Search

More than 200 virus strains have been implicated in common colds, thereby thwarting vaccination efforts. However, the most common causes of colds are human rhinoviruses, which infect the epithelial cells of the nasopharynx. Moreover, after decades of research, the best documented method of preventing infection remains to be handwashing. However, stopping people from inadvertently touching or rubbing one’s nose and eyes is difficult, and the effectiveness of preventing such habits has not been validated. Here, we reported the results of a randomized controlled trial (n = 120) performed over 50 days. We examined the effectiveness of using smartwatches equipped with a sensor and a vibration alert, as well as the self-checking of behavior, in preventing subjects from touching their nose or eyes. Participants were randomly assigned to either the smartwatch group or the handwashing group (control). Subjects in the handwashing group were requested to wash their hands after going out, whereas subjects in the smartwatch group were requested to wash their hands and in addition wear a smartwatch that vibrates to remind them not to excessively touch their nose or eyes. The daily frequency of nose and eye touching was also recorded by the smartwatches. The first incidence of an upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) was the primary endpoint. In the smartwatch group, compared with the control group, the incidence of URTIs was significantly lower by 53% (p < 0.05) and was associated with a decrease in the mean frequency of nose or eye touching (p < 0.05).

Dysregulation of the complement system is linked to the pathogenesis of a variety of hematological disorders. Eculizumab, an anti-complement C5 monoclonal antibody, is the current standard of care for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) and atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS). However, because of high levels of C5 in plasma, eculizumab has to be administered biweekly by intravenous infusion. By applying recycling technology through pH-dependent binding to C5, we generated a novel humanized antibody against C5, SKY59, which has long-lasting neutralization of C5. In cynomolgus monkeys, SKY59 suppressed C5 function and complement activity for a significantly longer duration compared to a conventional antibody. Furthermore, epitope mapping by X-ray crystal structure analysis showed that a histidine cluster located on C5 is crucial for the pH-dependent interaction with SKY59. This indicates that the recycling effect of SKY59 is driven by a novel mechanism of interaction with its antigen and is distinct from other known pH-dependent antibodies. Finally, SKY59 showed neutralizing effect on C5 variant p.Arg885His, while eculizumab does not inhibit complement activity in patients carrying this mutation. Collectively, these results suggest that SKY59 is a promising new anti-C5 agent for patients with PNH and other complement-mediated disorders.

Heart rate monitoring has huge potential in disease prevention, stroke prediction, and mental stress/workload assessment. Although most conventional heart rate monitoring systems are wearable devic...

When selecting targets in a Smart TV service, the user is frequently required to select remote targets such as menu items, but is unable to touch the targets directly or use a mouse. Solutions include gesture-based rapid selection techniques. However, such techniques have problems in that they hide the original information. We propose Trace Select, a novel technique for selecting remote targets; it generates gesture guides from the targets’ characters. The guides don’t conceal the original targets. An experiment shows that Trace Select outperforms cursor-based pointing and activationrequired gestural selection. Author

We present a mouse with Photo-Plethysmographic (PPG) surfaces that offer unobtrusive PPG sensing for estimating mental stress while conducting regular office work. Our PPG approach yields broad, thin, gently curved surfaces that are suitable for the surfaces of everyday devices. In an experiment, our PPG mouse realizes the Inter Beat Interval (IBI) accuracy needed to calculate the user's Heart Rate Variability (HRV) for reliable stress detection.

Capturing the user's vital signs is an urgent goal in the HCI community. Photo-plethysmography (PPG) is one approach; it can collect data from the finger tips that indicate the user's autonomic nervous system (ANS) and offers new potentials such as mental stress measurement and drowsy state detection. Our goal is to set PPG sensors on the surfaces of ordinary devices such as mice, smartphones, and steering wheels. This will offer smart monitoring without the burden of additional wearable sensors. Unfortunately, current PPG sensors are very narrow, and even if the sensor is attached to the surface of a device, the user is forced to align and hold the finger to the sensor point, which degrades device usability. To solve this problem, we propose an area-based sensing method that relaxes the alignment requirement. The proposed method uses two thin acrylic plates, a diffuser plate and a detection plate, as an IR waveguide. The proposed method can yield very thin sensing surfaces and gentle curvatures are possible. An experiment compares the proposed method to the conventional point-sensor in terms of LF/HF discrimination performance with the participant in the resting state, and the proposed method is shown to offer comparable sensing performance with superior usability.

We have developed a wafer-scale layer-transfer technique for transferring GaAs and Ge onto Si wafers of up to 300 mm in diameter. Lattice-matched GaAs or Ge layers were epitaxially grown on GaAs wafers using an AlAs release layer, which can subsequently be transferred onto a Si handle wafer via direct wafer bonding and patterned epitaxial lift-off (ELO). The crystal properties of the transferred GaAs layers were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence, and the quality of the transferred Ge layers was characterized using Raman spectroscopy. We find that, after bonding and the wet ELO processes, the quality of the transferred GaAs and Ge layers remained the same compared to that of the as-grown epitaxial layers. Furthermore, we realized Ge-on-insulator and GaAs-on-insulator wafers by wafer-scale pattern ELO technique.

This poster describes an implementation of the puzzle generators and puzzle layouts introduced in [1].

In the surface activated bonding (SAB) at room temperature, the surfaces of specimens are sputter etched by high-energy ion/atom beam of inert gas to remove surface contaminants and create active surfaces, which are ready to form inter-atomic bonds even at room temperature. Ar has been used for the purpose. However, sputter etching by Ar high-energy ion/atom beam causes increase of surface roughness. In case of wafer direct bonding, the surface roughness has large influence on the quality of bonding interface such as bonding strength, local strain, and so on. Therefore a surface activation process which does not cause surface roughening has been desired. In this work, we have examined the applicability of Ne fast-atom-beam (FAB) to SAB of Si wafers at room temperature. We confirmed that Ne-FAB does not cause surface roughening and Si wafers are successfully bonded by Ne-beam surface activation. In addition, we found that Ne-FAB sputter etching has surface smoothing effect which improves quality of the bonding interface. The room temperature wafer bonding apparatus (MWB-12-ST: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) with the FAB 104 (Atom Tech Ltd.) beam sources were used for bonding of Si wafers. The etching rate of Si surface by Ne-FAB was about half of that of Ar-FAB using the beam source operation parameters of 1.8 kV applied voltage and 100 mA input current. With etching depth more than 1.5 nm, the bonding strength comparable to Si bulk strength was attained by Ne-FAB surface activation. With etching depth of 30 nm, we measured surface roughening of Si wafers using Ne, Ar and Xe gas. The surface roughness of Si wafers largely increased by the Ar and Xe-FAB sputter etching. In case of Ne-FAB, the surface roughness did not increase by the sputter etching and kept the initial rms value of 0.18 nm of CMP-polished Si wafers. Moreover, we found surface smoothing effect of the Ne-FAB. We prepared Si wafers which had been roughened by Xe-FAB etching. They could not be bonded directly by SAB. Surface roughness of the roughened Si wafer decreased from 0.40 to 0.17 nm rms by applying Ne-FAB of 30 nm etching depth. Along with the surface smoothing, the bonding strength was largely improved and finally became equivalent to Si bulk strength. It was confirmed that strain near the bonding interface was decreased by the smoothing effect as shown in Figure.

We have identified a partial deletion of the short arm of chromosome 20 in a 5-year-old boy from parents having normal phenotype and karyotype. His major anomalies were mild mental retardation, congenital heart disease, chest deformity, spina bifida, kyphoscoliosis, inguinal hernia, and preauricular fistula. The clinical findings were compared with those of two patients reported previously as a partial deletion 20p.

We have realized patterned Ge-on-Insulator wafers by large-scale layer transfer technology. In conjunction with low-temperature bonding and patterned Epitaxial Lift-Off (ELO) technique, high quality Ge layer transfer was achieved in full-wafer scale.