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Ticagrelor (TCG), an antiplatelet agent, has low solubility and permeability; thus, there are many trials to apply the pharmaceutical technology for the enhancement of TCG solubility and permeability. Herein, we have developed the TCG high-loaded nanostructured lipid carrier (HL-NLC) and solidified the HL-NLC to develop the oral tablet. The HL-NLC was successfully fabricated and optimized with a particle size of 164.5 nm, a PDI of 0.199, an encapsulation efficiency of 98.5%, and a drug loading of 16.4%. For the solidification of HL-NLC (S-HL-NLC), the adsorbent was determined based on the physical properties of the S-HL-NLC, such as bulk density, tap density, angle of repose, Hausner ratio, Carr's index, and drug content. Florite R was chosen because of its excellent adsorption capacity, excellent physical properties, and solubility of the powder after manufacturing. Using an S-HL-NLC, the S-HL-NLC tablet with HPMC 4 K was prepared, which is showed a released extent of more than 90% at 24 h. Thus, we have developed the sustained release tablet containing the TCG-loaded HL-NLC. Moreover, the formulations have exhibited no cytotoxicity against Caco-2 cells and improved the cellular uptake of TCG. In pharmacokinetic study, compared with raw TCG, the bioavailability of HL-NLC and S-HL-NLC was increased by 293% and 323%, respectively. In conclusion, we successfully developed the TCG high-loaded NLC tablet, that exhibited a sustained release profile and enhanced oral bioavailability.

Microneedles (MNs), one of the transdermal drug delivery systems, have received extensive interest as an alternative to parenteral or parenteral administrations. For the successful drug delivery of coated MNs, the coated drug or chemical of MNs should be dissolved by skin's interstitial fluid and completely released from the MNs. Thus, the rapid disintegration of the drug from MNs plays a crucial role in ideal drug delivery of MNs. In this study, we developed the rapid disintegration coating formulation to reduce the application time of MN. The rapid disintegration MN was developed using polymers (PVA or HPMC), glycerol, croscarmellose sodium, tween 80, and Brij, as thickener, plasticizer, disintegrating agent, and surfactants, respectively. HPMC MN showed the burst release and rapid disintegration. Moreover, the drug from HPMC MN was successfully delivered into porcine skin within 1 min. In toxicological evaluation, the HPMC MN did not alter the liver and kidney function. Besides, HPMC MN did not induce the acute inflammation and change of skin structure after the application on rat skin. Thus, the coating formulation in this study could be one of the options for the development of safe and rapid disintegration MN.

It is well known that wearing virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices for long periods can cause visual fatigue and motion sickness due to vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC). VAC is considered the main obstacle to the development of advanced three-dimensional VR and AR technology. In this paper, we present a novel AR high-density super-multiview (HDSMV) display technique capable of eliminating VAC in wide range. The designed binocular time-sequential AR HDSMV projection, which delivers 11 views to each eye pupil, is experimentally demonstrated, confirming that VAC is eliminated over a wide-range of viewer’s focus distance. It is believed that the proposed time-sequential AR HDSMV method will pave the way for the development of VAC-free AR technology.

Photonic crystals are commonly implemented in media with periodically varying optical properties. Photonic crystals enable exquisite control of light propagation in integrated optical circuits, and also emulate advanced physical concepts. However, common photonic crystals are unfit for in-operando on/off controls. We overcome this limitation and demonstrate a broadly tunable two-dimensional photonic crystal for surface plasmon polaritons. Our platform consists of a continuous graphene monolayer integrated in a back-gated platform with nano-structured gate insulators. Infrared nano-imaging reveals the formation of a photonic bandgap and strong modulation of the local plasmonic density of states that can be turned on/off or gradually tuned by the applied gate voltage. We also implement an artificial domain wall which supports highly confined one-dimensional plasmonic modes. Our electrostatically-tunable photonic crystals are derived from standard metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor technology and pave a way for practical on-chip light manipulation., Traditional photonic crystals consist of periodic media with a pre-defined optical response. Here, the authors combine nanostructured back-gate insulators with a continuous layer of graphene to demonstrate an electrically tunable two-dimensional photonic crystal suitable for controlling the propagation of surface plasmon polaritons.

Internet of Things (IoT) becomes an inevitable technology for ICT convergence. It gathers information from various objects and provides intelligent services through analyzing the information. To collect surrounding information, IoT employs a sensor network, which is a low-power wireless communication network with numerous sensor nodes. Sensor nodes in conventional sensor networks have short transmission range. However, it is required a sensor network with long transmission range as well as low transmission power consumption for various IoT services. Long transmission range of IoT devices affects transmission environment. Lots of sensor nodes (i.e., IoT devices) in the long range sensor network transmit data to a given gateway node in order to deliver data to a network server. The gateway node can experience serious traffic load to relay the data. It causes to drop transmission efficiency. Therefore, for efficient data transmission, a network architecture and a data transmission method for long range IoT services are necessary. This paper proposes the network and data transmission architecture for the long range sensor networks. The proposed network architecture is based on oneM2M IoT standard. It has Infrastructure Node (IN), Middle Node (MN) and Application Service Node (ASN) as network elements. In the proposed method, IN employs cloned MNs to reduce the traffic load at the MN, which is the gateway. ASN delivers data through MN or cloned MNs to the IN. Through the load balancing by the proposed method at the MN, the efficient data transmission for IoT services in long range sensor networks can be provided. The performance of the proposed method is validated by the computer simulation.

The Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) that can collect measured vital signs through sensors enables continuous monitoring of the elder and of chronic diseases. As smart devices become popular, development of the WBAN becomes easier. Our research implemented an integration platform that consists of WBAN and cloud computing based on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). We optimized the WBAN and the TCP as a sampling rate control. A sampling rate is the number of transfer data per second. The sampling rate is an important factor in the resolution of waveforms, though high sampling rates can cause a decline in network performance. A smart device performs three threads, such as Bluetooth, main, and TCP. The Bluetooth thread was implemented to collect vital signs from sensing nodes. The main thread performs computations for drawing waveforms and transmits data to the TCP thread. The TCP thread transmits vital signs to a server. We verified our proposed integration platform with formal verification and simulation. We expect to contribute to the platform development of WBAN and to cloud computing.

One of the main purposes of personal healthcare devices is for elderly people with chronic illness that needs a health monitoring continuously in common life. There are several standard specifications for personal healthcare devices to interact each other safely and compatibly. Depending on evolution of technology, the elderly and the chronic disease can have their own personal healthcare devices, and they can monitor themselves easily. However, some kind of limitation is still remaining in their life even if they have powerful smart devices. In situation that they need to drive and go to get treatment and to prepare medicine, automotive system does not support interfaces for personal healthcare devices. Therefore, we discuss about several standards of the personal healthcare devices and interfaces for connection of personal healthcare device. Also, automotive environments that include various network interfaces for infotainment and interconnection between infotainment system and devices and platform are considered. After that, we propose several implementations of personal healthcare services to support standard of personal healthcare devices on automotive system.