Berntsenritter9190

2 MPa), and stretchability (fracture strain of ≈292%), excellent conductivity tolerance in a wide range of temperatures (from -30 to 80 °C), as well as fine elasticity and antifatigue ability even after 10 000 loading-unloading cycles. It is further demonstrated that the printed building blocks can be programmed into 3D flexible tactile sensors such as gyroid-based piezoresistive sensor and gap-based capacitive sensor, both of which exhibit several times higher in sensitivity than their bulky counterparts.

Cytological examination of the skin is an important diagnostic technique in dermatology for disease diagnosis and monitoring of treatment. Impression smear and tape-strip preparation are gold standard cytological techniques. This study introduces a novel cytological method, slurry preparation, in which debris collected from the skin surface is macerated in warm sterile water and dried on the slide.

To compare organism yield between a novel and two standard cytological collection techniques by evaluating bacteria and Malassezia yeast counts.

Thirty client-owned dogs diagnosed with atopic dermatitis and lesions consistent with pyoderma and/or Malassezia dermatitis.

In a prospective, blinded comparison study, dermatological lesions from each dog were sampled using impression smear, tape-strip and slurry preparation methodologies. Ten random reticle fields per lesion, accounting for a total area of 6.25 × 10

 mm

(equivalent to ˜5% of a typical ×40 field field), were evaluated by light microscopy for enine pyoderma could be considered as an alternative to the gold standard techniques.

Slurry preparation presents advantages over the gold standard techniques in the detection of bacteria which can help to manage canine pyoderma more appropriately. Performing a slurry preparation in cases of suspected canine pyoderma could be considered as an alternative to the gold standard techniques.This study examined how the cessation of work at retirement affects daily measures of actigraphy-measured and self-rated sleep quality. Time in bed or asleep and stress at bedtime were examined as potential mechanisms. In total 117 employed participants who were aged 60-72 years and planned to retire soon were recruited to the Swedish Retirement Study. Sleep quality was measured in a baseline week using accelerometers, diaries, and questionnaires. Subjective sleep measures were sleep quality, restless sleep, restorative sleep, getting enough sleep, estimated wake after sleep onset, difficulties falling asleep, too early final awakening, and difficulties waking up. Actigraphy measures were sleep efficiency, wake after sleep onset, and average awakening length. After 1 and 2 years, the measurements were repeated for the now retired participants. Daily variations in sleep quality before and after retirement were analysed using multilevel modelling, with time in bed or asleep and stress at bedtime as potential mediators. We found that several self-reports of sleep improved (e.g., +0.2 standard deviations for sleep quality and +0.5 standard deviations for restorative sleep) while objective sleep quality remained unchanged or decreased slightly with retirement (e.g., -0.8% for sleep efficiency). Increased time in bed or asleep and stress at bedtime accounted partially for the improvements in self-rated sleep quality at retirement. In conclusion, actigraph-measured and self-reported sleep quality do not change in concert at retirement, highlighting the interest of studying both outcomes. The main effects of retirement from work concern subjective experiences of recovery more than sleep quality per se.

Patients treated for multiple myeloma often suffer from anxiety and depression related to concerns about the future. This indicates a need for improvement of communication between patients and healthcare professionals within haematology. The aim of this study was to explore how patients with multiple myeloma and their caregivers experience serious illness conversation focusing on illness understanding, concerns, values, and wishes for the future.

Phenomenological, semi-structured dyad interviews were carried out in patients with multiple myeloma (n= 12) and their caregivers (n= 11) 2-20 days after participation in one serious illness conversation. interpretive phenomenological analysis was used for analysing data.

Three themes emerged (1) transforming patient-caregiver communication, (2) redeeming communication, and (3) equality in communication in an unequal relation. Furthermore, time allocated for the conversation and preparatory materials for the conversations highly influenced outcome.

The findings suggest that serious illness conversation can help patients and family caregivers managing living life with multiple myeloma by increasing dyadic communication and strengthen their use of existential language together with healthcare professionals. This study highlights the benefits of preparing patients and caregivers prior to the conversation and cancer care systems should strive to allocate ample time for serious illness conversations.

The findings suggest that serious illness conversation can help patients and family caregivers managing living life with multiple myeloma by increasing dyadic communication and strengthen their use of existential language together with healthcare professionals. This study highlights the benefits of preparing patients and caregivers prior to the conversation and cancer care systems should strive to allocate ample time for serious illness conversations.2D materials have many outstanding properties that make them attractive for the fabrication of electronic devices, such as high conductivity, flexibility, and transparency. However, integrating 2D materials in commercial devices and circuits is challenging because their structure and properties can be damaged during the fabrication process. Recent studies have demonstrated that standard metal deposition techniques (like electron beam evaporation and sputtering) significantly damage the atomic structure of 2D materials. Here it is shown that the deposition of metal via inkjet printing technology does not produce any observable damage in the atomic structure of ultrathin 2D materials, and it can keep a sharp interface. These conclusions are supported by abundant data obtained via atomistic simulations, transmission electron microscopy, nanochemical metrology, and device characterization in a probe station. The results are important for the understanding of inkjet printing technology applied to 2D materials, and they could contribute to the better design and optimization of electronic devices and circuits.As a representative electron transporting layer in organic solar cells, zinc oxide (ZnO) can be fabricated by the meniscus-guided coating with the promotion of sol-gel technology. In order to fabricate stable and flexible organic solar cells (OSCs) based on the printable ZnO layers, here, a new method for simultaneously manipulating fluidics of the sol-gel ZnO precursor and optimizing processability of the ZnO layer for flexible OSCs is developed. It is found that the Marangoni recirculation in meniscus and the annealing temperature of the sol-gel ZnO precursor can be effectively modulated by changing the Lewis base. With the use of propylamine, the high-quality ZnO layer that is suitable for flexible OSCs can be fabricated through blade coating. Under such a condition, the formation of polar facet in ZnO layer is well restrained, which favors the photostability of the cells. As a result, the best 1.00 cm2 flexible cell outputs a power conversion efficiency of 16.71%, which is the best value till now.Asymmetric and nanostructured polystyrene-block-poly(2-vinyl pyridine)-block-poly(ethylene oxide) (PS-b-P2VP-b-PEO or SVEO, SVEO ≈ 563410, 79.5 kg mol-1 ) thick films blended with 20 wt% of a short PS homopolymer (hPS, 10.5 kg mol-1 ) are achieved by combining the non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) process with a solvent vapor annealing (SVA) treatment. Here, the NIPS step allows for the formation of a highly-permeable sponge-like substructure topped by a dense thin layer exhibiting poorly-ordered nanopores while the subsequent SVA treatment enables to reconstruct the material top surface into a porous monolayer of well-ordered hexagonal perforated lamellae (HPL). This optimized film architecture generated by NIPS-SVA shows a water permeability of 860 L h-1 m-2 bar-1 , which is roughly two times higher than the flux measured through NIPS made PS-b-P2VP-b-PEO/hPS materials having poorly-ordered nanopores. The post-SVA treatment is also revealed as a powerful tool to tailor the thickness of the nanostructure formed within the blended material because monoliths entirely composed of a HPL phase are produced by increasing the time of exposure to a chloroform stream. The water flux of such PS-b-P2VP-b-PEO/hPS monoliths is found to be an order of magnitude lower than that of their asymmetric film homologues.DNA-based gels are attractive materials as they allow intuitive rational design, respond to external physicochemical stimuli, and show great potential for biomedical applications. However, their relatively poor mechanical properties currently limit their technological application considerably as the latter requires mechanical integrity and tunability. With this work, a DNA organogel is reported that gels through supramolecular interactions, which induce mesophase ordering, and that exhibits exceptional stretchability, deformability, plasticity, and biocompatibility. Moreover, the nature of the supramolecular bond enables complete self-healing within 3 s. Most importantly, the DNA-based liquid crystalline organogels exhibit impressive ultimate tensile strengths above 1 MPa, stiffness higher than 20 MPa, and toughness up to 18 MJ m-3 , rendering these materials the strongest among reported DNA networks. learn more In addition, the facile access is demonstrated to composite DNA materials by blending magnetic nanoparticles with the organogel matrix giving access to magnetic field induced actuation. It is believed that these findings contribute significantly to the advancement of DNA gels for their use in smart materials and biomedical applications.Amorphous phosphorus (a-P) has long attracted interest because of its complex atomic structure, and more recently as an anode material for batteries. However, accurately describing and understanding a-P at the atomistic level remains a challenge. Here we show that large-scale molecular-dynamics simulations, enabled by a machine learning (ML)-based interatomic potential for phosphorus, can give new insights into the atomic structure of a-P and how this structure changes under pressure. The structural model so obtained contains abundant five-membered rings, as well as more complex seven- and eight-atom clusters. Changes in the simulated first sharp diffraction peak during compression and decompression indicate a hysteresis in the recovery of medium-range order. An analysis of cluster fragments, large rings, and voids suggests that moderate pressure (up to about 5 GPa) does not break the connectivity of clusters, but higher pressure does. Our work provides a starting point for further computational studies of the structure and properties of a-P, and more generally it exemplifies how ML-driven modeling can accelerate the understanding of disordered functional materials.