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SiC Schottky-Barrier Diode without Ion-Implanted P-Type Regions
Get PDFThis paper shows results of SiC Schottky diodes fabricated without ion-implanted P-type regions. Diodes with blocking voltages up to 4,500 V are demonstrated utilizing an epitaxial P-type ring with sloped edges for the edge termination. Reverse-bias currents at temperatures higher than 60°C, and at nominal blocking voltages of 650 V, 1200 V, and 1700 V, are shown to match the theoretical values based on the two fundamental current mechanisms: tunneling and thermionic emission. In comparison to JBS and MPS diodes, the whole anode area is active, which enables homogeneous current flow and comparable isothermal characteristics without the usual wafer thinning. In addition, the non-thinned wafer results in larger thermal capacitance, allowing for higher repetitive peak surge currents for the same junction temperature within the maximum operating temperature of 175°C.Full Tex
Creating Safer Injecting Practices Through Community-Led Harm Reduction: Lessons From People Who Use Steroids for the Alcohol and Other Drug Sector
Get PDFIntroduction
Research on anabolic–androgenic steroid (AAS) use has addressed health outcomes, social dynamics, service access and risk management strategies. Yet little work has examined how these domains converge in injection practices, where community-led knowledge and structural barriers shape harm reduction. This study aimed to explore people's experiences of injecting AAS, focusing on practices, challenges and sources of harm reduction knowledge, and examined how consumers develop safer injection methods through lived-living expertise.
Methods
Data were drawn from semi-structured interviews with Australian AAS consumers (N = 25), including follow-ups with 15 participants, resulting in 40 research interactions. These interactions examined safer injecting, harm reduction strategies and structural barriers. Analysis employed iterative categorisation, integrating lived-living experience and a lens of prefigurative politics to develop knowledge into three theme-categories.
Results
Participants articulated that injecting, when done correctly, was perceived as a safer usage pathway. However, many participants lacked access to clear, evidence-based injection guidance and acquired information through informal sources including online forums and peer networks. Some AAS consumers experienced bacterial infections and abscesses, highlighting the ongoing risks associated with injecting. Experienced consumers had developed practices, through experimentation, on site rotation, injection volume and hygiene to mitigate harms.
Discussion and Conclusions
AAS consumers prefigure harm reduction through their community, yet informal learning is inconsistent. Peer-led interventions which partner with trusted allies, including clinicians and health workers, can work toward reducing injecting-related harms in the community; thus, moving the alcohol and other drug sector toward sustainable, collective care.Full Tex
Reduced Type-I Interferon by Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells and Asthma in School-Aged Children
Get PDFBackground: Allergic sensitization and reduced ability to respond to viral infections may contribute to virus-induced wheeze and asthma development in young children. Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDC) are rare immune cells that produce type I interferons (IFN-I) and play a key role in orchestrating immune responses against viruses. Objective: To further evaluate the function of pDC in children with asthma. Methods: This study was based on a subset of 71 children from the Early Life Lung Function (ELLF) cohort at the age of 7 years. As part of the ELLF study, participants were characterized for atopic sensitization, viral infection history, and lung function testing. pDC responses to a TLR7/8 agonist were assessed in the presence or absence of anti-IgE using an in vitro assay. Responses were evaluated utilizing flow cytometry, multiplexed cytokine assays, and transcriptional analysis of isolated pDC. Results: pDC responses varied considerably across individuals, and those who responded with IFN-I following stimulation showed a lower proportion of asthma compared to those who responded with TNF-only. A TNF-only response was associated with increased atopy and reduced upregulation of IFN-associated genes. Anti-IgE stimulation reduced pDC activation, and the reduction was associated with baseline expression of the IgE receptor (FcεR1). A reduction in a gene module centralized around genes such as TPM2, LILRA4, and CLEC4C was also observed. Conclusion: Together, these findings suggest that pDC responses are variable, associated with asthma, and appear influenced by environmental stimuli. This response thus appears to be an important aspect of asthma pathology in children.Full Tex
Large lithium-ion battery model for secure shared electric bike battery in smart cities
Get PDFElectric bikes powered by lithium-ion batteries are increasingly used in smart cities to promote sustainable mobility and efficient delivery services. However, limited battery range and slow plug-in charging remain key challenges. Shared electric bike battery systems, facilitated by battery swapping stations, offer a promising solution by enabling quick and efficient battery replacements. However, their success hinges on accurate anomaly detection, battery health estimation and remain range prediction. These tasks remain challenging due to data scarcity, battery diversity and environmental variability. Here we show that a large-scale lithium-ion battery model trained on over ten million battery time series data enables robust and adaptable battery management across diverse real-world scenarios. The model learns complex battery behavior through unsupervised pretraining. Importantly, after efficient finetuning, the model significantly outperforms existing approaches in the three critical tasks. Deployed on cloud servers, our model enables real-time data processing, enhancing the safety, reliability and efficiency of battery swapping services. This advancement accelerates electric bike adoption, fostering sustainable urban mobility and green smart city development.Full Tex
Exploring the Scope of Functionalized N-Acylneuraminic Acid β-Methyl Glycosides as Inhibitors of Neisseria meningitidis CMP-Sialic Acid Synthetase
Get PDFCell surface sialylation is utilized by a number of pathogenic bacteria to evade the host immune system through molecular mimicry of host sialoglycoconjugates. Human pathogen Neisseria meningitidis serotype B (NmB) expresses both sialylated capsule and surface lipooligosaccharides as pivotal virulence factors. An essential enzyme in the sialylation pathway of NmB is CMP-sialic acid synthetase (CSS), which produces the activated nucleotide sugar necessary for sialic acid transfer. In this work, novel C-4, -5, -7, and -9 functionalized derivatives of neuraminic acid β-methyl glycoside (Neuβ2Me) were synthesized as candidate CSS inhibitors. A number of these were found to reduce the activity of NmB CSS in vitro. The highest inhibition of NmB CSS, in a mixed mode manner, was observed with a Neu5Acβ2Me C-9 serine carboxamide. Direct interaction with the enzyme was confirmed by Saturation Transfer Difference (STD) NMR. Supplementation of growth media with this compound reduced lipooligosaccharide (LOS) sialylation of living N. meningitidis, thus providing an interesting starting point for the development of specific NmB CSS inhibitors as an alternative treatment strategy to fight bacterial infections.Full Tex
Beyond Antibiotics: Repurposing Non-Antibiotic Drugs as Novel Antibacterial Agents to Combat Resistance
Get PDFThe escalating global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) necessitates innovative therapeutic strategies beyond traditional antibiotic development. Drug repurposing offers a rapid, cost-effective approach by identifying new antibacterial applications for existing non-antibiotic drugs with established safety profiles. Emerging evidence indicates that diverse classes of non-antibiotic drugs, including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), statins, antipsychotics, calcium channel blockers and antidepressants, exhibit intrinsic antibacterial activity, or potentiate antibiotic efficacy. This review critically explores the mechanisms by which drugs that are not recognised as antibiotics exert antibacterial effects, including efflux pump inhibition, membrane disruption, biofilm inhibition, and quorum sensing interference. We discuss specific examples that demonstrate reductions in minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of antibiotics when combined with these drugs, underscoring their potential as antibiotic adjuvants. Furthermore, we examine pharmacokinetic considerations, toxicity challenges, and clinical feasibility for repurposing these agents as standalone antibacterials or in combination therapies. Finally, we highlight future directions, including the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning to prioritise drug candidates for repurposing, and the development of targeted delivery systems to enhance bacterial selectivity while minimising host toxicity. By exploring the overlooked potential of non-antibiotic drugs, this review seeks to stimulate translational research aimed at leveraging these agents in combating resistant bacterial infections. Nonetheless, it is crucial to acknowledge that such drugs may also pose unintended risks, including gut microbiota disruption and facilitation of resistance development. Hence, future research should pursue these opportunities with equal emphasis on efficacy, safety, and resistance mitigation.Full Tex
Seismic and Progressive Collapse Strain Rate Effects on the Withdrawal Strength of Screws in Glued Laminated Timber
Get PDFTimber-to-timber connections play an important role in the robustness of timber structures. Their performance and structural integrity primarily depend on the effective transfer of loads between elements, typically achieved through metal fasteners, such as nails, screws, bolts or dowels. During their design life, these connections may be subjected to dynamic loads, such as during earthquake and progressive collapse events, and the response of the fasteners under such loads is under researched. In this study, the pull-out and pull-through withdrawal resistance of 7 mm in diameter self-tapping timber screws, driven into Glue Laminated Timber (Glulam) samples, was experimentally evaluated under four strain rates, with failure occurring between 200 s (quasi-static) and 0.2 s (corresponding to seismic and progressive collapse events). The withdrawal pull-out strength increased by 23.0% when the screws were inserted along the parallel-to-grain direction and 18.9% when inserted perpendicular-to-grain. The pull-through resistance showedalower strain rate sensitivity with an increase of 17.2%.Full Tex
Digital Twins for Clinical and Operational Decision-Making: Scoping Review
No full textBackground:
The health care industry must align with new digital technologies to respond to existing and new challenges. Digital twins (DTs) are an emerging technology for digital transformation and applied intelligence that is rapidly attracting attention. DTs are virtual representations of products, systems, or processes that interact bidirectionally in real time with their actual counterparts. Although DTs have diverse applications from personalized care to treatment optimization, misconceptions persist regarding their definition and the extent of their implementation within health systems.
Objective:
This study aimed to review DT applications in health care, particularly for clinical decision-making (CDM) and operational decision-making (ODM). It provides a definition and framework for DTs by exploring their unique elements and characteristics. Then, it assesses the current advances and extent of DT applications to support CDM and ODM using the defined DT characteristics.
Methods:
We conducted a scoping review following the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) protocol. We searched multiple databases, including PubMed, MEDLINE, and Scopus, for original research articles describing DT technologies applied to CDM and ODM in health systems. Papers proposing only ideas or frameworks or describing DT capabilities without experimental data were excluded. We collated several available types of information, for example, DT characteristics, the environment that DTs were tested within, and the main underlying method, and used descriptive statistics to analyze the synthesized data.
Results:
Out of 5537 relevant papers, 1.55% (86/5537) met the predefined inclusion criteria, all published after 2017. The majority focused on CDM (75/86, 87%). Mathematical modeling (24/86, 28%) and simulation techniques (17/86, 20%) were the most frequently used methods. Using International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision coding, we identified 3 key areas of DT applications as follows: factors influencing diseases of the circulatory system (14/86, 16%); health status and contact with health services (12/86, 14%); and endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases (10/86, 12%). Only 16 (19%) of 86 studies tested the developed system in a real environment, while the remainder were evaluated in simulated settings. Assessing the studies against defined DT characteristics reveals that the developed systems have yet to materialize the full capabilities of DTs.
Conclusions:
This study provides a comprehensive review of DT applications in health care, focusing on CDM and ODM. A key contribution is the development of a framework that defines important elements and characteristics of DTs in the context of related literature. The DT applications studied in this paper reveal encouraging results that allow us to envision that, in the near future, they will play an important role not only in the diagnosis and prevention of diseases but also in other areas, such as efficient clinical trial design, as well as personalized and optimized treatments.No Full Tex
Building radical hope in an imagined world: co-constructing racially-just futures through Creative Critical Collective Futuring (3CF)
Get PDFWe present the emerging concept of Creative Critical Collective Futuring (3CF) as a theory and method to co-imagine more radically hopeful, racially-just futures in the year 2056. Focusing on two workshop activities with university students, we acknowledge how the past, present, and future are intertwined, and that by asserting felt, bodily knowledges, we can then begin to imagine new, collective futures. Our work also revealed how a racially-just future for our participants involves the systematic undoing of linguistic imperialism and the presence of organising pedagogies that attend to collective action and learning beyond the contested boundaries of the academy.Full Tex
Venoms and toxins that induce anticoagulation in vitro do not cause major alterations in coagulation parameters in vivo in a mouse model
No full textSnake venoms exert profound effects on blood coagulation, mostly associated with consumption coagulopathy due to the procoagulant activity of venom proteinases, which result in drastic alterations of laboratory clotting tests. In addition, snake venoms contain enzymes [mostly phospholipases A2 (PLA2s) and metalloproteinases (SVMPs)] that have strong anticoagulant activity in vitro. However, their actual effect on coagulation parameters in vivo has not been studied in detail. In the present work, we evaluated the alterations in standard clotting tests (prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time and fibrinogen concentration) and in rotational thromboelastometry parameters after the administration of venoms (Naja nigricollis and Pseudechis papuanus) and enzymes (P-I and P-III fibrinogenolytic SVMPs and an anticoagulant PLA2) that exert anticoagulant effect in vitro. For comparative purposes the venom of Bothrops asper, which is procoagulant in vitro and induces defibrinogenation in vivo, was also studied. Venoms and enzymes were administered intravenously in mice using sublethal doses to assess their in vivo effects on clotting parameters. Despite their anticoagulant effect on mouse plasma in vitro, the alterations of the clotting tests in vivo were generally limited, being more pronounced in the case of P. papuanus venom and in some Intem and Fibtem parameters. In contrast, the venom of B. asper induced a consumption coagulopathy associated with drastic alterations in all clotting parameters examined. Our observations suggest that venom components that induce anticoagulation in vitro do not necessarily exert major alterations in clotting parameters in vivo.Full Tex