Mucoadhesive Phenolic Pectin Hydrogels for Saliva Substitute and Oral Patch

Oral disease is one of the most common conditions worldwide, negatively affecting general health, reducing the quality of life, and often developing into systemic illness. However, the design of therapeutic agents for oral diseases is challenging due to various unique features of the oral cavity, including its wet and dynamic environment and curved shape. Herein, the development of highly biocompatible mucoadhesive functional hydrogels for oral applications is reported, generated by introducing bio-inspired phenolic moieties into a pectin polymer. Pyrogallol-functionalized pectin (Pec-PG) can be crosslinked in situ via autoxidation without chemical agents and readily fabricated as various formulations. Sprayable Pec-PG hydrogel exhibits strong mucoadhesion and outstanding hydration ability ex vivo and in vivo, thus displaying significant potential as a novel saliva substitute for dry mouth. The authors further show that topical application of mucoadhesive Pec-PG patches pre-loaded with corticosteroid significantly promotes the repair of diabetic oral ulcer tissue via prolonged drug release, free radical scavenging, and physical barrier effects. Moreover, similar applications for oral ulcer treatment using a pectin hydrogel modified with catechol (Pec-CA), another phenolic moiety are demonstrated. Together, these findings suggest that mucoadhesive phenolic pectin derivatives can provide highly biocompatible, convenient, and effective hydrogel platforms for treating oral diseases.     

Millimeter‐Wave High‐Linear CMOS Low‐Noise Amplifier Using Multiple‐Gate Transistors

A millimeter‐wave (mm‐wave) high‐linear low‐noise amplifier (LNA) is presented using a 0.18 µm standard CMOS process. To improve the linearity of mm‐wave LNAs, we adopted the multiple‐gate transistor (MGTR) topology used in the low frequency range. By using an MGTR having a different gate‐source bias at the last stage of LNAs, third‐order input intercept point (IIP3) and 1‐dB gain compression point (P_1dB) increase by 4.85 dBm and 4 dBm, respectively, without noise figure (NF) degradation. At 33 GHz, the proposed LNAs represent 9.5 dB gain, 7.13 dB NF, and 6.25 dBm IIP3.     

A smartphone‐based U‐Healthcare system for real‐time monitoring of acute myocardial infarction

In recent years, medical service has been evolving from systems designed around centralized hospitals to Ubiquitous Healthcare (U‐Healthcare). U‐Healthcare system can facilitate real‐time monitoring of patient states, and can provide medical checkups and management whenever and wherever the medical staff deems necessary. U‐Healthcare services can provide chronic condition monitoring in the early stages of diseases and help execute decisive medical action in emergencies. However, thus far, the application of U‐Healthcare systems has been limited to diseases such as obesity, diabetes, etc. Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is among the most critical chronic diseases and requires early detection and treatment. In this paper, we propose an AMI diagnostic software technique and protocol that can support real‐time communication between the patient and medical personnel. Our monitoring and diagnostic system has been developed using a protocol based on ISO/IEEE 11073. When data is transferred from the patient's smartphone to a server in hospital, the medical personnel consult the patient's biosensor data to determine the status of the relevant disease and provide appropriate medical service. The relevant information is sent back to the patient's smartphone through a wireless network, and patients can view their data in graphical format through their smartphone. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive binary splitting for efficient RFID tag anti-collision

Tag collision arbitration for passive RFID tags is a significant issue for fast tag identification. This letter presents a novel tag anti-collision scheme called adaptive binary splitting (ABS). For reducing collisions, ABS assigns distinct timeslots to tags by using information obtained from the last identification process. Our performance evaluation shows that ABS outperforms other tree based tag anti-collision protocols.     

Vapor–liquid equilibria of the 1,1,1-trifluoroethane (HFC-143a) + dimethyl ether (DME) system

Binary vapor liquid equilibrium data were measured for the 1,1,1-trifluoroethane (HFC-143a) + dimethyl ether (DME) system at temperatures from 313.15 K to 363.15 K. These experiments were carried out with a circulating-type apparatus with on-line gas chromatograph analysis. The experimental data were correlated well by the Peng-Robinson equation of state using the Wong-Sandler mixing rules.     

SCON—a Short Conditional intrON for conditional knockout with one-step zygote injection

The generation of conditional alleles using CRISPR technology is still challenging. Here, we introduce a Short Conditional intrON (SCON, 189 bp) that enables the rapid generation of conditional alleles via one-step zygote injection. In this study, a total of 13 SCON mouse lines were successfully generated by 2 different laboratories. SCON has conditional intronic functions in various vertebrate species, and its target insertion is as simple as CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene tagging.Subject terms: Genetic engineering, Gene targeting, Genetic models     

W 1, p(·)-Regularity for Elliptic Equations with Measurable Coefficients in Nonsmooth Domains

We establish global W ^{1, p(·)}-estimates for second order elliptic equations in divergence form under the natural assumption that p(·) is log-Hölder continuous. To this end, we assume that the coefficients are measurable in one variable and have small BMO semi-norms in the other variables and the boundary of the domain is Reifenberg flat. Our work is an optimal and natural extension of W ^1,p -regularity for such equations with merely measurable coefficients beyond Lipschitz domains.     

Robust Corner Detection Based on Image Structure

In this paper, we propose a robust corner detection method to improve both detection rate and localization accuracy by modifying the structure tensor-based corner detection method in two ways. First, we introduce a connected component analysis (CCA) method for constructing a CCA structure tensor in order to make the structure tensor adaptive to the structure of the image. Second, the normalized cross-correlation (NCC) method is applied for false corner rejection with the observation that the patch of a true corner has a distinctive characteristic compared with connected neighboring patches. The proposed method is compared with several corner detection methods over a number of images. Experimental results show that the proposed method shows better performance in terms of both detection rate and localization accuracy.     

Ceramic-metal package for high power LED lighting

High power light-emitting diodes (LEDs)lighting has drawn a great interest in the field of street light system in recent years.Key parameters for successful launching of LED street light in the commerc...     

(Vapour + liquid) equilibria of the {1,1,1-trifluoroethane (HFC-143a) + isobutene} system

Isothermal (vapour + liquid) equilibrium data were measured for the {1,1,1-trifluoroethane (HFC-143a) + isobutene} as an alternative refrigerant in the temperature range from (273.15 to 348.15) K at 15 K intervals. A circulating-type apparatus with on-line gas chromatography was used in these experiments. The experimental data were correlated well by Peng–Robinson equation of state using the Wong–Sandler mixing rules.