Single Step Assembly of Janus Porous Biomaterial by Sub-Ambient Temperature Electrodeposition.

Janus porous biomaterials are gaining increasing attention and there are considerable efforts to develop simple, rapid, and scalable methods capable of tuning micro- and macro-structures. Here, a single-step electro-fabrication method to create a Janus porous film by the electrodeposition of the amino-polysaccharide chitosan is reported. Specifically, a Janus structure emerges spontaneously when electrodeposition is performed at sub-ambient temperature (0-5 °C). Sub-ambient temperature electrodeposition experiments show that: a Janus microstructure emerges (potentially as the result of a subtle alteration of the intermolecular interactions responsible for self-assembly); important microstructural features (pore size, porosity, and thicknesses) can be tuned by conditions; and this method is readily scalable (vs serial printing) and can yield complex tubular structures with Janus faces. In vitro studies demonstrate anisotropic cell guidance, and in vivo studies using a rat calvarial defect model further confirm the beneficial features of such Janus porous film for guided bone regeneration. In summary, these results further demonstrate that electro-fabrication provides a simple and scalable platform technology for the controlled functional structures of soft matter for applications in regenerative medicine.

Effect of Arylmethylene Substitutions on Molecular Structure, Optoelectronic Properties and Photovoltaic Performance of Dithienocyclopentafluorene-Based Small-Molecule Acceptors.

Two dithienocyclopentafluorene-based small-molecule acceptors (SMAs) were developed that feature methylene-functionalized conjugated side chains, to study the effect of arylmethylene substitution and its number on structure, optoelectronic properties and device performance. Results showed that two SMAs have better absorption properties and planarity, lower bandgaps and higher LUMOs compared with the control SMA without conjugated side chains. The synthesized SMAs were tested in polymer solar cells for examples of their applicability. This work argues that the introduction of methylene-functionalized conjugated side chains has great potential in tuning molecular structure, optoelectronic properties, device physics and photovoltaic performance of SMAs.

Cardiopulmonary Bypass Duration and the Incidence of Pressure Injuries in Patients Undergoing Cardiovascular Surgery: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

PURPOSE: The purpose of our study was to investigate the association between cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) duration and the incidence of pressure injuries (PIs) in patients undergoing cardiovascular surgery. DESIGN: Retrospective chart review. SUBJECTS AND SETTING: Two hundred and eighty-eight patients who underwent cardiovascular surgery with CPB from January 2016 through December 2016 in a 2000-bed general hospital, which integrates medical service, education, and research and in which 300 to 350 cardiovascular surgical procedures with CPB are performed each year. METHODS: We retrospectively collected data from patients' medical records. Univariate analysis and multivariate logistic regression analysis were performed to identify the independent risk factors for the development of PI. In addition, a simple linear regression model was conducted to assess the relationship between CPB duration and PI development. RESULTS: Of the 288 patients, 56 developed 80 PIs, with an incidence of 19.4% (95% confidence interval, 14.9%-24.3%). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that CPB duration, use of vasoactive drugs, and diabetes mellitus were independent risk factors for the development of PIs in patients receiving cardiovascular surgery. Median CPB duration was significantly longer in the group with PIs compared with the group without PIs (144 [range 48-415] minutes compared with 102.5 [range 16-678] minutes, P = .000). This result was consistent in the subgroup analysis of pediatric and adult patients. Pressure injuries also increased proportionally with CPB duration, from 12.2% at 60 minutes or shorter to 45.5% at more than 300 minutes (P = .002, R = 0.936). CONCLUSIONS: The CPB duration, use of vasoactive drugs, and presence of diabetes mellitus are independent risk factors for the development of PIs in patients undergoing cardiovascular surgery with CPB. Our findings indicated that PI incidence increased incrementally with the duration of CPB. We recommend implementing measures to prevent PIs in cardiovascular surgical patients, especially those undergoing prolonged CPB, receiving vasoactive drugs, and diagnosed with diabetes.

Stochastic Modeling and Analysis of Multiple Nonlinear Accelerated Degradation Processes through Information Fusion.

Accelerated degradation testing (ADT) is an efficient technique for evaluating the lifetime of a highly reliable product whose underlying failure process may be traced by the degradation of the product's performance parameters with time. However, most research on ADT mainly focuses on a single performance parameter. In reality, the performance of a modern product is usually characterized by multiple parameters, and the degradation paths are usually nonlinear. To address such problems, this paper develops a new s-dependent nonlinear ADT model for products with multiple performance parameters using a general Wiener process and copulas. The general Wiener process models the nonlinear ADT data, and the dependency among different degradation measures is analyzed using the copula method. An engineering case study on a tuner's ADT data is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results illustrate that the proposed method is quite effective in estimating the lifetime of a product with s-dependent performance parameters.

Electro-Sorting Create Heterogeneity: Constructing A Multifunctional Janus Film with Integrated Compositional and Microstructural Gradients for Guided Bone Regeneration.

Biology remains the envy of flexible soft matter fabrication because it can satisfy multiple functional needs by organizing a small set of proteins and polysaccharides into hierarchical systems with controlled heterogeneity in composition and microstructure. Here, it is reported that controlled, mild electronic inputs (<10 V; <20 min) induce a homogeneous gelatin-chitosan mixture to undergo sorting and bottom-up self-assembly into a Janus film with compositional gradient (i.e., from chitosan-enriched layer to chitosan/gelatin-contained layer) and tunable dense-porous gradient microstructures (e.g., porosity, pore size, and ratio of dense to porous layers). This Janus film performs is shown multiple functions for guided bone regeneration: the integration of compositional and microstructural features confers flexible mechanics, asymmetric properties for interfacial wettability, molecular transport (directional growth factor release), and cellular responses (prevents fibroblast infiltration but promotes osteoblast growth and differentiation). Overall, this work demonstrates the versatility of electrofabrication for the customized manufacturing of functional gradient soft matter.

A Multi-Modal and Multi-Atlas Integrated Framework for Identification of Mild Cognitive Impairment.

BACKGROUND: Multi-modal neuroimaging with appropriate atlas is vital for effectively differentiating mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from healthy controls (HC). METHODS: The resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and structural MRI (sMRI) of 69 MCI patients and 61 HC subjects were collected. Then, the gray matter volumes obtained from the sMRI and Hurst exponent (HE) values calculated from rs-fMRI data in the Automated Anatomical Labeling (AAL-90), Brainnetome (BN-246), Harvard-Oxford (HOA-112) and AAL3-170 atlases were extracted, respectively. Next, these characteristics were selected with a minimal redundancy maximal relevance algorithm and a sequential feature collection method in single or multi-modalities, and only the optimal features were retained after this procedure. Lastly, the retained characteristics were served as the input features for the support vector machine (SVM)-based method to classify MCI patients, and the performance was estimated with a leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV). RESULTS: Our proposed method obtained the best 92.00% accuracy, 94.92% specificity and 89.39% sensitivity with the sMRI in AAL-90 and the fMRI in HOA-112 atlas, which was much better than using the single-modal or single-atlas features. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrated that the multi-modal and multi-atlas integrated method could effectively recognize MCI patients, which could be extended into various neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases.

Deformation mechanism of innovative 3D chiral metamaterials.

Rational design of artificial microstructured metamaterials with advanced mechanical and physical properties that are not accessible in nature materials is very important. Making use of node rotation and ligament bending deformation features of chiral materials, two types of innovative 3D chiral metamaterials are proposed, namely chiral- chiral- antichiral and chiral- antichiral- antichiral metamaterials. In-situ compression and uniaxial tensile tests are performed for studying the mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms of these two types of 3D chiral metamaterials. Novel deformation mechanisms along different directions are explored and analyzed, such as: uniform spatial rotation deformation, tensile-shearing directed (compression-shearing directed), tensile-expansion directed (compression-shrinkage directed) deformation mechanisms of 3D chiral metamaterials, and competitions between different types of deformation mechanisms are discussed. The proposed 3D chiral metamaterials represents a series of metamaterials with robust microstructures design feasibilities.

A robust functional-data-analysis method for data recovery in multichannel sensor systems.

Multichannel sensor systems are widely used in condition monitoring for effective failure prevention of critical equipment or processes. However, loss of sensor readings due to malfunctions of sensors and/or communication has long been a hurdle to reliable operations of such integrated systems. Moreover, asynchronous data sampling and/or limited data transmission are usually seen in multiple sensor channels. To reliably perform fault diagnosis and prognosis in such operating environments, a data recovery method based on functional principal component analysis (FPCA) can be utilized. However, traditional FPCA methods are not robust to outliers and their capabilities are limited in recovering signals with strongly skewed distributions (i.e., lack of symmetry). This paper provides a robust data-recovery method based on functional data analysis to enhance the reliability of multichannel sensor systems. The method not only considers the possibly skewed distribution of each channel of signal trajectories, but is also capable of recovering missing data for both individual and correlated sensor channels with asynchronous data that may be sparse as well. In particular, grand median functions, rather than classical grand mean functions, are utilized for robust smoothing of sensor signals. Furthermore, the relationship between the functional scores of two correlated signals is modeled using multivariate functional regression to enhance the overall data-recovery capability. An experimental flow-control loop that mimics the operation of coolant-flow loop in a multimodular integral pressurized water reactor is used to demonstrate the effectiveness and adaptability of the proposed data-recovery method. The computational results illustrate that the proposed method is robust to outliers and more capable than the existing FPCA-based method in terms of the accuracy in recovering strongly skewed signals. In addition, turbofan engine data are also analyzed to verify the capability of the proposed method in recovering non-skewed signals.