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It is believed that skin sensitivity will be important for future robots working in our daily life for home-care and entertainment purposes. However, relatively little progress has been made in the field of pressure recognition compared to the areas of sight and voice recognition, mainly because good artificial “electronic skin” with a large area and mechanical flexibility is not yet available. The fabrication of a sensitive skin consisting of thousands of pressure sensors would require a flexible switching matrix that cannot be realized with present silicon-based electronics. Organic field-effect transistors can be used complimentary to such conventional electronics because organic circuits are inherently flexible and potentially ultra-low in cost even for large area. In this paper, we describe that integration of organic transistors and rubber pressure sensors provides an ideal solution to realize a practical artificial skin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mutations in the precore region and core promoter were compared between patients with acute and chronic hepatitis B. Methods: There were 69 patients with acute self-limited hepatitis B and 210 with chronic hepatitis B who had been followed for >15 years. The hepatitis B virus (HBV) of genotypes A, B and C was detected in 14 (23%), 8 (13%) and 28 (45%) of the patients with acute self-limited hepatitis, respectively, in contrast to 11 (5%), 25 (12%) and 167 (80%) of those with chronic hepatitis. Results: At presentation, hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) in serum was the more common (82% versus 65%, P < 0.05), and the wild-type sequences of the precore region (100% versus 74%, P < 0.001) and core promoter (88% versus 36%, P < 0.00001) were more frequent in the 50 patients with acute self-limited hepatitis than the 203 patients with chronic hepatitis B who were infected with HBV of genotype A, B or C. Wild-types of both the precore region and core promoter persisted in acute self-limited hepatitis, while they decreased from 28% to 10% in chronic hepatitis over the course of >15 years. Conclusion: HBV with the wild-type sequences of the precore region and core promoter prevails in patients with acute self-limited hepatitis, unlike in patients with chronic hepatitis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]