Role of Charlson comorbidity index in predicting the ICU admission in patients with thoracic aortic aneurysm undergoing surgery.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to explore the value of the Charlson comorbidity index (CCI) in predicting ICU admission in patients with aortic aneurysm (AA). METHODS: The clinical data of patients were obtained from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-IV database. The association between CCI and ICU admission was explored by restricted cubic spline (RCS), threshold effect analysis, generalized linear model, logistic regression, interaction, and mediation analyses. Its clinical value was evaluated by decision curve analysis (DCA), receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), DeLong's test, and net reclassification index (NRI) analyses. RESULTS: The ICU admission was significantly associated with the thoracic AA (TAA), unruptured status, and surgery status. Therefore, 288 candidate patients with unruptured TAA who received surgery were enrolled in the further analysis. We found that CCI was independently associated with the ICU admission of candidates (P = 0.005). Further, their nonlinear relationship was observed (adjusted P = 0.008), and a significant turning point of 6 was identified. The CCI had a favorable performance in predicting ICU admission (area under curve = 0.728) and achieved a better clinical net benefit. New models based on CCI significantly improved the accuracy of prediction. Besides the importance of CCI in ICU admission, CCI also exerted important interaction effect (rather than mediating effects) on the association of other variables (such as age and blood variables) with ICU admission requirements (all P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The CCI is an important predictor of ICU admission after surgery in patients with unruptured TAA.

Easy-to-process and high-performance colorful perovskite solar cells using a multilayer planar filter.

Color-rendering manipulation of solar cells is drawing increasing interest, since the integration of color displaying can promote various advanced applications. However, the dual functionality of high-performance operation and easy processing remain a challenge. Here we propose a colorful perovskite solar cell (PSC) based on purely planar layers. The photonic crystal (PC), which does not interfere with the PSC processing, enables the display of high-purity colors and maintaining the number of PC layers at 4-6. The fabricated PSC with a four-layer PC successfully displays red-green-blue (RGB) colors, with the power-conversion efficiency of 10.94%, 11.01%, and 13.70%, respectively. Further study indicates that by employing a six-layer PC the PSC can obtain excellent color-displaying effect with the color gamut up to 81.8% of the standard RGB. It also shows that the design has a good tolerance to the deviation of layer thickness.

Photonic Design and Electrical Evaluation of Dual-Functional Solar Cells for Energy Conversion and Display Applications.

Colored solar cells (SCs) are highly useful for applications in esthetic building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPVs). However, the theoretical designs mostly focus on the color quality with rarely addressing the optoelectronic responses. Here, considering both color display and complete electrical evaluation, we report a color-controlled a-Si:H SC in purely planar configuration, which simultaneously exhibits the desired high-purity color and sustains a relatively high power conversion efficiency. The high-performance color display is realized by thin-film photonic designs with incorporating distributed Bragg reflector and anti-reflection coating layers. Moreover, a comprehensive optoelectronic simulation addressing both the electromagnetic and internal semiconductor physics has been realized, which shows that the power conversion efficiencies of the designed red-green-blue (RGB) SCs can be 4.88%, 5.58%, and 6.54%, respectively. The physical principles of optimizing the colorful SCs with the tunable hue, high saturation, and brightness are explained, and we take the logo of "Soochow University" as an example to demonstrate the wide-angle pattern display by the SCs. The study paves the way of realizing the colored SCs targeting esthetic BIPV applications.

A method to measure the distance among scatters and the scatters' diameter in artificial composite materials.

A new method to measure the distance among scatters, the density of scatters, and the scatters' diameter in artificial composite materials has been proposed. This method is based on detecting the reflection amplitude change (amp) of the echo signal reflected from scatters. Simulation results show that such a method is valid for the distance less than four times of the acoustic wavelength, because the coupling between the scatters can be neglected for the distance larger than four times of the acoustic wavelength. Therefore, this new measure method can be always valid by choosing appropriate frequency according to the scaling rule discussed in this paper. At the same time, it is found that the diameter of scatters is the half of the wavelength where the curve peak of the amp vs frequency occurs. It implies that such a new method can also be used to measure the diameter of scatters in solids and liquids, and even in PM2.5 pollution particles in air.

Anisotropic relaxation of a CuO/TiO2 surface under an electric field and its impact on visible light absorption: ab initio calculations.

Ab initio calculations on the anisotropic relaxation of a CuO/TiO2 surface under electric fields and the visible light absorption of these relaxed surfaces are reported. We compare the relaxation of the CuO/TiO2 surface under the electric fields in the direction of [001] or [010]. Fewer Cu-O bonds with highly coordinated Cu-ions are found in the CuO/TiO2 relaxed surface under the electric field in the [010] direction. The Cu-O bonds in the interface of the CuO/TiO2 surface led to an improved visible light absorption in the polarization direction of [001]. The CuO/TiO2 relaxed surface under the electric field in the [010] direction exhibits a more effective absorption of visible light. However, the electric field in the [001] direction induces more relaxation on the CuO/TiO2 surface, breaking the Cu-O bonds. This leads to the partial reduction of CuO to Cu2O on the CuO/TiO2 relaxed surface under the electric field in the [001] direction and inefficient absorption of visible light is observed for this surface.