thinning

INTRODUCTION: The best method for assessing renal function after partial nephrectomy (PN) continues to be a matter of debate. Early studies evaluated kidney function by measuring serum creatinine (sCr) and/or the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), potentially underestimating the contribution of the contralateral kidney in masking alterations in renal function. Since then, researchers have studied the operated renal unit with the aid of nuclear renal scans (RS). However, taking into consideration the importance of the amount of renal parenchyma spared or sacrificed during PN, many novel methods have been proposed for determining kidney volume before and after PN...

Objective: To analyze the level of hemoglobin level and the prevalence of anemia in students aged 7-14 years in China. Methods: According to the 2010 Chinese National Surveys on Students'Constitution and Health, 71 130 students who were aged 7, 9, 12 and 14 years and had received hemoglobin test were sampled as the subjects, WHO anemia diagnostic criteria was used to explore the hemoglobin level and the prevalence of anemia. Results: The mean concentrations of hemoglobin were (129.25±11.37) g/L, (131.04±11...

The extraordinary properties of black phosphorus (BP) make it a promising candidate for next-generation transistor chemical sensors. However, BP films reported so far are supported on substrate, and substrate scattering drastically deteriorates its electrical properties. Consequentially, the potential sensing capability of intrinsic BP is highly underestimated and its sensing mechanism is masked. Additionally, the optimum sensing regime of BP remains unexplored. This article is the first demonstration of suspended BP sensor operated in subthreshold regime...

p23 is a small acidic protein with intrinsic molecular chaperone activity. It is best known as a co-chaperone of the major cytosolic molecular chaperone Hsp90. p23 binds the N-terminus of Hsp90 and stabilizes the ATP-bound and N-terminally closed Hsp90 dimer. It is in this configuration that many Hsp90 clients are most stably bound. Considering the important role of p23 in the Hsp90 cycle, it came as a surprise that it is not absolutely essential for viability in the budding yeast or for mouse development. Mice without p23 develop quite normally until birth and then all die perinatally because of immature lungs...

: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common cardiomyopathy, mainly caused by mutations in genes encoding for sarcomere proteins. Even though many mutations have been recognized to be causative of HCM, specific HCM phenotypes can be rarely predicted by the genotype, possibly as a consequence of the presence of still unknown disease-modifying genes [Maron et al. (2013). Lancet 381:242-55]. In this very peculiar case of HCM hypertrophy localized to left ventricle, mid-wall segments coexisted with a restrictive filling pattern and an apical wall thinning mimicking hypoplasia of left ventricle apex...

PURPOSE: To characterize inner retinal damage in patients with dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) using high-resolution spectral domain optical coherence tomography images. METHODS: Sixty eyes of 60 patients with AMD were categorized using the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) severity scale. Spectral domain optical coherence tomography images of these patients were quantified by manually correcting the segmentation of each retinal layer, including the retinal nerve fiber layer, ganglion cell layer, and inner plexiform layer to ensure accurate delineation of layers...

Pinning and depinning of droplets on heterogeneous substrates are widely seen in nature and need to be carefully controlled in industrial processes such as substrate cleaning and spray coating. In this work, a two-dimensional droplet sliding on an inclined substrate with a topographical defect is studied with a thin-film evolution equation. Using results from time-dependent finite-difference calculations, we focus our discussion on the dynamic interactions between the sliding droplet and the topographical defect...

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers with a direct bandgap feature tightly bound excitons, strong spin-orbit coupling and spin-valley degrees of freedom. Depending on the spin configuration of the electron-hole pairs, intra-valley excitons of TMD monolayers can be either optically bright or dark. Dark excitons involve nominally spin-forbidden optical transitions with a zero in-plane transition dipole moment, making their detection with conventional far-field optical techniques challenging. Here, we introduce a method for probing the optical properties of two-dimensional materials via near-field coupling to surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs)...

Nanoscale structuring holds promise to improve the thermoelectric properties of materials for energy conversion and photodetection. We report a study of the spatial distribution of the photothermoelectric voltage in thin-film nanowire devices fabricated from a single metal. A focused laser beam is used to locally heat the metal nanostructure via a combination of direct absorption and excitation of a plasmon resonance in Au devices. As seen previously, in nanowires shorter than the spot size of the laser, we observe a thermoelectric voltage distribution that is consistent with the local Seebeck coefficient being spatially dependent on the width of the nanostructure...

Thin rigid sheets floating on a liquid substrate appear, for example, in coatings and surfactant monolayers. Upon uniaxial compression the sheet undergoes transitions from a compressed flat state to a periodic wrinkled pattern to a localized folded pattern. The stability of these states is determined by the in-plane elasticity of the sheet, its bending rigidity, and the hydrostatics of the underlying liquid. Wrinkles and folds, and the wrinkle-to-fold transition, were previously studied for incompressible sheets...

In this work, we analyze the excitonic gap generation in the strong-coupling regime of thin films of three-dimensional time-reversal-invariant topological insulators. We start by writing down the effective gauge theory in 2+1-dimensions from the projection of the 3+1-dimensional quantum electrodynamics. Within this method, we obtain a short-range interaction, which has the form of a Thirring-like term, and a long-range one. The interaction between the two surface states of the material induces an excitonic gap...

Herein, we report an efficient and universal strategy to synthesize a unique triple-shell structured Fe3O4@SiO2@C-Ni hybrid composites. Firstly, the Fe3O4 cores were synthesized by hydrothermal reaction, sequentially coated by SiO2 and a thin layer of nickel ion doped resins-formaldehyde (RF-Ni2+) with an extended stöber method. This was followed by a carbonization to produce the Fe3O4@SiO2@C-Ni nanocomposites with metallic nickel nanoparticles embedded in RF-derived thin graphic carbon layer. Interestingly, the thin SiO2 spacer layer between RF-Ni2+ and Fe3O4 plays a critical role on adjusting the size and density of nickel nanoparticles on the surface of Fe3O4@SiO2 nanospheres...

Solar-to-hydrogen conversion by water splitting in photoelectrochemical cells (PECs) is a promising approach to alleviate problems associated with intermittency in solar energy supply and demand. Several interfacial resistances in photoelectrodes limit the performance of such cells, while the properties of interfaces are not easy to analyze in situ. We applied photoconductive-AFM to analyze the performance of WO3/p(+)n Si photoanodes, containing an ultra-thin metal interface of either Au or Pt. The Au interface consisted of Au nanoparticles with well-ordered interspacing, while Pt was present in the form of a continuous film...

The design, synthesis, and characterization of a series of tetradentate cyclometalated Pt(II) complexes are reported. The platinum complexes have the general structure Pt(ppz-O-CbPy-R), where a tetradentate cyclometalating ligand is consisting of ppz (3,5-dimethyl-1-phenyl-pyrazole), CbPy (carbazolylpyridine) components, and an oxygen bridging group. Variations of the R group on the pyridyl ring with various electron withdrawing and donating substituents are shown to have profound effects on the photophysical properties of Pt complexes...

Highly strained epitaxial BiFeO3/La0.67Sr0.33MnO3-δ heterostructures were fabricated on LaAlO3 substrates by magnetron sputtering. The as-grown downward self-polarization of BiFeO3 (BFO) capping layers was confirmed by piezoelectric force microscope. Through the electrostatic field induced charge screening, a hole depletion state was induced in ultrathin (8 nm) La0.67Sr0.33MnO3-δ (LSMO) films. As a result of the interfacial charge coupling, appreciable saturated magnetization (MS) increase of about 500% and 100% can be observed in LSMO with BFO capping at 5 K and 300 K, respectively...

Sputter-deposited TiO2 films with high visible-light photocatalytic activity were successfully realized by a hybrid TiO2/Pt/WO3 film structure with Pt nanoparticles uniformly distributed at the interface of the TiO2 and WO3 films. The TiO2/Pt/WO3 hybrid films enable the complete decomposition of CH3CHO under visible-light irradiation. The water contact angle of the TiO2/Pt/WO3 hybrid films reaches below 5° under visible-light irradiation. Pt nanoparticles are considered to act as a cocatalyst to improve the electron-hole separation efficiency...

The formation of intricately shaped crystalline minerals by organisms is orchestrated by specialized biomacromolecules. The macromolecules associated with coccoliths, nanometer-sized calcite crystal arrays produced by marine microalgae, can form a distinct calcium-rich phase via macromolecular recognition. Here, we show that this calcium-rich phase can be mineralized into a thin film of single-crystalline calcite by the balanced addition of carbonate ions. Such a crystallization process provides a strategy to direct crystalline products via local interactions between soluble macromolecules and compatible templates...

Microbiomes of full-scale seawater reverse osmosis membranes are complex and subject to variation within and between membrane units. The pre-existing bacterial communities of unused membranes before operation have been largely ignored in biofouling studies. This study is novel as unused membranes were used as a critical benchmark for comparison. Fouled seawater reverse osmosis membrane biofilm communities from an array of autopsied membrane samples, following a 7-year operational life-span in a full-scale desalination plant in Western Australia, were characterised by 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding using the bacterial primers 515F and 806R...

Bacteria often adhere to surfaces, where they form communities known as biofilms. Recently, it has been shown that biofilm formation initiates with the microscopically heterogeneous deposition of a skeleton of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) by individual cells crawling on the surface, followed by growth of the biofilm into a surface-covering continuum. Here we report microfluidic experiments with Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms showing that their "hidden" heterogeneity can affect the later dynamics of their disruption...

Biofilm formation on the filtration membrane and the subsequent clogging of membrane pores (called biofouling) is one of the most persistent problems in membrane bioreactors for wastewater treatment and reclamation. Here, we investigated the structure and microbiome of fouling-related biofilms in the membrane bioreactor using non-destructive confocal reflection microscopy and high-throughput Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. Direct confocal reflection microscopy indicated that the thin biofilms were formed and maintained regardless of the increasing transmembrane pressure, which is a common indicator of membrane fouling, at low organic-loading rates...