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Cooperation, paying a cost to benefit other individuals, is widespread. Cooperation can be promoted by pleiotropic “win-win” mutations which directly benefit self and partner. Previously, we showed that “partner-serving” should be defined as increased benefit supply rate per intake benefit (Hart & Pineda et al., 2019). Here, we report that “win-win” mutations can rapidly evolve even in nascent cooperation under conditions unfavorable for cooperation. Specifically, in a well-mixed environment we evolved engineered yeast cooperative communities where two strains exchanged costly metabolites lysine and hypoxanthine. Among cells that consumed lysine and released hypoxanthine, ecm21 mutations repeatedly arose. ecm21 is “self-serving”, improving self’s growth rate in limiting lysine. ecm21 is also “partner-serving”, increasing hypoxanthine release rate per lysine consumption and the steady state growth rate of partner. ecm21 also arose in monocultures evolving in lysine-limited chemostats. Thus, even without any pressure to maintain cooperation, pleiotropic win-win mutations may readily evolve.

This paper is based on the mass of the lower extremity section to estimate the mass of the sole, calf and thigh. The exoskeleton robot adjusts the motor output torque according to the mass of each lower extremity section of different users. It is to adjust the mass of the lower limbs to zero moment point movement, so that the exoskeleton robot and the patient maintain a stable and balanced state during the movement process. The weared robot in the patient is balanced using the gravity mathematic equation, considering individual mass of sole, calf and thigh. Therefore, each joint loading can be accurately estimated, and every motor output current for controlling motor can be thus determined. The experiments were carried out by collecting the muscle electronic signal strength from the actions of standing up and sitting down. Analysis and comparison with and without wearing robot are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed robot. According to the muscle power evaluation scale from Medical Research Council (MRC), patients who have above symptoms normally show a weak muscle. After wearing an exoskeleton robot, it can correct posture to balance and save effort.

Cooperation, paying a cost to benefit others, is widespread. Cooperation can be promoted by pleiotropic ‘win-win’ mutations which directly benefit self (self-serving) and partner (partner-serving). Previously, we showed that partner-serving should be defined as increased benefit supply rate per intake benefit. Here, we report that win-win mutations can rapidly evolve even under conditions unfavorable for cooperation. Specifically, in a well-mixed environment we evolved engineered yeast cooperative communities where two strains exchanged costly metabolites, lysine and hypoxanthine. Among cells that consumed lysine and released hypoxanthine, ecm21 mutations repeatedly arose. ecm21 is self-serving, improving self’s growth rate in limiting lysine. ecm21 is also partner-serving, increasing hypoxanthine release rate per lysine consumption and the steady state growth rate of partner and of community. ecm21 also arose in monocultures evolving in lysine-limited chemostats. Thus, even without any history of cooperation or pressure to maintain cooperation, pleiotropic win-win mutations may readily evolve to promote cooperation.

This paper reports the development of a three-channel automatic speed-matching climbing training system that could train three rats at the same time for rehabilitation after an ischemic stroke. An infrared (IR) remote sensor was installed at the end of each channel to monitor the real-time position of a climbing rat. This research was carried out in five stages: i) system design; ii) hardware circuit; iii) running speed control; iv) functional testing; and v) verification using an animal model of cerebral stroke. The rehabilitated group significantly outperformed the middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo) sedentary group in the rota-rod and inclined plate tests 21 days after a stroke. The rehabilitated group also had a cerebral infarction volume of 28.34±19.4%, far below 56.81±18.12% of the MCAo group 28 days after the stroke, validating the effectiveness of this training platform for stroke rehabilitation. The running speed of the climbing rehabilitation training platform was designed to adapt to the physical conditions of subjects, and overtraining injuries can be completely prevented accordingly.

On-board diagnostics II (OBD-II) [1]is a new automotive device, which can provide the vehicle's self-diagnostic and reporting capability to the vehicle owner or repair technician. And the vehicle owner or repair technician can understand the status of the various vehicle subsystems. These vehicle's self-diagnostic reports are very basic material for the car big data. Currently marketed OBD-II system can only be used for small cars. However, the large vehicle is the main cause of car accident. Therefore, the proposed OBD-II device is suitable for the niche market of the bus and commercial vehicles.

Mutualisms can be promoted by pleiotropic win-win mutations which directly benefit self (self-serving) and partner (partner-serving). Intuitively, partner-serving phenotype could be quantified as an individual’s benefit supply rate to partners. Here, we demonstrate the inadequacy of this thinking, and propose an alternative. Specifically, we evolved well-mixed mutualistic communities where two engineered yeast strains exchanged essential metabolites lysine and hypoxanthine. Among cells that consumed lysine and released hypoxanthine, a chromosome duplication mutation seemed win-win: it improved cell’s affinity for lysine (self-serving), and increased hypoxanthine release rate per cell (partner-serving). However, increased release rate was due to increased cell size accompanied by increased lysine utilization per birth. Consequently, total hypoxanthine release rate per lysine utilization (defined as ‘exchange ratio’) remained unchanged. Indeed, this mutation did not increase the steady state growth rate of partner, and is thus solely self-serving during long-term growth. By extension, reduced benefit production rate by an individual may not imply cheating., eLife digest Many organisms – including microbes – have mutually beneficially relationships. Often, the exchanged goods, such as nutrients, are costly to make. But what happens when individuals evolve to help themselves more? Can they also evolve to be more helpful to others? Hart, Pineda et al. studied a community of two genetically modified yeast strains that had to exchange essential nutrients to survive. One strain overproduced the molecule hypoxanthine, but depended on the second strain to provide the nutrient lysine, and vice versa. The communities were then allowed to evolve. The lysine-requiring strain frequently ended up with a mutation that initially seemed to be win-win: helping self to grow faster and at the same time, releasing more hypoxanthine to the partner. However, closer examination showed that the mutation also made these cells bigger, and bigger cells had to consume more lysine. Consequently, releasing more hypoxanthine was accompanied by consuming more lysine. Since the 'give' to 'take' ratio stayed the same, the partner strain did not benefit more from the mutant than from the ancestor. This suggests that an individual should not be considered helpful solely based on how much it gives to a partner, but also, on how much it takes. In the case of the mutant yeast strain, it produced 30 percent more nutrients, but also consumed 30 percent more, and was therefore not more helpful to the partner than the ancestor. Similarly, releasing less may not imply cheating. Beneficial interactions are very common in natural communities, such as among microbes living in the mouth cavity and the gut. Therefore, a better understanding of how they benefit from and affect each other may provide scientists with more insight into diseases linked to problems with microbial communities, such as tooth decay, inflammation of the gut, or obesity.

A novel cuffless blood pressure (BP) measurement technology is proposed in this paper. Systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) can be estimated by measuring pulse transit time (PTT) between radial and carotid artery. The pulse signals of artery are measured by split-ring resonator microwave sensors with high sensitivity in a non-contact manner. Instead of measuring resonance frequency deviation, the measurements can be performed by detecting amplitude variation for not only simplified circuits but also increasing sampling rate and sensitivity. In addition, cascading a notch filter can steepen the transition response of sensor to further improves 135 times sensitivity compared to traditional frequency-based method. From experiment results, PTT and BP show the significant negative correlation, and the correlation coefficient is more than -0.79. Based on the relational function of PTT and BP, SBP and DBP can be estimated accurately, and the average error is lower than 8.4%.

Today’s commercial forced exercise platforms had been validated not as a well-designed rehabilitation environment for rats with a stroke, for the reason that rat with a stroke cannot take exercise at a constant intensity for a long period of time. In light of this, this work presented an adaptive, fall-free ischemic stroke rehabilitation mechanism in an animal model, which was implemented in an infrared-sensing adaptive feedback control running wheel (IAFCRW) platform. Consequently, rats with a stroke can be safely rehabilitated all the time, and particularly at full capacity for approximately one third of a training duration, in a completely fall-free environment according to individual physical differences by repeated use of an acceleration/deceleration mechanism. The performance of this platform was assessed using an animal ischemic stroke model. The IAFCRW therapy regimen was validated to outperform a treadmill and a conventional running wheel counterpart with respect to the reduction in the neurobehavioral deficits caused by middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo). IAFCRW is the first adaptive forced exercise training platform short of electrical stimulation-assistance in the literature, and ischemic stroke rats benefit more in terms of the behavioral tests run at the end of a 3-week rehabilitation program after a stroke thereby.

Currently, many ischemic stroke patients worldwide suffer from physical and mental impairments, and thus have a low quality of life. However, although rehabilitation is acknowledged as an effective way to recover patients' health, there does not exist yet an adaptive training platform for animal tests so far. For this sake, this paper aims to develop an adaptive escalator (AE) for rehabilitation of rats with cerebral ischemia. Rats were observed to climb upward spontaneously, and a motor-driven escalator, equipped with a position detection feature and an acceleration/deceleration mechanism, was constructed accordingly as an adaptive training platform. The rehabilitation performance was subsequently rated using an incline test, a rotarod test, the infarction volume, the lesion volume, the number of MAP2 positive cells and the level of cortisol. This paper is presented in 3 parts as follows. Part 1 refers to the escalator mechanism design, part 2 describes the adaptive ladder-climbing rehabilitation mechanism, and part 3 discusses the validation of an ischemic stroke model. As it turned out, a rehabilitated group using this training platform, designated as the AE group, significantly outperformed a control counterpart in terms of a rotarod test. After the sacrifice of the rats, the AE group gave an average infarction volume of (34.36 ± 3.8)%, while the control group gave (66.41 ± 3.1)%, validating the outperformance of the escalator-based rehabilitation platform in a sense. An obvious difference between the presented training platform and conventional counterparts is the platform mechanism, and for the first time in the literature rats can be well and voluntarily rehabilitated at full capacity using an adaptive escalator. Taking into account the physical diversity among rats, the training strength provided was made adaptive as a reliable way to eliminate workout or secondary injury. Accordingly, more convincing arguments can be made using this mental stress-free training platform.

BACKGROUND An innovative animal running wheel with an individualized design was implemented for the rehabilitation of rats following ischemic stroke. MATERIAL AND METHODS The design of the running wheel platform included the running wheel and a side plate for exercise area adjustments. A U-curve with a width of 2 cm was drawn on the lower half of the side plate for the dynamic adjustments of five infrared (IR) sensors based on the physical fitness of the rats. The individualized training process for this running wheel consisted of 2 days of free training to record their average and maximum speeds, 3 days of progressive training to determine their exercise areas, and 2 weeks of normal training based on their average speeds, maximum speeds, and exercise areas. Blood samples were obtained from the tail veins of all rats before the operations and on Days 14, 21, and 28 postsurgery to measure cortisol levels. The motor function tests were performed on Days 7 and 28 postsurgery. On Day 28 postsurgery, the rats were sacrificed under anesthesia, and their brains were removed for Nissl and H&E staining. RESULTS On Day 28 after surgery, the motor function, lesion volume, and cell damage of the DEARW and control groups differed significantly, indicating that this device is effective for stroke rehabilitation. CONCLUSIONS The outcomes of the rats that were rehabilitated using the newly designed training system were better than those of their control-group counterparts, indicating the advantages of this designed system.

Stroke leads to physical and mental disability and severely reduces patient quality of life. Currently, physical exercise is considered a feasible approach to rehabilitation. However, basic clinical trials have yet to demonstrate an optimal method for rehabilitation training. The current study designed an electronic platform for ladder-climbing exercise for stroke rehabilitation. Rats after stroke can be subjected to rehabilitation training through the motor-driven ladder. The platform also involves position detection and speed control mechanisms, thus providing rehabilitation patterns that are different from the conventional rehabilitation programs. The designed platform will be expected to provide effective rehabilitation processes. Moreover, the operating mechanism of the designed platform is different from that of existing platforms. The approach of using automatic ladder-climbing exercise for stroke rehabilitation is unprecedented; in addition, the exercise intensity of the proposed platform can be adjusted according to the fitness of each rat. Therefore, this platform can be adopted for experiments in exercise physiology, and the study results can serve as a reference for future studies designing training programs for human stroke rehabilitation.

A novel concept of OTP has been demonstrated to create another feasibility to allow re-writable capability before storing the data. This OTP is named Rewritable One-time- programming (RW-OTP) memory. With RW-OTP, users can do the test by modifying the contexts repeatedly before finalizing the stored data. To implement the memory cell, it consists of a gate-floated FinFET and an RRAM where a bilayer has been designed as a thicker dielectric layer with resistive-switching property on a thinner dielectric-fuse layer. Moreover, the process of RW-OTP is fully compatible with the state-of- the-art CMOS logic technology. The result shows that the memory cell exhibits high retention and good endurance. With proper use of RW-OTP, the users can not only reduce error jobs cost-efficiently but also can develop various applications for their needs. This memory cell is very promising for embedded applications.

Objective An infrared-sensing deceleration running wheel (IDRW) is proposed from the prevention to the rehabilitation of ischemic stroke in an animal model. Current forced training platforms use a fixed speed for rehabilitation training in rats. However, it is difficult for the injured rats to keep exercising at a constant intensity. Moreover, neither high nor low training speed can be the optimal for rats for the whole rehabilitation process. This conventional method may even result in second-time injuries during rehabilitation, which causes adverse effects in recovery. This phenomenon is also one of the reasons why currently marketed forced training animal platforms have shown little effectiveness in the rehabilitation of stroke patients. The major distinction between the techniques described in this study and the commercially available ones is that our platform is capable of automatically and dynamically adjust varying the training intensity based on spontaneous feedback of individual physical conditions according to infrared sensor for positions. Methods This platform uses infrared sensors to measure the running positions of rats to provide feedback and adjust the exercise speed for assisting stroke rehabilitation in rats. In addition, with linear acceleration and adaptive deceleration models, rats with stroke can achieve rehabilitation based on their individual physical characteristics. This rehabilitation model not only achieves effective recovery based on the individualized physical capacity of rats but also protects rats from fall injuries. This rehabilitation model overcomes individual differences, which has not been realized in conventional rehabilitation models. Results An animal ischemic stroke model was used to test the effectiveness of this platform. One week after middle cerebral arterial occlusion (MCAo) surgery, the animals were assigned into four groups (treadmill, motorized running wheel (MRW), (infrared-sensing running wheel) ISRW, and IDRW) to complete rehabilitation training over three weeks. Inclined plane and beam walking tests were used daily to test the motor function recovery. After three weeks of exercise, the triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC) was used to obtain the cerebral infarct volume. The result showed that the IDRW group achieved a significant recovery from the evaluation of inclined plane (control: 49.9 ± 0.8 degrees, IDRW: 52.6 ± 0.7 degrees), beam walking (control: 1.5 ± 0.2 points, IDRW: 0.6 ± 0.15 points), and cerebral infarct volume (control: 64.9 ± 6 %, IDRW: 40.3 ± 4 %). IDRW is also the only platform that showed an actual treatment effect among all forced training platforms. Conclusions This study confirmed that forced rehabilitation training models require proper control to achieve certain treatment effects. In other words, when forcing rats to exercise, it is important to reduce their psychological burden and prevent them from suffering secondary injuries. Therefore, this model provides an objective and effective experimental platform for clinical researchers conducting sports physiology studies.

Physical exercise (PE) is an effective method for improving cognitive function among patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). We previously demonstrated that PE with an infrared-sensing running wheel (ISRW) system provides strong neuroprotection in an experimental animal model of stroke. In this study, we used fluid percussion injury in rats to simulate mild TBI. For rats, we used both passive avoidance learning and the Y-maze tests to evaluate cognitive function. We investigated whether PE rehabilitation attenuated cognitive deficits in rats with TBI and determined the contribution of hippocampal and cortical expression of heat shock protein 20 (HSP20) to PE-mediated cognitive recovery. In addition to increasing hippocampal and cortical expression of HSP20, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and the tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB) ratio, PE rehabilitation significantly attenuated brain contusion and improved cognitive deficits in the rat model. Furthermore, reducing hippocampal and cortical expression of HSP20 with an intracerebral injection of pSUPER hsp20 small interfering RNA significantly diminished the PE-induced overexpression of hippocampal and cortical BDNF and the TrkB ratio and also reversed the beneficial effect of PE in reducing neurotrauma and the cognitive deficits. A positive Pearson correlation was found between HSP20 and BDNF, as well as between HSP20 and TrkB, in the hippocampal and cortical tissues. We thus conclude that post-ischaemic ISRW exercise rehabilitation attenuates cognitive deficits, as well as brain contusions, in TBI rats by stimulating the cerebral HSP20/BDNF/TrkB signalling axis.

In this study, a noninvasive dynamic physiological monitoring system was proposed to assess animal disease prevention models. Most contemporary remote animal dynamic physiological monitoring systems are invasive by nature, and require the implantation of sensors in rats. This technique is prone to infections and makes continued data collection difficult. Contrarily, the proposed noninvasive system uses photoplethysmographic signals that are amplified in three stages (front end) in conjunction with an adaptive filter (back end) to offset the signal distortion caused by vibrations. The accuracy of the system was subsequently tested by measuring the heart rate of a test animal in both anesthetized and free-moving states. The proposed system has the advantage of low wearing interference. In addition, it is also more stable and durable than invasive systems. Therefore, the system is expected to provide a convenient and effective tool for physiologists of basic clinical studies.

This study proposed the use of an innovative shielded capacitive sensing electrode in noncontact electrocardiograms (ECG) with high noise immunity. Capacitive ECGs are sensitive to external noise and interference such as mains power and environmental changes. Therefore, a shielded capacitive electrode designed with capacitance feedback was proposed to prevent such interference.

To investigate accumulated mental stress according to the concept of the meridians of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This stress was quantified by using pulse spectrum analysis of finger-tip photoplethysmography (PPG). Stress accumulation is one of the main causes of cardiovascular disease and depression in humans, resulting in chronic physiologic malfunctions; however, few studies have thoroughly assessed the quantitative evaluation of accumulative stress using the concept of TCM.This study investigated accumulated mental stress from the perspective of TCM based on an 8-day experiment. The theory of organ resonance was integrated into the proposed PPG sensing instrument to capture the nine harmonics of TCM. Participants were given daily mental arithmetic tasks over 1 week to simulate stress accumulation, and trends in the proportion of the nine harmonics of TCM were extracted over several days and analyzed to identify the affective factors related to cumulative stress.The experimental results showed that the kidney harmonic proportion (C2) and stomach harmonic proportion (C5) were significant only on the first few days because of a physiologic phenomenon of temporary stimulation. Most important, the trend of the liver harmonic proportion (C1) from days 3 to 8 dramatically increased and became gradually saturated because of the influence of accumulated mental stress.The results strongly suggest that pulse spectrum analysis of the PPG signal provides physiologically and pathologically important information on accumulated mental stress and can be useful for TCM analysis.

Preclinical Research Cellular proteins are the mediators of multiple organism functions being involved in physiological mechanisms and disease. By discovering lead compounds that affect the function of target proteins, the target diseases or physiological mechanisms can be modulated. Based on knowledge of the ligand–receptor interaction, the chemical structures of leads can be modified to improve efficacy, selectivity and reduce side effects. One rational drug design technology, which enables drug discovery based on knowledge of target structures, functional properties and mechanisms, is computer-aided drug design (CADD). The application of CADD can be cost-effective using experiments to compare predicted and actual drug activity, the results from which can used iteratively to improve compound properties. The two major CADD-based approaches are structure-based drug design, where protein structures are required, and ligand-based drug design, where ligand and ligand activities can be used to design compounds interacting with the protein structure. Approaches in structure-based drug design include docking, de novo design, fragment-based drug discovery and structure-based pharmacophore modeling. Approaches in ligand-based drug design include quantitative structure–affinity relationship and pharmacophore modeling based on ligand properties. Based on whether the structure of the receptor and its interaction with the ligand are known, different design strategies can be seed. After lead compounds are generated, the rule of five can be used to assess whether these have drug-like properties. Several quality validation methods, such as cost function analysis, Fisher's cross-validation analysis and goodness of hit test, can be used to estimate the metrics of different drug design strategies. To further improve CADD performance, multi-computers and graphics processing units may be applied to reduce costs.

This paper presents a cost-effective sensor system for mattresses that can classify the sleeping posture of an individual and prevent pressure ulcers. This system applies projected capacitive sensing to the field of health care. The charge time (CT) method was used to sensitively and accurately measure the capacitance of the projected electrodes. The required characteristics of the projected capacitor were identified to develop large-area applications for sensory mattresses. The area of the electrodes, the use of shielding, and the increased length of the transmission line were calibrated to more accurately measure the capacitance of the electrodes in large-size applications. To offer the users comfort in the prone position, a flexible substrate was selected and covered with 16 × 20 electrodes. Compared with the static charge sensitive bed (SCSB), our proposed system-flexible projected capacitive-sensing mattress (FPCSM) comes with more electrodes to increase the resolution of posture identification. As for the body pressure system (BPS), the FPCSM has advantages such as lower cost, higher aging-resistance capability, and the ability to sense the capacitance of the covered regions without physical contact. The proposed guard ring design effectively absorbs the noise and interrupts leakage paths. The projected capacitive electrode is suitable for proximity-sensing applications and succeeds at quickly recognizing the sleeping pattern of the user.

This study presents an animal mobility system, equipped with a positioning running wheel (PRW), as a way to quantify the efficacy of an exercise activity for reducing the severity of the effects of the stroke in rats. This system provides more effective animal exercise training than commercially available systems such as treadmills and motorized running wheels (MRWs). In contrast to an MRW that can only achieve speeds below 20 m/min, rats are permitted to run at a stable speed of 30 m/min on a more spacious and high-density rubber running track supported by a 15 cm wide acrylic wheel with a diameter of 55 cm in this work. Using a predefined adaptive acceleration curve, the system not only reduces the operator error but also trains the rats to run persistently until a specified intensity is reached. As a way to evaluate the exercise effectiveness, real-time position of a rat is detected by four pairs of infrared sensors deployed on the running wheel. Once an adaptive acceleration curve is initiated using a microcontroller, the data obtained by the infrared sensors are automatically recorded and analyzed in a computer. For comparison purposes, 3 week training is conducted on rats using a treadmill, an MRW and a PRW. After surgically inducing middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo), modified neurological severity scores (mNSS) and an inclined plane test were conducted to assess the neurological damages to the rats. PRW is experimentally validated as the most effective among such animal mobility systems. Furthermore, an exercise effectiveness measure, based on rat position analysis, showed that there is a high negative correlation between the effective exercise and the infarct volume, and can be employed to quantify a rat training in any type of brain damage reduction experiments.

As a result of population aging, remote electrocardiograph (ECG) monitoring systems have increasingly gained attention. The traditional ECG signal acquisition system has many limitations. This paper presents a high-precision sigma-delta modulator for ECG signal acquisition. The circuit is implemented in a SMIC-EE 0.18 µm process. Simulation results indicate that the signal-to-noise ratios with and without the SMIC-EE 0.18 µm model are 105 and 81.2 dB, respectively, and the corresponding effect numbers of bits are 17.15 and 13.2 bits, respectively, which meet the requirements of a remote ECG monitoring system.

Although it is well known that microbial populations can respond adaptively to challenges from antibiotics, empirical difficulties in distinguishing the roles of de novo mutation and natural selection have left several issues unresolved. Here, we explore the mutational properties of Escherichia coli exposed to long-term sublethal levels of the antibiotic norfloxacin, using a mutation accumulation design combined with whole-genome sequencing of replicate lines. The genome-wide mutation rate significantly increases with norfloxacin concentration. This response is associated with enhanced expression of error-prone DNA polymerases and may also involve indirect effects of norfloxacin on DNA mismatch and oxidative-damage repair. Moreover, we find that acquisition of antibiotic resistance can be enhanced solely by accelerated mutagenesis, i.e., without direct involvement of selection. Our results suggest that antibiotics may generally enhance the mutation rates of target cells, thereby accelerating the rate of adaptation not only to the antibiotic itself but to additional challenges faced by invasive pathogens.

The web of life is weaved from diverse symbiotic interactions between species. Symbioses vary from antagonistic interactions such as competition and predation to beneficial interactions such as mutualism. What are the bases for the origin and persistence of symbiosis? What affects the ecology and evolution of symbioses? How do symbiotic interactions generate ecological patterns? How do symbiotic partners evolve and coevolve? Many of these questions are difficult to address in natural systems. Artificial systems, from abstract to living, have been constructed to capture essential features of natural symbioses and to address these key questions. With reduced complexity and increased controllability, artificial systems can serve as useful models for natural systems. We review how artificial systems have contributed to our understanding of symbioses.

In this study, a synthesized cation exchange resin supported nano zero-valent iron (NZVI) complex forming NZVI-resin was proposed for the decoloration of an azo dye Acid Blue 113 (AB 113), taking into account reaction time, initial dye concentration, NZVI dose and pH. From results, the successful decoloration of the AB 113 solution was observed using a NZVI-resin. Increasing the iron load to 50.8 mg g(-1), the removal efficiencies of the AB 113 concentration increased exponentially. With an initial dye concentration of 100 mg l(-1) and nano iron load of 50.8 mg g(-1), the best removal efficiencies were obtained at 100 and 12.6% for dye concentration and total organic carbon, respectively. Color removal efficiency was dependent on initial dye concentration and iron load. Moreover, the removal rates followed modified pseudo-first order kinetic equations with respect to dye concentration. Thus, the observed removal rate constants (k) were 0.137-0.756 min(-1) by NZVI loads of 4.9-50.8 mg g(-1). Consequently, the NZVI-resin performed effectively for the decoloration of AB 113 azo dye, offering great potential in the application of NZVI-resins in larger scale column tests and further field processes.

A semi-empirical, stacked capacitor model was developed to calculate the dielectric constants (k) and deposition rates of hafnium silicate (HfSiO) deposited by nano-laminated atomic layer deposition (NL-ALD) from the HfO2 and SiO2 ALD cycles (m and n, respectively). The calculations agree well with the experimental data, with an accuracy of 90%. The model enables the deposition of HfSiO with desired thicknesses and any dielectric constants ranging from 7 to 19 using proper combinations of m and n. The systematic study on the effects of various combinations of m and n that give similar dielectric constants showed that increasing m and n enhances the dielectric scalability due to less defects formed at the high- k/IL oxide interface during NL-ALD, but degrades the electrical stability due to more severe charge trapping. Changing m and n has no significant effect on thermal stability and electron mobility.

For the first time, a shallow trench isolation (STI)-induced enhanced degradation in pMOSFETs for ultrathin gate oxide devices has been observed. The I/sub D/ degradation is enhanced as a reduction in the gate width and the hot carrier (HC) or negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) effect. Extensive studies have been compared for atomic layer deposition (ALD)-grown and plasma-treated oxide pMOSFETs. Different temperature dependences were observed. At room temperature, hole trap is dominant for the device degradation, in which hole-trap-induced V/sub T/ is significant, whereas at high temperature under NBTI stress, interface trap becomes more significant, which dominates the device I/sub D/ degradation. In addition, the V/sub T/ rolloff can be modeled as a width narrowing effect specifically for STI. More importantly, the NBTI-induced interface/oxide traps are strongly related to the hydrogen and N/sub 2/ content in the gate oxide formation process. The interface trap generation is suppressed efficiently using the ALD-grown gate oxide. These results provide a valuable guideline for the understanding of the HC and NBTI reliabilities in an advanced ALD-grown gate oxide processes/devices.

In this paper, an algorithm to extract respiration signals using a flexible projected capacitive sensing mattress (FPCSM) designed for personal health assessment is proposed. Unlike the interfaces of conventional measurement systems for poly-somnography (PSG) and other alternative contemporary systems, the proposed FPCSM uses projected capacitive sensing capability that is not worn or attached to the body. The FPCSM is composed of a multi-electrode sensor array that can not only observe gestures and motion behaviors, but also enables the FPCSM to function as a respiration monitor during sleep using the proposed approach. To improve long-term monitoring when body movement is possible, the FPCSM enables the selection of data from the sensing array, and the FPCSM methodology selects the electrodes with the optimal signals after the application of a channel reduction algorithm that counts the reversals in the capacitive sensing signals as a quality indicator. The simple algorithm is implemented in the time domain. The FPCSM system is used in experimental tests and is simultaneously compared with a commercial PSG system for verification. Multiple synchronous measurements are performed from different locations of body contact, and parallel data sets are collected. The experimental comparison yields a correlation coefficient of 0.88 between FPCSM and PSG, demonstrating the feasibility of the system design.

Cellular proteins are the mediators of multiple organism functions being involved in physiological mechanisms and disease. By discovering lead compounds that affect the function of target proteins, the target diseases or physiological mechanisms can be modulated. Based on knowledge of the ligand-receptor interaction, the chemical structures of leads can be modified to improve efficacy, selectivity and reduce side effects. One rational drug design technology, which enables drug discovery based on knowledge of target structures, functional properties and mechanisms, is computer-aided drug design (CADD). The application of CADD can be cost-effective using experiments to compare predicted and actual drug activity, the results from which can used iteratively to improve compound properties. The two major CADD-based approaches are structure-based drug design, where protein structures are required, and ligand-based drug design, where ligand and ligand activities can be used to design compounds interacting with the protein structure. Approaches in structure-based drug design include docking, de novo design, fragment-based drug discovery and structure-based pharmacophore modeling. Approaches in ligand-based drug design include quantitative structure-affinity relationship and pharmacophore modeling based on ligand properties. Based on whether the structure of the receptor and its interaction with the ligand are known, different design strategies can be seed. After lead compounds are generated, the rule of five can be used to assess whether these have drug-like properties. Several quality validation methods, such as cost function analysis, Fisher's cross-validation analysis and goodness of hit test, can be used to estimate the metrics of different drug design strategies. To further improve CADD performance, multi-computers and graphics processing units may be applied to reduce costs.

This paper presents a cost-effective sensor system for the applications of large area array sensing. Unlike the traditional pressure sensing methods, projected capacitor technologies are proposed for sensing. The rapid charge time method is utilized to measure the capacitance values of the projected capacitive array electrodes. By constructing the process of projected capacitive array electrode, the required characteristics of the projected capacitor are identified, especially characteristics for large area applications. Three main factors, the area of electrodes, the use of shielding and gap between the guard ring and the electrode, also affect the capacitance primary value especially in the large-size applications. At last, a flexible projected capacitive sensing array with 8 × 10 electrodes was implemented to validate the feasibility of projected capacitive array electrodes.

Plasma-induced damage in various 3-nm-thick gate oxides (i.e., pure oxides and N/sub 2/O-nitrided oxides) was investigated by subjecting both nMOS and pMOS antenna devices to a photoresist ashing step after metal pad definition. Both charge-to-breakdown and gate leakage current measurements indicated that large leakage current occurs at the wafer center as well as the wafer edge for pMOS devices, while only at the wafer center for nMOS devices. These interesting observations could be explained by the strong polarity dependence of ultra thin oxides in charge-to-breakdown measurements of nMOS devices. In addition, pMOS devices were found to be more susceptible to charging damage, which can be attributed to the intrinsic polarity dependence in tunneling current between nand p-MOSFETs. More importantly, our experimental results demonstrated that stress-induced leakage current (SILC) caused by plasma damage can be significantly suppressed in N/sub 2/O-nitrided oxides, compared to pure oxides, especially for pMOS devices. Finally, nitrided oxides were also found to be more robust when subjected to high temperature stressing. Therefore, nitrided oxides appear to be very promising for reducing plasma charging damage in future ULSI technologies employing ultrathin gate oxides.

Ultrathin gate oxide, which is essential for low supply voltage and high driving capability, is indispensable for the continued scaling of ULSI technologies towards smaller and faster devices. Needless to say, the reliability of ultrathin oxide is of major concerns in the manufacturing of the state-of-the-art metal-oxide-semiconductor devices. This paper reviews the reliability issues regarding ultrathin gate oxide for present and future ULSI technologies. Issues including gate leakage current, time-dependent dielectric breakdown, poly-gate depletion, boron penetration, and plasma process-induced damage will be addressed. Several techniques such as nitrided oxide and alternative processes, which are proposed to improve gate oxide reliabilities, are also discussed.

Charging damage induced in oxides with thickness ranging from 8.7 to 2.5 nm is investigated. Results of charge-to-breakdown ( Q bd ) measurements performed on control devices indicate that the polarity dependence increases with decreasing oxide thickness at both room and elevated temperature (180°C) conditions. As the oxide thickness is thinned down below 3 nm, the Q bd becomes very sensitive to the stressing current density and temperature. Experimental results show that severe antenna effect would occur during plasma ashing treatment in devices with gate oxides as thin as 2.6 nm. It is concluded that high stressing current level, negative plasma charging, and high process temperature are key factors responsible for the damage.

Anomalously high gate tunneling current, induced by high-tensile-stress memorization technique, is reported in this letter. Carrier-separation measurement method shows that the increased gate tunneling current is originated from the higher gate-to-source/drain (S/D) tunneling current, which worsens when channel length is getting shorter. Also, the device with enhanced tensile strain exhibits 9% higher gate-to-S/D overlapping capacitance. These data indicate that the anomalously high gate tunneling current could be attributed to the high tensile strain that induces the effects of excessive lightly doped dopant diffusion and higher gate-edge damage. The proposed inference is confirmed by channel hot-electron stress.

This study implemented a forced running wheel system which applied automatic exercise training model to replace the traditional treadmill that trained animals manually. The proposed platform will be further applied to the efficacy of pre-conditioning exercise induced neuroprotection to prevent the animal stroke model. This proposed forced running wheel system not only solved the shortcomings of traditional treadmill use of electric shocks to force the mice to running, but more scientific method to construct the automatic training model to train the animals to achieve the purpose of endurance exercises. The experiments were processed from the mouse without the running wheel experiences to start training until the fifth day, and the experimental data was analyzed to construct an accelerative exercise training curve of exponential type from 0 - 20 meters per minute. Preliminary results indicate that the similar increase degrees of body temperature after exercising, compared the proposed automatic platform with the traditional treadmill, verifying the feasibility of this system.

Master devices, slave devices, system, and methods thereof in a master-slave tree network are provided. The system comprises a master device and a plurality of slave devices. The method is performed by a first slave device, comprises distributing a first beacon to a second slave device upon determining no beacon being received in a predetermined period; determining a neighboring node from a neighboring node list to establish an alternative connection to the master device, and requesting a new node identifier identifying the first slave device from the master device, thereby completing establishment of the alternative connection.

Purpose We analyzed the expression of angiogenesis-related factors in corneal tissues that had undergone previously autologous cultivated oral mucosal epithelial transplantation (COMET). Methods Six eyes from four chemically- and two thermally-injured patients with limbal stem cell deficiency who received COMET to promote wound healing were studied retrospectively. Immunoconfocal microscopy was performed on corneal specimens from the patients after COMET, as well on normal corneas, conjunctiva, and oral mucosa for keratin 8, fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF-2), VEGF, collagen XVIII (endostatin), pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFlt-1), tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-3 (TIMP-3), thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1), and interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra). Results FGF-2, VEGF, endostatin, PEDF, and IL-1ra were detected in all the samples, with signals for FGF-2, VEGF, and IL-1ra localized to the full-thickness epithelial layer, as signals for endostatin limited to the basement membrane. Expression of PEDF varied in tissues, with a preferential expression in the suprabasal epithelial layer. FGF-2 and IL-1ra were abundantly expressed in the basal epithelial layer in specimens with increased stratification. Signals for sFlt-1, TIMP-3, and TSP-1 were detected in normal corneal epithelium, and in a specimen containing corneal epithelium, but were negative in all other specimens. Conclusions Expression of FGF-2, VEGF, PEDF, endostatin, and IL-1ra was similar in normal corneas, conjunctiva, oral mucosa, and corneas after COMET. Expression of sFlt-1, TIMP-3, and TSP-1 was limited to normal corneas and negative for other tissues. A lack of the aforementioned antiangiogenic factors may contribute to the peripheral corneal neovascularization seen after COMET.

Plasma-induced damage in various 3-nm thick gate oxides (i.e., pure O/sub 2/ and N/sub 2/O-nitrided oxides) was investigated by subjecting both nMOS and pMOS antenna devices to a photoresist ashing step after metal pad definition. Gate leakage current measurements indicated that large leakage current occurs at the wafer center as well as at the wafer edge for pMOS devices, while it occurs only at the wafer center for nWOS devices. These interesting observations could be explained by the polarity dependence of ultrathin oxides in charge-to-breakdown measurements. Additionally, ultrathin N/sub 2/O-nitrided oxides show superior immunity to charging damage, especially for pMOS devices.

As the growth of Ethernet speed surpassed the growth of microprocessor performance, TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) technology has emerged and aimed at not only releasing servers and communication systems from burdened conventional TCP/IP stack but improving the network utilization rate. To lower the risk in developing TOE, one may rely on certain platform containing a single or plurality of embedded microprocessor(s). However, one may find that it is not easy to use such slow-clocked microprocessor(s) to achieve the high speed goal. Hence this paper proposed 5 design guidelines and a corresponding architecture in TOE offloading which come out with experimental results showing that the proposed design further approaches the limit of 1Gbps Ethernet, i.e. 858.82 Mbps as receiving and 793.25 Mbps as transmitting while saves 2/3 to 3/4 computation power compared with using conventional TCP/IP stack.

This paper describes an infrared-sensing running wheel (ISRW) system for the quantitative measurement of effective exercise activity in rats. The ISRW system provides superior exercise training compared with commercially available traditional animal running platforms. Four infrared (IR) light-emitting diode/detector pairs embedded around the rim of the wheel detect the rat's real-time position; the acrylic wheel has a diameter of 55 cm and a thickness of 15 cm, that is, it is larger and thicker than traditional exercise wheels, and it is equipped with a rubber track. The acrylic wheel hangs virtually frictionless, and a DC motor with an axially mounted rubber wheel, which has a diameter of 10 cm, drives the acrylic wheel from the outer edge. The system can automatically train rats to run persistently. The proposed system can determine effective exercise activity (EEA), with the IR sensors (which are connected to a conventional PC) recording the rat exercise behavior. A prototype of the system was verified by a hospital research group performing ischemic stroke experiments on rats by considering middle cerebral artery occlusion. The experimental data demonstrated that the proposed system provides greater neuroprotection in an animal stroke model compared with a conventional treadmill and a motorized running wheel for a given exercise intensity. The quantitative exercise effectiveness indicator showed a 92% correlation between an increase in the EEA and a decrease in the infarct volume. This indicator can be used as a noninvasive and objective reference in clinical animal exercise experiments.

Monitoring of plasma charging damage in ultrathin oxides (e.g.

We present an optical metrology solution based on fab-proven thin film ellipometry system for ultrathin nitrided gate oxide production control in semiconductor manufacturing.

For the first time, a novel hybrid SOI/bulk CMOS technology with 20nm gate length and low-leakage 1.3nm thick SiON gate dielectric has been developed for advanced SOC applications. 26% (for N-FET) and 35% (for P-FET) improvements of intrinsic gate delay (CV/I) at low gate leakage of 20-40A/cm/sup 2/ have been achieved over previous leading-edge 45nm node version, while maintaining the same sub-threshold leakage (100nA//spl mu/m). 10 times reduction of the leakage can be further modulated by a virtual back-gate control. Fine patterning with line pitch of 90nm by immersion lithography is demonstrated, which features 0.183/spl mu/m/sup 2/ 6T-SRAM cell for 32nm node on-trend scaling.

In this paper, we present new results on the width dependent hot-carrier (HC) reliabilities for shallow-trench-isolated (STI) pMOSFETs in a multiple oxide CMOS technology. For the first time, different phenomena in pMOSFETs, for a multiple oxide process have been observed. Extensive studies have been made for ALD grown and plasma treated oxide pMOSFETs. Experimental data shows that the drain current degradation is enhanced for a reducing gate width. For thick oxide, the I/sub D/ degradation is due to the channel length shortening, and the electron trap is dominant for the device degradation. While for thin gate oxide, the I/sub D/ degradation is due to width narrowing, and the hole trap is dominant, in which both electron and hole trap induced V/sub T/ shifts are significant. The degradation in thick-oxide pMOSFETs causes an increase of off-state leakage current and an increase of /spl Delta/V/sub T/ in thin-oxide with reduced width.