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Abstract: SnO2 precursor inks with appropriate viscosity and surface tension were prepared using the sol–gel technique with anhydrous ethanol as the primary solvent. The inks were printed on both alumina ceramic and silicon substrates using an ink printing apparatus produced by modifying a commercial printer. SnO2 based gas-sensing films with different thicknesses and additives were formed, and the morphologies and electrical properties of these films were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and an instrument designed to measure the gas sensing abilities of the films. A linear relationship was observed between the natural logarithm of the electrical resistance of the SnO2 films and the reciprocal of the films’ absolute working temperature in the range between 20°C and 265°C. The electrical and gas-sensing properties of the films changed significantly with the thickness of the films. The film thickness can be easily adjusted by modifying the number of printing events. The SnO2 films selectivity for various gases could be modified by utilizing different additives. This work also showed that ink-jet printing was a convenient and low-cost method to prepare gas-sensing films with controlled film thickness and additive level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

[Display omitted] • Flexible GP-PANI/PVDF film with multi-hierarchical porous structure. • The sensor with 10% response to 100 ppb NH 3 at room temperature. • Graphene as additives enhancing the flexibility of the sensor. • Three synergistical roles effect on the film's high NH 3 sensing performance. Resistive-type polyaniline (PANI) based sensing film was fabricated by a simple in-situ polymerization method with graphene (GP) as additives on flexible porous polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) substrate. The fabricated flexible GP-PANI/PVDF membrane demonstrates a multi-hierarchical porous microstructure, enhancing its sensing performance towards ammonia (NH 3). The optimized GP-PANI/PVDF sensor shows 60% response towards 1 ppm NH 3 with a response time of 46 s, and 10% response towards 0.1 ppm NH 3 at 24℃, respectively. Moreover, the GP-PANI/PVDF sensor presents excellent flexibility, exhibiting only small response values' difference upon several bending angles and after 1500 bending/extending cycles. Besides, the GP-PANI/PVDF sensor exhibits a strong linear relationship between the NH 3 response values and working temperatures with a range of 24℃∼50℃. The results demonstrate that the flexible GP-PANI/PVDF film sensor holds great promise for the application of portable, lightweight, and room temperature sub-ppm level NH 3 detection devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• PSS-PANI/PVDF flexible film sensor fabricated by in-situ polymerization. • The film with 9.4% response to 100 ppb NH 3 at room temperature. • The film presents excellent selectivity, flexibility and long-time stability. • An excellent linear relationship between the response with NH 3 concentration. Improved ammonia (NH 3) sensor is proposed based on polyaniline (PANI) with poly(styrene sulfonic acid) (PSS) as an additive, which was produced by in-suit polymerization of aniline on flexible porous polyvinylidene-fluoride (PVDF) membranes and then treated with PSS aqueous solution. The whole film sensor fabrication process was low-cost and convenient in operation, suitable for large-scale commercial production. The results demonstrated that the appropriate addition of PSS could significantly improve the sensor response to NH 3. The PSS-PANI/PVDF film sensor response was improved to approximately 70%, which was 2.8 times higher than that of the pure PANI/PVDF film with 25% response towards 1 ppm NH 3 at room temperature. Furthermore, it still showed an excellent response of 9.4% for 0.1 ppm NH 3. The fabricated film sensor showed remarkable long-term stability with response decreases less than 5% after 30 days, and excellent flexibility under 10,000 repeated bending times with a response value degradation of only 15.1% towards 1 ppm NH 3. The flexible PSS-PANI/PVDF film offers potential applications in smart wearable devices for detecting sub-ppm NH 3 under ambient conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Pyrolysis of typical C8 hydrocarbons have been studied. • Experiments were conducted in JSR at various temperatures and residence time. • Components and yields of main light gas products were measured and modelled. • Pyrolysis mechanisms are further assessed with chemical reaction paths. Pyrolysis experiments of typical C8 hydrocarbons, including the straight-chain, branched-chain, cyclic and aromatics structure ones, were carried out using a jet-stirred reactor (JSR) at 1 atm and temperature from 873 K from 1173 K for residence time from 0.2 s to 2.0 s. To assess the carbon number effect, studies were also conducted on two C16 alkanes. The mole fractions of light gases, including H 2 , main C1–C3 alkanes and C2–C4 alkenes in the pyrolysis product, were measured by a gas chromatography (GC). Thereafter, carbon conversion to C1–C4 light gas was determined. Meanwhile, corresponding kinetic modeling was conducted using perfectly stirred reactor (PSR) module in CHEMKIN-PRO. The results revealed that molecule structure has a great impact on not only the overall carbon conversion, but also the components and the individual yields of the main light gases. Non-monotonic variation trend of the yield of some C3–C4 products with pyrolysis temperature and residence time were found. Most light gases are produced within 0.5 s, and the yield is much higher for alkanes. With further increasing of residence time or at high temperatures, different from that of the other C8 hydrocarbons, the amount of C1–C4 pyrolysis products for iso -octane decreases. The mechanisms of the structure effect on the pyrolysis products were also assessed by the reaction path analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protein–protein interactions (PPIs) involve the physical or functional contact between two or more proteins. Generally, proteins that can interact with each other always have special relationships. Some previous studies have reported that gene ontology (GO) terms are related to the determination of PPIs, suggesting the special patterns on the GO terms of proteins in PPIs. In this study, we explored the special GO term patterns on human PPIs, trying to uncover the underlying functional mechanism of PPIs. The experimental validated human PPIs were retrieved from STRING database, which were termed as positive samples. Additionally, we randomly paired proteins occurring in positive samples, yielding lots of negative samples. A simple calculation was conducted to count the number of positive samples for each GO term pair, where proteins in samples were annotated by GO terms in the pair individually. The similar number for negative samples was also counted and further adjusted due to the great gap between the numbers of positive and negative samples. The difference of the above two numbers and the relative ratio compared with the number on positive samples were calculated. This ratio provided a precise evaluation of the occurrence of GO term pairs for positive samples and negative samples, indicating the latent GO term patterns for PPIs. Our analysis unveiled several nuclear biological processes, including gene transcription, cell proliferation, and nutrient metabolism, as key biological functions. Interactions between major proliferative or metabolic GO terms consistently correspond with significantly reported PPIs in recent literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • An approach for detecting human skin odors via wearable electronic nose is studied. • A sensor array based on CNTs/organics composites is applied for diverse VOCs sensing. • Contrast response is extracted and computed by PCA and K-means to identify different odors. Abstract Human skin odor is an important pheromone that can serve as an indicator for physiological status, or as a "fingerprint" for individual identification. It is a complex task to identify the organic components that constitute skin odor. An electronic nose is proposed to identify skin odors. This paper consists four parts. First is to prepare a gas sensor array, two functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are encapsulated by three different polymers to form six sensing materials, and they are deposited on a substrate to form a sensing array. A circuit is designed for data acquisition and wireless transmission. Second, gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry (GS-MC) is carried out to demonstrate the organic components of skin odors. Then, humidity and gas sensing properties of the sensor array are evaluated and tested in the laboratory. Third, human study is designed and conducted for monitoring of skin odor using the prepared electronic nose. The last is signal processing, to achieve highly accurate odor identification, contrast response is extracted as the feature. The best clustering accuracy, which is computed by unsupervised K-means, is 91.67%. This paper represents an important step in the research and development of electronic nose for human skin odor identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An electronic nose system can enhance the selectivity of semiconductor gas-sensor systems but increase system power consumption and signal data processing complexity. Herein, we developed a gas sensor array composed of six ZnO-based micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) sensors prepared by inkjet printing sensing materials on a micro-hotplate. Its power consumption decreased to 36 mW. Furthermore, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm was used to select the optimal features, decreasing the total of 72 features to 5. Finally, support vector machine and artificial neural network models based on the optimal 5 features were performed to recognize and quantify volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including formaldehyde, ethanol, toluene, and xylene. The identification accuracy and R 2 reach 97.9 % and 0.975, respectively. The result demonstrates that the MEMS sensor array, combined with PSO and pattern recognition algorithms, is a promising approach to accurately identifying and quantifying VOCs. [Display omitted] • Inkjet Printing ZnO-based MEMS sensor arrays. • The MEMS sensors show excellent consistency and low power consumption. • PSO algorithm is used to filter the optimal feature vectors. • Combining SVM and ANN produces classification analysis with 97.7 % accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endometrial polyps are common gynecological lesions. The standard treatment for this condition is hysteroscopic polypectomy. However, this procedure may be accompanied by misdetection of endometrial polyps. To improve the diagnostic accuracy and reduce the risk of misdetection, a deep learning model based on YOLOX is proposed to detect endometrial polyps in real time. Group normalization is employed to improve its performance with large hysteroscopic images. In addition, we propose a video adjacent-frame association algorithm to address the problem of unstable polyp detection. Our proposed model was trained on a dataset of 11,839 images from 323 cases provided by a hospital and was tested on two datasets of 431 cases from two hospitals. The results show that the lesion-based sensitivity of the model reached 100% and 92.0% for the two test sets, compared with 95.83% and 77.33%, respectively, for the original YOLOX model. This demonstrates that the improved model may be used effectively as a diagnostic tool during clinical hysteroscopic procedures to reduce the risk of missing endometrial polyps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monodisperse magnetic hydroxyapatite (HAp)/Fe 3 O 4 microspheres were successfully synthesized and explored for the removal of lead(II) from aqueous solution. The mechanism of Pb 2+ uptake was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. The sorption capacity toward Pb 2+ reached 440 mg/g at pH 3.0 and equilibrium was achieved within 1 h. The experimental data followed the Langmuir isotherm model ( R 2 = 0.9969) and the kinetic results accorded with the pseudo-second-order model ( R 2 = 0.9970). The sorption of Pb 2+ on the surfaces of HAp/Fe 3 O 4 and the following ion exchange are the primary mechanism at pH 3.0–6.0. The dissolution–precipitation mechanism response to the removal of Pb 2+ when pH varied from 3.0 to 2.0. The Pb 2+ -loaded magnetic HAp/Fe 3 O 4 could be separated conveniently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent flexible strain sensors based on fabric have caused tremendous attention in the application of wearable devices because of their lightweight and excellent air permeability. It is still a great challenge to achieve excellent stability, high sensitivity, and wide working range. In this work, a high-performance strain sensor with reduced graphene oxide (rGO) reinforced polyaniline (PANI) based on polydopamine (PDA) modified Lycra cotton (LC) electronic textile (e-textile) was fabricated. The strain sensor of PANI/rGO/PDA/LC exhibits high sensitivity with a gauge factor (GF) of 24, a wide strain range of 0.2–50%, and excellent mechanical durability and stability for 1500 stretching/releasing cycles test. Such e-textile is promising to be integrated with other wearable devices to track human motion signals in real-time for human-machine and medical monitoring. [Display omitted] • PANI/rGO/PDA/LC strain sensor is fabricated by in-situ polymerization and dip-coating. • Polydopamine enhances the stability of the strain sensor as adhesives. • The synergistic effect of GP and PANI helps to construct conductive network. • The strain sensor shows excellent sensitivity, stability and durability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep learning stimulates many novel mobile applications, but it is still challenging to enable efficient mobile deep learning applications. Traditional approach tackles this challenge by offloading computation tasks to cloud, which has weaknesses of high bandwidth requirements and long transmission latency. In this paper, we propose to enable collaborative inference among mobile devices. Instead of sending deep learning inference tasks to cloud, we let mobile devices collaboratively share the computation workloads. This is based on an important observation that batching inference tasks on GPUs can accelerate the inference processing speed. To achieve efficient collaboration, we design an algorithm based on partial swarm optimization (PSO) that is a versatile population-based stochastic optimization technique. We also design a distributed algorithm to address the challenge that is difficult to collect global network information and run the centralized algorithm. Moreover, extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the designed algorithm. The simulation results show that the collaborative inference scheme can effectively reduce inference time of mobile deep learning applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Flexible MWCNT-PANI/PVDF film with hierarchical porous structure. • The film sensor with 8 % response to 0.1 ppm NH 3 at 25 ℃. • Three interaction effects on the high NH 3 sensing performance of the film. Enhanced ammonia (NH 3) sensing properties based on porous flexible polyaniline/polyvinylidene fluoride (PANI/PVDF) composite films, which used multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) as additives, were prepared by an in-situ polymerization process. The obtained flexible PANI/PVDF based sensing films showed a hierarchical porous structure, which enhanced their NH 3 sensing performance. The results show that the addition of MWCNTs to the PANI/PVDF film further improved its stability and response to NH 3. The response of the optimized MWCNT-PANI/PVDF film was found to increase by twofold to 33 %, and its recovery time was decreased 7-fold to 26 s than those of the PANI/PVDF sensing film for 1 ppm NH 3 at 25 ℃. Its lower detectable NH 3 concentration was 0.1 ppm, with a response value of 8 % at 25 ℃. Additionally, the MWCNT-PANI/PVDF film sensor presented good flexibility, showing only minor response value decline after 500 bending cycles. This work shows that the fabricated flexible MWCNT-PANI/PVDF film is promising for detecting trace-level NH 3 gas at room temperature, and can be integrated with smart wearable devices for real-time environmental monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Enhanced flexible room temperature ammonia sensor based on FeCl 3 -PEDOT: PSS films. • Inkjet printing gas sensing films with controlled film thickness and additive level. • FeCl 3 additive plays two key role in response to NH 3. • A simple and effective method to find new sensing material with inkjet printing method. Herein we report improved ammonia (NH 3) gas sensing properties based on poly (3,4-ethylene-dioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT: PSS) thin films with ferric chloride (FeCl 3) as additives, which were prepared by inkjet printing the PEDOT: PSS solution and FeCl 3 aqueous solution onto the flexible polyimide films in sequence. PEDOT: PSS based gas sensing films with different thickness and different content of FeCl 3 were formed. The morphologies and electrical properties of these films were investigated by scanning electron microscope, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and an instrument designed to measure the gas sensing abilities of the films. The results showed that the addition of FeCl 3 to the PEDOT: PSS (FeCl 3 -PEDOT: PSS) thin film improved the NH 3 sensing performance of the sensor significantly. The response value was increased tenfold to approximately 44%, and the response time was reduced by 30 times to 20 s than those of the pure PEDOT: PSS film for detecting 50 ppm NH 3 at 20 °C. Furthermore, the lower detectable NH 3 concentration of the FeCl 3 -PEDOT: PSS thin film sensor was 0.5 ppm at room temperature with the response value of 7.6%. Additionally, the FeCl 3 -PEDOT: PSS thin film sensor presented excellent flexible stability, showing only minor response value changes with different bending angles. The results reveal the potential application of flexible based sensor for monitoring NH 3 gas under ambient conditions and show that ink-jet printing is a simple and low-cost method to prepare flexible gas sensing films with controlled film thickness and additive level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, silver nanowires (AgNWs) with aspect ratios of 1000 and lengths up to 200 μm are obtained by a modified polyol approach. These very long AgNWs are then utilized to prepare transparent electrodes (TEs) displaying a transmittance of 91.3% at a sheet resistance of 8.6 ohm/sq without any post-treatment. Furthermore, we also demonstrate a process for the cold welding of Ag NWs by simply dipping the AgNWs films into CTAB solutions, resulting in a further improvement for the optoelectronic performance. After the post-treatment, the AgNW-based TEs can achieve a transmittance of 93% at a sheet resistance of 9.5 ohm/sq. In addition, the electric behaviors of AgNW-based TEs are investigated. In the bulk-like regime, for the as-prepared AgNW-based TEs, the Figure of merit (FOM), DC to optical conductivity ratio reaches up to 566.8. After the cold welding process, the DC to optical conductivity ratio can reach even higher values (631.6). In the percolative regime, the as-prepared and welded AgNW-based TEs can achieve Π (FOM with percolative-like behavior) values of 166.8 and 242.1, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A simple method to fabricate porous ZnO for trace-level acetone detection. • MEMS structure with small size and high sensitivity. • Non-contact inkjet printing technology for the rapid prototyping of transducers. • The sensor with 3.2 response to 10 ppb acetone at 200℃. • A good linearity relationship between response and concentration of acetone. In this study, inkjet printing tactics is employed to deposit sensitive materials, which is a nest-like array vertically assembled by petal-shaped structure composed of nanoparticles. It overcomes the disadvantages of cumbersome and unstable operation of traditional deposition technology for gas sensor sensitive materials based on MEMS. The mesoporous ZnO-sensor shows high gas-sensing response to low concentration acetone. The excellent performance of mesoporous ZnO-sensors lies in the uniform small nanoparticles, their multi-dimensional assembly structures and rich oxygen vacancy defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Recycled concrete fines can be used as supplementary cementitious materials after treating with tannic acid. • Tannic acid can react with RCF to produce to produce submicron particles. • Tannic acid treatment drastically reduces the porosity and enhances the elastic modulus and packing density of the hydration products. • Compressive strength at 28d of the mortar made with RCF as SCM can be improved over 26% by the proposed treatment. • The early-age cracking of the mortar is significantly reduced by the tannic acid treatment. • The corrosion time of the reinforcing bar is enhanced by the proposed method over 55%. Demolished or waste concretes can be crushed into particles with appropriate sizes to be used as coarse or fine aggregates in new concretes. This recycling process also produces 5% to 20% small particles with size less than 0.15 mm. which can be recycled as the recycled concrete fines (RCFs). Besides low-end applications and landfilling, few appropriate applications have been found for RCF. This study develops an eco-friendly treatment to turn these underutilized RCFs into supplementary cementitious materials (SEM) for new concretes. Without any treatment, RCFs can significantly reduce the strength and durability of the produced concrete due to their low pozzolanic activity and high porosity. This study exploits a plant-based compound, tannic acid (TA) to treat RCFs so they can be used in new concrete to partially replace Portland cement without reducing the performance of the concrete. This is done by a simple two-step mixing process. In the first step, RCF particles are mixed with a low-concentrated TA solution for about one hour to allow for potential reaction between the TA and the RCF particles. In step II, the slurry produced by step I is mixed with cement and aggregate to make concrete. Reaction between the TA and the RCF particles can produce submicron particles deposited on the surface of the RCF particles. Those particles not only fill the pores of the RCF particles, but also provide the nucleation sites for the hydration of the cement. This promotes the hydration of the cement and densifies the microstructure of the hardened paste. As a result, multiple benefits can be induced by the proposed TA treatment. Experimental results show that up to 26% increment in compressive strength of the mortar has been achieved by the proposed treatment. More importantly, the risk of cracking in the early age of the mortar is reduced and the corrosion life of the reinforcing bar is greatly enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CD4 + T cells play a pivotal role in the immune system, particularly in adaptive immunity, by orchestrating and enhancing immune responses. CD4 + T cell-related immune responses exhibit diverse characteristics in different diseases. This study utilizes gene expression analysis of CD4 + T cells to classify and understand complex diseases. We analyzed the dataset consisting of samples from various diseases, including cancers, metabolic disorders, circulatory and respiratory diseases, and digestive ailments, as well as 53 healthy controls. Each sample contained expression data for 22,881 genes. Four feature ranking algorithms, incremental feature selection method, synthetic minority oversampling technique, and four classification algorithms were utilized to pinpoint essential genes, extract classification rules and build efficient classifiers. The following analysis focused on genes across rules, such as AK4, CALU, LINC01271, and RUSC1-AS1. AK4 and CALU show fluctuating levels in diseases like asthma, Crohn's disease, and breast cancer. The analysis results and existing research suggest that they may play a role in these diseases. LINC01271 generally has higher expression in conditions including asthma, Crohn's disease, and diabetes. RUSC1-AS1 is more expressed in chronic diseases like asthma and Crohn's, but less in acute illnesses like tonsillitis and influenza. This highlights the distinct roles of these genes in different diseases. Our approach highlights the potential for developing novel therapeutic strategies based on the transcriptional profiles of CD4 + T cells., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Lung adenocarcinoma, a subtype of lung cancer, is produced by uncontrolled proliferation of somatic cells affected by some tumorigenic factors. The origin of this disease can be attributed to the concept of "cancer driver," which links the occurrence of tumor with specific changes in some key genes. These key genes can be identified at various molecular levels. Our innovative method uses a groundbreaking computing technology called GenePlexus to mine new genes related to lung adenocarcinoma. Initially, a vast network was synthesized from protein-protein interactions. Utilizing GenePlexus, we traversed paths interlinking aberrant genes across different layers and pinpointed emerging candidate genes situated on these trajectories. Finally, the candidate genes that were obtained underwent a series of filtering processes, including a permutation test, interaction test, and enrichment test. Compared with the shortest path method, GenePlexus has identified previously neglected genes involved in lung adenocarcinoma. For example, genes such as EGR2, EPHA3, FGFR4, HOXB1, and HEY1 play key roles at multiple molecular levels, including methylation, microRNA, mRNA and mutation, which affect tumorigenesis and lung cancer progression. These genes regulate various processes, from gene expression and cell proliferation to drug resistance to therapeutic drugs and the progress of lung adenocarcinoma., (© 2024 Wiley‐VCH GmbH.)

Hyperthermophilic Sulfolobus solfataricus β-glycosidase (SS-βGly), with higher stability and activity than mesophilic enzymes, has potential for industrial ginsenosides biotransformation. However, its relatively low ginsenoside Rd-hydrolyzing activity limits the production of pharmaceutically active minor ginsenoside compound K (CK). In this study, first, we used molecular docking to predict the key enzyme residues that may hypothetically interact with ginsenoside Rd. Then, based on sequence alignment and alanine scanning mutagenesis approach, key variant sites were identified that might improve the enzyme catalytic efficiency. The enzyme catalytic efficiency (k cat /K m ) and substrate affinity (K m ) of the N264D variant enzyme for ginsenoside Rd increased by 60% and decreased by 17.9% compared with WT enzyme, respectively, which may be due to a decrease in the binding free energy (∆G) between the variant enzyme and substrate Rd. In addition, Markov state models (MSM) analysis during the whole 1000-ns MD simulations indicated that altering N264 to D made the variant enzyme achieve a more stable SS-βGly conformational state than the wild-type (WT) enzyme and corresponding Rd complex. Under identical conditions, the relative activities and the CK conversion rates of the N264D enzyme were 1.7 and 1.9 folds higher than those of the WT enzyme. This study identified an excellent hyperthermophilic β-glycosidase candidate for industrial biotransformation of ginsenosides., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

β-Glycosidase from Sulfolobus solfataricus (SS-BGL) is a highly effective biocatalyst for the synthesis of compound K (CK) from glycosylated protopanaxadiol ginsenosides. In order to improve the thermal stability of SS-BGL, molecular dynamics simulations were used to determine the residue-level binding energetics of ginsenoside Rd in the SS-BGL-Rd docked complex and to identify the top ten critical contributors. Target sites for mutations were determined using dynamic cross-correlation mapping of residues via the Ohm server to identify networks of distal residues that interact with the key binding residues. Target mutations were determined rationally based on site characteristics. Single mutants and then recombination of top hits led to the two most promising variants SS-BGL-Q96E/N97D/N302D and SS-BGL-Q96E/N97D/N128D/N302D with 2.5-fold and 3.3-fold increased half-lives at 95 °C, respectively. The enzyme activities relative to those of wild-type for ginsenoside conversion were 161 and 116%, respectively..

Yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) based potentiometric gas sensors have been widely utilized for detecting NO x (NO and NO 2 ). Nevertheless, it is still remains challenging issue for YSZ-based sensors to sense total NO x due to the opposite response signals to NO and NO 2 . Herein, we report an efficient strategy to sense total NO x at high temperature (above 300 °C) by designing a dual functional sensing electrode (SE); namely, the SE will simultaneously convert NO (in NO x mixture) to NO 2 and electrocatalyze all of the obtained NO 2 to generate the response signal of total NO x . In comparison with those previously reported total NO x sensors, the proposed total NO x sensor will be featured with a simplified sensor configuration and desirable long-term stability. To confirm the practicability of the proposed strategy, the NO conversion rate of several metal oxides and their composites have been measured and it turns out that the Co 3 O 4 /NiO shows relatively high NO conversion rate. Further study indicates a YSZ-based sensor consisting of (Co 3 O 4 + 20 wt % NiO)-SE and Mn-based RE demonstrates satisfactory performance in detecting total NO x . For instance, analogous response magnitude to NO and NO 2 as well as the mixture of NO/NO 2 (within 35 ppm) is witnessed for the sensor; particularly, the sensor gives acceptable stability and response/recovery rate at the operating temperature of 500 °C within the examined period. In summary, the use of dual functional SE (e.g., Co 3 O 4 /NiO composite SE) indeed addressed those issues of concern in monitoring the level of total NO x and has provided a promising alternative way for designing future high-performance total NO x sensor.

Network-based data sharing is a current trend in medicine and healthcare. The search and retrieval architecture (SRA) we previously proposed for web-based sharing of electrocardiogram (ECG) facilitates the search and retrieval of ECG across hospitals via the Internet. The SRA has a triangle-like configuration including an ECG metadata registry, an ECG provider and an ECG querist. In this paper, we present a framework for ECG information publishing of an ECG provider. We also introduce a prototype of this framework, which was developed for an experimental scenario for assessment test based on MFER, an IEEE standard proposed from Japan. The assessment shows that the prototype of the framework can effectively publish the ECGs in a group of emulated MFER-conformant electrocardiographs, and the published ECGs can be successfully discovered and retrieved via the Internet.