Browse Articles

Core-genome guided novel therapeutic targets identification and chimeric vaccine designing against Rickettsia rickettsii

Improved gate leakage current and breakdown voltage of InAlN/GaN MIS-HEMTs by HfAlOx-based charge-trapping layer dielectric and <i>in situ</i> O3 treatment

In this study, high-performance InAlN/GaN metal-insulator-semiconductor high electron mobility transistors (MIS-HEMTs) are fabricated using HfAlOx-based charge-trapping layer dielectric stack combined with in situ O3 treatment. A positive threshold voltage shift (ΔVTH) of 8.9 V is achieved due to the charge-trapping effect. The device also shows a high Ion/Ioff ratio of ∼1010, a low gate leakage current of ∼10−7 mA/mm, and a relatively high BVDS of 400 V. The suppression of gate leakage current results in an ultra-high gate breakdown voltage of 22.5 V, owing to the superior current blocking capability of the O3-based Al2O3/HfO2 blocking layers and the interface improvement between dielectric and InAlN barrier achieved through in situ O3 treatment. The time-dependent dielectric breakdown measurements reveal the quality and reliability of the dielectric layer, predicting a maximum VGS of 9.66 and 9.31 V for a 10-year lifetime at failure rates of 63.2% and 0.10%, respectively. Additionally, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and multi-frequency C–V measurements further verify the effectiveness of the in situ O3 treatment in the optimization of the dielectric/GaN interface. These results demonstrate a practical approach to significantly improve the performance of InAlN/GaN MIS-HEMTs.

Role of P2 X7 receptor during focused ultrasound induced blood brain barrier modulation

Heteroatomic doping induces charge rearrangement to optimize carrier dynamics in 2D halide perovskites

It is well established that a number of techniques, including applied electric fields, interfacial engineering, structural torsion, and doping, can modulate the geometric and electronic structures of materials, thereby enhancing their photoelectronic properties in two-dimensional (2D) halide perovskites. Among these strategies, doping has proven to be an extremely effective approach; however, the precise mechanisms underlying this effect remain elusive. Herein, we systematically investigated how heteroatom doping, specifically using Sn and Bi dopants, influences the excited-state dynamics of 2D (MA)2PbI4 perovskites using ab initio calculations combined with real-time nonadiabatic molecular dynamics simulations. Our results indicate that the doped systems maintain the octahedral configuration characteristics of the parent material. Notably, doping leads to a significant electron–hole separation in real space, corresponding to an extended carrier lifetime of approximately 140–150 ns, compared to just 2.70 ns for pristine (MA)2PbI4 perovskites. This behavior is primarily governed by a low-frequency vibration mode around ∼200 cm−1. These calculations provide important insights into the potential for atomically modulating carrier behaviors to achieve excellent photovoltaic properties.

The homeobox family gene signature predicts the prognosis of osteosarcoma and correlates with immune invasion

Hydrogen-mediated control of magnetic anisotropy and magnetic domain structure in Co/Pd multilayer

This study demonstrates the reversible transition from perpendicular to in-plane magnetic anisotropy in Co/Pd multilayers induced by hydrogenation, using a magneto-optic Kerr microscope. By controlling hydrogen pressure and exposure time, the transition is separated into coercivity and squareness ratio changes, reflecting reduced perpendicular anisotropy and spin reorientation. The Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction is observed through asymmetric magnetic domain expansion, with hydrogenation causing domains to fragment. These results suggest hydrogenation as a method for precise control of magnetic anisotropy and domain structures.

Stability-indicating spectrophotometric quantification of safinamide in the presence of its possible degradation product

AbstractIn recent times, a truly exquisite pharmaceutical marvel has graced the world of medicine, known as Safinamide (SAF). This opulent creation has been specifically tailored to cater to the needs of individuals afflicted with Parkinson’s disease (PD), an esteemed neurological condition renowned for its regal ability to impede motor skills, coordination, and equilibrium. It is highly improbable that degradation products of pharmaceutical components would significantly compromise efficiency and safety of a drug during its shelf life. Pharmaceutical analysis requires a variety of stability tests to be conducted under distinct conditions. As a result, there was an increased need for the development of an analytical methodology capable of reliably separating and quantifying degradants and impurities that might be found in pharmaceuticals. In this study, we have developed two efficient and straightforward spectrophotometric methodologies for the concurrent estimation of SAF and its degradation product (SAF DEG), which is the main acid hydrolysis product. The confirmation of degradation product build-up by the use of several analytical techniques, including infrared spectroscopy (IR), and mass spectrometry (MS) investigations. The present methodologies have been validated for linearity within the concentration range of 5–30 µg/ml for SAF, and 5–15 µg/mL, 2–15 µg/ml for SAF DEG for fourier self-deconvolution (FSD) and dual wavelength (DW) methods, respectively. The originality of these techniques lies in their status as the first stability-indicating spectrophotometric procedures that are both environmentally friendly. Moreover, the process of obtaining pure SAF DEG offers substantial economic benefits by obviating the need to acquire a costly constituent. The use of intelligent techniques was employed to analyze the pharmaceutical dosage form, potentially offering significant advantages to the pharmaceutical industry.

E-mode AlGaN/GaN HEMT with ScAlN/ScN charge trap-coupled ferroelectric gate stacks

A fully epitaxial ferroelectric ScAlN/AlGaN/GaN HEMT coupled with an ultrathin ScN charge trap layer for enhancement-mode operation is demonstrated. The ultrathin ScN acts as an electron reservoir to trap and store the electrons from the 2-dimensional electron gas channel region, transitioning the operation of the GaN high electron mobility transistor from the depletion-mode to the enhancement-mode, while the fully epitaxial nature enables low interface defect density and steep slope operation. The initialization process by applying a positive gate bias to inject carriers to the ScN layer is observed to shift the threshold voltage (Vth) from −1.2 to +1.3 V. The fabricated device also shows a steep subthreshold swing as low as 61 mV/dec and exhibits good stability, providing a promising pathway for power-efficient and multifunctional applications.

Green-synthesized silver nanoparticle-enhanced nanofiltration mixed matrix membranes for high-performance water purification

Field-free spin–orbit switching of canted magnetization in Pt/Co/Ru/RuO2(101) multilayers

Achieving field-free current-induced switching of perpendicular magnetization is crucial for the advancement of spin–orbit torque magnetic random access memory technology. In our study on the Pt/Co/Ru/RuO2(101) system, we have demonstrated field-free switching via current injection along the RuO2[010] axis. We found that the system features a tilted easy axis, deviating from the out-of-plane orientation toward the RuO2[1¯01] direction. The application of current perpendicular to this tilted axis generates a significant out-of-plane effective field, enabling field-free magnetization switching. Our findings also suggest that fine-tuning the thickness of the Ru layer to change the tilt angle can substantially reduce the critical switching current density. This work offers a promising approach for controlling the tilting magnetization, which is vital for the development of RuO2-based magnetic devices.

A hybrid attention multi-scale fusion network for real-time semantic segmentation

AbstractIn semantic segmentation research, spatial information and receptive fields are essential. However, currently, most algorithms focus on acquiring semantic information and lose a significant amount of spatial information, leading to a significant decrease in accuracy despite improving real-time inference speed. This paper proposes a new method to address this issue. Specifically, we have designed a new module (HFRM) that combines channel attention and spatial attention to retrieve the spatial information lost during downsampling and enhance object classification accuracy. Regarding fusing spatial and semantic information, we have designed a new module (HFFM) to merge features of two different levels more effectively and capture a larger receptive field through an attention mechanism. Additionally, edge detection methods have been incorporated to enhance the extraction of boundary information. Experimental results demonstrate that for an input size of 512 × 1024, our proposed method achieves 73.6% mIoU at 176 frames per second (FPS) on the Cityscapes dataset and 70.0% mIoU at 146 FPS on Camvid. Compared to existing networks, our Model achieves faster inference speed while maintaining accuracy, enhancing its practicality.

Reduced sound velocity in PbZrO3 thin film during antiferroelectric to ferroelectric transition revealed by picosecond acoustics

The antiferroelectric-to-ferroelectric (AFE-FE) phase transition has attracted considerable attention due to its potential applications in high-strain transducers, thermal switching, and pulsed-power devices. To deepen our understanding of this transition and enable its functionalities, ultrafast dynamics, especially lattice dynamics of antiferroelectricity, are essential to be demonstrated. In this work, the picosecond acoustics technique is applied to measure the sound velocity of a high-quality PbZrO3 epitaxial thin film with a thickness of ∼110 nm, determining it to be 5879 ± 11 m/s. More importantly, our in situ measurements reveal a reduction in sound velocity of approximately 6% during the AFE-FE phase transition under an external electric field of ∼364 kV/cm at ambient conditions. This reduction can increase to about 12% with an elevated electric field of approximately 545 kV/cm. Additionally, we found that this field-induced ferroelectric phase is metastable and the recovery takes up to tens of hours at ambient conditions, indicating a memory effect of the field-induced state. These findings suggest that the AFE-FE phase transition in PbZrO3 thin films holds promise for applications in acoustic wave manipulation.

Control of flow deflection angle around the corner using microjet array

Imprinting of stochastic magnetic domain configurations by fluctuating interlayer coupling

Competing interaction within magnetic materials leads to the formation of complex magnetic domain configurations such as stripe domains, labyrinthine domains, magnetic bubbles, and skyrmions, which are fingerprints of different magnetic materials. An effective tailoring of these competing interactions and the resultant magnetic domain configurations by extrinsically means is of current interest. Through depositing an interfacially asymmetric Ta/CoFeB/MgO/Ta multilayer on a rare-earth-doped yttrium iron garnet of composition SmLu: YIG film, we show that the magnetic domain configurations from the bottom SmLu: YIG film can be partly imprinted onto the top Ta/CoFeB/MgO/Ta multilayer. The formation of stochastic domain configurations, such as labyrinthine domains, parallel stripe domains, and magnetic bubbles in the Ta/CoFeB/MgO/Ta multilayer, is jointly studied by using polar magneto-optical Kerr effect microscope and anomalous Hall effect measurements. The underlying physics is attributed to the fluctuating interlayer dipole–dipole interaction that results in the partial imprinting, which could substantially modify the intrinsic magnetism of the top Ta/CoFeB/MgO/Ta multilayer and leading to the formation of stochastic domain configurations. Our results provide an effective approach for tailoring the competing interaction in magnetic materials and for application scenarios in which the formation of stochastic domain configurations is required.

Follow-up care needs and motivational factors for childhood cancer survivors and their parents in Germany

AbstractThis study aims to explore the long-term follow-up needs and motivations of childhood and adolescent cancer survivors and their parents to attend follow-up care in Germany, given the inconsistent adherence to national follow-up guidelines. We developed interview guidelines based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and the stereotype priming model to explore motivations and barriers related to follow-up care. We conducted a total of 36 episodic narrative interviews with adolescent (ages 13–17) and adult (ages 18–45) survivors of pediatric cancer, as well as their parents. We analyzed the transcripts qualitatively using thematic content analysis, while quantitative analysis through multiple regression models was used to support the qualitative findings and identify predictors of follow-up care attendance. We identified key themes across age groups, including a strong need to “return to normal life” and a desire for ongoing organizational and social support. Both survivors and parents highlighted specific needs, including timely, personalized health information and practical help with healthcare logistics. Adolescents particularly valued emotional support from their social circles, whereas adult survivors and parents expressed a need for more structured psychosocial and logistical assistance. The findings suggest that both age and the time elapsed since diagnosis play a role in affecting survivors’ perceived control to attend guideline-based follow-up care. Our findings suggest that a differentiated approach to follow-up care, with age-appropriate support structures, and tailored guidelines, may improve adherence among survivors and their parents. To enhance follow-up care adherence among cancer survivors, healthcare providers could offer tailored, age-specific information and practical assistance with healthcare logistics. Additionally, providing emotional and psychosocial support resources for both survivors and their parents can help address their unique needs at different stages of recovery.Trial registration: Registered at German Clinical Trial Register (ID DRKS00025960 and DRKS00026092).

Erratum: “MOCVD growth of β-Ga2O3 with fast growth rates (&amp;gt;4.3 <i>μ</i> m/h), low controllable doping, and superior transport properties” [Appl. Phys. Lett. <b>125</b> , 242106 (2024)]

Comprehensive bioinformatics analysis reveals novel potential biomarkers associated with aging and mitochondria in osteoporosis

Visualization of the phonon evolution behavior in NaNbO3 single crystal during field-induced phase transition by <i>in situ</i> Raman spectroscopy

NaNbO3 (NN) is a significant lead-free alternative for pulse power systems or nonvolatile memories due to its antiferroelectric P phase at room temperature. However, a comparable free energy between P phase and another ferroelectric Q phase leads to an irreversible transition from P to Q phase just under a weak electric field, which results in the unobservable double hysteresis loops. In addition, recent studies reveal that the critical field needed during the transition process is inconsistent between in situ microstructure characterization and macroscopic polarization measurement. Consequently, the intricate field-induced phase transition in NN is perplexing. Based on high sensitivity of Raman spectroscopy to symmetry breaking in lattices, this work systematically investigates the in situ Raman spectra of NN single crystals, analyzing the evolution and depolarization behavior of various phonons under an electric field. Correspondingly, the transition from P to Q phase is determinately identified, accompanied by in-depth understanding of the phonon dynamics of field-induced phase transition. This present work provides a reliable experimental foundation for further probing on the transition mechanism of ferroelectric/antiferroelectric order in dielectrics, as well as facilitating the performance control and application development of NN-based devices.

6-hydroxygenistein attenuates hypoxia-induced injury via activating Nrf2/HO-1 signaling pathway in PC12 cells

Phase stability and transition behaviors of (Bi<i>x</i>In1−<i>x</i>)2Se3 alloy

The Bi2Se3–In2Se3 layered system has garnered significant attention and extensive research due to its versatile properties, yet its structural properties and phase stability remain elusive. Here, using first-principles calculations with van der Waals interactions, we systematically study the phase stability and transition behavior of (BixIn1−x)2Se3 alloys. Our results reveal a contrasting stability profile between Bi2Se3 and In2Se3, with the former exhibiting a distinct preference for the β phase over the α phase, while the latter shows similar stabilities in both phases, thus partially addressing previously reported ground-state inconsistencies. Exploring composition–structure relationships, we demonstrate that Bi incorporation in low concentrations stabilizes the β phase, consistent with early experimental observations. Further analysis based on the cation orbital properties indicates that the preference of Bi for octahedral sites over tetrahedral ones drives the small critical composition for the α→β phase transition. This work enhances our understanding of phase stability in (BixIn1−x)2Se3 alloys, providing insights for future design of monophasic materials and advanced applications.