Deficiency of tPA aggravated liver fibrosis through promoting hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) activation and inhibiting ECM degradation by decreasing MMP-2, MMP-9 activities and disrupting the balance between MMP-13 and TIMP-1.

The Check tools automate formal memory consistency model and security verification of processors by analyzing abstract models of microarchitectures, called µSPEC models. Despite the efficacy of this approach, a verification gap between µSPEC models, which must be manually written, and RTL limits the Check tools' broad adoption. Our prior work, called RTL2µSPEC, narrows this gap by automatically synthesizing formally verified µSPEC models from SystemVerilog implementations of simple processors. But, RTL2µSPEC assumes input designs where an instruction (e.g., a load) cannot exhibit more than one microarchitectural execution path (µPATH, e.g., a cache hit or miss path)-its single-execution-path assumption.In this paper, we first propose an automated approach and tool, called RTL2MµPATH, that resolves RTL2µSPEC's singleexecution-path assumption. Given a SystemVerilog processor design, instruction encodings, and modest design metadata, RTL2MµPATH finds a complete set of formally verified µPATHs for each instruction. Next, we make an important observation: an instruction that can exhibit more than one µPATH strongly indicates the presence of a microarchitectural side channel in the input design. Based on this observation, we then propose an automated approach and tool, called SYNTHLC, that extends RTL2MµPATH with a symbolic information flow analysis to support synthesizing a variety of formally verified leakage contracts from SystemVerilog processor designs. Leakage contracts are foundational to state-of-the-art defenses against hardware sidechannel attacks. SYNTHLC is the first automated methodology for formally verifying hardware adherence to them.

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Black Phosphorus (BP) is a 2D material with high hole mobility. However, due to its fast degradation property under ambient air, fast crystal orientation determination is required for the fabrication of BP transistor along the crystal orientation with the highest mobility. In this paper, a method for producing BP flakes with a special rectangular shape was developed. This shape provides important information about the crystal orientation of BP. By using polarized Raman measurements, it was demonstrated that the Raman peak ratios of two specific lattice vibration modes would change from 2 to 1 when the polarized laser light is parallel to armchair (AC) and zigzag (ZZ) orientations of BP. In addition, by using the rectangular BP, the mobility in the AC direction was measured to be larger than that in the ZZ direction by a factor of 2. The BP transistor with hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) encapsulation on both top and bottom sides were also fabricated to avoid the degradation and improve the device performance.

The optimal conditions for the separation and detection of a mixture of 18 phenethylamine/tryptamine derivatives were determined, using liquid chromatography/UV-absorption (LC/UV) and liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (LC/ESI MS) methods, respectively. Complete separation could be achieved within ~25 min using gradient elution (A, 0.1% formic acid aqueous solution/pH 2.5; B, acetonitrile). The limit of detection (LOD at S/N = 3) obtained by LC/UV-absorption (absorption wavelength, 280 nm) was in the range from 0.3 to 3 mg/mL. In contrast, when the LC/ESI MS method was used, the LODs for primary, secondary and tertiary amines were in the ranges 0.1 -3.0, 0.1 -0.2, and 0.05 -1.8 mg/mL, respectively. The lower LOD obtained for a tertiary amine can be attributed to the fact that its ionization efficiency (during the ESI process) is better than the others. In order to improve the LOD of a primary/secondary amine, a derivatization procedure was used in which the chemical structure was altered to a secondary/tertiary amine, via a reaction with acetic anhydride. As a result, the LODs for primary/secondary amines could be significantly improved. The characteristic mass fragmentations of the 18 phenethylamine/tryptamine derivatives, as well as the products of the reaction with acetic anhydride, were investigated, and the data were reported. A urine sample was obtained by spiking urine from a volunteer with the 18 derivatives, and after liquid-liquid extraction the sample was examined by LC/UV and LC/ESI MS, respectively. The extraction procedures used for the urine sample and the experimental conditions for the separation and detection were optimized.