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The HfZrO x (HZO) ferroelectric material is a promising material for ferroelectric memory and is compatible with the semiconductor process for ferroelectric random access memory (FeRAM) and negative capacitance field effect transistor. However, defects often exist in the grain boundary to influence the performance or reliability of devices. In addition, uniformity between devices must be considered when they are mass-produced. Therefore, the grain size will become important in determining the performance and reliability. In this study, we use electrical measurements of current–voltage, capacitance–voltage, and polarization–voltage measurements to test high- and low-temperature deposition devices, with a transmission electron microscope (TEM) image to confirm the grain size. Finally, we propose a model to explain the phenomenon and provide a method to obtain better ferroelectric memory.

Due to the rise of spherical cameras, monocular 360

In this letter, the electrical characteristics of Ti/HfO2/TiN resistive random access memory (RRAM) were thoroughly investigated. An abnormal current degradation was seen in the DC sweeping cycle. Both the on-state and off-state current clearly exhibited degradation with time. Next, current fitting analysis was used to investigate the carrier transport mechanisms. The results indicate that the on-state carrier transport mechanism changed from space-charge-limited current into hopping conduction after cycle sweeping. However, the off-state current changes from Schottky thermal emission to hopping conduction. Based on comparisons of different Schottky distances and Schottky barriers, physical models were proposed to explain the abnormal current degradation behavior. Finally, COMSOL electric field simulations were used to show the electric field distribution around the conducting filament (CF), and the conducting model was subsequently verified.

In this paper, the instability mechanism of resistive random access memory (RRAM) was investigated, and a technique was developed to stabilize the distribution of high resistance states (HRS) and better concentrate the set voltage. Due to the accumulation of oxygen, an interface-type switching characteristic was observed on the I-V curves beneath the filament-type switching behavior. In this work, the interface-type switching characteristic is used to fit the natural distribution of HRS as an analysis of the instability mechanism. According to the results, the HRS distribution is attributed to the accumulation of excess oxygen ions left from the lower oxygen content and oxygen vacancy recombination during the reset process. The proposed solution with simple plasma treatment, can create an excess oxygen reservoir by changing the surface topography of the electrode to store the surplus oxygen ions from the reset process, eliminating the oxygen accumulation effect and further improving the device stability.

Background: Fluoroquinolones (FQs) are potent antimicrobials with multiple effects on host cells and tissues. Although FQs can attenuate cancer invasion and metastasis, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) has functional roles in tumor angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis, and is associated with cancer progression and poor prognosis, suggesting that inhibitors of MMP-9 activity and transcription are prime candidates for cancer therapy. Despite numerous preclinical data supporting the use of MMP-9 inhibitors as anticancer drugs, the few available examples are not therapeutically useful due to low specificity and off-target effects. We examined the effects of FQs on MMP-9 production in cancer cells following transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) and phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) stimulation. Experimental approaches: Using confluent cultures of HepG2 and A549 cells, the effects of FQs (ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, clinafloxacin, gatifloxacin, and enrofloxacin) on TGF-β and PMA-induced MMP-9 mRNA expression and production were studied in RNA extracts and culture supernatants, respectively. FQs specifically abrogated TGF-β and PMA-induced MMP-9 levels and activity in a concentration and time-dependent manner, without affecting other MMPs or proteins involved in epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Additionally, FQs inhibited TGF-β and PMA-induced cell migration via p38 and cyclic AMP signaling pathways. Conclusions and implications: Overall, we demonstrated that FQs inhibit cancer cell migration and invasion by downregulating MMP-9 expression and revealed the cellular mechanisms underlying their potential value in cancer treatment.

Although significant progress has been made in room layout estimation, most methods aim to reduce the loss in the 2D pixel coordinate rather than exploiting the room structure in the 3D space. Towards reconstructing the room layout in 3D, we formulate the task of 360° layout estimation as a problem of predicting depth on the horizon line of a panorama. Specifically, we propose the Differentiable Depth Rendering procedure to make the conversion from layout to depth prediction differentiable, thus making our proposed model end-to-end trainable while leveraging the 3D geometric information, without the need of providing the ground truth depth. Our method achieves state-of-the-art performance on numerous 360° layout benchmark datasets. Moreover, our formulation enables a pre-training step on the depth dataset, which further improves the generalizability of our layout estimation model.

Background Early detection of bladder cancer remains challenging because patients with early-stage bladder cancer usually have no incentive to take cytology or cystoscopy tests if they are asymptomatic. Our goal is to find non-invasive marker candidates that may help us gain insight into the metabolism of early-stage bladder cancer and be examined in routine health checks. Results We acquired urine samples from 124 patients diagnosed with early-stage bladder cancer or hernia (63 cancer patients and 61 controls). In which 100 samples were included in our marker discovery cohort, and the remaining 24 samples were included in our independent test cohort. We obtained metabolic profiles of 922 compounds of the samples by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Based on the metabolic profiles of the marker discovery cohort, we selected marker candidates using Wilcoxon rank-sum test with Bonferroni correction and leave-one-out cross-validation; we further excluded compounds detected in less than 60% of the bladder cancer samples. We finally selected eight putative markers. The abundance of all the eight markers in bladder cancer samples was high but extremely low in hernia samples. Moreover, the up-regulation of these markers might be in association with sugars and polyols metabolism. Conclusions In the present study, comparative urine metabolomics selected putative metabolite markers for the detection of early-stage bladder cancer. The suggested relations between early-stage bladder cancer and sugars and polyols metabolism may create opportunities for improving the detection of bladder cancer.

With the advancement of science and technology, online applications have emerged in an endless stream. Once everything can communicate and interact with each other through network, the world of the Internet of Things will come into being. This study explore the market reaction and its influencing factors when enterprises announce the launching of new IoT-related products or services, aiming to understand whether investors in the capital market will react to IoT-related announcements and whether such reaction subsequently generates abnormal returns on stock prices.

This work investigates the effect of X-ray accelerating voltage (V acc) on the structural repair of HfZrOx ferroelectric random-access memory. We found that X-rays are able to break the molecular bonds due to missing electrons, thereby repairing the material structure. To further understand the influence of X-ray V acc on structural repair, we conducted different V acc conditions, with results showing that there is only a small improvement under high V acc. However, the improvement is much clearer under low V acc. To illuminate these results, we propose a physical model which is based on different X-ray energies that will have different energy penetration capacities.

Depth estimation from a monocular 360 image is an emerging problem that gains popularity due to the availability of consumer-level 360 cameras and the complete surrounding sensing capability. While the standard of 360 imaging is under rapid development, we propose to predict the depth map of a monocular 360 image by mimicking both peripheral and foveal vision of the human eye. To this end, we adopt a two-branch neural network leveraging two common projections: equirectangular and cubemap projections. In particular, equirectangular projection incorporates a complete field-of-view but introduces distortion, whereas cubemap projection avoids distortion but introduces discontinuity at the boundary of the cube. Thus we propose a bi-projection fusion scheme along with learnable masks to balance the feature map from the two projections. Moreover, for the cubemap projection, we propose a spherical padding procedure which mitigates discontinuity at the boundary of each face. We apply our method to four panorama datasets and show favorable results against the existing state-of-the-art methods.

Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) is a major advance in treating NSCLC with EGFR-activating mutations. However, acquired resistance, due partially to secondary mutations limits their use. Here we report that NSCLC cells with acquired resistance to gefitinib or osimertinib (AZD9291) exhibit EMT features, with a decrease in E-cadherin, and increases in vimentin and stemness, without possessing any EGFR secondary mutations. Knockdown of E-cadherin in parental cells increased gefitinib resistance and stemness, while knockdown of vimentin in resistant cells resulted in opposite effects. Src activation and Hakai upregulation were found in gefitinib-resistant cells. Knockdown of Hakai elevated E-cadherin expression, attenuated stemness, and resensitized the cells to gefitinib. Clinical cancer specimens with acquired gefitinib resistance also showed a decrease in E-cadherin and an increase in Hakai expression. The dual HDAC and HMGR inhibitor JMF3086 inhibited the Src/Hakai and Hakai/E-cadherin interaction to reverse E-cadherin expression, and attenuated vimentin and stemness to restore gefitinib sensitivity. The EMT features of AZD9291-resistant H1975 cells were related to the upregulation of Zeb1. Both gefitinib and AZD9291 sensitivity was restored by JMF3086 through reversing EMT. Our study not only revealed a common mechanism of EMT in both gefitinib and AZD9291 resistance beyond EGFR mutations per se, but also provides a new strategy to overcome it.

In this paper, an extraction method for measuring impact ionization-induced hole current in gallium nitride (GaN) metal–insulator–semiconductor high electron mobility transistors (MIS-HEMTs) is proposed. The results show that the non-monotonic impact ionization current characteristic can be easily acquired by the extraction method. Further, different hot-carrier stress (HCS) conditions can be obtained based on the I G–V G curve, and the reliability tests can act as verification of the impact-ionization curve. In addition, electrical reliability tests indicate that the threshold voltage (V TH) shift and on-state current (I on) degradation in the MIS-HEMTs have a positive correlation to impact ionization-generated hole current. During HCS operation, the V TH will shift positively and I on decreases due to hot electrons trapping into the GaN layer. This model is validated by TCAD simulation.

A sensitive method for the determination of mexiletine and lidocaine using surfactant-assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction coupled with capillary electrophoresis was developed. Triton X-100 and dichloromethane were used as the dispersive agent and extraction solvent, respectively. After the extraction, mexiletine and lidocaine were analyzed using capillary electrophoresis with ultraviolet detection. The detection sensitivity was further enhanced through the use of field-amplified sample stacking. Under optimal extraction and stacking conditions, the calibration curves were linear over a concentration range of 0.05-1.00 μM for mexiletine and 0.03-1.00 μM for lidocaine. The limits of detection (signal-to-noise ratio of 3) were 0.01 and 0.01 μM for mexiletine and lidocaine, respectively. An approximately 1141- to 1250-fold improvement in sensitivity was observed for the two analytes compared with the injection of a standard solution without the surfactant-assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction and field-amplified sample stacking procedures. This developed method was successfully applied to the determination of mexiletine and lidocaine in human urine and serum samples. Both precision and accuracy for urine and serum samples were less than 8.7 and 6.7%, respectively. The recoveries of the two analytes from urine and serum samples were 54.7-64.9% and 16.1-56.5%, respectively.

In this work, Ag-doped HfO2-based resistive random access memory (RRAM) with high on-off ratio, low-power consumption and forming-free properties was investigated. We propose the fabrication flow of the RRAM with via-hole structure. After doping Ag into HfO2 as the switching layer, the devices could execute resistive switching without a high-voltage forming process. The conduction mechanism was subsequently validated by a current fitting analysis. Electric field simulation was also utilized to observe the electric field distribution and finally a physical model was proposed to provide an explanation for the formation and dissolution of the filament.

The determination of the mutation load, a total number of nonsynonymous point mutations, by whole-exome sequencing was shown to be useful in predicting the treatment responses to cancer immunotherapy. However, this technique is expensive and time-consuming, which hampers its application in clinical practice. Therefore, the objective of this study was to construct a mutation load estimation model for lung adenocarcinoma, using a small set of genes, as a predictor of the immunotherapy treatment response. Using the somatic mutation data downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, a computational framework was developed. The estimation model consisted of only 24 genes, used to estimate the mutation load in the independent validation cohort precisely (R2 = 0.7626). Additionally, the estimated mutation load can be used to identify the patients with durable clinical benefits, with 85% sensitivity, 93% specificity, and 89% accuracy, indicating that the model can serve as a predictive biomarker for cancer immunotherapy treatment response. Furthermore, our analyses demonstrated the necessity of the cancer-specific models by the constructed melanoma and colorectal models. Since most genes in the lung adenocarcinoma model are not currently included in the sequencing panels, a customized targeted sequencing panel can be designed with the selected model genes to assess the mutation load, instead of whole-exome sequencing or the currently used panel-based methods. Consequently, the cost and time required for the assessment of mutation load may be considerably decreased, which indicates that the presented model is a more cost-effective approach to cancer immunotherapy response prediction in clinical practice., Cancer genetics: Predicting patient response to immunotherapy Estimating patients’ mutation load from a small set of genes can accurately predict their response to cancer immunotherapy. Harnessing patients’ immune response to target tumor cells is an effective treatment approach in some cases but not others. A patient’s number of deleterious genetic mutations across all their protein-coding genes has been shown to correlate with their responsiveness to immunotherapy. However, whole-exome sequencing is time-consuming and costly. Yu-Chao Wang at the National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan, and colleagues have developed cancer-specific mutation load estimation models for adenocarcinoma, melanoma and colorectal cancer that require sequencing only a small number of genes. They show that the mutation load in lung adenocarcinoma patients can be estimated from 24 genes and that they can predict immunotherapy responsiveness with similar accuracy to that obtained using whole-exome sequencing.

Cardiac rupture following blunt thoracic trauma in motor vehicle crash generally causes death at scene, and is rarely diagnosed preoperatively. However, early emergency thoracotomy in the emergency department (ED) or operating room might reduce the mortality but the benefit is still controversial. A haemodynamically unstable 28-year-old woman following motor vehicle crash was detected to have right haemothorax on chest X-ray. Thoracic computed tomography (CT) revealed additional lung contusions and multiple bone fractures. She developed cardiac arrest during open thoracotomy and had restored spontaneous circulation after open-chest cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). This report highlights that CT scan in haemodynamically unstable patients could delay surgical control of the injury. Open-chest CPR can be life-saving for blunt chest injury developing cardiac arrest. (Hong Kong j.emerg.med. 2015;22:320-323)

Overdose of benzodiazepines rarely causes morbidity or mortality. A 58-year-old woman presented to the emergency department in coma after ingestion of 30 tablets of 0.5 mg alprazolam. She recovered after flumazenil was administered. However, massive pulmonary embolism developed during observation in the emergency department. Endotracheal intubation and recombinant tissue plasminogen activator infusion were initiated. This case report highlights that benzodiazepine overdose can contribute to pulmonary embolism which is a life-threatening condition.

This article describes an arc-submerged nanofluid synthesis system (ASNSS) using ultrasonic orthogonal vibration that was developed to fabricate Co/Ag nanocompound fluid. In the fabrication process, the positive electrode of an Ag rod and the ultrasonic vibrator are combined to form an orthogonal model with the negative electrode of a Co rod. The two electrodes are then installed inside the vacuum chamber, with deionized water as the dielectric liquid. This nanocompound fluid is analyzed by morphological analysis, heat transfer analysis, magnetism analysis and suspension stability. The experimental results show that the nanocompound fluid is composed of Co, Ag and Co 3 O 4 , and the mean particle size is 30 nm. The pH value of the prepared nanocompound fluid is 3.8, and the Zeta potential is 31 mV, so the prepared nanofluid has excellent suspension stability. For the heat transfer experiment, the experimental ambient temperature is 40 °C, weight concentration is 0.4%, and average heat transfer coefficient is 0.79 W/m °C. The magnetism test shows that the saturation magnetization of the produced Co/Ag nanocompound fluid is 5.213 emu/g, the saturation magnetic strength is 6666.93 Oe, the coercivity is 56.62 Oe and the remanent magnetization is 0.0945 emu/g.

In this article, an arc-submerged nanofluid synthesis system is proposed and developed for Ag/Ni nanocomposite fluid fabrication. In the fabrication process, the positive electrode uses an Ag rod and the negative electrode uses a Ni rod, with the two electrodes processed in the dielectric liquid. The nanocomposite fluid generated by the synthesis system is analyzed by morphological analysis, heat transfer analysis, magnetic analysis and the UV-Vis spectrophotometer optical property analysis. Experimental results show that the Ag/Ni nanocomposite fluid has a very high Zeta potential of 45 mV, so that without dispersant it can remain stabile longer than five months. Testing the Ag/Ni nancomposite fluid magnetism by SQUID, shows that paramagnetism appears in the nanocomposite fluid. Moreover, the Ag/Ni nanocomposite fluid preserves both the nickel's magnetic characteristic and silver's absorption capability to visible light.

Pesticide exposure is associated with various neoplastic diseases and congenital malformations. Previous studies have indicated that pesticides may be metabolized by cytochrome P450 3A5 or glutathione S-transferases. DNA-repair genes, including X-ray repair cross-complementing group 1 (XRCC1) and xeroderma pigmentosum group D (XPD), may also be implicated in the process of pesticide-related carcinogenesis. Thus, we investigated whether various metabolic and DNA-repair genotypes increase the risk of DNA damage in pesticide-exposed fruit growers. Using the comet assay, the extent of DNA damage was evaluated in the peripheral blood of 135 pesticide-exposed fruit growers and 106 unexposed controls. The metabolic genotypes CYP3A5 (A(-44)G) and GSTP1 (Ile105Val) and DNA-repair genotypes XRCC1 (Arg399Gln, Arg194Trp, T(-77)C) and XPD (Asp312Asn, Lys751Gln) were identified by polymerase chain reaction. Our multiple regression model for DNA tail moment showed that age, high pesticide exposure, low pesticide exposure, GSTP1 Ile-Ile, and XRCC1 399 Arg-Arg genotype were associated with increased DNA tail moment (DNA damage). Further analysis of interaction between GSTP1 and XRCC1 genes that increase susceptibility revealed a significant difference in DNA tail moment for high pesticide-exposed subjects carrying both GSTP1 Ile-Ile with XRCC1 399 Arg-Arg genotypes (2.49+/-0.09 microm/cell; P=0.004), compared to those carrying GSTP1 Ile-Val/Val-Val with XRCC1 399 Arg-Gln/Gln-Gln genotypes (1.98+/-0.15 microm/cell). These results suggest that individuals with susceptible metabolic GSTP1 and DNA-repair XRCC1 genotypes may be at increased risk of DNA damage due to pesticide exposure.

This paper uses a vacuum submerged arc processing system to fabricate a nanocomposite fluid. During the processing, criteria such as breakdown voltage, temperature of dielectric fluid and vacuum pressure current, pulse-on and pulse-off time, etc. are set to obtain a better processing parameter. Then examination of the material morphology, composition, thermal conductivity, rheology and magnetism etc. is made of the nanocomposite fluid that is fabricated under these processing parameters.