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Fetal abdominal subcutaneous soft tissue thickness (FASSTT) is a key indicator in evaluating fetal growth, development, and nutritional status. Currently, manual measurement in FASSTT faces the problems of difficulty in positioning, time consumption, and inaccurate measurement. Therefore, this article proposes an automatic measurement scheme for FASSTT. Firstly, a U‐shaped attention network VGG‐SeUnet is proposed to automatically segment the subcutaneous soft tissue area of the fetal abdomen. Secondly, based on the segmentation results, a morphological method is proposed to obtain FASSTT. Specifically, the segmentation network uses VGG16 as the encoder and connects the decoder through jump connections for multi‐scale fusion. We introduce channel attention to jump connections, which enables the model to select key channels for feature fusion. At the same time, the model uses the proposed DF_Loss function for training to solve the problem of sample imbalance. Based on the segmentation results, a morphological distance transformation algorithm is proposed to obtain FASSTT by drawing the maximum inscribed circle and calculating its diameter. The method is evaluated on a fetal abdominal circumference ultrasound dataset containing 135 samples. The DSC, mIOU, mPA, Precision and Recall of the segmentation experiments reache 88.9%, 81.02%, 90.44%, 86.38%, and 90.44% respectively. The difference between FASSTT's result from that provided by radiologist is 0.0615 cm in Average Error (AVE) and 0.081 cm in Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). The overall performance of this algorithm is superior to existing methods with excellent performance, and the measurement error is less than 1 millimeter. This result proves that the proposed scheme in this paper can achieve automated measurement of FASSTT and assist doctors in subsequent evaluation of fetal development and nutritional status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimal surgical intervention for lateral patellar instability remains a topic of controversy despite satisfactory clinical outcomes and low re‐dislocation rates reported in numerous studies following medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction (MPFLR) with and without tibial tubercle transfer (TTT). The purpose of this systematic review and meta‐analysis is to investigate the hypothesis that combining MPFLR with TTT provides reduced complication rates and improved clinical outcomes to isolated MPFLR in patients with lateral patellar instability. We conducted a comprehensive systematic review and meta‐analysis of comparative trials involving MPFLR with and without TTT, sourcing data from PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science. The primary clinical outcomes analyzed included the Kujala score, the Lysholm score, complication rates, and the Caton–Deschamps index (CDI). Random or fixed effects were used for the meta‐analysis. Postoperatively, there were no significant differences observed in the Kujala and Lysholm scores between MPFLR and MPFLR + TTT (p = 0.053). At the final follow‐up, the CDI had decreased 0.015 (95% CI −0.044, 0.013; p = 0.289) points in the MPFLR group, with no statistical significance. In contrast, the MPFLR + TTT group demonstrated a significant decrease of 0.207 (95% CI −0.240, −0.174; p = 0.000) points in CDI. Notably, the complication rate was higher in the MPFLR + TTT group compared to the MPFLR‐only group (RR = 2.472; 95% CI 1.638, 3.731; p = 0.000). Both MPFLR and MPFLR + TTT procedures yield significant improvements in the Kujala and Lysholm scores. However, the MPFLR + TTT approach results in an apparent improvement in CDI and corrects patellar maltracking, particularly in cases involving high tibial tuberosity‐trochlear groove (TT‐TG) (>20 mm) or patella alta (CDI > 1.2), while MPFLR alone cannot. It is essential to consider the higher complication rate of MPFLR + TTT, which suggests that MPFLR alone may be sufficient for patients without high TT‐TG or patella alta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The tibial tubercle‐trochlear groove (TT‐TG) distance is now routinely utilized to help determine whether a realignment procedure is necessary for patients with patellar instability. The tibial tubercle‐posterior cruciate ligament (TT‐PCL) distance has been explored as an alternative measurement. The aim of this study is to compare the reliability of TT‐TG and TT‐PCL; to explore whether there is a relationship between the TT‐PCL and the TT‐TG distance; to determine whether there is a relationship between the TT‐TG and TT‐PCL distances and knee rotation; and to compare the abilities of the TT‐PCL distance and the TT‐TG distance with predicted patellar instability. Method: This systematic review was performed in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Three databases, PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, were searched from inception to September 2021 to identify clinical studies comparing TT‐TG and TT‐PCL distances to patellar instability. Data on patient baseline characteristics, TT‐TG and TT‐PCL distances, inter‐observer reliability, and area under the receiver‐operating characteristic curve (AUC) were recorded. The methodological quality of the studies was assessed using the quality assessment form recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Result: Twenty studies were included in the final analysis, comprising 2330 knees from 2260 patients. The current study showed that TT‐TG and TT‐PCL have similar observer reliability. The inter‐ and intra‐observer reliability of TT‐TG ranged from 0.807 to 0.98 and 0.553 to 0.99, respectively. The inter‐ and intra‐observer reliability of TT‐PCL ranged from 0.553 to 0.99 and 0.88 to 0.981, respectively. Six studies compared the AUC for predicting patellar instability and showed that TT‐TG had better predictive performance than TT‐PCL. Three studies reported a correlation between TT‐TG and knee rotation, but no such relationship was found for TT‐PCL. Eight studies reported a weak or moderate correlation between TT‐TG and TT‐PCL. Conclusion: TT‐TG and TT‐PCL have similar inter‐ and intra‐rater reliability (as measured by ICC), but TT‐TG has greater discriminatory power to predict patellar instability than TT‐PCL (as measured by AUC values and odds ratio). However, considering trochlear dysplasia and individual variations, future studies need to find more accurate and individualized methods to predict patellar instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Channel and spatial attention mechanisms have proven to provide an evident performance boost of deep convolution neural networks. Most existing methods focus on one or run them parallel (series), neglecting the collaboration between the two attentions. In order to better establish the feature interaction between the two types of attentions, a plug‐and‐play attention module is proposed, which is termed as 'CAT'—activating the Collaboration between spatial and channel Attentions based on learned Traits. Specifically, traits are represented as trainable coefficients (i.e. colla‐factors) to adaptively combine contributions of different attention modules to fit different image hierarchies and tasks better. Moreover, the global entropy pooling is proposed apart from global average pooling and global maximum pooling (GMP) operators, which is an effective component in suppressing noise signals by measuring the information disorder of feature maps. A three‐way pooling operation is introduced into attention modules and the adaptive mechanism is applied to fuse their outcomes. Extensive experiments on MS COCO, Pascal‐VOC, Cifar‐100, and ImageNet show that our CAT outperforms the existing state‐of‐the‐art attention mechanisms in object detection, instance segmentation, and image classification. The model and code will be released soon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new type of capacitor–battery hybrid energy storage device, metal‐ion capacitors have attracted widespread attention because of their high‐power density while ensuring energy density and long lifespan. Potassium‐ion capacitors (KICs) featuring the merits of abundant potassium resources, lower standard electrode potential, and low cost have been considered as potential alternatives to lithium‐/sodium‐ion capacitors. However, KICs still face issues including unsatisfactory reaction kinetics, low energy density, and poor lifetime owing to the large radius of the potassium ion. In this Review, the importance of emerging potassium‐ion capacitor is addressed. The Review offers a brief discussion of the fundamental working principle of KICs, along with an overview of recent advances and achievements of a variety of electrode materials for dual carbon and non‐dual carbon KICs. Furthermore, electrolyte chemistry, binders as well as electrode/electrolyte interface, are summarized. Finally, existing challenges and perspectives on further development of KICs are also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High heat conduction performance of electrical insulating composite is highly desired in thermal management of electronics. In this study, densely packed boron nitride (BN) composites with resin matrices of epoxy, polymethyl methacrylate, and an acrylic copolymer based binder were prepared through a solvent mediated mixing and compression molding method. The solvent mediated mixing assisted homogeneous dispersion; the compression molding removed excessive resin and led to alignment of BN flakes with high filler content. The resulted composites exhibited superior in‐plane thermal conductivity k// up to 21.3 W/mK and pronounced anisotropic heat conduction properties. The thermal conductivity was positively correlated with density ρ of a specimen in experimental. A presentation of thermal conductivity k = k ρ was proposed, and the dependence of thermal conductivity on specimen density d k ( ρ ) / d ρ   >   0 was proven mathematically. The application of BN composite in LED thermal management was demonstrated. An epoxy/BN heat spreader was used to efficiently cool down a 0.3‐W LED. The cooling effect was close to that with Al board heat spreader. POLYM. COMPOS., 39:E1653–E1658, 2018. © 2017 Society of Plastics Engineers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are a family of high-profile layer materials with tunable metal species and interlayer spacing, and herein the LDHs are first investigated as bifunctional electrocatalysts. It is found that trinary LDH containing nickel, cobalt, and iron (NiCoFe-LDH) shows a reasonable bifunctional performance, while exploiting a preoxidation treatment can significantly enhance both oxygen reduction reaction and oxygen evolution reaction activity. This phenomenon is attributed to the partial conversion of Co2+ to Co3+ state in the preoxidation step, which stimulates the charge transfer to the catalyst surface. The practical application of the optimized material is demonstrated with a small potential hysteresis (800 mV for a reversible current density of 20 mA cm−2) as well as a high stability, exceeding the performances of noble metal catalysts (commercial Pt/C and Ir/C). The combination of the electrochemical metrics and the facile and cost-effective synthesis endows the trinary LDH as a promising bifunctional catalyst for a variety of applications, such as next-generation regenerative fuel cells or metal-air batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphology and phase transformation of CoAl layered double hydroxide (denoted CAL) nanoplates are systematically investigated in highly concentrated basic solution. Characterization results reveal that this is a time-dependent process, in which CALs are gradually converted to β-Co(OH)2 and CoOOH, and the structure becomes increasingly porous. This process could be caused by the dissolution of the Al part of CoAl LDHs, recrystallization of the Co part, and subsequent oxidation of Co. It is found that the pseudocapacitive performance of the products vary with the immersion time. CALs already show a reasonable performance, whereas short-term treatment would lead to the enhanced capacitance of 1123 F g−1 with both remarkable rate capability and stability. However, the formation of CoOOH will significantly degrade the supercapacitive performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pine-shaped Pt nanostructured electrode with under-water superaerophobicity for ultrahigh and steady hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance is successfully fabricated by a facile and easily scalable electrodeposition technique. Due to the lower bubble adhesive force (11.5 ± 1.2 μN), the higher bubble contact angle (161.3° ± 3.4°) in aqueous solution, and the smaller size of bubbles release for pine-shaped Pt nanostructured electrode, the incomparable under-water superaerophobicity for final repellence of bubbles from submerged surface with ease, is successfully achieved, compared to that for nanosphere electrode and for Pt flat electrode. With the merits of superior under-water superaerophobicity and excellent nanoarray morphology, pine-shaped Pt nanostructured electrode with the ultrahigh electrocatalytic HER performance, excellent durability, no obvious current fluctuation, and dramatically fast current density increase at overpotential range (3.85 mA mV−1, 2.55 and 13.75 times higher than that for nanosphere electrode and for Pt flat electrode, respectively), is obtained, much superior to Pt nanosphere and flat electrodes. The successful introduction of under-water superaerophobicity to in-time repel as-formed H2 bubbles may open up a new pathway for designing more efficient electrocatalysts with potentially practical utilization in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benefiting from high safety, low cost, and competitive energy density, aqueous zinc ion batteries (AZIBs) have emerged as very promising technology for grid energy storage. However, the lifetime of AZIBs is severely affected by uncontrolled zinc dendritic growth and undesirable side reaction. To address the problem, natural aluminum silicate hydroxide covered glass fibers separator (AlSi‐GF) is prepared herein using a simple spraying method. Aluminum silicate hydroxide is a complex oxide, where a large number of adsorption sites can adsorb Zn2+ and guide its deposition process. In particular, the Maxwell–Wagner polarization of aluminum silicate hydroxide under an applied electric field contributes to homogenizing the electric field distribution around the interface, thereby modulating zinc deposition and reducing the nucleation overpotential. Impressively, AlSi‐GF separator enables high‐performance zinc‐metal batteries. The symmetric battery with AlSi‐GF separator has a stable voltage polarization and an ultra‐long cycle life of 2280 h at a current density of 1 mA cm−2, and the Zn//V2O5 full cell based on AlSi‐GF separator can exhibit a high specific capacity of 123 mAh g−1 after 1500 cycles at 1 A g−1. This study provides new insights into the design of reliable and cost‐effective separators for metal anodes in energy storage devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]