Single Surface Research Articles

Compress and Compare: Interactively Evaluating Efficiency and Behavior Across ML Model Compression Experiments.

To deploy machine learning models on-device, practitioners use compression algorithms to shrink and speed up models while maintaining their high-quality output. A critical aspect of compression in practice is model comparison, including tracking many compression experiments, identifying subtle changes in model behavior, and negotiating complex accuracy-efficiency trade-offs. However, existing compression tools poorly support comparison, leading to tedious and, sometimes, incomplete analyses spread across disjoint tools. To support real-world comparative workflows, we develop an interactive visual system called COMPRESS AND COMPARE. Within a single interface, COMPRESS AND COMPARE surfaces promising compression strategies by visualizing provenance relationships between compressed models and reveals compression-induced behavior changes by comparing models' predictions, weights, and activations. We demonstrate how COMPRESS AND COMPARE supports common compression analysis tasks through two case studies, debugging failed compression on generative language models and identifying compression artifacts in image classification models. We further evaluate COMPRESS AND COMPARE in a user study with eight compression experts, illustrating its potential to provide structure to compression workflows, help practitioners build intuition about compression, and encourage thorough analysis of compression's effect on model behavior. Through these evaluations, we identify compression-specific challenges that future visual analytics tools should consider and COMPRESS AND COMPARE visualizations that may generalize to broader model comparison tasks..

Aerothermal Performance of Slashface Leakage With Double Surface Angle Under Realistic Swirling Inflow

Abstract The turbine vanes being manufactured and assembled piece by piece leads to an unavoidable gap on the vane endwall called slashface. Usually, the coolant leakage introduced from the slashface with a single surface angle aims to prevent hot gas ingression and protect the vane endwall. However, the cooling effectiveness is greatly reduced when considering the swirling flow from the combustor. In the current work, against strong swirling inflow, a new solution to improve endwall film cooling performance through applying the slashface leakage with the double surface angle is carried out. Through numerical method, the effects of the location of the angle transition region (D/L = 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%) and mass flow ratio (MFR = 0.5%, 1.0%, 1.5%) of the leakage on the turbine vane endwall aerothermal and film cooling performance are investigated. The results indicated that the coverage area of the coolant on the endwall was obviously enlarged when the slashface leakage with the double surface angle was employed. The film cooling level on both the endwall and suction side surface of the vane increased with increasing MFR. Moreover, the endwall thermal load was reduced. The designs of D/L = 25% and 50% are recommended for their high endwall film cooling level and low endwall thermal load. This paper provides turbine designers with a new idea to increase endwall film cooling performance by the slashface leakage with the double surface angle when considering aggressive swirling inflow.

GR-PSN: Learning to Estimate Surface Normal and Reconstruct Photometric Stereo Images.

In this paper, we propose a novel method, namely GR-PSN, which learns surface normals from photometric stereo images and generates the photometric images under distant illumination from different lighting directions and surface materials. The framework is composed of two subnetworks, named GeometryNet and ReconstructNet, which are cascaded to perform shape reconstruction and image rendering in an end-to-end manner. ReconstructNet introduces additional supervision for surface-normal recovery, forming a closed-loop structure with GeometryNet. We also encode lighting and surface reflectance in ReconstructNet, to achieve arbitrary rendering. In training, we set up a parallel framework to simultaneously learn two arbitrary materials for an object, providing an additional transform loss. Therefore, our method is trained based on the supervision by three different loss functions, namely the surface-normal loss, reconstruction loss, and transform loss. We alternately input the predicted surface-normal map and the ground-truth into ReconstructNet, to achieve stable training for ReconstructNet. Experiments show that our method can accurately recover the surface normals of an object with an arbitrary number of inputs, and can re-render images of the object with arbitrary surface materials. Extensive experimental results show that our proposed method outperforms those methods based on a single surface recovery network and shows realistic rendering results on 100 different materials.

Endothelium-Inspired Hemocompatible Silicone Surfaces: An Elegant Balance between Antifouling Properties and Endothelial Cell Selectivity.

To address the adverse reactions caused by the implantation of blood-contacting materials, researchers have developed different strategies, of which mimicking multiple key features of endothelial cells is the most effective. However, simultaneously immobilizing multiple chemical components on a single material surface and maintaining the effects of individual components are challenging. In this work, endothelium-mimicking silicone surfaces were developed by incorporating the antifouling polymer poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate), the glycosaminoglycan analog poly(sodium 4-vinyl-benzenesulfonate) and a nitric oxide catalyst (selenocystamine dihydrochloride). Through the rational regulation of multiple chemical components, the surfaces harmoniously resisted nonspecific protein adsorption, platelet adhesion and activation and smooth muscle cell hyperproliferation while promoting endothelial cell proliferation and migration. The coculture experiment with HUVECs and HUVSMCs showed that the optimum selectivity of HUVECs/HUVSMCs was ∼1.7. This work contributes insight into the control of antifouling properties and endothelial selectivity, providing a new avenue for the development of blood-contacting materials.

Preparation of tea saponin-cinnamaldehyde nanoemulsion and study of its inhibition of citrus fungi

In this study, tea saponin was used as an emulsifier to construct tea saponin-cinnamaldehyde nanoemulsion (TS-CNE) system by high-pressure homogenization nanotechnology. Preparation conditions of TS-CNE were optimized using single factor and response surface methods. The results showed that optimal TS-CNE had a particle size of 88.81 nm, a polydispersity index (PDI) of 0.113 and 86.49% retention of cinnamaldehyde. TS-CNE was stored at 4 and 25 °C for 180 days and the nanosystem was stable. Antioxidant assay showed that TS-CNE had good radicals scavenging. Furthermore, antimicrobial assay showed that the minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) of TS-CNE was 1.95 mL/L against three pathogenic fungi (Penicillium italicum, Penicillium digitatum, and Geotrichum citri-aurantii) of citrus. TS-CNE (MFC and 10 × MFC) effectively suppressed disease development in citrus inoculated with the three fungi. Consequently, TS-CNE had good physicochemical properties and was a promising natural preservative for citrus.

Assembled Wood-Polyester Fabric-Hydrogel Janus Evaporator for Sustainable Seawater Desalination.

Solar-driven interfacial evaporation technology is a novel and efficient desalination process that helps alleviate the global shortage of freshwater resources. We developed a Janus evaporator assembled from cotton hydrogel, hydrophilic polyester fabric (PF), and Hydrophobic Wood (PW). By doping graphene oxide and TiO2 as light-absorbing materials within the hydrogel, we achieved a high absorptivity of over 90% across the entire solar spectrum. The hydrophilically modified PF, combined with the PW substrate, provided robust water transport and reduced thermal losses. Subsequent optical path simulations using TracePro74 software verified that the sawtooth light-trapping design of the wood substrate increased multiple light reflections and absorption (compared to a flat structure), enhancing light absorption capabilities. The sawtooth interface also enlarged the evaporation area, further boosting evaporation performance. The cleverly designed evaporator exhibited an evaporation rate of 1.722 kg m-2 h-1 and an efficiency of 83.1% under 1 sun irradiation. Additionally, after applying polydimethylsiloxane to the single surface of the photothermal hydrogel for low surface energy treatment, the resulting Janus structure demonstrated asymmetric wettability that prevented salt ions from accumulating on the irradiated interface. After 8 h of continuous evaporation in saline water (10 wt %), only slight salt crystallization occurred at the edges. The evaporator maintained long-term stability during a 15 day cyclic test, and the produced freshwater fully met the relevant drinking water standards. The components of the evaporator are characterized by simple fabrication, low cost, and eco-friendliness, offering significant application potential in the global context of energy conservation and emission reduction initiatives.

AirTac: A Contactless Digital Tactile Receptor for Detecting Material and Roughness via Terahertz Sensing

Tactile sensing is an indispensable capability for humans or intelligent devices to engage in complex physical interactions. Mainstream tactile sensors are contact-based, which show limitation in measuring deformable objects and demanding high maintenance effort. As a complementary solution, a new paradigm of contactless tactile sensing is attracting much interest. While promising, they can only identify coarse-grained single tactile perception properties, either material type or surface roughness. In this paper, we propose airTac, which includes a novel contactless digital tactile receptor model, capable of simultaneously extracting these two basic tactile properties in a fine-grained resolution, by harnessing the massive bandwidth of terahertz(THz) frequency band. airTac is designed based on our key finding: while the impact of material type and surface roughness on THz signal intertwine with each other, they are actually separable, i.e., roughness manifests a certain pattern in distorting relative high-frequency components of the whole THz spectrum. Therefore, we custom-design a bio-inspired deep neural network model to decouple the intertwined THz signal, and distill the tactile perception properties embedded underlying the signal. We prototype airTac using a THz time domain spectroscopy, and perform extensive evaluation over 9 different daily material types with 39 different surface roughness. airTac achieves a material identification accuracy of 97.43% and a roughness classification accuracy of 91.46%, which demonstrates that airTac can identify common materials in daily life and exceed a fingertip spatial resolution of 1mm.

Polaritonic Chemistry Enabled by Non-Local Metasurfaces.

Vibrational strong coupling can modify chemical reaction pathways in unconventional ways. Thus far, Fabry-Perot cavities formed by pairs of facing mirrors have been mostly utilized to achieve vibrational strong coupling. In this study, we demonstrate the application of non-local metasurfaces that can sustain surface lattice resonances, enabling chemical reactions under vibrational strong coupling. We show that the solvolysis kinetics of para-nitrophenyl acetate can be accelerated by a factor of 2.7 by strong coupling to the carbonyl bond of the solvent and the solute with a surface lattice resonance. Our work introduces a new platform to investigate polaritonic chemical reactions. In contrast to Fabry-Perot cavities, metasurfaces define open optical cavities with single surfaces, which removes alignment hurdles, facilitating polaritonic chemistry across large areas.

Design and development of lignin nanobottles: Toward developing novel multifunctional nanocomposites

The design of lignin nanostructures, which leverages interfacial interactions to enhance colloidal network entanglement, holds promise for expanding their applications in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) composites. Herein, a novel approach is proposed for fabricating lignin nanobottles (LNBs) using biomass-derived γ-butyrolactone (GBL) to create hollow interiors connected to a single surface opening. The resulting LNBs exhibit uniform sizes of approximately 108 nm with an opening diameter of 34.94 nm. Incorporating LNBs into PVA composites enhances mechanical properties significantly, with a tensile strength of 64.96 MPa and an elongation at break of 611.6 %. Moreover, the nanocomposite films demonstrate notable antibacterial effects, UV protection, and hydrophobicity. Introducing LNBs improves photothermal conversion capacity, achieving a temperature of 62.1 °C in just 150 s. Furthermore, a meticulously designed 3D solar evaporator demonstrates remarkable evaporation performance, achieving a rate of up to 1.89 kg m-2h−1 with an outstanding efficiency of 96.55 %. When exposed to 1 sunlight, the thermoelectric material generates an output voltage of 0.83 V, indicating considerable potential for energy generation. Overall, Incorporating LNBs enhances lignin’s effectiveness in materials and provides a novel approach to augment lignin’s photothermal properties, enabling broader applications in solar-driven evaporation and thermoelectric materials.

Nucleate pool boiling bubble dynamics for R32 and R1234yf on machined micro-structured surfaces

Efficient electronics cooling has always been a perpetual challenge, with the limits of single-phase cooling almost being reached. Two-phase cooling in the form of pool boiling is an attractive next step, with much research being devoted to it. While refrigerants operating at lower saturation temperatures are key to achieving effective cooling, surface modifications have been shown to also affect bubble dynamics and enhance nucleate pool boiling heat transfer. A simple, easy to implement fabrication method was sought, with the goal of expanding the knowledge of bubble dynamics. To this end, single bubble growth on structured surfaces that are achievable on a lathe, with an average roughness of 75 μm and differing indentation angles between 90° and 46°, was studied numerically using an OpenFOAM multiphase library. Conjugate heat transfer was applied, with heat fluxes ranging between 7.6 and 28 kW/m2 for pure refrigerants R32 and R1234yf. By comparing the bubble equivalent diameter with that of a smooth surface at a fixed heat flux, it was found that the bubble growth rates of structured surfaces were largely independent of indentation angles less than 90°, but lower than for smooth surfaces. For structured surfaces, a critical indentation angle of approximately 60° was identified which affected the bubble dynamics. For angles greater than the critical angle the bubble growth time was up to 150 % longer, which also resulted in larger departure diameters. However, the opposite trend was observed as the indentation angle was decreased below the critical angle. From a force analysis, it was found that the physical limitation imposed on the bubble growth was responsible for the critical indentation angle behaviour, with the most acute angle of 46° showing the shortest departure time. Furthermore, the bubble growth from a single cavity corresponded better with the trends of a smooth surface than a structured surface with comparable indentation angles. On a structured surface, once the bubble reached the edge of the cavity, its base diameter was limited by the physical characteristics of the surface. For the single cavity surface, however, bubble growth was uninhibited beyond the cavity, mimicking a completely smooth surface. The marked difference between results of a fully structured surface and the single cavity implies that future research will have to take the structural limitations on bubble growth imposed by a roughened surface into account.

Multiple cracking, crack coalescence and fatigue lifetime – Model and experiments on an austenitic steel and on a nickel base alloy

In many metals and alloys, low-cycle fatigue (LCF) and thermomechanical fatigue (TMF) generate a large number of surface microcracks. Using the replica technique, we document their growth and coalescence in the austenitic steel 1.4550 and the nickel base alloy Inconel 100. A model based on elastic–plastic fracture mechanics is developed, which considers the growth and coalescence of many coplanar semi-elliptical surface cracks. The results of the model are consistent with the experiments. An important conclusion is that the fatigue lifetime predicted by the multi-crack model is not substantially shorter than that predicted by a corresponding model assuming only a single semi-circular surface crack. This means that lifetime assessment can still be based on single-crack data, if one considers a factor 2 to include scatter and multiple-crack effects.

High brightness terahertz quantum cascade laser with near-diffraction-limited Gaussian beam

High-power terahertz (THz) quantum cascade laser, as an emerging THz solid-state radiation source, is attracting attention for numerous applications including medicine, sensing, and communication. However, due to the sub-wavelength confinement of the waveguide structure, direct beam brightness upscaling with device area remains elusive due to several mode competition and external optical lens is normally used to enhance the THz beam brightness. Here, we propose a metallic THz photonic crystal resonator with a phase-engineered design for single mode surface emission over a broad area. The quantum cascade surface-emitting laser is capable of delivering an output peak power over 185 mW with a narrow beam divergence of 4.4° × 4.4° at 3.88 THz. A high beam brightness of 1.6 × 107 W sr−1m−2 with near-diffraction-limited M2 factors of 1.4 in both vertical and lateral directions is achieved from a large device area of 1.6 × 1.6 mm2 without using any optical lenses. The adjustable phase shift between the lattices enables a stable and high-intensity surface emission over a broad device area, which makes it an ideal light extractor for large-scale THz emitters. Our research paves the way to high brightness solid-state THz lasers and facilitates new applications in standoff THz imaging, detection, and diagnosis.

Fog collection on wettability-mixed patterned surfaces inspired by multiple biological structures

Fog collection has become one of the effective means to solving water scarcity. Wettability-mixed patterned surfaces exhibit great potential in fog collection. In this article, the desert beetle, honeycomb structures and cactus spines served as an inspiration in the proposal of a bionic pattern of honeycomb and cactus spine coupling (BPHCSC) that can efficiently collect fog. First, a superhydrophobic (SHB) surface was successfully prepared on the surface of 5052 Al alloy through combined electrochemical etching with fluorosilane modification. Subsequently, laser etching technology was used in the precise etching of a superhydrophilic BPHCSC on the SHB surface. Compared with the fog collection efficiencies of a single SHB surface and the honeycomb-like wettability-mixed patterned surface composed of rectangular channels, that of the prepared BPHCSC surface increased by approximately 23.5% and 4.27%, respectively. In addition, a thorough exploration was conducted on the effects of factors, such as the distance between the sample surface and the fog outlet, tilt angle and the number of laser etchings, on fog collection efficiency. This study provides a new idea for fog collection and exhibits a broad application potential in fields, such as microfluidic systems, droplet manipulation and cell screening.

Electrolyte-Induced Fe-Doping of LaNiO3 Model Surfaces for Water Electrolysis

Renewable energy needs to be store in different energy forms for the energy transition away from fossil fuels. One of most promising forms is chemicals such as H2 and C-based fuels obtained via electrochemical reactions. The common hinderance in such reactions is the sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which causes low energy efficiency in conversion devices. Developing highly active, earth-abundant OER electrocatalysts in alkaline media is necessary to boost the performance of such devices. Fe ion content in electrolyte is known to influence the OER-activity of metal oxide electrocatalysts. For example, the Fe incorporation in NiOOH is a well-established and important effect for OER.[1] Here, we present the effect of absorbed Fe on the OER activity of the epitaxial Ni-surface terminated LaNiO3 thin films. The correlation between surface species and OER activity of electrocatalysts was investigated using surface-sensitive low-energy ion scattering and X-ray photoemission spectroscopies. We observe more than an order-of-magnitude boost in OER activity during initial cycling, from 0.15 mAcm-2 to 3.40 mAcm-2 at 1.60 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode. The activity increase was mainly caused by the incorporation of up to 5 % Fe at the top surface of LaNiO3 film (less than ~1 nm) even though only a very trace amount of Fe ion, 30 ppb, is present in the 0.1 M electrolyte of high purity KOH 99.99 %. Our results demonstrate that the disordered active surface phase, which develops even on single crystalline surfaces, is a complex interplay between the as-prepared (surface) crystalline structure, composition of the solid electrocatalyst and the liquid electrolyte, and has strong impact on the final OER activity, implying that we need to think differently about the crystalline electrocatalysts: crystalline bulk and dynamically changing surface layer.[1] L. Trotochaud, S.L. Young, J.K. Ranney, S.W. Boettcher, Nickel–Iron Oxyhydroxide Oxygen-Evolution Electrocatalysts: The Role of Intentional and Incidental Iron Incorporation, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 136 (2014) 6744–6753.

A nearly complete treatment of the effect of non-adiabaticity on rovibrational energies of H3+ (Part III).

In this article, significant contributions of non-adiabaticity for the rovibrational bound states up to 25 000 cm-1 and total angular momentum J = 0-20 of H3+ are investigated. A coupled-perturbed full configuration interaction (CP-FCI) treatment is applied to calculate all couplings between electronic states caused by the nuclear motion. These derivative couplings were evaluated up to the second order by means of a perturbation treatment and include all nuclear Cartesian first and second derivatives of the electronic wavefunctions. In particular, the coupling of special derivatives with respect to r and R in the Jacobi coordinate representation is more significant than thought. The perturbation approach is especially optimal for the treatment of weak non-adiabaticity in case of rovibrational energies in H3+ and had not been available before for H3+ or other triatomics. Using exclusively Gaussian basis functions for CP-FCI appears to be sufficient, because explicit correlated wavefunctions are already used for all other potential energy contributions. Our work is an extension of earlier non-adiabatic investigations based on first derivative couplings of electronic states that led to the concept of geometry-dependent effective nuclear masses and which needs only a single potential energy surface for the dynamics. The implementation allows us to include all non-adiabatic effects up to the order of O(μ-2), μ being the reduced nuclear mass. Our treatment works for any isotopologue and for the whole potential energy curve or surface. By this treatment, a further reduction in deviations to experimental data for most rovibrational levels to less than 0.1 cm-1 is possible. For the related transition frequencies, 1366 of 1720 known rovibrational transitions in H3+ have deviations less than 0.1 cm-1 without using any empirically adjustable parameters or optimizing the nuclear mass for a specific transition. For many questionable assignments (deviations >0.3 cm-1) of observed transitions in H3+, a new labeling is proposed.

Dynamic response of OWT tripod pile foundation in clay considering scour

Tripod-supported offshore wind turbine (OWT) foundation must withstand wind, wave, and seismic loads. In addition, it may be threatened by scouring during its service life, which could affect its bearing capacity and the overall OWT dynamic response. This study develops a three-dimensional numerical model of OWT tripod pile foundation to investigate scour effects. The numerical model incorporates a simplified single bounding surface model to simulate the dynamic stress–strain response of clay soil. The results revealed that scouring can reduce the first-order natural frequency of tripod pile-OWT system; however, the reduction usually does not lead to resonance within the 1P frequency range. Nonetheless, as the scour depth increases under wind and wave loads, the horizontal displacement of the wind turbine structure increases monotonously; however, its peak acceleration increases initially then decreases slightly as the scour depth continues to increase. Under seismic loading only, the OWT response exhibits complex evolution pattern as the scour depth increases. On the other hand, the foundation horizontal displacement and rotation angle increase significantly under combined wind-wave-seismic loads when the scouring depth reaches three times the pile diameter. Finally, the scouring depth has a relatively small impact on the foundation vertical displacement.

Cretaceous cyclic peritidal carbonates of the Apulia Carbonate Platform (Apulia, southern Italy) in a hierarchical sequence‐stratigraphic perspective: A case study from the Murge area (the Giovinazzo sea‐cliff section)

AbstractCretaceous cyclic peritidal carbonates form the bulk of the Apulia Region in Italy and represent the vestiges of the Apulia Carbonate Platform. To show from a sequence stratigraphic perspective the architecture of peritidal carbonates, the 17 m thick Albian Giovinazzo sea‐cliff section was studied at a centimetre detail, aiming to: (i) describe cyclic facies organisation in beds and bedsets; (ii) reconstruct the relative sea‐level curve and its evolution over time; (iii) interpret the long‐term evolution of the accommodation space in terms of sequence stratigraphy. The hierarchical stacking pattern of facies in beds and bedsets reveals Milankovitch cyclicity. As a working hypothesis, elementary sequences are assumed to represent the precession cycle (ca 20 kyr) and small‐scale and medium‐scale sequences the short (ca 100 kyr) and long (ca 400 kyr) eccentricity cycles, respectively. Four different types of elementary sequences (condensed, catch‐down, catch‐up and give‐up) are recognised and interpreted in terms of relative sea‐level changes to reconstruct the relative sea‐level curve of the entire succession. The envelope of the reconstructed relative sea‐level curve is used to represent the long‐term accommodation change on the platform, which covers a time span of approximately 1.8 Myr. Most of this time was spent in subaerial exposure, as approximately 1.2 Myr was predicted to be condensed in a stratigraphic interval encompassing both the sequence‐boundary zone/falling stage deposits and the lowstand deposits. Moreover, it was interpreted that about two‐third of the total thickness of the succession was formed in only 280 kyr and consisted of both transgressive and maximum‐flooding deposits. The main implication of this study is that unconformities do not necessarily correspond to single surfaces but, rather, to very amalgamated intervals or unconformity zones. Moreover, based on biostratigraphic constraints, there is a correlation between the unconformity zone of the studied succession and the third‐order KAl4 sequence boundary of the Cretaceous eustatic cycle chart.

Surface structure of MOVPE-prepared As-modified Si(100) substrates

In the pursuit of high-efficiency tandem devices for solar energy conversion based on III-V-semiconductors, low-defect III-V nucleation on Si(100) substrates is essential. Here, hydrogen and arsenic are key ingredients in all growth processes with respect to industrially scalable metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. Our study provides insight into Si(100) surface preparation for the initial stage of III-V nucleation. The samples investigated, prepared on substrates with different offcut angles, show single domain surfaces consisting of rows of preferentially buckled dimers. Low energy electron diffraction and reflection anisotropy spectroscopy confirm well-defined (1 × 2)/(2 × 1) majority domains. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy revealed hydrogen bonding to the surface dimers, while no impurities were found by XPS. Density functional theory calculations support the experimental results and reveal a novel surface motif of H-passivated Si-As mixed dimers.

Initial Outcomes of Single versus Multiple-Plug Osteochondral Allograft Transplantation for Osteochondral Defects of the Knee: A Matched Cohort Analysis.

Although several prior studies have described the outcomes of osteochondral allograft (OCA) transplantation for single osteochondral lesions, there is a paucity of comparative data on outcomes of single versus multiple OCA transplants. We aimed to describe the initial outcomes of single-plug versus multiple-plug knee OCA transplants at a minimum of 1 year of follow-up. We hypothesized that there would be no difference in patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) between patients undergoing single-plug and multiple-plug OCA transplants at a minimum of 1 year of follow-up. We retrospectively reviewed the prospectively collected data of patients undergoing OCA transplantation for large (>2 cm2) osteochondral defects of the knee. Thirty patients who underwent multiple-plug (2 + ) OCA transplants (either single surface using the snowman technique or multi-surface) were 1:1 age, sex, and body mass index (BMI) matched with 30 patients who underwent single-plug OCA transplants. PROMs, including the International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) and Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) subscores, were obtained both preoperatively and at a minimum of 1 year postoperatively. Failure was defined as a revision OCA or conversion to unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) or total knee arthroplasty (TKA). The cohort comprised 30 females (31 affected left knees), with an average age of 37 ± 10.3 years and median follow-up of 2.0 years (interquartile range: 1.7-2.5 years). There was a significant increase in PROMs from the preoperative to the postoperative period for the entire cohort and the single-plug versus multiple-plug subgroups (p < 0.01). There was no difference between the groups with respect to the percentage of patients who achieved the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) for each PROM (p > 0.05). There were two failures, both in the single-plug group, with a mean time to failure of 3.5 years. There was no difference in the initial outcomes between patients undergoing single-plug versus multiple-plug OCA transplant at the short-term follow-up. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE:: Level IV, case series.

Extraction efficiency of loganic acid and gentiopicroside from Gentianae radix et rhizoma by deep eutectic solvent-based ultrasound-assisted extraction

This study describes the extraction efficiency of loganic acid and gentiopicroside from Gentianae radix et rhizoma using the deep eutectic solvent-based ultrasound-assisted extraction (DES-UAE) method. A comparison was made against 12 deep eutectic solvents (DESs) as alternative extraction solutions. The extraction efficiency of DES-4 (prepared from choline chloride and lactic acid) exceeded that of other DESs. A single factor experiment and response surface methodology (RSM) were adopted, and the optimal processing parameters of DES-UAE were: the water content of DES-4 was 19.9 %, solid/liquid was 29.3 mg/ml, extraction temperature was 50.8 °C and extraction time was 26.8 min. Under these conditions, the extraction efficiency of loganic acid and gentiopicroside was 7.6986 mg/100 g. The results of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) indicated that the unextracted powder exhibited a granular shape with rough surface and complete structure. Moreover, the ultrasonic extraction of Gentianae radix et rhizoma powder with DES-4 as extraction solution caused significant damage to the surface structure of the powder, creating numerous fine pores on the surface. This suggested that DES-4 had higher permeability and erosive force, which effectively destroyed the cell wall.