Gravesen Hildebrandt (actionlotion5)

0125), and significant relationships for hearing aid benefit were absent with only few exceptions. Hearing aid benefit defined by global APHAB using NU-6 and SPIN scores showed significant but weak positive correlations (r = 0.37, p less then 0.001; r = 0.28, p = 0.005, respectively) and ease of communication APHAB subscale scores (r = 0.32, p less then 0.001; r = 0.33, p = 0.001, respectively). CONCLUSION Hearing aid benefit assessed with audiologic measures were poor predictors of patient-reported benefit. Thus, patient-reported outcomes may provide a unique assessment of patient-perceived benefit from hearing aids, which can be used to direct hearing aid programming, training, or recommendations of alternative hearing services. © 2020 S. Karger AG, Basel.In this study, a transparent particle-free reactive silver ink was used to fabricate conductive patterns on flexible substrate. Thermal annealing and plasma irradiation at low temperature were utilized to improve the conductivity of as-printed patterns. The effects of sintering process parameters on the microstructure and resistivity of patterns were investigated. Under the optimized process conditions, the resistivity of pattern reached 1.2 ×10 -7 Ω · m by thermal sintering, while it was 8 ×10 -8 Ω · m after plasma sintering. Combined with these two sintering techniques, the resistivity was reduced to 6 × 10 -8 Ω · m, close to that of bulk silver. This work provides an alternative solution for fabricating of highly conductive feature patterns on common flexible substrates. © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd.The poor conductivity of sulfur and the "shuttle effect" of polysulfide intermediates have hindered the development of next generation lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries with high energy and low consumption. Herein, novel Co9S8-S composite nanotubes are developed to efficiently alleviate above-mentioned problems. Experiments and theoretical calculations show that Co9S8 has strong adsorption on soluble polysulfides. This can not only restrain polysulfides diffusion and ensure their utilization, but also enhance the intimate contact between the active materials and the conductive substrates to promote the kinetics of conversion reaction. The three-dimensional (3D) conductive network with high surface area formed by interlinking Co9S8 nanotubes further improves the electronic conductivity of the composite cathode. As a result, the Co9S8-S cathode shows a high capacity of 1153 mAh g-1. After 500 cycles, it shows a high capacity of 462 mAh g-1 (2 C) with a negligible capacity decay of ~0.04% per cycle. © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd.Hierarchical actuators are comprised of multiple individual actuator elements arranged into a system, resulting in improved and expanded performance. read more Natural muscle tissue is a complex and multi-level example of hierarchical actuation, with its hierarchy spanning from the micrometer to the centimeter scale. In addition to a hierarchical configuration, muscle tissue exists in varying geometric arrangements. Pennate muscle tissue, denoted by its characteristic fibers extending obliquely away from the muscle tissue line of action, leverages geometric complexity to transform the relationship between fiber inputs and muscle tissue outputs. In this paper, a bioinspired hierarchical pennate actuator is detailed. This work expands on previous pennate actuator studies by deriving constitutive force, contraction, and stiffness models for a general pennate actuator, where the constituent fibers can be constructed from any linear actuator. These models are experimentally validated by studying a pennate actuator with McKibben artificial muscles constituting the actuator fibers. McKibben artificial muscles are used because they have a high force-to-weight ratio and are inexpensive to construct, making them an attractive candidate for hierarchical actuators and mobile robotics. Using the derived constitutive models, general pennate actuator performance is better u