Heterotopic pregnancy - case report.

OBJECTIVE: Heterotopic pregnancy is the simultaneous occurrence of intrauterine and ectopic pregnancy. This situation is very rare (1:30 000 pregnancies), while recently, with the development of assisted reproductive techniques, the incidence has increased to 1:100 - 1:500 pregnancies. The aim of the study is to present the situation of coexistence of intrauterine pregnancy and ruptured tubal pregnancy. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The case concerns a 32-year-old patient in the 12th week of the second pregnancy in whom the only risk factor was the state after Caesarean section and thus possible intraperitoneal adhesions. The ultrasound revealed normal intrauterine pregnancy and a very large amount of free fluid in the smaller pelvis. After immediate surgical intervention, a ruptured right tubal pregnancy was found. Right fallopian tube was removed. After the operation, the patient with the preserved intrauterine pregnancy was discharged from the ward. Further intrauterine pregnancy was normal. Delivery by Caesarean section. CONCLUSION: Conclusions: The described case indicates that the existence of intrauterine pregnancy does not exclude the existence of ectopic pregnancy and emphasizes the great importance of correctly and accurately carried out ultrasound examination in the first trimester of pregnancy along with appendicitis assessment. Early diagnosis of heterotopic pregnancy reduces the risk of complications.

Unraveling the Mechanism of the 150-Fold Photocurrent Enhancement in Plasma-Treated 2D TMDs.

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are increasingly investigated for applications such as optoelectronic memories, artificial neurons, sensors, and others that require storing photogenerated signals for an extended period. In this work, we report an environment- and gate voltage-dependent photocurrent modulation method of TMD monolayer-based devices (WS2 and MoS2). To achieve this, we introduce structural defects using mild argon-oxygen plasma treatment. The treatment leads to an extraordinary over 150-fold enhancement of the photocurrent in vacuum along with an increase in the relaxation time. A significant environmental and electrostatic dependence of the photocurrent signal is observed. We claim that the effect is a combined result of atomic vacancy introduction and oxide formation, strengthened by optimal wavelength choice for the modified surface. We believe that this work contributes to paving the way for tunable 2D TMD optoelectronic applications.

Study of Structural and Optoelectronic Properties of Thin Films Made of a Few Layered WS2 Flakes.

We report a surfactant-free exfoliation method of WS2 flakes combined with a vacuum filtration method to fabricate thin (<50 nm) WS2 films, that can be transferred on any arbitrary substrate. Films are composed of thin (<4 nm) single flakes, forming a large size uniform film, verified by AFM and SEM. Using statistical phonons investigation, we demonstrate structural quality and uniformity of the film sample and we provide first-order temperature coefficient χ, which shows linear dependence over 300-450 K temperature range. Electrical measurements show film sheet resistance RS = 48 MΩ/Υ and also reveal two energy band gaps related to the intrinsic architecture of the thin film. Finally, we show that optical transmission/absorption is rich above the bandgap exhibiting several excitonic resonances, and nearly feature-less below the bandgap.

CNT-based saturable absorbers with scalable modulation depth for Thulium-doped fiber lasers operating at 1.9 µm.

In this work, we demonstrate a comprehensive study on the nonlinear parameters of carbon nanotube (CNT) saturable absorbers (SA) as a function of the nanotube film thickness. We have fabricated a set of four saturable absorbers with different CNT thickness, ranging from 50 to 200 nm. The CNTs were fabricated via a vacuum filtration technique and deposited on fiber connector end facets. Each SA was characterized in terms of nonlinear transmittance (i.e. optical modulation depth) and tested in a Thulium-doped fiber laser. We show, that increasing the thickness of the CNT layer significantly increases the modulation depth (up to 17.3% with 200 nm thick layer), which strongly influences the central wavelength of the laser, but moderately affects the pulse duration. It means, that choosing the SA with defined CNT thickness might be an efficient method for wavelength-tuning of the laser, without degrading the pulse duration. In our setup, the best performance in terms of bandwidth and pulse duration (8.5 nm and 501 fs, respectively) were obtained with 100 nm thick CNT layer. This is also, to our knowledge, the first demonstration of a fully polarization-maintaining mode-locked Tm-doped laser based on CNT saturable absorber.

High accuracy determination of the thermal properties of supported 2D materials.

We present a novel approach for the simultaneous determination of the thermal conductivity κ and the total interface conductance g of supported 2D materials by the enhanced opto-thermal method. We harness the property of the Gaussian laser beam that acts as a heat source, whose size can easily and precisely be controlled. The experimental data for multi-layer graphene and MoS2 flakes are supplemented using numerical simulations of the heat distribution in the Si/SiO2/2D material system. The procedure of κ and g extraction is tested in a statistical approach, demonstrating the high accuracy and repeatability of our method.