Creating a sustainable residency research program is necessary to develop a sustainable research pipeline, as highlighted by the recent Society for Academic Emergency Medicine 2024 Consensus Conference. We sought to describe the implementation of a novel, immersive research program for first-year emergency medicine residents. We describe the curriculum development, rationale, implementation process, and lessons learned from the implementation of a year-long research curriculum for first-year residents. We further evaluated resident perception of confidence in research methodology, interest in research, and the importance of their research experience through a 32-item survey. In two cohorts, 25 first-year residents completed the program. All residents met their scholarly project requirements by the end of their first year. Two conference abstracts and one peer-reviewed publication were accepted for publication, and one is currently under review. Survey responses indicated that there was an increase in residents’ perceived confidence in research methodology, but this was limited by the small sample size. In summary, this novel resident research curriculum demonstrated a standardized, reproducible, and sustainable approach to provide residents with an immersive research program.

Recent ex situ observations of crystallization in both natural and synthetic systems indicate that the classical models of nucleation and growth are inaccurate. However, in situ observations that can provide direct evidence for alternative models have been lacking due to the limited temporal and spatial resolution of experimental techniques that can observe dynamic processes in a bulk solution. Here we report results from liquid cell transmission electron microscopy studies of nucleation and growth of Au, CaCO3, and iron oxide nanoparticles. We show how these in situ data can be used to obtain direct evidence for the mechanisms underlying nanoparticle crystallization as well as dynamic information that provide constraints on important energetic parameters not available through ex situ methods.

Background: Low education and illiteracy are associated with an increased risk of dementia. This study aimed to develop a neuropsychological test battery applicable to both illiterate and literate elderly and to assess its reliability and validity for a diagnosis of dementia.

Methods: We developed the Literacy Independent Cognitive Assessment (LICA), which consists of 13 subtests assessing memory, language, visuoconstruction, executive function, attention and calculation. We investigated its reliability and validity on 152 patients with dementia, 66 with mild cognitive impairment and 639 normal controls.

Results: The subtests were found to be applicable to most of the illiterate normal controls (97.3%) and were found to have high inter-rater reliabilities (r = 0.85–1.00, p < 0.001) and moderate to high test-retest reliabilities (r = 0.50–0.86, p < 0.001). The LICA performed well in discriminating participants across Clinical Dementia Rating stages and showed excellent internal consistency and good concurrent validity with the Korean Mini-mental State Examination in both literate and illiterate participants. The area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic was 0.985 in each of the two literacy groups. Sensitivity and specificity of the LICA to make a diagnosis of dementia was 91.9% and 91.8% at the cutoff point of 186.0 in the literate subjects and 96.2% and 91.1% at the cutoff point of 154.5 in the illiterate subjects. The battery was factored into two separate factors consisting of verbal memory tests and tests for other cognitive domains.

Conclusion: The LICA is a valid and reliable instrument for a diagnosis of dementia in both illiterate and literate elderly.

In this report, we describe recent efforts in fabricating new nanocarbon-supported titanium dioxide structures that exhibit high surface area and improved electrical conductivity. Nanocarbons consisting of single-walled carbon nanotubes and carbon aerogel nanoparticles were used to support titanium dioxide particles and produce monoliths with densities as low as 80 mg/cm 3. The electrical conductivity of the nanocarbon-supported titanium dioxide was dictated by the conductivity of the nanocarbon support while the pore structure was dominated by the titanium dioxide aerogel particles. The conductivity of the monoliths presented here was 72 S/m and the surface area was 203 m2/g.

We investigate the contact of bottom-contact pentacene-based thin-film transistors, with Au source/drain electrode. By separating the voltage drop at the contact from the source-drain voltage, the current-voltage characteristic of the injection contact is obtained. The contact characteristics are in a good agreement with a model of carrier injection from a metal electrode into a disordered hopping system.

This paper describes the results of an investigation of the structure and composition of core-shell gold and alloy nanoparticles as catalytically active nanomaterials for potential fuel cell catalysis. Centered on the electrocatalytic methanol oxidation, we show three sets of results based on electrochemical, surface, and composition characterizations. First, electrochemical studies have revealed that the nanostructured catalysts are active towards the electrooxidation of methanol and carbon monoxide. Second, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) data have shown that the organic encapsulating shells can be effectively removed electrochemically or thermally, which involves the formation of oxides on the nanocrystals. Thirdly, direct current plasma - atomic emission spectrometry (DCP-AES) has revealed insights for the correlation of the composition of alloy nanoparticles with the catalytic activities. Implications of these results to the design of nanostructured catalysts will also be discussed.

The experimental results regarding to the effects of ultraviolet (UV) light illumination on the characteristics of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin film transistors (TFT's) have been presented. The device parameters of a-Si:H TFT, such as threshold voltage, field-effect mobility, and subthreshold slope, have been degraded by electrical stress and visible light illumination, but substantially improved by UV radiation. This may be attributed to an annealing effect on the dangling-bond defects, involving a number of phonons generated by absorption of high energy UV photons in the a-Si:H TFT channel. It has been also observed that the off-current of a-Si:H TFT decreases remarkably while the on-current changes very little. From the experimental results, we report that the improved on/off current ratio of a-Si:H TFT may be achieved by UV radiation.

The experimental and analytical results regarding to the effects of temperature and electrical stress on the characteristics of amorphous silicon thin-film transistors (a-Si TFT's) have been presented. The variations in the device parameters of a-Si TFT, such as threshold voltage and field-effect mobility, have been examined under various operating temperatures and electrical stress conditions. The hysteresis in the transfer characteristics and the trapped charges at the a-Si/silicon nitride interface were measured at the operating temperature ranges. From the experimental results, it has been found out that the increase of the interface charge trapping may be responsible for the degradation in the a-Si TFT characteristics. Also, an analytical formulation, employing the interface charge trapping, is presented to clarify the instability phenomena and verified successfully with the experimental results.

We present a new analytical model of amorphous silicon thin-film transistor (a-Si TFT) suitable for circuit simulators such as SPICE. The effects of localized gap state distributions of a-Si as well as temperatures on the a-Si TFT performances have been fully considered in the presented model. The parameters used in SPICE, such as transconductance, channel-length modulation, and power factor of source-drain current, are evaluated from the measured current-voltage and capacitance-voltage characteristics by employing the proposed extraction method. It has been found out that the analytical model is in good agreement with experimental data at both room temperature and elevated temperature and successfully implemented in a widely used circuit simulator.