Laser printed two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides.

Laser processing is a highly versatile technique for the post-synthesis treatment and modification of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). However, to date, TMDCs synthesis typically relies on large area CVD growth and lithographic post-processing for nanodevice fabrication, thus relying heavily on complex, capital intensive, vacuum-based processing environments and fabrication tools. This inflexibility necessarily restricts the development of facile, fast, very low-cost synthesis protocols. Here we show that direct, spatially selective synthesis of 2D-TMDCs devices that exhibit excellent electrical, Raman and photoluminescence properties can be realized using laser printing under ambient conditions with minimal lithographic or thermal overheads. Our simple, elegant process can be scaled via conventional laser printing approaches including spatial light modulation and digital light engines to enable mass production protocols such as roll-to-roll processing.

Evaluations of Morphine and Fentanyl for Mechanically Ventilated Patients With Respiratory Disorders in Intensive Care: A Systematic Review of Methodological Trends and Reporting Quality.

BACKGROUND: Mechanically ventilated patients with respiratory disorders may require sedatives, such as opioids. OBJECTIVES: To define methodological trends, gaps, and the reporting quality of the comparative clinical and economic evaluations of fentanyl and morphine in ventilated patients in the intensive care unit. METHODS: We conducted a literature review of the MEDLINE, Embase, OVID, ScienceDirect, Springer Link, and EconLit databases, comparing studies in the management of ventilated patients with respiratory disorders in the intensive care unit using either fentanyl or morphine, or both. We assessed the methodological aspects of the literature characteristics and trends of, for example, modeling, data sources, cost calculation, and data analysis, appraising the quality of reporting via the CONsolidated Standards Of Reporting Trials, STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology, and the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards checklists. RESULTS: Among 1327 articles, 33 (comprising 22 in adults, 8 in neonates, and 3 in pediatrics) met the inclusion criteria. No head-to-head morphine versus fentanyl evaluations explicitly confined to subjects with respiratory conditions were undertaken. Studies relied on various scales to measure the sedation level as a primary study outcome, limiting the comparability of study conclusions. Seven articles of adults were identified to be economic studies from the hospital perspective. On the basis of different endpoints, the same sedation regimen performed differently in various studies. None of the randomized controlled trials, observational cohorts, or pharmacoeconomics studies met most of the assessed reporting quality criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Our review identified poor reporting quality and high heterogeneity of methods used, potentially limiting the degree to which studies could be interpreted, decisions could be influenced, and findings could be generalized.

History based forward and feedback mechanism in cooperative spectrum sensing including malicious users in cognitive radio network.

In cognitive radio communication, spectrum sensing plays a vital role in sensing the existence of the primary user (PU). The sensing performance is badly affected by fading and shadowing in case of single secondary user(SU). To overcome this issue, cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is proposed. Although the reliability of the system is improved with cooperation but existence of malicious user (MU) in the CSS deteriorates the performance. In this work, we consider the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence method for minimizing spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack. In the proposed CSS scheme, each SU reports the fusion center(FC) about the availability of PU and also keeps the same evidence in its local database. Based on the KL divergence value, if the FC acknowledges the user as normal, then the user will send unified energy information to the FC based on its current and previous sensed results. This method keeps the probability of detection high and energy optimum, thus providing an improvement in performance of the system. Simulation results show that the proposed KL divergence method has performed better than the existing equal gain combination (EGC), maximum gain combination (MGC) and simple KL divergence schemes in the presence of MUs.