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Nanowire thin films exhibiting superhydrophobicity or even superomniphobicity can protect themselves from liquid contamination. However, high contact angle of these thin films with liquid droplets limits the interfacial area between liquids and nanowire network, which is unfavorable for applications such as sensing suspended liquid droplets. In this study, slippery surface based on lubricant infused hierarchical Si nanowire film was developed, which provided low contact angle with liquid droplet, while possessing liquid repellent properties upon slight tilting. Si nanowire films were fabricated through chemical vapor deposition and were further branched with ZnO nanospikes for enhanced immobilization of lubricant. These hierarchical nanowire films were functionalized to enhance their superhydrophobicity and were further infused with perfluorinated lubricant to produce slippery surface. These infused slippery surfaces exhibited low contact angles with blood and corn oil along with high repellency towards these liquids. This study offers a promising approach for creating nanowire films that avoid liquid contamination.

Dexmedetomidine is an important sedative agent administered as premedication to achieve procedural sedation in children. To describe the correlation between the genetic state and the concentration of dexmedetomidine, it is necessary to develop a specific, time-saving and economical method for detection of dexmedetomidine in plasma samples. In this work, an ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC)-tandem mass spectrometry method has been established and validated for detection of dexmedetomidine in plasma from pediatric population. After a simple liquid-liquid extraction with an organic solution, the analytes were separated on an ACQUITY BEH C18 column (2.1 mm × 50 mm, 1.7 μm particle size) by gradient elution with the mobile phase of acetonitrile and 1‰ aqueous formic acid (flow rate 0.3 mL min-1 ). Mass spectrometry measurements were performed under the positive selected reaction monitoring and the mass transitions monitored were m/z 201.3 → 95.1, 204.2 → 98.0 for dexmedetomidine and deuterated medetomidine (internal standard), respectively. Validation of the method based on China Food and Drug Administration guidelines showed acceptable selectivity. The UHPLC method employed a stable isotope-labeled internal standard, showed good specificity and was successfully used to detect dexmedetomidine in plasma samples from 260 pediatric patients. A subsequent application of this method to a pharmacogenetic study was also described. Importantly, this is the first study to report the correlation between CYP2A6 rs835309 activity and concentration of dexmedetomidine.

To study the accuracy of 3D printing implant-guided anterior tooth implantation under flap or flapless surgery.Twenty-one cases (32 teeth) with missing teeth were divided into two groups: tooth implantation on the maxillary models under flap surgery (FP group) and tooth implantation on the maxillary models under flapless surgery (FPS group). A dental implant guide was designed and used in the two groups. The actual position of the dental implants in the two groups was compared with the preplanned deviation values of implant top, bottom, vertical distance, and angle deviation. SPSS 19.0 software was used for statistical analysis.The deviation values of implant top, bottom, vertical distance, and angle were significantly lower in the FP group than in the FPS group (P0.05).High accuracy of tooth implantation can be realized by using the 3D printing implant guide. The different surgical methods influence the precision of tooth implantation. Clinicians can choose the surgery reasonably depending on the actual situation.目的 比较3D打印种植导板引导前牙牙种植在不同术式下的精度。方法 选择21例（32个牙位）牙缺失患者，制作仿真翻瓣与不翻瓣颌骨模型，分为翻瓣组（FP组）与不翻瓣组（FPS组），分别设计制作牙种植导板，比较两组牙种植体实际位置与术前规划在顶端、底端、垂直向距离的偏差值和角度偏差值。采用SPSS 19.0软件对数据进行统计学分析。结果 FPS组与FP组种植体顶端、底端、垂直向距离偏差值和角度偏差值的差异均有统计学意义（P0.05）；与FPS组相比，FP组偏差值更小，精度更高。结论 3D打印种植导板可提高牙种植的精确性，翻瓣与不翻瓣的不同术式对牙种植精度有一定的影响，临床医生可根据实际情况合理选择术式。.

Advanced oxidation protein products (AOPPs) can trigger NADPH oxidase (NOX) and lead to the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the pathophysiology of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Hydroxytyrosol (HT) is a phenolic composite in olive oil that has antioxidant and anti‑inflammatory effects and enhances autophagy. Early research has revealed that HT can activate the silent information regulator 1 (SIRT1) pathway to induce autophagy and alleviate the cartilage inflammatory response caused by H2O2. However, whether HT can attenuate AOPP‑induced NOX and inflammatory responses remains to be elucidated. The present study aimed to investigate how HT can alleviate the damage caused by AOPPs. In cell experiments, chondrocytes were pre‑stimulated with HT and then exposed to AOPPs. First, it was found that HT promoted autophagy through the SIRT1 pathway, increased the expression of autophagy‑related proteins including microtubule‑associated protein 1 light chain 3, autophagy related (ATG)5 and ATG7, and decreased the expression of P62. Furthermore, HT reduced the expression of NOX, which was affected by AOPPs in chondrocytes through the SIRT1 pathway. Finally, the expression of inflammatory cytokines caused by AOPPs was downregulated following HT treatment. In conclusion, it was found that HT reduced the expression of NOX and inhibited the inflammatory response caused by AOPPs in chondrocytes through the SIRT1 pathway.

Implant-associated infection (IAI), a common condition marked by progressive inflammation and bone destruction, is mentally and financially devastating to those it affects, causing severe morbidity, prolonged hospital admissions, significant hospital costs and, in certain cases, mortality. Aspirin, a popular synthetic compound with a history of >100 years, is antipyretic, anti-inflammatory and analgesic. It is the most active component of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. However, the effects of aspirin on IAI remain unknown. In the present study, an IAI animal model was used, in which a stainless steel pin coated with Staphylococcus aureus was implanted through the left shaft of the tibia in mice. The animals were then randomized into five groups and subjected respectively to IAI, IAI + 15 mg aspirin treatment, IAI + 30 mg aspirin treatment, IAI + 60 mg aspirin treatment and IAI + 120 mg aspirin treatment groups. Aspirin was injected intraperitoneally twice daily for 11 days. Micro-CT and histological assays were performed to assess the effects of aspirin on IAI. It was found that aspirin reduced osteolysis and periosteal reaction, inhibited the activation of osteoclasts, promoted the activation of osteoblasts and facilitated healing of the infected fracture.

The present study aimed to investigate and compare the analgesic effect and safety of ropivacaine or levobupivacaine in combined spinal-epidural anesthesia during childbirth and their effects on neonatal Apgar scores, as well as maternal and neonatal vital signs. A total of 615 maternal patients undergoing labor between April 2016 and March 2017 were divided into two groups according to the analgesic used for combined spinal-epidural anesthesia during childbirth: The ropivacaine group (n=318) and the levobupivacaine group (n=297). The onset time of analgesia in the two groups was determined and the pain score on the visual analog scale was assessed at the time of delivery (T3). At pre-analgesia, 30 min after analgesia (T2), at T3 and during maternal wound suturing (T4), the systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and heart rate (HR) were assessed. The cesarean section rate, neonatal 1- and 5-min Apgar scores and neonatal asphyxia at T4 were also determined. The onset time of analgesia in the ropivacaine group was significantly reduced compared with that in the levobupivacaine group (P

In this paper, an X-band air-cooled high efficiency traveling wave tube with coupled-cavity slow-wave structure and four-stage depressed collector was developed. The experimental results show that its average output power can reach more than 850 W and total efficiency is over 40% in the operating band (800 MHz). The X-band air-cooled high efficiency coupled-cavity traveling wave tube has met the requirements of airborne environment.

Real-time transdermal biosensing provides a direct route to quantify biomarkers or physiological signals of local tissues. Although microneedles (MNs) present a mini-invasive transdermal technique, integration of MNs with advanced nanostructures to enhance sensing functionalities has rarely been achieved. This is largely due to the fact that nanostructures present on MNs surface could be easily destructed due to friction during skin insertion. In this work, we reported a dissolvable polymer-coating technique to protect nanostructures-integrated MNs from mechanical destruction during MNs insertion. After penetration into the skin, the polymer could readily dissolve by interstitial fluids so that the superficial nanostructures on MNs could be re-exposed for sensing purpose. To demonstrate this technique, metallic and resin MNs decorated with vertical ZnO nanowires (vNWs) were employed as an example. Dissolvable poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) was spray-coated on the vNW-MNs surface as a protective layer, which effectively protected the superficial ZnO NWs when MNs penetrated the skin. Transdermal biosensing of H2O2 biomarker in skin tissue using the polymer-protecting MNs sensor was demonstrated both ex vivo and in vivo. The results indicated that polymer coating successfully preserved the sensing functionalities of the MNs sensor after inserting into the skin, whereas the sensitivity of the MN sensor without a coating protection was significantly compromised by 3-folds. This work provided unique opportunities of protecting functional nanomodulus on MNs surface for minimally invasive transdermal biosensing.

Student pose information plays an important role in teaching management and evaluation. Thus, it is meaningful to acquire student pose information fast and precisely. Although the pose estimation techniques are well-studied recently, it is still challenging to apply existing methods to handle this task due to heavy occlusion in the educational environment. Different from the pose estimation, we consider pose detection as a specific problem of object detection. However, compared with generic object detection problems, pose detection usually suffers from poor detection performance due to the challenges of similar categories, object with small sizes, quantity imbalance of categories, etc. To address these issues, we propose a new pose detection method based on a single-stage object detector. We present a multi-scale feature enrichment branch to obtain balanced and robust features. Then we adopt an adaptive fusion mechanism to learn complementary spatial features, making our feature extractor more discriminative. Besides, an adaptive positive sample training strategy is adopted to select robust positive samples and make full use of high-quality predicted positive samples when training by the adaptive Smooth L1 loss. Experimental results show that the proposed method obviously outperforms other single-stage object detection methods on the real classroom pose datasets.

Electrophysiological study that records the action potential of cardiomyocyte served as excellent tool to explore cardiology and neuroscience, disease investigation and pharmacological screening. Advances of micro/nanotechnologies promote the development of three-dimensional (3D) nanodevices to record high-quality intracellular recordings by various perforation approaches of cells, however, the complicated fabrication processes limited their large-scale manufacture. In this work, a unique nanobranched microelectrode array (NBMEA) platform is developed to achieve high-quality intracellular recording of cultured cardiomyocytes in a minimally invasive manner. The NBMEA is consisting of high aspect ratio conductive nanobranches fabricated on patterned microelectrodes combining hydrothermal growth and standard microfabrication. The 3D structure of nanobranches enables the electrode to form tight coupling with cardiomyocytes to achieve the low voltage cell electroporation and high-quality intracellular recording. The recorded intracellular action potentials of cardiomyocytes by NBMEA exhibited significant enhancement on amplitude (~5 mV), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) (~67.47 dB), recording duration (up to 105 min), and recording yield (69.5 ± 17.8%). This NBMEA platform is a promising and powerful tool for electrophysiology that opens up new opportunities for high-quality and stable intracellular recording of cardiomyocytes.

Optical buffer can not only solve the competition problem of the same port, but also provide an adjustable buffer time for nodes to process the frame header. In this study, an optical buffer using the nonreciprocal waveguide composed of magneto-optical material was introduced. The dispersion equations and nonreciprocal propagation characteristics of surface magneto-plasmons in gyroelectric and gyromagnetic semiconductor waveguides under the external magnetic field were studied. By using the C-band gyroelectric semiconductor, the surface magneto-plasmons in the nonreciprocal frequency region could be localized near the interface between dielectric and metal in the waveguide system. The signal evolution, effective buffer time and readout operation in the buffer were also investigated.

Circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection has become a powerful tool for early diagnosis of metastasis and precise monitoring of cancer progression. While existing microchips have achieved promising progress on CTC capture, facile release and in situ regulation of CTC from devices for downstream analysis have rarely been realized. Herein, we demonstrated a porous nanoflower substrate (PNFS)-embedded microfluidic device that integrated multiple functionalities of effective CTC capture, in situ intracellular delivery, and nondestructive CTC release on a single device. The core of the device, PNFS, consisting of hierarchical Zn-phosphate composite structure on a nanoporous membrane, was produced by converting from micro/nano-fabricated ZnO nanostraws by low-temperature hydrothermal method and could be degraded via sodium citrate solution treatment for 20 min. Cancer cells could be captured on the PNFS with high efficiency up to 93.9 ± 1.7% after specific antibody conjugations, and be non-destructively released from the PNFS by using biocompatible sodium citrate to rapidly dissolve the PNFS at room temperature. In addition, the degradable PNFS was integrated with a microfluidic electroporation device, allowing in situ intracellular molecular delivery into the captured cells for cell modifications, where such reengineered cells could be further released for subsequent applications. This device promises to be a versatile and efficient platform for CTC analysis, with great potential for the futuristic cell-based cancer diagnostics and therapies.

Surface magnetoplasmons (SMPs) is a kind of near-field electromagnetic wave, which propagates at the interface of dielectricand magneto-optical material under the action of biased magnetic field. Because SMPs have excellent anti-interference and backscattering-immune properties, it has attracted wide attention of researchers in recent years, but there are still many problems in the design of waveguide structures. When electromagnetic waves propagate in magneto-optical materials, the faraday rotation effect makes the bias magnetic field and the magnetic field vector (or electrical displacement vector) not in the same direction, so the anti-angle elements of the second-order matrix of magnetic permeability (or dielectric constant) are asymmetric. This asymmetrymakes electromagnetic waves non-reciprocal when propagating in specific directions in magneto-optical materials, and can even achieve one-way propagation in a certain frequency range. In this paper, a structure of three-layerplanar waveguide with silver, silicon, and magneto-optical material is studied. SMPs propagate at the interface between silicon and magneto-optical materials. This work numerically calculates the dispersion relation of the waveguide and the band gap of the magneto-optical material. It is found that both the fundamental mode and the higher-order mode of SMPs have one-way propagation characteristics in forward or backward directionwithin a specific frequency range. The dispersion relation of the planar waveguides with gyromagnetic material andgyroelectricmaterial are calculated respectively. As a result, the thickness of silicon layer and the external magnetic field have significant influence on bulk mode and the one-way propagation region of SMPs. By increasing the thickness of the silicon layer or increasing the intensity of the magnetic field, the higher-order mode can appear at the lower frequency region, thus compressing the one-way propagation region or even losing the one-way propagation mode. The one-way propagation bandwidth of planar waveguideswith gyromagnetic material YIG and gyroelectric material InSbare calculated. Bycalculating the dispersion relation of the waveguide SMPs and the band gap of the magneto-optical material for each group of magnetic field and the thickness of Si, the colormap of YIG waveguideand InSbwaveguide under 400–2000Oe magnetic field and 0.1–​​​​​​​1 T magnetic field are obtained. As a result, the one-way mode of YIG waveguide appears in GHz band, and the maximum bandwidth for both forward and backward one-way propagation is 2.45 GHz. While, the one-way mode of InSbwaveguide appears in THz band, the maximum one-way propagation bandwidth in forward and backward directions are 3.9 THz and 3.12 THz. The research results in this paper are of great significance for the design and fabrication of non-reciprocal waveguides with one-waypropagation characteristics.

The development of wearable strain sensors for the human-machine interface has attracted considerable research interest. Most existing wearable strain sensors were incapable of simultaneously detecting strain amplitudes and directions, and they failed to fully record stretching vectors that occurred on the body. Graphene and graphene-derived materials have been utilized to construct wearable strain sensors with excellent electrical sensitivities. Although the growth techniques of planar graphene and vertical graphene (VG) have been established, the fabrication of VG aligned in parallel within a larger area has not been previously achieved. Here, parallelly aligned VG (PAVG) in a large area was successfully fabricated and constructed as a wearable strain vector sensor. The PAVG was fabricated via inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition assisted by metal inducers. The as-fabricated sensor was electrically anisotropic because of the profiles of the VG nanosheets aligned in parallel. Therefore, the sensor could simultaneously and sensitively detect the direction and the amplitude of the strain vectors with excellent accuracy. Application of this strain vector sensor for the human-sensor interface to identify the stretching directions and amplitudes of finger joints was also demonstrated. This work established the fabrication methodology of graphene with unique vertical and parallel alignment morphology. This study introduced a new opportunity of developing wearable sensors that could fully detect multidirectional human actions.

Wireless power transfer (WPT) offers the promise of cutting the last cord, marking users to recharge portable electronic devices easily through the air. In the conventional transmitting coil array for wireless power transmission, an opposite magnetic field will create at the gap between the unit. Consequently, the power transfer efficiency is decreased at gap of resonator unit. To alleviate this problem, adding a coil to a conventional array to form a five-coil array structure is proposed in this article. The results show that the transmission efficiency at these locations will reach above 70%. In comparisons with the conventional system, the proposed transmitting system provides a higher wireless power transmission efficiency.

This paper studies the bipartite consensus problem for second-order multi-agent systems with distinct disturbances. The interactions between agents are described by a signed directed graph. For structurally balanced networks, a generalized bipartite consensus algorithm with disturbances' observers is proposed. Necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained to achieve bipartite consensus with the well designed algorithm by using frequency-domain analysis and matrix theory. Finally, simulations are shown to verify the correctness of presented results.

Summary Background Chloral hydrate, a commonly used sedative in children during noninvasive diagnostic procedures, is associated with side effects like prolonged sedation, paradoxical excitement, delirium, and unpleasant taste. Dexmedetomidine, a highly selective α-2 agonist, has better pharmacokinetic properties than chloral hydrate. We conducted this prospective, double-blind, randomized controlled trial to evaluate efficacy of intranasal dexmedetomidine with that of a second oral dose of chloral hydrate for rescue sedation during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies in infants. Methods One hundred and fifty infants (age group: 1–6 months), who were not adequately sedated after initial oral dose of 50 mg·kg−1 chloral hydrate, were randomly divided into three groups with the following protocol for each group. Group C: second oral dose chloral hydrate 25 mg·kg−1; Group L and Group H: intranasal dexmedetomidine in a dosage of 1 and 2 mcg·kg−1, respectively. Status of sedation, induction time, time to wake up, vital signs, oxygen saturation, and recovery characteristics were recorded. Results Successful rescue sedation in Groups C, L, and H were achieved in 40 (80%), 47 (94%), and 49 (98%) of infants, respectively, on an intention to treat analysis, and the proportion of infants successfully sedated in Group H was more than that of Group L (P ˂ 0.01). There were no significant differences in sedation induction time; however, the time to wake up was significantly shorter in Group L as compared to that in Group C or H (P < 0.01). No significant adverse hemodynamic or hypoxemic effects were observed in the study. Conclusion Intranasal dexmedetomidine induced satisfactory rescue sedation in 1- to 6-month-old infants during MRI study, and appears to cause sedation in a dose-dependent manner.

The recrystallization behavior of cold-rolled Zr–1Nb alloy was investigated by measuring the micro-Vickers hardness of the specimens annealed for various times. Different deformation reductions and annealing temperatures were coupled to study the effects of deformation and temperature on the recrystallization behavior of Zr–1Nb alloy. The results show that both large deformation reduction and high annealing temperature accelerate the recrystallization process. The microstructural evolution during recrystallization was characterized by optical microscope (OM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) to correlate with the variation of Vickers hardness. The TEM observation also revealed the distribution of different types of Nb-containing precipitates during recrystallization. The Vickers hardness data were fitted by using the Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov (JMAK) equation to derive the activation energies for recrystallization, giving the corresponding recrystallization maps. This study provides useful guidelines for the processing of a broad family of zirconium alloys based on Zr–1Nb.

COMSOL finite element software was used to establish a solid-liquid coupling biphasic model of articular cartilage and a microscopic model of chondrocytes, using modeling to take into account the shape and number of chondrocytes in cartilage lacuna in each layer. The effects of cyclic loading at different frequencies on the micromechanical environment of chondrocytes in different regions of the cartilage were studied. The results showed that low frequency loading can cause stress concentration of superficial chondrocytes. Moreover, along with increased frequency, the maximum value of stress response curve of chondrocytes decreased, while the minimum value increased. When the frequency was greater than 0.2 Hz, the extreme value stress of response curve tended to be constant. Cyclic loading had a large influence on the distribution of liquid pressure in chondrocytes in the middle and deep layers. The concentration of fluid pressure changed alternately from intracellular to peripheral in the middle layer. Both the range of liquid pressure in the upper chondrocytes and the maximum value of liquid pressure in the lower chondrocytes in the same lacunae varied greatly in the deep layer. At the same loading frequency, the elastic modulus of artificial cartilage had little effect on the mechanical environment of chondrocytes.

Implantable sensors that detect biomarkers in vivo are critical for early disease diagnostics. Although many colloidal nanomaterials have been developed into optical sensors to detect biomolecules in vitro, their application in vivo as implantable sensors is hindered by potential migration or clearance from the implantation site. One potential solution is incorporating colloidal nanosensors in hydrogel scaffold prior to implantation. However, direct contact between the nanosensors and hydrogel matrix has the potential to disrupt sensor performance. Here, we develop a hollow-microcapsule-based sensing platform that protects colloidal nanosensors from direct contact with hydrogel matrix. Using microfluidics, colloidal nanosensors were encapsulated in polyethylene glycol microcapsules with liquid cores. The microcapsules selectively trap the nanosensors within the core while allowing free diffusion of smaller molecules such as glucose and heparin. Glucose-responsive quantum dots or gold nanorods or heparin-responsive gold nanorods were each encapsulated. Microcapsules loaded with these sensors showed responsive optical signals in the presence of target biomolecules (glucose or heparin). Furthermore, these microcapsules can be immobilized into biocompatible hydrogel as implantable devices for biomolecular sensing. This technique offers new opportunities to extend the utility of colloidal nanosensors from solution-based detection to implantable device-based detection.

Synthesis, surface modification, characterization and static contact angle analysis details of ZnO@TiO2 hierarchical nanowire network

Extraordinary water-repelling properties of superhydrophobic surfaces make them novel candidates for a great variety of potential applications. A general approach to achieve superhydrophobicity requires low-energy coating on the surface and roughness on nano- and micrometre scale. However, typical construction of superhydrophobic surfaces with micro-nano structure through top-down fabrication is restricted by sophisticated fabrication techniques and limited choices of substrate materials. Micro-nanoscale topographies templated by conventional microparticles through surface coating may produce large variations in roughness and uncontrollable defects, resulting in poorly controlled surface morphology and wettability. In this work, micro-nanoscale hierarchical nanowire network was fabricated to construct self-cleaning coating using one-dimensional TiO 2 nanowires as microscale templates. Hierarchical structure with homogeneous morphology was achieved by branching ZnO nanowires on the TiO 2 nanowire backbones through hydrothermal reaction. The hierarchical nanowire network displayed homogeneous micro/nano-topography, in contrast to hierarchical structure templated by traditional microparticles. This hierarchical nanowire network film exhibited high repellency to both water and cell culture medium after functionalization with fluorinated organic molecules. The hierarchical structure templated by TiO 2 nanowire coating significantly increased the surface superhydrophobicity compared to vertical ZnO nanowires with nanotopography alone. Our results demonstrated a promising strategy of using nanowires as microscale templates for the rational design of hierarchical coatings with desired superhydrophobicity that can also be applied to various substrate materials.