White Roman Goose Feather-Inspired Unidirectionally Inclined Conical Structure Arrays for Switchable Anisotropic Self-Cleaning.

White Roman goose (Anser anser domesticus) feathers, comprised of oriented conical barbules, are coated with gland-secreted preening oils to maintain a long-term nonwetting performance for surface swimming. The geese are accustomed to combing their plumages with flat bills in case they are contaminated with oleophilic substances, during which the amphiphilic saliva spread over the barbules greatly impairs their surface hydrophobicities and allows the trapped contaminants to be anisotropically self-cleaned by water flows. Particularly, the superhydrophobic behaviors of the goose feathers are recovered as well. Bioinspired by the switchable anisotropic self-cleaning functionality of white Roman geese, superhydrophobic unidirectionally inclined conical structures are engineered through the integration of a scalable colloidal self-assembly technology and a colloidal lithographic approach. The dependence of directional sliding properties on the shape, inclination angle, and size of conical structures is systematically investigated in this research. Moreover, their switchable anisotropic self-cleaning functionalities are demonstrated by Sudan blue II/water (0.01%) separation performances. The white Roman goose feather-inspired coatings undoubtedly offer a new concept for developing innovative applications that require directional transportation and the collection of liquids.

Self-Assembly of Hemimyzon Formosanus-Inspired Crescent-Shaped Nanosucker Arrays for Reversible Adhesion.

Hemimyzon formosanus, a species of ray-finned fish, makes use of crescent-shaped abdominal suckers for adhering to irregular, rough, and slippery gravel in fast-flowing headwaters and minor tributaries. Bioinspired by the adhesion characteristics, two-dimensional non-close-packed colloidal crystals are self-assembled and serve as templates to pattern crescent-shaped shape memory polymer-based nanostructure arrays. By the manipulation of the configuration of nanosuckers through applying common solvent stimulations, the corresponding adhesion performances on glass, sandpaper, or even porcine kidney surfaces can be switched instantaneously and reversibly under ambient conditions. The biomimetic nanostructures indicate possible solutions to a variety of challenges, such as wound nursing, and so on.

Low- or moderate-carbohydrate calorie-restricted diets have similar effects on body composition and taekwondo performance after high-carbohydrate recovery meals.

Low-carbohydrate (LC) diets are popular among general and athletic populations attempting to lose body mass. This study investigated the effect of a 7-day LC or moderate-carbohydrate (MC) calorie-restricted diet followed by 18-h recovery on body composition and taekwondo-specific performance. In this randomised cross-over study, 12 male taekwondo athletes consumed an LC (10% of carbohydrate, 41% of protein, 49% of fat, and 15.8 ± 0.4 kcal/kg/day) or an isocaloric MC diet (60% of carbohydrate, 30% of protein, and 10% of fat) for 7 days. The participants then consumed a carbohydrate-rich recovery dinner (39.2 ± 3.1 kcal/kg) followed by breakfast (6.2 ± 0.4 kcal/kg) in both the trials. Three repeated sprint ability (RSA) tests were conducted after breakfast. The taekwondo-specific reaction battery was administered before the first RSA test and after each RSA test. The participants experienced similar magnitudes of significant loss of body mass in the LC (-2.4 ± 1.7%) and MC (-2.3 ± 1.7%) trials. Fat mass and fat percentage significantly decreased in the MC trial but remained unchanged in the LC trial after body mass loss. Fat free mass was maintained in both the trials. The average and peak power in the RSA tests and the premotor reaction time were similar between the trials. The participants experienced significantly higher fatigue in the LC trial. In conclusion, both the diets can help athletes rapidly lose body mass while maintaining performance as long as an adequate amount of carbohydrate is consumed during the recovery period.

Solvent-Induced Controllable Supramolecular Isomerism: Phase Transformation, CO2 Adsorption, and Fluorescence Sensing toward CrO42-, Cr2O72-, MnO4-, and Fe3.

Complexes {[Zn(bpdc)(Cz-3,6-bpy)]·DMF·H2O}n (1α-DMF, H2bpdc = biphenyl-4,4'-dicarboxylic acid, Cz-3,6-bpy = 3,6-bis(pyridine-4-yl)-9H-carbazole, DMF = N,N'-dimethylformamide) and {[Zn(bpdc)(Cz-3,6-bpy)]·2DMAc·H2O}n (1ß-DMAc, DMAc = N,N'-dimethylacetamide) as a couple of solvent-induced supramolecular isomers were hydro(solvo)thermally synthesized using DMF/H2O and DMAc-only as reaction media, respectively. Complexes 1α-DMF and 1ß-DMAc adopt very similar wavy sql sheet structures but present great differences in the 3-fold interweaving 2D → 2D nets, which result in free voids of 17.6 and 33.4%, respectively. Desolvated 1ß has about 2 times the free voids compared to that of desolvated 1α; however, the former displays a CO2 uptake of 87.9 cm3 g-1 STP at 195 K and P/P0 = 1 which is only slight larger than that (73.7 cm3 g-1 STP) of the latter under the same conditions. This is mainly interpreted by activation- and adsorption-induced framework distortion that caused partial transformation of crystal phase from 1ß to 1α and thus reduced free voids. The isosteric heat of CO2 adsorption (Qst) at zero loading is 29.8 kJ mol-1 for desolvated 1α and 30.6 kJ mol-1 for desolvated 1ß. On the other hand, results from XRPD, IR, and TGA measurements imply that 1α-DMF and 1ß-DMAc are highly stable in several different solvents, with the exception of 1α-DMF in DMAc, which experienced complete transformation to convert to 1ß-DMAc and 1ß-DMAc in acetone and methanol, which would respectively completely and partially transform to the crystal phase of 1α-DMF. Remarkably, 1α-DMF and 1ß-DMAc display intense blue and cyan fluorescence emissions, respectively, promising them to be multifunctional sensing platforms in sensitive detection of CrO42-, Cr2O72-, MnO4-, and Fe3+ with high selectivity and a fairly low limit of detection through perceptible fluorescence quenching effect. The possible sensing mechanisms were also investigated.

Use of antipsychotics and risk of venous thromboembolism in postmenopausal women. A population-based nested case-control study.

Despite continued uncertainty of venous thromboembolism (VTE) caused from antipsychotic agents, this safety issue has not been examined in postmenopausal women, a population with high usages of antipsychotics and at high risk for VTE. We assessed whether antipsychotic use was associated with an increased VTE risk in women after menopause. We conducted a nested case-control study of all Taiwanese women aged ≥ 50 years (n = 316,132) using a nationwide healthcare claims database between 2000 and 2011. All newly diagnosed VTE patients treated with an anticoagulant or thrombectomy surgery were identified as cases (n = 2,520) and individually matched to select controls (n = 24,223) by cohort entry date, age, cancer diagnosis and major surgery procedure. The odds ratios (ORs) and 95 % confidence interval (CI) of VTE associated with antipsychotics were estimated by multivariate conditional logistic regressions. Current use of antipsychotics was associated with a 1.90-fold (95 % CI = 1.64-2.19) increased VTE risk compared with nonuse in postmenopausal women. The VTE risk existed in a dose-dependent fashion (test for trend, p<0.001), with a more than quadrupled risk for high-dose antipsychotics (adjusted OR = 4.60; 95 % CI = 2.88-7.33). Current parenteral administration of antipsychotics also led to a 3.46-fold increased risk (95 % CI = 2.39-5.00). Conversely, there was no increased VTE risk when antipsychotics were discontinued for > 30 days. In conclusion, current use of antipsychotics is significantly associated with a dose-dependent increased risk of VTE in postmenopausal women, especially for those currently taking high-dose or receiving parenteral antipsychotics.

An Artificial Neural Network Embedded Position and Orientation Determination Algorithm for Low Cost MEMS INS/GPS Integrated Sensors.

Digital mobile mapping, which integrates digital imaging with direct geo-referencing, has developed rapidly over the past fifteen years. Direct geo-referencing is the determination of the time-variable position and orientation parameters for a mobile digital imager. The most common technologies used for this purpose today are satellite positioning using Global Positioning System (GPS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS) using an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). They are usually integrated in such a way that the GPS receiver is the main position sensor, while the IMU is the main orientation sensor. The Kalman Filter (KF) is considered as the optimal estimation tool for real-time INS/GPS integrated kinematic position and orientation determination. An intelligent hybrid scheme consisting of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and KF has been proposed to overcome the limitations of KF and to improve the performance of the INS/GPS integrated system in previous studies. However, the accuracy requirements of general mobile mapping applications can't be achieved easily, even by the use of the ANN-KF scheme. Therefore, this study proposes an intelligent position and orientation determination scheme that embeds ANN with conventional Rauch-Tung-Striebel (RTS) smoother to improve the overall accuracy of a MEMS INS/GPS integrated system in post-mission mode. By combining the Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) INS/GPS integrated system and the intelligent ANN-RTS smoother scheme proposed in this study, a cheaper but still reasonably accurate position and orientation determination scheme can be anticipated.