1,721,269 research outputs found
Liquid metals as soft electromechanical actuators
No full textLeveraging the unique properties of liquids, such as surface tension, capillary action, reconfigurability, nearly unlimited stretchability, and viscosity has enabled the development of a wide range of soft actuators, presenting vast potential to revolutionise wearable healthcare devices, manufacturing, reconfigurable electronics, and robotics. Gallium (Ga) based liquid metals (GaLMs) are a remarkable family of functional fluidic materials that can actuate electrically for realising electromechanical functions. Such actuators are simple, highly responsive, highly controllable, and reversible, which has led to the creation of useful devices such as reconfigurable antennas, artificial muscles, electrical switches, and soft robots, just to name a few. Herein, this review succinctly and critically summarises recent advances in research on using GaLMs as electromechanical actuators. First, the properties of GaLMs are introduced, and then the methods for their electrical actuation and the applications thereof are discussed. Finally, an outlook is offered, highlighting the research challenges faced by liquid metal electromechanical actuators in order to develop into commercial devices. </p
Liquid Metal Enabled Biodevices
No full textBiodevices are crucial for monitoring vital physiological signals, managing chronic health conditions, developing artificial organs for assisting people with disabilities, and conducting various clinical and surgical procedures. However, existing biodevices are mostly composed of rigid components, which can cause discomfort to the user, whereas the high stiffness of implants is known to be the major cause of inflammation and scarring. Gallium‐based liquid metals are intrinsically soft and possess desirable properties, including low toxicity, high conductivity, and deformability, which make them ideally suited for developing soft, deformable, reconfigurable, and healable biodevices. Herein, recent advancements in the emerging field of liquid‐metal‐based biodevices are discussed. This includes a description of the properties of gallium‐based liquid metals which make them so distinct from conventional materials, a brief outline of various techniques devised for fabrication of liquid‐metal‐based devices/structures, and an overview of the diverse range of wearable or implantable liquid‐metal‐enabled biodevices. The outlook and challenges are also discussed
Post-submission changes to prespecified statistical analysis plans
Full text linkTransparency and reproducibility are two of the fundamental principles of evidence generation and dissemination of research knowledge.12 Researchers ask questions, challenge answers, replicate results, and scrutinise findings—this is how we accumulate knowledge and help develop evidence based policy. Scientific integrity, reliability, reproducibility, and transparency are paramount if scientific studies are to serve as the basis for policies that can have a big effect on human wellbeing.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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