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In this study, a novel inductively coupled plasma (ICP) system is proposed. It comprises a segmented dielectric window and a metal frame. For the proposed ICP system, a thin window can be designed, thereby compensating for the power loss caused by the metal frame. The proposed ICP system has two potential advantages: it can enhance the controllability of the gas flow field and it can reduce the capacitive power coupling. These characteristics enable the superior uniformity and reliable operation of ICP systems for semiconductor processes. The characteristics of the proposed ICP system are investigated using three-dimensional fluid self-consistent plasma simulations and experiments. The proposed ICP system exhibits performance similar to that of the conventional ICP system currently used in etching and deposition processes.

Binary metal sulfides have been explored as sodium storage materials owing to their high theoretical capacity and high stable cyclability. Nevertheless, their relative high charge voltage and relatively low practical capacity make them less attractive as an anode material. To resolve the problem, addition of alloying elements is considerable. Copper antimony sulfide is investigated as a representative case. In this study, we do not only perform electrochemical characterization on CuSbS2, but also investigate its nonequilibrium sodiation pathway employing in-/ex situ transmission electron microscopy, in situ X-ray diffraction, and density functional theory calculations. Our finding provides valuable insights on sodium storage into ternary metal sulfide including an alloying element.

The surgical goal for reduction of maxillofacial fracture has been focused on the reconstruction of facial buttresses. If there is fracture-displacement at non-buttress area, it close observation used to be the choice of treatment. It is not easy to have access to the posterior part of maxilla with conventional approach. But with the endoscopic sinus surgery technique, posterior wall of maxillary sinus is easily approachable and can be manipulated. This report presents a case of a 38-year-old male with isolated posterior wall of maxillary sinus fracture. Inward comminuted fracture-displacement of the posterior wall of maxillary sinus with retroantral fat and soft tissue was herniated into the maxillary sinus and extruded out through the natural ostium of maxillary sinus. Using endoscopic approach and Foley catheter inflation, the maxillary sinus posterior wall was successfully repaired without complications. This report thus suggests endoscopic approach with the Foley catheter for the posterior maxillary sinus wall fracture.

Aims Aging is associated with an increased occurrence of age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes (T2D), cancer, and various neurodegenerative diseases (NDs). Disturbance of cellular protein homeostasis might be involved in the etiology of these age-related diseases. Therefore, these three diseases may be related to each other. The aim of this study was to estimate the risk of cancer and NDs in elderly Koreans with the first diagnosed T2D using the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) database (DB) for the entire Korean population. Methods A population-based 10-year follow-up study was conducted using the Korean NHIS DB between 2006 and 2015. The study population included the T2D group (n = 155,459) and the matched-control group (n = 155,459), aged 60 to 84 years. A multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to evaluate the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for the risk of cancer and ND. Results The number of cancer patients at the end of follow-up in both groups was as follows: 39,802/155,459 (25.6%) in the control group and 41,194/155,459 (26.5%) in the T2D group (χ2 = 32.35, p

Objective Orbital invasion is associated with a poor prognosis in cases of sinonasal malignancy. This study aimed to analyze the oncological outcomes of sinonasal malignancies involving the orbit. Patients and Methods We reviewed the medical records of 116 patients with a sinonasal malignancy who had orbital invasion at initial diagnosis and followed up at least 6 months between June 1991 and October 2017 at a single institute. The overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS), and progression-free survival (PFS) rates according to the clinicopathological factors, extent to orbit, and treatment modality were compared. Results Patients were mainly treated with surgery and postoperative radiation (n = 39, 33.6%) and concurrent chemoradiation (n = 72, 62.1%). Only five patients (5.1%) underwent orbital exenteration. The OS, DSS, and PFS rates significantly decreased in patients older than 60 years of age and in patients with a higher Charlson Comorbidity Index Score (each p Conclusion Orbit preservation and relatively successful oncological outcome could be obtained with surgery and adjuvant radiation or concurrent chemoradiation.

The development of high-tap density electrode materials that can simultaneously achieve stable electrochemical performance at high charge/discharge rates is critically in demand. Herein, we propose an innovative material design that can offer high tap density and excellent rate capabilities by using Co3O4 nanograin-interconnected secondary particles (Co3O4 NISPs). By taking advantage of a conversion reaction that forms Co from Co3O4, we demonstrate that Co3O4 NISPs are capable of creating a number of metallic Co sites along with a number of vacant sites in-between nanograins. Electrochemical tests that reveal reduced internal cell resistance and more accessible Li diffusion are achieved for Co3O4 NISPs compared with Co3O4 nanoparticles (NPs). Additionally, in situ X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses, electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), and density functional theory (DFT) calculations reveal that the insulating intermediate product (CoO) is formed less on the Co3O4 NISPs, which can enhance the charge transport. Attributed to the combinatorial effects of Co3O4 nanograins that form metallic Co upon conversion and secondary particles that enable high tap density, Co3O4 NISPs show the most outstanding volumetric capacity (2167.3 mA h cm−3 at a current density of 500 mA g−1) among spinel-type metal oxide electrode materials researched so far.

A two-dimension (2D) atomic-threshold-switching field-effect transistor (ATS-FET) was implemented, by connecting an AgTi/HfO2-based threshold-switching (TS) device in series to the drain electrode of the 2D baseline-FET with molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) channel material. We optimized/developed the Ag/HfO2-based TS device because its characteristic is associated to the way how to achieve high performance of the 2D ATS-FET. By reducing the effective device area of the Ag/HfO2-based TS device down to $4~\mu \text{m}^{2}$ , low threshold voltage ( $\text{V}_{\mathrm {T}} \sim 0.42$ V), low threshold current (IT, drain current at the threshold voltage, $\sim 3.79 \times 10^{-11}$ A), and low VT variation (~0.09 V) were achieved. This is because the randomly formed filaments and electric field are better controlled with the scaled effective area. Next, the titanium (Ti)-injection barrier layer was inserted between the top electrode and the switching layer, while maintaining the optimized area in the TS device. The inserted Ti-injection barrier layer prevents the migration of Ag ions into the switching layer, enabling the stable TS operation even under the compliance current of $100~\mu \text{A}$ . Additionally, it locally restricts the region where the filaments are created inside the switching layer, resulting in a 17% lower VT variation and stable IT to approximately $\sim 1.5 \times 10^{-11}$ A in 100 cycles. Due to the low off-state leakage current and low variation characteristic of the optimized AgTi/HfO2-based TS device, the 2D ATS-FET (vs. 2D baseline-FET) shows the reduction of off-state leakage current (by $\sim 10^{2}$ in sub-threshold region) and the stable switching characteristic. The proposed 2D ATS-FET shows stably steep switching characteristics, e.g., sub-threshold swing under forward bias (~19 mV/decade) and reverse bias (~26 mV/decade), because of its abruptly switching characteristics of the TS device.

Estimating semantic correspondence between pairs of images can be challenging as a result of intra-class variation, background clutter, and repetitive patterns. This paper proposes a convolutional neural network (CNN) that attempts to learn rich semantic representations that contain the global semantic context to enable robust semantic correspondence estimation against intra-class variation and repetitive patterns. We introduce a global context fused feature representation that efficiently employs the global semantic context in estimating semantic correspondence as well as a semi-global self-similarity feature to reduce background clutter-induced distraction in capturing the global semantic context. The proposed network is trained in an end-to-end manner using a weakly supervised loss, which requires a weak level of supervision involving annotation on image pairs. This weakly supervised loss is supplemented with a historical averaging loss to effectively train the network. Our approach decreases running time by a factor of more than four and reduces the training memory requirement by a factor of three and produces competitive or superior results relative to previous approaches on the PF-PASCAL, PF-WILLOW, and TSS benchmarks.

Objective To identify the difference of quantitative radiologic stenosis between a normal latency group and an abnormal latency group, and to investigate the association of dermatomal somatosensory-evoked potential (DSEP) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings of narrowing in patients with lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS).Methods We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records and P40 latencies of L5 DSEP of 40 patients with unilateral symptoms of LSS at the L4–5 disc level. Quantitative assessments of stenosis in lumbar spine MRI were performed with measurements of the anteroposterior diameter (APD), cross-sectional area (CSA) of the dural sac, ligamentous interfacet distance (LID), CSA of the neural foramen (CSA-NF), and subarticular zone width. Analyses were conducted through comparisons of radiologic severity between the normal and abnormal latency groups and correlation between radiologic severity of stenosis and latency of DSEP in absolute (APD

The characteristics of large-area inductively coupled plasma were investigated to optimize the uniformity using a self-consistent simulation based on a drift–diffusion approximation with anisotropic transport coefficients. As the aspect ratio increases, a tendency toward uniform plasma conditions of electron density on 450 mm wafer is reflected by an increase in the input power ratio of the outer coil. In the case of an aspect ratio of 0.29 (radius: 350 mm, height: 200 mm), the power distribution has a ratio of about 1.4:8.6, and the non-uniformity of the 450 mm wafer region is less than 1%. A lower aspect ratio is advantageous in terms of plasma uniformity. The plasma uniformity can be negatively affected by the electron density distribution changing to M-shape in the case of a lower aspect ratio of 0.3. When designing the chamber, the ratio of the surface area to the volume must be considered due to the differences in the plasma characteristics according to the radii and heights.

Apocarotenoids are important signaling molecules generated from carotenoids through the action of carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases (CCDs). These enzymes have a remarkable ability to cleave carotenoids at specific alkene bonds while leaving chemically similar sites within the polyene intact. Although several bacterial and eukaryotic CCDs have been characterized, the long-standing goal of experimentally visualizing a CCD–carotenoid complex at high resolution to explain this exquisite regioselectivity remains unfulfilled. CCD genes are also present in some archaeal genomes, but the encoded enzymes remain uninvestigated. Here, we address this knowledge gap through analysis of a metazoan-like archaeal CCD from Candidatus Nitrosotalea devanaterra (NdCCD). NdCCD was active toward β-apocarotenoids but did not cleave bicyclic carotenoids. It exhibited an unusual regiospecificity, cleaving apocarotenoids solely at the C14′–C13′ alkene bond to produce β-apo-14′-carotenals. The structure of NdCCD revealed a tapered active site cavity markedly different from the broad active site observed for the retinal-forming Synechocystis apocarotenoid oxygenase (SynACO) but similar to the vertebrate retinoid isomerase RPE65. The structure of NdCCD in complex with its apocarotenoid product demonstrated that the site of cleavage is defined by interactions along the substrate binding cleft as well as selective stabilization of reaction intermediates at the scissile alkene. These data on the molecular basis of CCD catalysis shed light on the origins of the varied catalytic activities found in metazoan CCDs, opening the possibility of modifying their activity through rational chemical or genetic approaches.

In this study, the effects of process parameters on the high temperature strength of 17-4PH stainless steel manufactured by selective laser melting (SLM) were investigated. Nine rectangular block specimens were fabricated with various process parameters. Small punch (SP) tests were conducted at 425 °C four times for each rectangular block specimens. The average maximum SP loads were measured from the tests. The fracture surfaces of SP-tested specimens were also examined. Un-melted powder was observed on the fracture surface of the specimen with the lowest average maximum SP load value, which could give rise to local cracking. Analysis of the microstructures showed that the retained austenite and amount of pore defects were the main factors that could affect SP test results. Regression surface methodology (RSM) models was applied to predict the maximum strength as a function of laser scan speed and energy density. Results showed that the energy density level of 64.29 J/mm3 and a scan speed higher than 1884 mm/s are recommended for fabricating SLM parts in the shortest time without losing material strength and with minimum metallurgical defects.

On the basis of recent research, brain-inspired parallel computing is considered as one of the most promising technologies for efficiently handling large amounts of informational data. In general, ...

The development of high performance and cost-effective electrode materials is the main challenge for the commercialization of sodium ion batteries. Here, we suggest a substantial iron-doped sodium vanadium fluorophosphate and sodium vanadium phosphate composite as a promising cathode. Iron substitution enhances ionic diffusivity and lowers the bandgap, and, thus, improves sodium storage performance. The origin of the enhanced performance is investigated employing in situ X-ray diffraction, ex situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, density functional theory calculation, and electrochemical characterization. Moreover, we demonstrate its full cell configuration with earth-abundant element-based copper sulfide anodes. The suggested cathode and sodium ion battery full cell exhibits well-balanced sodium storage performance in terms of energy density, C-rate capability, cycling stability, and low cost. The low cost and high performance of the full cell make it an attractive choice for energy storage systems and high power applications to support lithium ion batteries.