Structured Materials Industries (United States)

Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) are utilized as a therapeutic option for patients with end-stage heart failure. While LVAD implantation can enhance survival rates and quality of life, the procedure has its risks, and postoperative complications are common. This review aims to investigate whether there is an association between living in a rural area and the incidence of postoperative complications or hospital readmissions following LVAD implantation, compared to urban LVAD recipients. A comprehensive literature review examined studies that compared postoperative outcomes between rural and urban LVAD recipients. Data on adverse events, hospitalizations, and mortality rates were extracted, focusing on the impact of geographic location on these outcomes. The review found that rural LVAD recipients may be at a higher risk for certain complications, including gastrointestinal bleeding, ventricular arrhythmias, LVAD complications, and stroke. Rural patients also exhibited higher instances of emergency department visits and hospital readmissions. Despite these challenges, survival rates and heart transplantation outcomes at 1 year were similar between rural and urban recipients. However, rural patients exhibited a higher driveline infection rate at 1 year. The findings of this review suggest that rural residency may be associated with an increased risk of certain postoperative complications and hospital readmissions following LVAD implantation. These results highlight the need for healthcare strategies to address the challenges faced by rural LVAD recipients. Further research is necessary to understand the relationship between geographic location and LVAD outcomes and to develop interventions that can improve postoperative care for this vulnerable population.

The Intersections of Global AfricaThe 2024 Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA) in Chicago could not have come at a more pivotal time for education.Africanist scholars, practitioners, and government officials descended on the city to participate in more than 350 sessions, lectures, and special events several weeks after the reelection of Donald Trump.The Annual Meeting brought together members from more than fifty countries around the world.They braved the December cold to gather for critical conversations about higher education, immigrant communities, international collaboration, and the need to reject essentialist perspectives on Africa.With the largest attendance since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chicago meeting enjoyed an exceptional number of intimate assemblies and special convenings.The community building and sororal care enacted throughout the week recalled the philosophy and activism of Audre Lorde and reminded members of their interconnectedness across institutional, disciplinary, and geographical distances.Most importantly, the Annual Meeting provided space and time to contemplate, negotiate, and embody the historical and political imperatives of the field in an otherwise uncertain institutional moment.The thematic essay for the ASA's 67th Annual Meeting, "Global Africa," positions Africa at the nexus of global relations, histories, and imaginaries.The piece asserts that "Africa is central to the understanding, analysis, and interpretation of the major global issues of today" and calls for "transdisciplinary, ontologically plural, and multimethod investigations" to identify and address these issues.This prescient exposition attracted many thoughtprovoking and innovative sessions surrounding Africa's diasporas, Global Blackness, the African immigrant experience in the United States, and identity construction in a global digital context, among many others.These sessions also built on previous meeting themes and discussions, and in the interim inspired the symposium African Studies and Black Studies: Intersections, Genealogies and New Directions hosted in early November at Duke University.The symposium convened scholars from North America and Africa for transdisciplinary conversations on the intersection of African studies and Black studies.Salient ASA member presentations included Jordanna Maton's work on masculinity and the volu, Walter C. Rucker's work on mnemonic praxis, and Natasha Shivji's

Incremental updates to this always-updated software suite.

In recent years, Ga2O3 solar-blind photodetectors (SBPDs) have received great attention for their potential applications in solar-blind imaging, deep space exploration, confidential space communication, etc. In this work, we demonstrated an ultra-high-performance ε-Ga2O3 metal–semiconductor–metal (MSM) SBPD. The fabricated photodetectors exhibited a record-high responsivity and fast decay time of 230 A/W and 24 ms, respectively, compared with MSM-structured Ga2O3 photodetectors reported to date. Additionally, the ε-Ga2O3 MSM SBPD presents an ultrahigh detectivity of 1.2 × 1015 Jones with a low dark current of 23.5 pA under an operation voltage of 6 V, suggesting its strong capability of detecting an ultraweak signal. The high sensitivity and wavelength selectivity of the photodetector were further confirmed by the record-high responsivity rejection ratio (R250 nm/R400 nm) of 1.2 × 105. From the temperature-dependent electrical characteristics in the dark, the thermionic field emission and Poole–Frenkel emission were found to be responsible for the current transport in the low and high electric field regimes, respectively. In addition, the gain mechanism was revealed by the Schottky barrier lowering effect due to the defect states at the interface of the metal contact and Ga2O3 or in the bulk of Ga2O3 based on current transport mechanism and density functional theory calculations. These results facilitate a better understanding of ε-Ga2O3 photoelectronic devices and provide possible guidance for promoting their performance in future solar-blind detection applications.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) processes were demonstrated for lead-titanate (PbTiO3) and lead-zirconium-titanate (PZT) films. The metal organic precursors were tetraethyl lead Pb(Et)4 reacted with ozone; along with tetrakis ethylmethylamino zirconium and tetrakis dimethylamino titanium reacted with either water or ozone. These precursors were selected based on compatibility with ALD processes for the component oxides. Single oxide films of PbO, ZrO2, and TiO2 were easily deposited using the selected precursors. ALD of the complex oxide films was done by combining the ALD processes for the component oxide films. The compositions of Pb, Zr, and Ti in the films could be predictably controlled by the relative ratio of Pb, Zr, and Ti precursor doses during the ALD process, and controlled composition for both PbTiO3 and PZT films was demonstrated.

This paper presents the design and fabrication of a switchable band pass filter based on barium strontium titanate (Ba 0.7 Sr 0.3 TiO 3 ) thin film materials. This filter is designed and fabricated as a solidly mounted resonator (SMR) using spin-on metal organic solution decomposition. It consists of six film bulk acoustic resonators (FBARs), two series and four shunt. Without voltage biasing, there is no frequency switching and the filter has shown capacitive response of return loss S11 at −3 dB and insertion loss of −21 dB. By applying 10.8 dc voltage to the six resonators, the filter has exhibited band pass response at 4.67 GHz with 150 MHz band width and insertion loss of 3.8 dB and shown an agreement between the simulation and measurement results.

A solidly mounted tunable barium strontium GaN/Sapphire substrate using a metalorganic solution deposition (MOSD) technique. An acoustic Bragg reflector was first formed on the GaN/sapphire substrate consisting of alternating layers of silicon dioxide and tantalum oxide deposited using a-spin on technique. Lower and upper electrodes were fabricated using sputter deposited platinum. The resonant frequency of the resonator could be tuned from 5.17 GHz to 5.20 GHz by applying a voltage of 8 V, resulting in tunability of about 0.6%. The quality factor of the resonator was found to depend on the applied voltage, with a maximum quality factor of 216 observed for an applied bias voltage of 8 V. The effective electromechanical coupling coefficient (kt <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> ) of the resonator was found to be 13.1% at 8 V.