Hanbat National University

Photothermal shape memory alloys (SMAs) offer a promising pathway toward wireless soft robotic systems, yet their practical implementation remains limited by reliance on heterogeneous coatings and multistep processing to achieve sufficient light absorption and programmed mechanical response. Here, we present a monolithic UV-laser programming strategy that transforms flat NiTi sheets into photothermal SMA meta-morphing structures, where kirigami mechanics and photonic absorbance are dual-encoded within a single SMA metamaterial platform. UV-laser micromachining defines the kirigami architecture to prescribe 3D morphing amplitude and force output, while laser-induced oxidation creates micro-nano porous TiOx layers that dramatically enhance near-infrared absorbance without external coatings. This coupled mechanical-optical encoding provides deterministic control over deformation, heating rate, and temporal actuation dynamics. A comprehensive design map links geometric parameters to mechanical performance, and spatial patterning of oxidation levels enables spatiotemporally sequenced actuation under uniform illumination, demonstrating material-level photonic logic. Leveraging these capabilities, we construct a multi-channel 3D morphing and haptic display driven solely by optical inputs. This laser-encoded platform establishes a scalable and manufacturing-ready framework for architecting multifunctional SMA morphing systems, opening new opportunities for adaptive surfaces, interactive haptics, and photonic soft robotics.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is triggered by genetic predisposition and chronic inflammation, with aberrant activation of the innate immune complex NLRP3 inflammasome playing a pivotal role in its pathogenesis. In this study, we investigated the effects of a hot water extract from the brown alga Endarachne binghamiae (EB-WE) on the inhibition of NLRP3 inflammasome activation, with a focus on its antioxidant properties, in various inflammation models. In bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs), NLRP3 inflammasome activation was induced using LPS and ATP, and EB-WE pretreatment (100, 200 µg/mL) significantly reduced the secretion of IL-1β and IL-18. Confocal immunofluorescence analysis further confirmed that EB-WE suppressed the formation of the NLRP3-ASC/caspase-1 complex. Furthermore, the in vivo anti-IBD efficacy of EB-WE was assessed using a DSS-induced mouse model, in which colonic inflammation and NLRP3-mediated responses were prominent. Oral administration of EB-WE (2 or 5 mg/day) markedly ameliorated clinical symptoms, such as weight loss, diarrhea, and rectal bleeding, and significantly reduced the disease activity index (DAI). EB-WE also decreased serum pro-inflammatory cytokine levels and the expression of NLRP3 inflammasome-related molecules in colon tissue at both the gene and protein levels. In both BMDMs and the IBD mouse model, we further analyzed the upstream regulatory pathway involving NOX2-iNOS. EB-WE efficiently inhibited the activation of the NOX-iNOS axis and NF-κB phosphorylation, thereby alleviating inflammasome activation associated with DSS-induced oxidative stress and neutrophil/macrophage infiltration. Collectively, these results demonstrate that EB-WE effectively suppresses the formation and activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome by modulating the NOX-iNOS axis and the NF-κB pathway via antioxidant mechanisms. These findings suggest that EB-WE holds promise as a novel marine-derived natural therapeutic agent for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases.

Background/Objectives: Detecting Alzheimer's disease (AD) from normal aging using eyes-open (EO) EEG is challenging due to stimulus-driven nonstationarity and fragmented oscillatory responses. This study aims to determine whether prototype-based representations derived from Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) can improve AD detection from EO photostimulation EEG. Methods: We propose a DMD-based framework termed DMD-based Clustered Pattern Projection (DMD-CPP). Segment-wise DMD representations were clustered to learn class-specific medoid prototypes, and each EEG epoch was encoded as a vector of cosine-similarity coordinates with respect to these prototypes. A linear SVM classifier was trained on the resulting DMD-CPP features and evaluated under strict leave-one-subject-out validation. Results: The DMD-CPP model achieved competitive classification accuracy and, importantly, enhanced margin-based reliability. In EO photostimulation, AD versus healthy control classification showed a pronounced improvement, characterized by wider and more asymmetric decision margins, particularly assigning low confidence to normal epochs misclassified as AD. Tasks involving frontotemporal dementia also showed improvement, although the effect was less pronounced than for AD. Conclusions: Clustering-based pattern projection has been shown to stabilize EEG dynamics and provide an interpretable, confidence-aware feature representation. These findings suggest that DMD-CPP offers a promising framework for reliable AD detection from EO EEG, where conventional spectral methods typically struggle.

Abstract In optical systems, where miniaturization is the dominant trend, flat optical components capable of active aberration correction are increasingly required. SmartLens enables tunable wavefront control by locally modifying the refractive index of a transparent thermo-optic polymer using a microscale heater. However, such heaters are typically fabricated through complex multistep photolithography. In this study, we designed and simulated a Fresnel zone plate (FZP)-based microheater geometry to optimize optical efficiency and aberration control. The optimized FZP-shaped heater is fabricated by direct laser writing on a 70 nm-thick chromium (Cr) film and coated with a 1.1 mm-thick polydimethylsiloxane layer to enable thermo-optic modulation. A pronounced coma aberration was generated under off-axis conditions and subsequently compensated through electrically induced thermo-optic wavefront modulation. The fabricated SmartLens demonstrated correction of the off-axis coma aberration, which was quantitatively verified using point spread function and modulation transfer function analyses, including the reduction of directional anisotropy and the convergence of orthogonal full width at half maximum values.