pain for which patients required either strong opioids or spinal irradiation for relief. Eighty-six patients were enrolled in the study. Bone lesions were mainly osteolytic. Thirty-nine tumors spread to the vertebral body in the anterior direction, and 47 in the anterolateral/lateral direction. Severe pain intensity related to vertebral body lesions was due to anterolateral/lateral spread, primary sites of nonurothelial carcinoma, metastatic vertebral lesions, multiple lesions within a vertebrum, and location within the cervical-thoracic spine. In conclusion, patients with tumor spread to the anterolateral/lateral portion of vertebrae bodies based on CT scan diagnosis experienced severe cancer pain. These patients needed strong opioids or palliative spinal irradiation for pain relief.