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Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is erupting and spreading globally. Cardiovascular complications secondary to the infection have caught notice. This study aims to delineate the relationship of cardiac biomarkers and outcomes in severe cases of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19). One hundred forty-eight critically ill adult patients with COVID-19 were enrolled. From these patients, the demographic data, symptoms, cardiac biomarkers, treatments, and clinical outcomes were collected. Data were compared between survivors and non-survivors. Four patients in the non-survivor group were selected, and their cardiac biomarkers were collected and analyzed. Among the 148 patients, the incidence of cardiovascular complications was 19 (12.8%). Five of them were survivors (5.2%), and 14 of them were non-survivors (26.9%). Compared with the survivors, the non-survivors had higher levels of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin I, creatine kinase isoenzyme-MB, myoglobin, and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (P < 0.05). The occurrence of cardiovascular events began at 11-15 days after the onset of the disease and reached a peak at 14-20 days. COVID-19 not only is a respiratory disease but also causes damage to the cardiovascular system. Cardiac biomarkers have the potential for early warning and prognostic evaluation in patients with COVID-19. It is recommended that cardiac biomarker monitoring in patients with COVID-19 should be initiated at least from the 11th day of the disease course.

Exploring high efficient electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction plays a vital role in the sustainable and widespread application of hydrogen fuel. Platinum-based electrocatalysts, as one of the most standout candidates, are limited to large-scale commercial applications attributing to their scarcity, expensive price, poor stability, and inferior durability. Herein, we construct a ZIF-8-derived nitrogen-doped carbon arrays-confined platinum clusters structure, named CTA@Pt@NCBs, on a continuously conducting carbon nanotube arrays substrate. As expected, the prepared CTAs@Pt@NCBs exhibits a low overpotential of 27.42 mV at 10 mA cm−2. More importantly, CTA@Pt@NCBs demonstrate excellent stability and durability, with 97.18% potential retention after 60 h of chronopotentiometric test, higher than that of commercial Pt/C (53.09%), and virtually no decrease in activity after 10, 000 potential cycles. The excellent electrocatalytic performance is mainly attributed to the unique structural features, including confined Pt clusters, porous nitrogen-doped carbon bubbles, continuous conductive carbon nanotube arrays, and binder-free electrode. This work provides a feasible strategy for improving the stability and atom utilization efficiency of platinum-based catalysts, thereby increasing their cost-effectiveness.

In this paper, a novel in-pixel time-to-digital converter (TDC) for 3D time-of-flight cameras is presented. Coarse---fine architecture has been used to guarantee both wide dynamic range and high time resolution. The proposed TDC exploits pulse-train time amplifier (TA) to further improve the time resolution and optimize time error performance. The 11-bit TDC provides 62.5 ps resolution and 126 ns full-scale range. Simulation results indicate the TDC achieves a DNL of under 0.52 LSB and INL less than 0.8 LSB. Both the TA and TDC are designed in GSMC CIS 0.18 μm 1P6M technology.

In this paper, high value added NaA zeolite material was prepared from blast furnace (BF) slag by hydrothermal method and its adsorption behavior on the removal of ammonium ion was investigated. It was found out that the synthetic NaA cubic zeolite with smaller crystal size obtained at nSiO2/nAl2O3 = 2 and nH2O/nNaOH = 20 showed better adsorption performance. The kinetics of the adsorption of ammonium ion by synthesized NaA zeolite was fitted by the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The intra-particle diffusion modeling reveals that two mixed rate-controlling mechanisms were involved in the adsorption process. The relatively high value of activation energy of 92.3 kJ·mol−1 indicates a high impact of temperature on the adsorption rate, and the nature of ammonium adsorption is chemical reaction rather than physisorption. Based on the thermodynamics calculations, the adsorption of ammonium was found to be an endothermic, spontaneous process. The adsorption isothermal analysis showed that the Langmuir model could be well fitted and a maximum adsorption capacity of 83.3 mg·g−1 of NH4+ was obtained. Thus, it was demonstrated that by forming low cost NaA zeolite and using it for environmental remediation, the synchronous minimization of BF slag and ammonia nitrogen contamination could be achieved.

A single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) device with P+-SEN junction, and a low concentration of N-type doping circular virtual guard-ring was presented in this paper. SEN layer of the proposed SPAD has high concentration of N-type doping, causing the SPAD low breakdown voltage (~14.26 V). What’s more, an efficient and narrow (about 2μm) guard-ring of the proposed SPAD not only can withstand considerably higher electric fields for preventing edge breakdown, but also offers a little increment in fill factor compared with existing SPADs due to its small area. In addition, some Silvaco TCAD simulations have been done and verify characteristics and performance of the design in this work.

The charge transfer efficiency improvement method is proposed by optimizing the electrical potential distribution along the transfer path from the PPD to the FD. In this work, we present a non-uniform doped transfer transistor channel, with the adjustments to the overlap length between the CPIA layer and the transfer gate, and the overlap length between the SEN layer and transfer gate. Theory analysis and TCAD simulation results show that the density of the residual charge reduces from 1e11 / cm 3 to 1e9 / cm 3 , and the transfer time reduces from 500 ns to 143 ns , and the charge transfer efficiency is about 77 e - / ns . This optimizing design effectively improves the charge transfer efficiency of 4T pixel and the performance of 4T high speed CMOS image sensor.

A novel pixel structure for the readout of SPAD range detector has been proposed in this paper, which aimed at 3D ranging applications by means of the direct time-of-flight (D-TOF) detection. The proposed pixel is consist of a single photon avalanche diode (SPAD), quenching-recharging circuit and 10 bit time-to-digital converter which provides a minimum time resolution of 141ps. Coarse-fine architecture has been used to provide both wide dynamic range and high time resolution. The chip has been fabricated in 0.18 µm GSMC 1P4M imaging process. The resulting pixel has a pitch of 100µm.

Objective: To observe the influence of jiangtang fanglong capsule to hearing impairment in deaf diabetes animal models. 50 Wistar rats randomly selected from 60 Wistar rats. The other 10 rats were normal control group (group A). 50 Wistar rats with experimental deaf diabetic, induced by 55 mg/kg streptozotocin (STZ) once intraperitoneal, were randomly divided into five groups. And the five groups contain model control group (group B), lower density (3.3 g/kg. d) jiangtang fanglong capsule was administrated (group C), middle density (310 g/kg. d) jiangtang fanglong capsule was administrated (group D), high density (3.3 g/kg. d) jiangtang fanglong capsule was administrated (group E) and yuquanwan (25 g/kg. d) was administrated (group F). After 60 days, test the fasting blood glucose (FBG), body weight (BW) and fasting insulin (FINS) of the wistar rats. Calculate the HO-MA-IR and HOMA-B, insulin was measured by radioimmunoassay. Tests showed that compared with model group, Jiangtang Fanglong capsule in middle and high dose groups reduce the index of the animal models in a dose-dependent manner (P 0.01), the HOMA-β shrink as the dose increased (P 0.01), improve the insulin expression in pancreatic islets (P 0.01), compare group E to B, it doesn’t make any sense (P > 0.05). Our results suggest that Jiangtang Fanglong capsule could improve the pancreatic β-cell’s function of the diabetic deaf animal model.