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The problem of pin-constrained electrowetting-ondielectric (EWOD) biochips becomes a serious issue to realize complex bio-chemical operations. Due to limited number of control pins and routing resources, additional Printed Circuit Board (PCB) routing layers may be required which potentially raises the fabrication cost. Previous state-of-the-art work has tried to develop a framework that uses a network-flow-based method for broadcast electrodeaddressing EWOD biochips. Nevertheless, greedily merging of electrical pins in previous works is at high risk of producing unroutable design. Routability should have higher priority than pin reduction. While previous works dedicated their effort on pin reduction, we have addressed our attention on routability of broadcast addressing. Experimental results demonstrate that taking routability into consideration can even have higher pin reduction. Viewed in this light, we present ACER, a routability driven clustering algorithm followed by escape routing using integer linear programming that effectively solves both pin merging and routing in broadcast addressing framework. Our proposed algorithm does not greedily focus on pin-reduction. Instead, routability is taken into consideration through agglomerative clustering. Compared to previous state-of-the-art, our proposed algorithm can further reduce required control pins by an average of 13% and route the design using 68% less wirelength.

Single-molecule manipulation techniques have enabled the characterization of the unfolding and refolding process of individual protein molecules, using mechanical forces to initiate the unfolding transition. Experimental and computational results following this approach have shed new light on the mechanisms of the mechanical functions of proteins involved in several cellular processes, as well as revealed new information on the protein folding/unfolding free-energy landscapes. To investigate how protein molecules of different folds respond to a stretching force, and to elucidate the effects of solution conditions on the mechanical stability of a protein, we synthesized polymers of the protein ubiquitin and characterized the force-induced unfolding and refolding of individual ubiquitin molecules using an atomic-force-microscope-based single-molecule manipulation technique. The ubiquitin molecule was highly resistant to a stretching force, and the mechanical unfolding process was reversible. A model calculation based on the hydrogen-bonding pattern in the native structure was performed to explain the origin of this high mechanical stability. Furthermore, pH effects were studied and it was found that the forces required to unfold the protein remained constant within a pH range around the neutral value, and forces decreased as the solution pH was lowered to more acidic values.

Potential energy surfaces for the first singlet and triplet excited states of methane have been studied using multireference configuration interaction (MRCI) and equation-of-motion coupled cluster (EOM-CCSD) ab initio molecular orbital calculations. The vertical excitation energies for the 1T2 and 3T2 states are computed to be 10.64–10.66 and 10.25–10.30 eV, respectively. Two minima are found on the first excited singlet surface, 1 (∼C3v) and 2 (C2v), with adiabatic excitation energies of 9.16–9.25 and 8.39–8.52 eV, respectively. No minima is located on the triplet surface. Vibronic spectra, calculated based on the geometries, vibrational frequencies, and normal modes of the ground and excited states, reproduce well the experimental results. The spectra due to the 3s(C2v)←1t2 transition start at ∼8.63 eV and form a broad underlying continuum. The 3s(C3v)←1t2 transition is shown to be responsible for the minor fine structure observed in the experimental absorption spectra between 9.5 and 10.6 eV. Dissociat...

Shaw-Ji Chen,1,2 Chung-Hung Chang,3 Hsin-Chi Tsai,2,4 Shao-Tsu Chen,2,4 Chaucer CH Lin2,4 1Department of Psychiatry, Mackay Memorial Hospital Taitung Branch, Taitung; 2School of Medicine, Buddhist Tzu Chi University, Hualien; 3Department of Psychiatry, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung; 4Department of Psychiatry, Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital, Hualien, Taiwan Abstract: Depression is a major psychiatric disorder. The standard treatment for depression is antidepressant medication, but the responses to antidepressant treatment are only partial, even poor, among 30%–45% of patients. Refractory depression is defined as depression that does not respond to antidepressant therapy after 4 weeks of use. There is evidence that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) may exert effects in treating psychiatric disorder through moderating focal neuronal functions. High-frequency rTMS on the left prefrontal area and low-frequency rTMS on the right prefrontal area were shown to be effective in alleviating depressive symptoms. Given the statistically significant antidepressant effectiveness noted, the clinical application of rTMS as a depression treatment warrants further studies. Application of rTMS as an add-on therapy would be a practical research model. High-frequency (5–20 Hz) rTMS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was found to have a significant effect on medication-resistant depression. In the present study, we not only measured the acute antidepressant effect of rTMS during treatment and immediately after its completion but also evaluated participants 1 month after completion of the treatment protocol. Study participants were divided into two groups: an active rTMS group (n = 10) and a sham group (n = 10). The active rTMS group was defined as participants who received the rTMS protocol, and the sham group was defined as participants who received a sham rTMS procedure. A significant Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score reduction was observed in both groups after the fifth and tenth treatments. However, those in the active rTMS group maintained their improvement as measured one month after completion of the rTMS protocol. Participants who received active rTMS were more likely to have persistent improvement in depression scores than participants who received sham rTMS. Keywords: major depressive disorder, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, treatment-resistant depression, efficacy, adverse effect

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of the most common types of arrhythmia. It affects millions people in the world. The occurrence of AF is around 18% in population, however, elderly people have the higher risk. The algorithm proposed in this research uses heart rate variability as the primary selection to distinguish arrhythmia and normal rhythm. Each detected ECG beat will be normalized by a clustering method to minimize the effects of noises. The final step of the AF detection called Line Segment Clustering (LSC) was applied to analyze the characteristics of the waveform in order to determine AF beat automatically. MIT-BIH Atrial Fibrillation Database was applied to perform the preliminary evaluation. The results presented 95.5% of specificity and 94.7% of sensitivity. This automatic detection can be implemented into a handheld ECG device for homecare application, and as a patient reminder in the future.