Exploring Usability and Patient Attitude towards a Smart Hospital Service with the Technology Acceptance Model.

The demand for health care has increased with the development of global technology and the rise of public health awareness, and smart service systems have also been introduced to medical care to relieve the pressure on hospital staff. However, the survey found that patients' willingness to use smart services at the time of consultation has not improved. The main research purpose of this study was to understand the willingness of patients from various groups to use smart medical service systems and to explore the influencing factors on patients' use of smart service systems in hospitals through the technology acceptance model. This study distributed questionnaires in the outpatient area of National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin Branch, and a total of 202 valid questionnaires were obtained. After related research and regression analysis, it was found that patients paid more attention to the benefits and convenience brought by smart services. If patients believed that smart services were trustworthy and beneficial to themselves, their usage intention and attitude would be positive. The results of this study are summarized by the following four points: (1) Designed according to the cultural conditions of different regions; (2) think about design from the patient's perspective; (3) strengthen the explanation and promotion of smart services; and (4) add humanized care and design. This study could be used as a reference for hospitals to improve their service quality and systems in the future.

Resonance in modulation instability from non-instantaneous nonlinearities.

To explore resonance phenomena in the nonlinear region, we show by experimental measurements and theoretical analyses that resonance happens in modulation instability from non-instantaneous nonlinearities in photorefractive crystals. With a temporally periodic modulation in the external bias voltage, corresponding to a modulation in the nonlinear strength, an enhancement in the visibility of MI at resonant frequency is reported through spontaneous optical pattern formations. Theoretical curves obtained from a nonlinear non-instantaneous Schrödinger equation give good agreement to experimental data.

Propagation of a topologically half-charge vortex light beam in a self-focusing photorefractive medium.

While a fundamental Gaussian light beam can form stably a spatial soliton in certain self-focusing medium, a single-wave topologically integer-n-charge vortex light beam cannot. It breaks up into 2n filaments due to symmetry breaking and azimuthal instability, in which every azimuthal section of a π phase range from a soliton and repels itself from its azimuthal neighboring soliton. Then what happens to the half-charge vortex light beam, which contains only one section of a π phase range? We investigate experimentally and theoretically the propagation and stability of a topologically half-charge vortex light beam in a self-focusing photorefractive medium. We observed that the light beam propagates unstably in a self-focusing medium and breaks up into three filaments. This result is confirmed by numerical simulation and perturbation analysis.

Room-temperature violet luminescence and ultraviolet photodetection of Sb-doped ZnO/Al-doped ZnO homojunction array.

A Sb-doped ZnO microrod array was fabricated on an Al-doped ZnO thin film by electrodeposition. Strong violet luminescence, originated from free electron-to-acceptor level transitions, was identified by temperature-dependent photoluminescence measurements. This acceptor-related transition was attributed to substitution of Sb dopants for Zn sites, instead of O sites, to form a complex with two Zn vacancies (VZn), the SbZn-2VZn complex. This SbZn-2VZn complex has a lower formation energy and acts as a shallow acceptor which can induce the observed strong violet luminescence. The photoresponsivity of our ZnO p-n homojunction device under a negative bias demonstrated a nearly 40-fold current gain, illustrating that our device is potentially an excellent candidate for photodetector applications in the ultraviolet wavelength region.

Symmetry breaking of discrete solitons and its suppression by partial incoherence.

We study the symmetry breaking instability of discrete solitons with even parity in a 1-D waveguide array, and find that such instability can be suppressed by adding spatial incoherence. This is true for both staggered and unstaggered modes.

Stabilization of optical vortices in noninstantaneous self-focusing medium by small rotating intensity modulation.

We observe the stabilization of a single-(double-) charge optical vortex propagating in a self-focusing medium. The optical vortex, which carries a phase singularity at its center, usually breaks up in a self-focusing medium due to the so-called azimuthal instability. However, by adding a small rotating azimuthally-periodic intensity modulation on the vortex light beam, which propagates in a noninstantaneous self-focusing medium, we successfully suppress the azimuthal instability. This observation is confirmed by both numerical simulation and perturbational analysis.

Induced spatiotemporal modulation instability in a noninstantaneous self-defocusing medium.

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that induced spatiotemporal modulation instability can exist in a self-defocusing medium if the nonlinearity is noninstantaneous. We predict the growth rate as a function of the spatial and temporal frequencies of the modulation and the response time of the nonlinearity and confirm it by our experiments.

Coherence controlled soliton interactions.

We demonstrate theoretically and subsequently observe in experiment a novel type of soliton interaction when a pair of closely spaced spatial optical solitons as a whole is made partially incoherent. We explain how the character of the soliton interaction can be controlled by the total partial incoherence, and show a possibility to change the soliton interaction from attractive to repulsive, or vice versa, near a certain threshold in the coherence parameter.

Partially incoherent optical vortices in self-focusing nonlinear media.

We observe stable propagation of spatially localized single- and double-charge optical vortices in a self-focusing nonlinear medium. The vortices are created by self-trapping of partially incoherent light carrying a phase dislocation, and they are stabilized when the spatial incoherence of light exceeds a certain threshold. We confirm the vortex stabilization effect by numerical simulations and also show that the similar mechanism of stabilization applies to higher-order vortices.

Soliton transverse instabilities in anisotropic nonlocal self-focusing media.

We study, both numerically and experimentally, the transverse modulational instability of spatial stripe solitons in anisotropic nonlocal photorefractive media. We demonstrate that the instability scenarios depend strongly on the stripe orientation, but the anisotropy-induced features are largely suppressed for spatial solitons created by self-trapping of partially incoherent light.

Spatiotemporal optical modulation instability of coherent light in noninstantaneous nonlinear media.

We report on the theoretical derivation and experimental observation of spatiotemporal modulation instability (MI) of a coherent light beam in noninstantaneous nonlinear media. We obtain analytically the MI growth rate as a function of the spatial and temporal frequencies of the perturbation and the material response time. In the experiment, we observe that the varying speed of the MI patterns increases with the decreased material response time. We also observe that increasing the material response time can arrest the MI, agreeing with our theoretical derivation.