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Wearable assistant devices play an important role in daily life for people with disabilities. Those who have hearing impairments may face dangers while walking or driving on the road. The major danger is their inability to hear warning sounds from cars or ambulances. Thus, the aim of this study is to develop a wearable assistant device with edge computing, allowing the hearing impaired to recognize the warning sounds from vehicles on the road. An EfficientNet-based, fuzzy rank-based ensemble model was proposed to classify seven audio sounds, and it was embedded in an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense development board. The audio files were obtained from the CREMA-D dataset and the Large-Scale Audio dataset of emergency vehicle sirens on the road, with a total number of 8756 files. The seven audio sounds included four vocalizations and three sirens. The audio signal was converted into a spectrogram by using the short-time Fourier transform for feature extraction. When one of the three sirens was detected, the wearable assistant device presented alarms by vibrating and displaying messages on the OLED panel. The performances of the EfficientNet-based, fuzzy rank-based ensemble model in offline computing achieved an accuracy of 97.1%, precision of 97.79%, sensitivity of 96.8%, and specificity of 97.04%. In edge computing, the results comprised an accuracy of 95.2%, precision of 93.2%, sensitivity of 95.3%, and specificity of 95.1%. Thus, the proposed wearable assistant device has the potential benefit of helping the hearing impaired to avoid traffic accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Threshold logic has been attracting great attention from researchers due to the rapid development in nanotechnology-based devices. In the state-of-the-art approach to the threshold logic network (TLN) synthesis using don’t cares, we observed that not all the computed don’t cares contribute to the cost minimization of threshold logic gate (TLG). Therefore, in this work, we focus on computing the don’t cares that effectively provide the opportunities for cost minimization. Furthermore, De Morgan’s law for TLGs is applied such that global TLN optimization considering the cost and the number of inverters can be achieved. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is capable of obtaining efficiently a smaller cost and fewer inverters for a set of TLN benchmarks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is considered as a promising emerging technology due to its low power dissipation and high device density. Since the majority function is the main operation in QCA circuits, minimizing the number of majority gates in QCA circuits is crucial to the corresponding QCA circuit minimization. A previous work used the node-merging technique to replace one target node with an existing substitute node in majority circuits for optimization. However, this technique may fail when no substitute nodes exist for a target node. In this article, we propose an enhanced optimization technique for majority circuits by adding a new node into the circuits and removing the target node and its fanin nodes. The experimental results show that this technique improves the results of the node-merging technique on a set of EPFL logic synthesis benchmarks. Additionally, this enhanced technique can work together with other optimization techniques. The circuit size reduction in the integrated approach reaches 1.26 times as compared to the results using the node-merging technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new necessary condition and the corresponding speedup strategies to the threshold function (TF) identification problem. The state-of-the-art to this identification problem could be very time-consuming when the function-under-identification is a non-TF with the unateness property. The proposed new necessary condition can be seamlessly integrated into this identification algorithm. As compared with the state-of-the-art, the improved identification algorithm with the proposed necessary condition can more effectively and efficiently detect non-TFs. Furthermore, according to the experimental results, the ratio of CPU time overhead in the process of checking the proposed necessary condition for identifying all the 8-input TF is only 0.1%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of threshold function (TF), which determines whether a Boolean function can be represented by an linear threshold logic gate (LTG) or not, is a fundamental but important task in the theories of threshold logic. In this paper, we propose a more efficient and effective algorithm of TF identification by constructing the system of irredundant inequalities and adjusting the weight assignment comprehensively. This is the first non-ILP-based approach that is able to identify all the eight-input TFs. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed approach is more effective than all the existing non-ILP-based approaches and the LTGs obtained by the proposed approach are optimal for near 100% cases. For TFs with 9–15 inputs, the proposed approach can identify 100 000 randomly generated TFs as well in a reasonable CPU time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Dynamic WDIs were proposed with consideration of water status under climate change. • Derivation of the monthly WDI with spatial and temporal improvement was displayed. • TaiWAP and SWAT were used for modeling local future weather and streamflow. • The importance of applying dynamic WDIs in the impact assessment was discussed. Understanding the environmental impacts associated with water-related adaptation measures plays an important role in decision making, as some adaptation measures may not offer environmental benefits compared to traditional water systems. The water depletion index (WDI) is one water stress indicator used to estimate the impacts of water consumption. A dynamic WDI was constructed and employed in this study under climate change scenarios with weather and streamflow modeling. To demonstrate whether adaptation measures can reduce water depletion and to demonstrate how dynamic WDI affects assessment results, Taipei, a highly developed and populated city in Taiwan, was selected as a case study site. Decreased WDI from July to August and increased WDI from September to October were simulated under climate change. This approach implied that when measuring water consumption impacts, the WDI should be applied according to the corresponding time period. Additionally, by substituting 70% of potable water with rainwater in a four-story building, 17.9–159.3 m3 of the freshwater depletion risk might be reduced every month. As adaptation measures can be long-term strategies and long-lasting infrastructures, a dynamic WDI could provide policy makers with a method to accurately and effectively assess the impacts of applying water-related adaptation measures in response to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Growth control of cubic perovskite structure strontium titanate (SrTiO 3) thin films was facilely achieved by tailoring surface morphologies of the TiN seeding layer in the hydrothermal-galvanic couple (HT-GC) synthesis. Two types of TiN thin films with pyramidal (P-TiN) and granular (G-TiN) surface morphologies were deposited on Si substrates by sputtering. The TiN-coated Si working electrodes were then directly connected to the Pt counter electrode without applying any external power source and soaked in 0.1 M Sr(CH 3 COOH) 2 mixed with 2 M NaOH at 80 °C for 1–60 min. Significant galvanic currents were detected during the HT-GC synthesis. Directional oriented cubic SrTiO 3 thin films grew over the two types of highly preferred oriented TiN seeding layers. The growth kinetics of SrTiO 3 was deduced by fitting the coverage of the oxide over the two types of TiN at different reaction times to a modified Avrami equation. It was shown that galvanic currents, relative peak integrated intensities, and growth rates of SrTiO 3 over the P-TiN were much higher than those on the G-TiN, while the grain sizes of SrTiO 3 over the P-TiN were smaller. The faceted surfaces with fewer phase boundaries for P-TiN could yield a different rate-limiting step during the HT-GC synthesis and enhance significantly the growth of the oxide. This facile growth control could also be applied to similar perovskite oxide/conductive nitride systems. Highlights • SrTiO 3 was made on TiN-coated electrodes by the hydrothermal-galvanic couple method. • Directionally oriented SrTiO 3 thin films grew over highly preferred oriented TiN. • Growth kinetics of SrTiO 3 films was governed by tailoring surface morphology of TiN. • Different morphologies of TiN yield different growth rates and gain sizes of SrTiO 3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water availability, resulting from either a lack of water or poor water quality is a key factor contributing to regional water stress. This study proposes a set of sector-wise characterization factors (CFs), namely consumptive and degradative water stresses, to assess the impact of water withdrawals with a life cycle assessment approach. These CFs consider water availability, water quality, and competition for water between domestic, agricultural and industrial sectors and ecosystem at the watershed level. CFs were applied to a case study of regional water management of industrial water withdrawals in Taiwan to show that both regional or seasonal decrease in water availability contributes to a high consumptive water stress, whereas water scarcity due to degraded water quality not meeting sector standards has little influence on increased degradative water stress. Degradative water stress was observed more in the agricultural sector than in the industrial sector, which implies that the agriculture sector may have water quality concerns. Reducing water intensity and alleviating regional scale water stresses of watersheds are suggested as approaches to decrease the impact of both consumptive and degradative water use. The results from this study may enable a more detailed sector-wise analysis of water stress and influence water resource management policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient processing of skyline queries with partially ordered domains has been intensively addressed in recent years. To further reduce the query processing time to support high-responsive applications, the skyline queries that were previously processed with user preferences similar to those of the new query contribute useful candidate result points. Hence, the answered queries can be cached with both their results and the user preferences such that the query processor can rapidly retrieve the result for a new query only from the result sets of cached queries with compatible user preferences. When caching a significant number of queries accumulated over time, it is essential to adopt effective access methods to index the cached queries to retrieve a set of relevant cached queries for facilitating the cache-based skyline query computations. In this paper, we propose an extended depth-first search indexing method (e-DFS for short) for accessing user preference profiles represented by directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), and emphasize the design of the e-DFS encoding that effectively encodes a user preference profile into a low-dimensional feature point which is eventually indexed by an R-tree. We obtain one or more traversal orders for each node in a DAG by traversing it through a modified version of the depth-first search which is utilized to examine the topology structure and dominance relations to measure closeness or similarity. As a result, e-DFS which combines the criteria of similarity evaluation is able to greatly reduce the search space by filtering out most of the irrelevant cached queries such that the query processor can avoid accessing the entire data set to compute the query results. Extensive experiments are presented to demonstrate the performance and utility of our indexing method, which outperforms the baseline planning techniques by reducing 37 percent of the computational time on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion of deuterated polystyrene(dPS) is probed in PS matricescontaining stringlike chained nanoparticles (cNP) grafted with PS.This investigation connects prior diffusion studies in model sphericaland cylindrical NP systems and provides insight for technologicalapplications, which typically involve irregularly shaped NPs suchas carbon black. We report that the presence of chained NPs in PSmatrices induces a minimum in the diffusion coefficient (D) with increasing cNP concentration when the key length scale, 2Rg/L≤ 1.5, where Rgis the gyration radius of dPS and Lis the mean length of the impenetrable core of the chainedNPs. When 2Rg/L>1.5, Ddecreases monotonically as the NP concentrationincreases.Note that in all cases 2Rgis larger thanthe diameter of these short-stringy NPs. The diffusion minimum isattributed to anisotropic diffusion in the vicinity of the chainedNPs and requires that the long dimension of the cNP be comparableto or longer than the tracer molecule. Two normalizations are exploredto provide insight about the diffusion mechanism: D/D0where D0is the diffusion coefficient in a pure homopolymer matrix and D/Dewhere Deis an effective diffusion coefficient that accountsfor the distinct dynamics in the PS matrix and PS brush regions. For D/D0, a sharp transition froma diffusion minimum to a monotonic decrease is observed as dPS molecularweight increases, while for D/Dethe transition is more gradual. These studies show not onlythat the NPs act as impenetrable obstacles for polymer diffusion butthat the polymer brush grafted to the cNP provides an alternativepathway to control polymer dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Orthorhombic ZrTiO4 and amorphous Yb2O3 were confirmed by XRD and TEM. [•] Gate stack of ZrTiO4/Yb2O3 shows low D it and a small fixed oxide charge density. [•] MOSFETs with 0.79-nm EOT and excellent sub-Vt swing of 66mV/dec were realized. [•] Good reliability is proven by negligible ΔVt, Δgm and sub-Vt swing degradation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Skin and soft-tissue infections (SSTIs) caused by community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) have emerged as major health problems throughout the world. Most SSTI CA-MRSA strains produce Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), but its contribution to CA-MRSA pathogenesis is poorly defined. Here, we used an endemic PVL-positive SSTI-causing CA-MRSA strain from Taiwan, together with an isogenic PVL-knockout mutant (Δpvl) and complemented PVL-positive derivative, to evaluate the role of PVL in the pathogenesis of CA-MRSA in the RHEK-1 human keratinocyte cell line and a rabbit skin infection model. We found that both PVL-positive CA-MRSA and isogenic Δpvl strains attached and were engulfed into endosomes of RHEK-1 cells within 1 hour following infection. However, by 2 hours after infection PVL-positive CA-MRSA more effectively disrupted endosomes, escaped into the cytoplasm, and replicated intracellularly. By 6 hours after infection, the PVL-positive strain caused significantly more caspase-dependent keratinocyte apoptosis than the isogenic Δpvl mutant. In the rabbit infection model, 1 week following infection the wild-type strain produced significantly more widespread lesions and cell apoptosis than the isogenic Δpvl mutant. These findings indicate that PVL is an important virulence factor that enables CA-MRSA to produce necrotizing skin infections by allowing the bacteria to escape from endosomes, replicate intracellularly, and induce apoptosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Investigate the impact of dielectric crystallinity on the performance of RRAM. [•] Provides more insights into the different conduction mechanisms for RRAM operation. [•] Amorphous ZrTiO x outperforms crystalline ZrTiO x for RRAM applications. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Diffusion of deuterated poly(methylmethacrylate) (dPMMA) is sloweddown in a PMMA matrix filled with hydroxyl-capped spherical silicananoparticles, from 13 to 50 nm in diameter and at loadings up to40 vol %. At constant T– Tg= 75 K, the normalized diffusion coefficients (D/D0) collapse onto a mastercurve, when plotted against the confinement parameter, ID/2Rg, where IDis interparticledistance and 2Rgis probe size. This resultsuggests that the confinement parameter captures the effect of nanoparticlesize, size polydispersity, and volume fraction on polymer dynamicsfor the PMMA composite. For ID< 2Rg, the master curve exhibits a strongly confined regionwhere D/D0decreasesby up to 80%, whereas for ID> 2Rg, the curve falls in a weakly confined region where D/D0decreasesonly moderately by up to 15%. Surprisingly, D/D0is reduced even when IDis8 times larger than 2Rg. A comparisonbetween the master curves for PMMA and polystyrene nanocompositesindicates that attractive interactions in the PMMA system do not significantlyalter the center-of-mass diffusion of macromolecules in polymer nanocomposites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Advances in amphiphilic copolymers can potentially be exploited in drug or gene delivery. This study develops novel comb-like amphiphilic copolymers that comprise poly(γ-glutamic acid) (γ-PGA) as a hydrophilic backbone and Doxifluridine–poly-(ɛ-caprolactone) (5′-deoxy-5-fluorouridine–poly(ɛ-caprolactone), 5′DFUR–PCL) as a hydrophobic side chain. A novel 5′DFUR–PCL polymer was synthesized with antitumor agent Doxifluridine (5′DFUR) as the initiator via the ring-opening polymerization of ɛ-caprolactone (ɛ-CL) using tin(II) 2-ethylhexanoate (Sn(Oct)2) as the catalyst. The 5′DFUR–PCL polymer was then grafted on γ-PGA to yield a 5′DFUR–PCL–γ-PGA comb-like copolymer with the help of 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethyl-aminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC). The characteristics of these copolymers were examined by 1H NMR, FT-IR, GPC, contact angle measurement and thermal properties. Grafting 5′DFUR–PCL would significantly increase the contact angle and decrease the melting temperature (T m) of the copolymers. The micelles self-assembled from these amphiphilic copolymers were formed in an aqueous phase and were examined via fluorescence approaches, dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The average sizes of the micelles were in the range from 130 to 230nm and their zeta potentials were negative and less than −16.7mV. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) was from 1.49mg/L to 4.63mg/L at 25°C. TEM images demonstrated that the micelles were spherical and clearly had a core–shell structure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A Ge-stabilized tetragonal ZrO2 dielectric with a permittivity (κ) value of 36.5 has been obtained by annealing a ZrO2/Ge/ZrO2 laminate at 500 °C and it is a more reliable approach toward stabilizing a tetragonal ZrO2 film. However, metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors with the sole tetragonal ZrO2 film as an insulator achieve a high capacitance density of 27.8 fF/μm2 at the price of a degraded quadratic voltage coefficient of capacitance (VCC) of 81 129 ppm/V2 and unacceptably high leakage current. By capping an amorphous La-doped ZrO2 layer with a κ value of 26.3 to block grain boundaries-induced leakage paths of the crystalline ZrO2 dielectric, high-performance MIM capacitors in terms of a capacitance density of 19.8 fF/μm2, a VCC of 3135 ppm/V2, leakage current of 6.5×10-8 A/cm2 at -1 V, as well as a satisfactory capacitance change of 1.21% after ten-year operation can be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel earth‐abundant metal sulfate‐containing high entropy sulfides, FeNiCoCrXS2 (where X = Mn, Cu, Zn, or Al), are synthesized via a two‐step solvothermal method. It is shown that sulfate‐containing FeNiCoCrMnS2 exhibits superior oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity with an exceptionally low overpotential of 199, 246, 285, and 308 mV at current densities of 10, 100, 500, and 1000 mA cm–2, respectively, and surpassing its unary‐, binary‐, ternary‐, and quaternary‐metal counterparts. The electrocatalyst yields exceptional stability after 12 000 cycles and 55 h of durability even at a high current density of 500 mA cm–2. Various in situ and ex situ analyses are used to investigate the self‐reconstruction of the sulfides during the OER for the first time. The resulting metal (oxy)hydroxide is believed to be the true active center for OER. The remaining sulfate also contributes to the catalytic activity. Density function theory calculation is in good agreement with the experimental result. The extraordinary OER performance of the high entropy sulfide brings a great opportunity for desirable catalyst design for practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new type of lanthanum‐based high entropy perovskite oxide (HEPO) electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction is reported. The B‐site lattices in the HEPO consist of five consecutive first‐row transition metals, including Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, and Ni. Equimolar and five non‐equimolar HEPO electrocatalysts are studied for their OER electrocatalytic performance. In the five non‐equimolar HEPOs, the concentration of one of the five transition metals is doubled in individual samples. The performances of all the HEPOs outperform the single perovskite oxides. The optimized La(CrMnFeCo2Ni)O3 HEPO exhibits an outstanding OER overpotential of 325 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm−2 and excellent electrochemical stability after 50 h of testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, a new high entropy material is reported, i.e., a noble metal‐free high entropy glycerate (HEG), synthesized via a simple solvothermal process. The HEG consists of 5 different metals of Fe, Ni, Co, Cr, and Mn. The unique glycerate structure exhibits an excellent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity with a low overpotential of 229 and 278 mV at current densities of 10 and 100 mA cm−2, respectively, in 1 m KOH electrolyte, outperforming its subsystems of binary‐, ternary‐, and quaternary‐metal glycerates. The HEG also shows outstanding stability and durability in the alkaline electrolyte. The result demonstrates the significance of synergistic effect that gives additional freedoms to modify the electronic structure and coordination environment. Moreover, HEG@HEG electrolyzer shows a good overall water splitting performance and durability, requiring a cell voltage of 1.63 V to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, a new high entropy material is reported, i.e., a noble metal‐free high entropy glycerate (HEG), synthesized via a simple solvothermal process. The HEG consists of 5 different metals of Fe, Ni, Co, Cr, and Mn. The unique glycerate structure exhibits an excellent oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity with a low overpotential of 229 and 278 mV at current densities of 10 and 100 mA cm−2, respectively, in 1 m KOH electrolyte, outperforming its subsystems of binary‐, ternary‐, and quaternary‐metal glycerates. The HEG also shows outstanding stability and durability in the alkaline electrolyte. The result demonstrates the significance of synergistic effect that gives additional freedoms to modify the electronic structure and coordination environment. Moreover, HEG@HEG electrolyzer shows a good overall water splitting performance and durability, requiring a cell voltage of 1.63 V to achieve a current density of 10 mA cm−2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skyline points and queries are important in the context of processing datasets with multiple dimensions. As skyline points can be viewed as representing marketable products that are useful for clients and business owners, one may also consider non-skyline points that are highly competitive with the current skyline points. We address the problem of continuously finding such potential products from a dynamic d -dimensional dataset, and formally define a potential product and its upgrade promotion cost. In this paper, we propose the CP-Sky algorithm, an efficient approach for continuously evaluating potential products by utilizing a second-order skyline set, which consists of candidate points that are closest to regular skyline points (also termed the first-order skyline set), to facilitate efficient computations and updates for potential products. With the knowledge of the second-order skyline set, CP-Sky enables the system to (1) efficiently find substitute skyline points from the second-order skyline set only if a first-order skyline point is removed, and (2) continuously retrieve the top- k potential products. Within this context, the Approximate Exclusive Dominance Region algorithm ( AEDR ) is proposed to reduce the computational complexity of determining a candidate set for second-order skyline updates over a dynamic data set without affecting the result accuracy. Additionally, we extend the CP-Sky algorithm to support the computations of top- k potential products. Finally, we present experimental results on data sets with various distributions to demonstrate the performance and utility of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By D-arginine and L-arginine chiral peptides induced spin selectivity and Au NPs enhanced spin polarization, chiral peptides purification has been effectively simplified and the purification performance has raised from a mixture system. The angular momentums of light are operated by the polarizer and wave plates. Au NPs decorated ZnO nanorods electrodes are utilized to modulate the polarization of spintronic. Seed growth methods are for synthesizing spherical Au NPs. UV light reduction methods are for urchin-liked Au NPs. Au NPs are decorated on ZnO nanorods electrodes for rising photon to electron conversion efficiency and enhancing spin polarization rates by surface plasmon effect. From our results, photon to the electron conversion efficiency of ZnO nanorods electrodes has effectively enhanced by urchin-liked Au NPs decorating. Ultrahigh localized plasmon conversion efficiency as high as 60% was also obtained. Besides, density functional theory (DFT) calculations simulated the force on spintronic. Since the D-arginine and L-arginine are on Au substrate, DFT results demonstrate different angular momentum and spin polarization coupling. Along with urchin-liked Au NPs rising chiral induced spin polarization by surface plasmon resonance, the sensitivity of chiral arginine has been raised around 5000% from bare ZnO nanorods electrodes. The purification and separation time of a specific chiral arginine only needs 5 min. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we proposed a novel adjustable data hiding method. Our proposed method, which is based on exploiting modification direction (EMD) method, is called the “multi-group exploiting modification direction” method. In the multi-group method, we combine several pixel-groups to embed secret data according to the constructed switch map to simply avoid the conversion redundancy of the EMD method and the spatial redundancy of the section-wise strategy, as well as to efficiently increase the probability of achieving larger embedding capacity. According to the experimental results and mathematical justification, we verified that the multi-group method can achieve higher embedding payload and better visual quality of the image than the EMD method and section-wise strategy for simulated and real secret data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this study, we describe a method for the analysis of melamine in rat plasma, liver, kidney, spleen, bladder, and brain using trichloroacetic acid precipitation with mixed-mode cation-exchange solid-phase extraction and hydrophilic interaction chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry detection. Method validation was investigated completely, including linearity, precision, accuracy, matrix effect, extraction recovery, and carryover for the determination of melamine. The method exhibited a good linear range covering 20–500ng/mL, and the overall precision ranged from 1.6 to 16.3%, with the accuracy varying from −7.9 to 15.1%. The mean matrix effects of melamine in rat plasma, liver, kidney, spleen, bladder, and brain ranged from 66.2±6.7 to 95.5±13.2%, and the mean recoveries for melamine varied from 79.8±8.2 to 113.0±9.6%. Rat kidney showed the highest level among the organs (192.5% of the plasma melamine level), and the average concentration of melamine in the brain was only 7.5% of the plasma melamine concentration. This work has pointed out that even with the application of two popular preparation procedures (acid precipitation and solid-phase extraction) of melamine, the matrix effect in analyzing biological samples still exists in certain kinds of matrices. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

LOOPLock is the state-of-the-art cyclic logic locking method in hardware security. LOOPLock is able to invalidate SAT Attack, Removal Attack, and CycSAT simultaneously by introducing two types of cycle pairs in a circuit. In this work, we analyze LOOPLock’s locking mechanism and propose an attacking approach based on locking structure analysis. Furthermore, to defend the new attack, we propose LOOPLock 2.0, which strengthens the original cyclic logic locking method—LOOPLock. Experimental results show the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed attacking approach to LOOPLock and the high defense capability of LOOPLock 2.0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Concentrations of plasma biomarkers associated with Alzheimer's disease have been reported to be as low as several tens of picograms/milliliter (pg/ml). However, in assays measuring these biomarkers, it is likely that repeated measurements are necessary to obtain reliable values. Methods: We performed assays as a single test or as duplicate, quadruplicate, fivefold and tenfold repeated tests, on samples spiked with different concentrations of amyloid β 1–40 (Aβ1–40; 1–1000 pg/ml), Aβ1–42 (1–30,000 pg/ml) and total Tau protein (T-Tau; 0.1–1000 pg/ml), with the aim to to calculate the coefficients of variation (CVs). Results: The results demonstrated common changes in the CVs with changes in the number of tests for a given sample: the CVs decreased with increases in the number of tests from one to ten. All CV values were distributed within the range of 0.35 to 15.5%; as such, the CV values were all lower than the acceptable value of 20%. Conclusion: Based on this study, a single assay of Aβ1–40, Aβ1–42 and T-Tau, respectively, provides reliable results in terms of the measurement of that plasma biomarker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnetotransport properties of a hybrid InSe/monolayer graphene in a SiC system are systematically studied. Compared to those of its bare graphene counterpart, in InSe/graphene, we can effectively modify the carrier density, mobility, effective mass, and electron–electron (e–e) interactions enhanced by weak disorder. We show that in bare graphene and hybrid InSe/graphene systems, the logarithmic temperature (lnT) dependence of the Hall slope RH = δRxy/δB = δρxy/δB can be used to probe e–e interaction effects at various temperatures even when the measured resistivity does not show a lnT dependence due to strong electron–phonon scattering. Nevertheless, one needs to be certain that the change of RH is not caused by an increase of the carrier density by checking the magnetic field position of the longitudinal resistivity minimum at different temperatures. Given the current challenges in gating graphene on SiC with a suitable dielectric layer, our results suggest that capping a van der Waals material on graphene is an effective way to modify the electronic properties of monolayer graphene on SiC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SAT Attack, CycSAT, and Removal Attack have demonstrated their abilities to break most existing logic locking methods. In this article, we propose a new cyclic logic locking method to invalidate these attacks simultaneously. Our main intention is to create noncombinational cycles to lock a circuit. Specifically, the noncombinational behavior in the noncombinational cycles that is unobservable at the primary outputs (POs) needs to be preserved when the correct key-vector is fed to resist CycSAT, and the noncombinational behavior in the noncombinational cycles affecting POs needs to be preserved when the incorrect key-vector is fed to invalidate SAT Attack. Furthermore, some nodes will be removed when applying our locking method, which is able to defend Removal Attack. The experimental results show the effectiveness and low area overhead of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ananalytic model for the slowing down of polymer chain diffusionin nanocomposites attributable to excluded volume effects is presented.The nanocomposite is modeled as an ensemble of cylinders through whichthe polymer chains diffuse. The reduction of polymer diffusion ineach cylinder is equated with the reduction of diffusion for a spherethrough a cylinder. The distribution of cylinder diameters withinthe ensemble is determined from statistical mechanical theories basedon the packing of spherical particles. For low loadings of sphericalparticles in nanocomposites, this model results in a master curvefor the reduced diffusion coefficient. With no adjustable parameters,the model agrees with recent data for tracer diffusion measurementsin polymer nanocomposites at low loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[•] The YGeO x enjoys a low interface trap density of 2.1×1011 cm−2 eV−1. [•] Low leakage current of 3.1×10−10 A/cm2 at the effective electric field of 1MV/cm. [•] 13mV flatband voltage shift for BTI test under 10MV/cm for 8000s at 85°C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure of SiGe nanocrystals embedded in Al2O3 formed by sequential deposition of Al2O3/Si/Ge/Al2O3 and a subsequent annealing was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and its application for write-once-read-many-times (WORM) memory devices was explored in this study. By applying a -10 V pulse for 1 s, a large amount of holes injected from Si substrate are stored in the nanocrystals and consequently, the current at +1.5 V increases by a factor of 104 as compared to that of the initial state. Even with a smaller -5 V pulse for 1 μs, a sufficiently large current ratio of 36 can still be obtained, verifying the low power operation. Since holes are stored in nanocrystals which are isolated from Si substrate by Al2O3 with good integrity and correspond to a large valence band offset with respect to Al2O3, desirable read endurance up to 105 cycles and excellent retention over 100 yr are achieved. Combining these promising characteristics, WORM memory devices are appropriate for high-performance archival storage applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A Ge-stabilized tetragonal ZrO2 (t-ZrO2) film with permittivity (κ) of 36.2 was formed by depositing a ZrO2/Ge/ZrO2 laminate and a subsequent annealing at 600°C, which is a more reliable approach to control the incorporated amount of Ge in ZrO2. On Si substrates, with thin SiON as an interfacial layer, the SiON/t-ZrO2 gate stack with equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) of 1.75nm shows tiny amount of hysteresis and negligible frequency dispersion in capacitance–voltage (C–V) characteristics. By passivating leaky channels derived from grain boundaries with NH3 plasma, good leakage current of 4.8×10−8 A/cm2 at V g = V fb −1V is achieved and desirable reliability confirmed by positive bias temperature instability (PBTI) test is also obtained. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Pyogenic liver abscess (PLA) is a major life-threatening disease with varied clinical features. This study aimed to determine predictors of mortality in patients with PLA using criteria determined upon admission. We retrospectively examined the data of 324 hospitalized adults in whom liver abscesses were confirmed using abdominal ultrasound and/or computed tomography. The relationship between various risk factors was assessed using multivariate analysis. A total of 109 (33.6%) patients were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). The overall mortality rate was 7.4% and was higher among ICU patients than non-ICU patients (21.1% vs. 0.5%, p < 0.001). PLA patients with an Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II score ≥18 had a 19.31-fold increased risk, and those with concomitant infections had a 34.33-fold increased risk of 30-day mortality according to multivariate analysis. The estimated area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for predicting 30-day mortality revealed that APACHE II score ≥18 (sensitivity of 75% and specificity of 84%, p < 0.0001) had better discriminative power than Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) ≥6 (sensitivity of 81% and specificity of 66%, p < 0.0001). APACHE II has shown better discrimination ability than SOFA in predicting mortality in PLA patients. To improve outcomes in patients with PLA, future management strategies should focus on high-risk patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CF4 plasma treatment on germanium (Ge) surface is proposed in this work to alleviate the strong Fermi level pinning between metal/Ge, and its effectiveness is also explored for n- and p-type Ge wafers. It is found that samples with CF4 plasma treatment reveal conduction behavior transition between Schottky and ohmic characteristics, a metal-work-function-dependent Schottky barrier height as well as modulated contact resistance, and these results confirm the depinning of Fermi level. This depinning can be explained by the effective capability in passivating dangling bonds at Ge surface through fluorine atoms and the formation of Ge-F binding with partial ionic property, both of which are helpful in decreasing the number of surface states and consequently release the pinning effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]