Magnetic topological insulators provide an important materials platform to explore emergent quantum phenomena such as the quantized anomalous Hall (QAH) effect, Majorana modes and the axion insulator state, etc. Recently, MnBi2Te4 was discovered to be the first material realization of a van der Waals (vdW) antiferromagnetic topological insulator (TI). In the two-dimensional (2D) limit, at a record high temperature of 4.5 K, MnBi2Te4 manifests the QAH effect in the forced ferromagnetic state above 12 T. To realize the QAH effect at lower fields, it is essential to search for magnetic TIs with lower saturation fields. By realizing a bulk vdW material MnBi4Te7 with alternating [MnBi2Te4]and [Bi2Te3] layers, we suggest that it is ferromagnetic in plane but antiferromagnetic along the c axis with a small out-of-plane saturation field of ~ 0.22 T at 2 K. Our angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and first-principles calculations further demonstrate that MnBi4Te7 is a Z2 antiferromagnetic TI with two types of surface states associated with the [MnBi2Te4] or [Bi2Te3] termination, respectively. Therefore, MnBi4Te7 provides a new material platform to investigate emergent topological phenomena associated with the QAH effect at much lower magnetic fields in its 2D limit.

L-2-Oxothiazolidine-4-carboxylic acid (OTC) is a cysteine prodrug that maintains glutathione in tissues. The present study was designed to investigate anti-fibrotic and anti-oxidative effects of OTC via modulation of nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) in an in vivo thioacetamide (TAA)-induced hepatic fibrosis model. Treatment with OTC (80 or 160 mg/kg) improved serum liver function parameters and significantly ameliorated liver fibrosis. The OTC treatment groups exhibited significantly lower expression of α-smooth muscle actin, transforming growth factor-β 1, and collagen α 1 mRNA than that in the TAA model group. Furthermore, the OTC treatment groups showed a significant decrease in hepatic malondialdehyde level compared to that in the TAA model group. Nrf2 and heme oxygenase-1 expression increased significantly in the OTC treatment groups compared with that in the TAA model group. Taken together, these results suggest that OTC restores the anti- oxidative system by upregulating Nrf2; thus, ameliorating liver injury and a fibrotic reaction.

Background: The increase in aortic diameter is not closely associated with type B aortic dissection (TBAD); morphological risk factors other than aortic diameter may help to better identify patients at risk for TBAD.The purpose of this study was to investigate possible morphological factors associated with the occurrence of TBAD.Methods: This study was a retrospective, multicenter, cross-sectional study. We collected 94 patients with TBAD as the TBAD group and 534 patients with healthy aortas as the healthy control group. Morphometric data were collected on three-dimensional models of the thoracic aorta. A propensity score matching (PSM) analysis was conducted to reduce the potential for confounding by baseline factors.Results: The number of patients in the TBAD group was 75 after PSM. Longer lengths of the aortic arch (28.00±7.42 vs. 25.14±7.11 cm) were observed in patients with TBAD. The width (80.04±17.27 vs. 71.73±15.55 mm) and height (24.92±11.39 vs. 19.37±10.10 mm) of the aortic arch in patients with TBAD were both larger than those of healthy controls. The morphological changes associated with the occurrence of type B acute dissection were most pronounced in the geometry of the aortic arch.Conclusions: This study demonstrates that TBAD was associated with longer lengths of aortic arch and with larger arch height and width.

In this paper, the propagation of SET in dynamic CMOS cascade circuits is studied. Based on the domino logic buffer chain and the static inverter chain, the SET propagation was simulated by large amount of random singe event current transient injecting in spice simulation. It can be found that the propagation probability of SET in the domino logic buffer chain is 15.7% of that in the static inverter chain. With the simulation results, it can be deduced that in other logic gate cascade structures, the propagation probability of SET in dynamic CMOS cascade circuits is reduced significantly compared with that in the static circuits.

We propose an experimental method to investigate the dominant multiple node charge collection mechanism. A transistor array-based test structure is used to distinguish charge collection owing to the drift-diffusion and parasitic bipolar amplification effect. Heavy ion experimental results confirm that drift-diffusion dominates multiple node charge collection at low linear energy transfer (LET). However, the parasitic bipolar amplification effect dominates it at high LET. We also propose simple equations to determine the critical LET which may change the dominant multiple node charge collection mechanism. The calculated LET value is consistent with the heavy ion experimental results.