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Review question / Objective: Participant Type: Only for any ESRD patient diagnosed with CKD and established AVF and requiring regular HD treatment with AVF. Intervention type: Studies using FIR therapy versus non- FIR therapy. Outcome Measure Types: Fistula maturation, patency, access blood flow, AVF I.D.; fistula occlusion. P: Patients under hemodialysis. Condition being studied: Far infrared is an invisible electromagnetic wave. Far infrared therapy (FIR) uses low-power electromagnetic waves emitted by FIR with wavelengths of 3-100 µm to improve human physiological functions. Previous studies have shown that FIR can effectively suppress inflammation, and in recent years it has also been widely used in the clinical treatment of various diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases. The use of FIR allows the improvement of AVF blood flow and patency not only through local vasodilation induced by thermal effects, but more importantly, through non-thermal effects that improve endothelial function.

Pseudocapacitive materials are promising to increase specific capacity of carbon-based electrodes, but suffer from poor rate capability. In the work, novel Li:CuO/reduced graphene oxide flexible electrodes demonstrate enhanced electrical conductivity and specific capacitance obtained via the incorporation of Li into CuO particles. The degree of capacitance enhancement increases with scan rate, reaching a maximum value of 40% at a high scan rate of 500 mV/s. Galvanostatic charge/discharge measurements show high volumetric capacitance, energy density, and power density. Cyclic life tests show excellent stability over 10,000 cycles, with a capacitance retention of 93.2% at a scan rate of 100 mV/s.

We demonstrate an athermal WDM (de)multiplexer by realizing strip/subwavelength grating polysilicon waveguide based cascaded MZIs in bulk CMOS. Measured temperature sensitivity for all channels is around -20 pm/oC with a slope of -0.25 pm/oC/nm.

Human face reenactment aims at transferring motion patterns from one face (from a source-domain video) to an-other (in the target domain with the identity of interest).While recent works report impressive results, they are notable to handle multiple identities in a unified model. In this paper, we propose a unique network of CrossID-GAN to perform multi-ID face reenactment. Given a source-domain video with extracted facial landmarks and a target-domain image, our CrossID-GAN learns the identity-invariant motion patterns via the extracted landmarks and such information to produce the videos whose ID matches that of the target domain. Both supervised and unsupervised settings are proposed to train and guide our model during training.Our qualitative/quantitative results confirm the robustness and effectiveness of our model, with ablation studies confirming our network design.

Near-infrared (NIR) sensors has become one of the key components in applications, such as temperature, proximity, and even fingerprint sensing. A novel full-CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) compatible near-infrared sensor is proposed and demonstrated in this article. This sensing device consists of a gateless transistor, enabling near-infrared photon absorption in the channel region. With a tunable channel barrier, this near-IR sensor also features a dynamic photo-response with an extending sensing range up to 60 dB.

High-power light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are essential in general lighting applications. Because of the characteristics of semiconductors, the optical and electrical properties of LEDs vary with the operating temperature. To increase the reliability of high-power LEDs, this study conducted a shear stress test and examined the thermal dissipation alongside electrical and optical properties. The simulated and experimental trends of the thermal distribution of the LED package overlapped effectively. The results revealed that changing the side glue height from 10% to 100% of die height, which consequently increases the shear stress of 1693 g/mm2, reduces the thermal resistance of 1 °C/W, and reduces the luminous flux of 0.4 lm, can optimize the LED reliability.

We report on a highly efficient polariton emission of poly [2-methoxy-5-(3, 7-dimethyloctyloxy)-1, 4-phenylenevinylene] (MDMO-PPV) organic light-emitting diode (OLED) operating in the ultrastrong coupling regime. MDMO-PPV film with a broadband high absorbance and modest Stokes shift is shown to enable the generation of a large coupling strength and radiative pumping of the lower polariton (LP) mode. Further combining the optimized conditions of cavity design, electron injection, and emission side mirror, we demonstrate that the polariton OLED can produce a spectrally narrow and almost angle-independent emission from the LP mode, with a maximum external quantum efficiency of >0.1% and a Rabi splitting energy of >0.8 eV.

Lessons Learned For patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma after failure of first-line sorafenib monotherapy, second-line axitinib provides modest efficacy with tolerable toxicity. The discrepant tumor responses and survival outcomes in trials using axitinib as salvage therapy highlight the importance of optimal patient selection with the aid of clinical biomarkers. Background Multikinase inhibitors have been effective treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This multicenter phase II study explored the efficacy and safety of second-line axitinib for advanced HCC. Methods Patients with advanced HCC and Child-Pugh A liver function, experiencing progression on first-line sorafenib monotherapy, were eligible. Axitinib 5 mg twice daily was given continuously with allowed dose escalation. Tumor assessment was performed according to RECIST version 1.1. The primary endpoint was rate of disease control. Results From April 2011 to March 2016, 45 patients were enrolled. Thirty-seven patients (82%) tested positive for hepatitis B surface antigen. The disease control rate was 62.2%, and the response rate was 6.7%, according to RECIST criteria. Median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were 2.2 months and 10.1 months, respectively. Treatment-related adverse events were compatible with previous reports of axitinib. Conclusion Second-line axitinib has moderate activity and acceptable toxicity for patients with advanced HCC after failing the first-line sorafenib monotherapy.

In this study, carbon-supported CoPtAg nanoparticles with different atomic ratios have been reduced under CO atmosphere and applied as electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). These samples with low Pt loading have comparable ORR activity and stability to Pt/C. An appropriate amount of Ag addition like 5 at % can effectively promote the performance of CoPt owing to the modification of the oxophilicity. Then carbon-supported Co90Pt5Ag5 nanoparticles with different atomic arrangements have been reduced by different agents. The coordination numbers of Pt-Co and Co-Co (CNPt-Co and CNCo-Co) of catalysts are related to their ORR activity and stability, respectively. Co90 sample with Ag and Pt randomly distributing within the Co matrix has high CNCo-Co, which does not have positive effect on the ORR performance. On the other hand, Co90-1 sample with Ag and Pt cores within the Co matrix has the highest CNPt-Co and ORR activity ascribed to the electronic modification effect. However, it losses 32% ORR activity after accelerated durability test of 1000 cycles due to high CNCo-Co. Co90-2 with Pt in the inner core and Ag on the outer shell structure has moderate CNPt-Co, very low CNCo-Co, and un-filled d-states, which not only modify the oxophilicity but also benefit the ORR stability with a decay rate of 21%. We have demonstrated the atomic arrangement-performance relationship of highly stable and low Pt catalysts.

A novel near-infrared sensor implemented by nano-scaled CMOS technologies is proposed and demonstrated. This NIR sensing device consists of a gateless device, enabling light penetration into the channel region with tunable surface potential. With adjustable channel barrier, this near-IR sensor also features full compatibility to CMOS processes as well as a dynamic responsivity with the capability of extending its sensing range up to 60dB.

In this study, we have investigated the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity and durability of Co-based catalysts mechanistically. CoPt/C catalysts with a Pt loading of 7 wt% and Au modification have been prepared and shown excellent ORR performance. The various as-prepared CoPt/C and CoPtAu/C catalysts have about 2.6–9.2 times higher mass activity than commercial Pt/C. The mechanistic insight obtained by density functional theory calculations has shown that the enhanced activity is attributable to the fact that Co-based catalysts can easily dissociate surface O2* without the high-barrier protonation step and efficiently remove the dissociated O*. The improved stability, 1000th decay = 14.6%, corresponds to the fact that the core Au can resist the shrinkage of surface Pt during the accelerated durability test.

Financial distress has been invoked in the asset pricing literature to explain the anomalous patterns in the cross-section of stock returns. The risk of financial distress can be measured using indexes. George and Hwang (2010) suggest that leverage can explain the distress risk puzzle and that firms with high costs choose low leverage to reduce distress intensities and earn high returns. This study investigates whether this relationship exists in the Taiwan market. When examined separately, distress intensity is found to be negatively related to stock returns, but leverage is found to not be significantly related to stock returns. The results are the same when distress intensity and leverage are examined simultaneously. After assessing the robustness by using O-scores, distress risk puzzle is found to exist in the Taiwan market, but the leverage puzzle is not.

(In,Mn)As nanowires with ultrahigh Mn concentration have been successfully grown on GaAs(001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. The morphology dependences on Mn concentration and growth temperature are investigated. High Mn concentration and high growth temperature are both necessary for the growth of nanowires. All the (In,Mn)As nanowires are self-aligned along [−110]GaAs, and therefore have the shape magnetic anisotropy with the easy axis along the alignment orientation of the nanowires.

An efficient power reduction technique for CMOS flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is presented. The presented technique adopts the procedure with a simple coarse comparison first followed by a finer comparison later. Our ADC design does not decrease the total number of comparators, though it is able to reduce the power consumption. Subject to time signal controlling, the manipulation is to interchangeably shut down the comparator sections for the coarse comparison function. Experimental results show that this new method consumes about 48.14 mW at 400 MHz with 3.3 V supply voltage in TSMC 0.35 μm 2P4 M process. Compared with the traditional flash ADC, our low power method can reduce up to 47.8% in power consumption. The DNL of our proposed flash ADC is 0.5 LSB, the INL is 0.7 LSB, and the ENOB is 5.75 bits. The chip area occupies 0.4 × 0.9 mm2 without I/O pads.

Starting from 2,6-bis-(3-octylthiophene-2yl)-pyridine, two new poly(alkylthiophene) derivatives, POTPyOT and POTPy, containing pyridine in the backbone were prepared from nickel(0)-mediated Stille coupling or by palladium-catalyzed Yamamoto coupling. These polymers exhibited good solubility in common organic solvents, thermal stability up to 400 °C, and facile film formation. They were amorphous and give strong luminescence both in CHCl3 solution and solid state film. The polymers emitted blue light in solution with photoluminescence (PL) emission maximum at 420–484 nm and green light with PL emission maximum at 500–514 nm in thin films. These polymers showed a reversible redox reaction at potential from 0 to 1.3 V (vs. SCE). Nevertheless, the reduced form of the polymer was very unstable; it decomposed in the presence of oxygen or water. The emission and UV–vis absorption of the polymer were influenced by the solvent polarity, protonation, and acid–base treatment. These may be the results of the stabilization of the polar excited state by solvation and the change of the conformation in polymer backbone. Electroluminescence (EL) was achieved from a single-layer PLED with the configuration of ITO/POTPyOT/Al. The turn-on voltage of the device is 10 V and the λmax (550 nm) of the EL is voltage independent.

e15656 Background: Axitinib, a potent inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor, has moderate antitumor efficacy for advanced HCC. Vascular response (VR) measured by DCE-MRI has been demonstrated to correlate with efficacy of systemic therapy for advanced HCC. Methods: Patients enrolled into a phase 2 trial of axitinib as second-line therapy for advanced HCC (NCT01273662) with liver tumors evaluable by DCE-MRI were included. Patients must have documented progression on or intolerance to sorafenib and Child-Pugh class A liver function. The primary endpoint was disease stabilization, defined as complete or partial response per RECIST1.1 or stable disease lasting for 8 weeks without progression of tumor-related symptoms. The quantitative parameter Ktrans and semi-quantitative parameter peak, measured by DCE-MRI at baseline and after 2 weeks of axitinib treatment, were used to evaluate VR, defined by a greater than 40% decrease of Ktrans or peak. Results: From April 2011 to March 2016, 40 patients were enrolled at National Taiwan University Hospital and 5 at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, all had documented progression after sorafenib treatment. Disease stabilization rate was 62.2% (95% CI 48.0-76.4). Median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were 2.2 months (95% CI 0.3-4.1) and 10.1 months (95% CI 3.6-16.5) respectively. 33 patients were evaluable for VR. VR evaluated by peak was significantly associated with better PFS (5.5 vs. 1.8 months, HR 0.41, 95% CI 0.16-1.02, p = 0.04) and OS (13.0 vs. 5.8 months, HR 0.28, 95% CI 0.09-0.85, p = 0.02). Treatment-related adverse events were compatible with previous reports of axitinib. Conclusions: VR measured by DCE-MRI may help identify HCC patients most likely to benefit from axitinib treatment. Clinical trial information: NCT01273662. [Table: see text]

Micro lens captures less light than normal lens dose, which makes low quality noise image, and current image sensor cannot preserve whole dynamic range in real world. HDR image with multi-exposure image overcomes the problems mentioned above. Choosing good exposure time is a seldom-discussed but important issue in HDR imaging technology. In this paper we propose a Histogram Based Exposure Time Selection (HBETS) method to automatically adjust proper exposure time of each lens for different scenes. Adopting the proposed weighting function restrains random distributed noise caused by micro-lens and produces a high quality HDR image. An integrated tone mapping methodology, which keeps all details in bright and dark parts when compressing the HDR image to LDR image for being displayed on monitors, is proposed. The result image has extended the dynamic range, that is, comprehensive information is provided. Eventually, we have implemented the proposed 4-CAM HDR system on Adlink MXC-6300 platform that can reach VGA video@10 fps.

GaMnAs diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) thin films with high Mn compositions were grown on (001) GaAs substrate by low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy (LT-MBE) after inserting an InAs wetting layer onto the GaAs buffer. The growth follows the Stranski–Krastanov mode, which brings about special magnetic characteristics of Ga0.88Mn0.12As. The insulating-DMS-like M(T) relation of the as-grown sample indicates the existence of a high proportion of interstitial Mn atoms. The magnetization is greatly improved after annealing, and the low Curie temperature is suggested to be due to the surface hole-localization effect. The investigation on the magnetic anisotropy shows an almost isotropic characteristic of the magnetic properties, which is ascribed to the S–K growth mode.

High-quality epitaxial ZnCo0.07O films deposited at room temperature were obtained by using reactive ion beam sputtering. Room-temperature ferromagnetic behavior of ZnCoO was observed with a coercivity of 70 Oe. We observed the loop shift at 5 K in the field-cooled samples of ZnCoO/Cu/IrMn and an enhanced coercivity in the zero-field-cooled samples, which indicated the existence of exchange coupling between ZnCoO and IrMn through a thin Cu layer (0.15 nm). Furthermore, the exchange field of ZnCoO was increased from 55 to 113 Oe by increasing the cooling field from 3 to 15 kOe

We analyzed anisotropy in IrMn/CoFe/FeOX/CoFe multilayers with angular remanence measurements. The results showed the coexistence of biquadratic and unidirectional anisotropies. A significantly asymmetric magnetization reversal had been observed. We studied the reversal mechanism by using vector coils and suggested that the switching in the decreasing branch comprised both coherent rotation and 90deg domain wall motion; however, the switching in the increasing branch showed complicated multidomain rotation

Samples of Ta/Cu 3 nm/IrMn 8 nm/Co/sub (FM1)/ 1 nm/FeO/sub x/ 1.6 nm/Co/sub (FM2)/ 2.5 nm/Ta were prepared using sputtering deposition. The exchange biasing direction of the films were set by postannealing in vacuum at 200 /spl deg/C for 15 min at a presence of 1 kOe. Hysteresis loops measured parallel (0/spl deg/) and perpendicular (90/spl deg/) to the annealing field show the existence of unidirectional anisotropy and uniaxial anisotropy, respectively. The presence of the uniaxial anisotropy at 90/spl deg/ induced a local energy minumum at 90/spl deg/. The effects of local energy minimum at 90/spl deg/ are more pronounced in the R-H loops measured at 20/spl deg/ where the coexistence of the two anisotropies results to an extra MR minimum near the zero field. With increasing positive field, the magnetization of the free layer is switched to the appllied field direction, accompanying the increase in MR. Further increase of the positive fields lead to the re-appearance of the MR minimum due to the alignment of the magnetization of FM2 and free layer.

This paper is a pilot study for a combination of school knowledge and board game learning. We designed a digital board game based on textbook materials. And presented them with a set of educational equipment- Digital Learning Playground (DLP). We created a situational interaction learning in classrooms. In this research, the resulted data indicates the studentsi¦ motivation, confidence and satisfaction were enhanced through the designed learning environment.

Coexistence of exchange bias (H(E)) and magnetization (M) shift was observed in as-grown and field-annealed MnO(x)/Ga(0.95)Mn(0.05)As bilayers. It was found that H(E) initially decreases with the annealing time t(a) and then increases when t(a)30 min, while the M shift remains almost unchanged with t(a). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis reveals that MnO(x) is composed of MnO and Mn(3)O(4), and the volume amount ratio of Mn(3)O(4) to MnO increases with increasing t(a). A simple model based on a uniform MnO-Mn(3)O(4) interface with constant 'pinned' uncompensated interfacial spins is proposed to account for the observed exchange-biased phenomena in the bilayers.

This paper presents new low power CMOS flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) using multiple-selection method. As an example of 6-bit flash ADC, we use three extra comparators in our design to divide the next stage into four sections and control the switches whether can proceed to the 4-bit modified flash ADC or not. We use multiple-selection method to let only one section of the 4-bit modified flash ADC is allowed to operate, which achieve the aim of the low power consumption. Simulation and experimental results show that this proposed 6-bit flash ADC consumes about 19.2 mW at 800 M sample/s with 3.3 V supply voltage in TSMC 0.35 mum 2P4M process. Compared with the traditional flash ADC, this multiple-selection method can reduce about 80.3% in power consumption.

We studied the interlayer coupling in the quadrilayer consisting of IrMn/CoFe (bottom layer)/NiFeOx/ CoFe (top layer). The in-plane perpendicular interlayer coupling is observed between CoFe layers at room temperature. An anisotropy transition from uniaxial to unidirectional in the perpendicular direction is observed around Tt = 55 K. The nano-oxide layer NiFeOx shows no distinguishable ferromagnetic signal in the high-temperature (uniaxial) phase, while a strong signal appeared in the low-temperature (unidirectional) phase. A possible two-component scenario, that the nano-oxide layer may contain both amorphous short-range antiferromagnetic domains and superparamagneitc clusters, is proposed to explain the phase transition., final version to appear in Applied Physics Letters

In1−xMnxAs (0.22 ≤ x ≤ 0.55) nanostructures with ultrahigh Mn concentration were grown on GaAs(001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. When the growth is performed at 380 °C, nanodots are obtained. The M(T) relation of InMnAs nanodots is highly dependent on the morphology which is affected by Mn concentration. When the growth temperature is higher up to 550 °C, the shape transition from nanodots to nanowires takes place and well-shaped nanowires are obtained at high Mn concentrations. The formation of InMnAs nanowires brings about the in-plane uniaxial magnetic anisotropy, with the easy axis along the self-alignment orientation, namely, [1−10] GaAs.

The in-plane aligned MnAs nanowires have been grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on GaAs(001) substrates at high growth temperature (≥450 °C). A discontinuous growth with break intervals (50 s’ interval per 10 s’ growth) was employed. The obtained nanowires were identified to be mainly type-B hexagonal MnAs. The influences of growth temperature and As4/Mn flux ratio on the nanowires’ morphology were investigated. Both high growth temperature and high As4/Mn flux ratio are necessary for the growth of uniaxially aligned MnAs nanowires with high aspect ratio. The magnetic anisotropy of the nanowires and their multimodal size distributions contribute to the large coercivity and special shape of the M-H loops along the magnetic easy axis, which is [11¯02]MnAs∥[110]GaAs. However, the longer growth time would lead to the both azimuthal alignments of the MnAs wires and the weakening of the magnetic anisotropy.

Structural and magnetic properties of Ga0.93Mn0.07As layers grown on (001) and (311)A GaAs substrates by molecular-bean epitaxy are investigated. The as-grown (001) and (311)A Ga0.93Mn0.07As layers exhibit the same Curie temperature (TC) of 80K. However, upon annealing, the TC’s of the (001) and (311)A Ga0.93Mn0.07As layers are enhanced by 80 and 60K, respectively. X-ray diffraction studies reveal that the AsGa defects cannot be removed by low-temperature annealing, and a higher concentration of AsGa defects exist in the (311)A layers than in the (100) reference layers. The less enhancement in TC by annealing for the (311)A Ga0.93Mn0.07As layer can be ascribed to the larger amount of AsGa defects in the material.

Exchange fields accompanying vertical magnetization shifts were observed in the epitaxial ZnCo0.07O (dilute magnetic semiconductor)/NiO system after field cooling. Transitions of exchange fields and magnetization shifts were observed at 50K, above which the magnetization shift disappeared and the exchange field was significantly reduced. Both the exchange field and the magnetization shift increased with increasing cooling-field strength at temperatures below 50K, which might be attributed to the existence of “frozen” spins in ZnCoO. The observed linear dependence of the exchange field on the magnetization shift may directly elucidate the role of pinned spins on the exchange fields.