Polyvinyl pyrrolidone is blended in PbI2 with varied concentration, so as to study the coarsening dynamics of perovskite during the two-step growth method. It is observed that polyvinyl pyrrolidone hinders the crystallization of PbI2 and helps to form a more amorphous PbI2 matrix, which then improves perovskite crystallization. As the blending concentration increases from 0 to 2 mM, average crystallite/grain size of perovskite increases from 40.29 nm/0.79 µm to 84.35 nm/1.02 µm while surface fluctuation decreases slightly from 25.64 to 23.96 nm. The observations are caused by the \"confinement effect\" brought by polyvinyl pyrrolidone on PbI2 . Elevating blending concentration of polyvinyl pyrrolidone results in smaller PbI2 crystallites and more amorphous PbI2 matrix, thus reducing the diffusion/reaction barrier between PbI2 and organic salt and favoring perovskite crystallization. As blending concentration increases from 0 to 2 mM, the device efficiency rises from 19.76 (± 0.60) % to 20.50 (± 0.89) %, with the optimized value up to 22.05%, which is further improved to 24.48% after n-Octylammonium iodide (OAI)-basing surface modification. The study enlarges the scope of \"confinement effect\" brought by polymer molecules, which is beneficial for efficient and stable perovskite solar cell fabrication.

The application requirements of high frame rate CMOS image sensors (CIS) in the industry have not been satisfied due to the speed limitations in traditional single-slope and serial two-step analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). In this paper, a high-speed fully differential two-step ADC design method for CIS was proposed. The proposed method was based on differential ramp and time-to-digital conversion (TDC) technology. A parallel conversion mode was formed that is different from serial conversion, and the robustness of the system was ensured due to the existence of differential ramps. Aiming at the inconsistency between traditional TDC technology and single-slope ADC, a TDC technology based on level coding was proposed. The proposed technology achieves the TDC in the last clock cycle of analog-to-digital conversion, and realized a two-step conversion process at another level. This paper presents a complete circuit design, layout design, and test verification of the proposed design method based on the 55 nm 1P4M CMOS experimental platform. Under the design environment of the analog voltage of 3.3 V, the digital voltage of 1.2 V, the clock frequency of 100 MHz, and a dynamic input range of 1.6 V, this design was a 12-bit ADC with a conversion time of 480 ns, column-level power consumption of 62 μW, differential nonlinearity (DNL) of +0.6/-0.6 LSB, and integral nonlinearity (INL) of +1.2/-1.4 LSB. Furthermore, it achieved a signal-to-noise distortion ratio (SNDR) of 70.08 dB. The proposed design provided a large area array with a high frame rate, and compared with the existing advanced single-slope ADC, its conversion speed increased by more than 52%. It provides an effective solution for the implementation of high frame frequency CIS.

A two-step bainitic treatment with a final isothermal temperature below MS was adopted to obtain bainitic steel with abundant retained austenite (RA). Nanoindentation testing was used to investigate the stability of RA in bainite steel and clarify the effect of RA on the deformation of medium-carbon steel. The results showed that, in contrast to the traditional one-step approach, a greater amount of nanoscale RA film was obtained using the two-step treatment. This was due to a lower final bainitic transformation temperature, which induced a higher carbon concentration in the untransformed austenite in the stasis stage; this resulted in untransformed austenite with a higher carbon content existing as RA rather than forming martensite in the subsequent cooling process. In addition, it was determined that the increased stability of RA during the two-step transformation delayed the pop-in point.

UNASSIGNED: An accurate prognostic score to predict mortality for adults with COVID-19 infection is needed to understand who would benefit most from hospitalizations and more intensive support and care. We aimed to develop and validate a two-step score system for patient triage, and to identify patients at a relatively low level of mortality risk using easy-to-collect individual information.
UNASSIGNED: Multicenter retrospective observational cohort study.
UNASSIGNED: Four health centers from Virginia Commonwealth University, Georgetown University, the University of Florida, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
UNASSIGNED: Coronavirus Disease 2019-confirmed and hospitalized adult patients.
UNASSIGNED: We included 1,673 participants from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) as the derivation cohort. Risk factors for in-hospital death were identified using a multivariable logistic model with variable selection procedures after repeated missing data imputation. A two-step risk score was developed to identify patients at lower, moderate, and higher mortality risk. The first step selected increasing age, more than one pre-existing comorbidities, heart rate >100 beats/min, respiratory rate ≥30 breaths/min, and SpO2 <93% into the predictive model. Besides age and SpO2, the second step used blood urea nitrogen, absolute neutrophil count, C-reactive protein, platelet count, and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio as predictors. C-statistics reflected very good discrimination with internal validation at VCU (0.83, 95% CI 0.79-0.88) and external validation at the other three health systems (range, 0.79-0.85). A one-step model was also derived for comparison. Overall, the two-step risk score had better performance than the one-step score.
UNASSIGNED: The two-step scoring system used widely available, point-of-care data for triage of COVID-19 patients and is a potentially time- and cost-saving tool in practice.

UNASSIGNED: Sinistral portal hypertension (SPH) is a rare clinical syndrome. The purpose of this study was to assess the clinical outcomes and safety of splenic artery embolization (SAE) in the treatment of SPH.
UNASSIGNED: This retrospective study included 39 SPH patients who underwent SAE treatment between August 2009 and May 2021. The cases had esophageal, gastric, or ectopic varices detected by endoscopy or enhanced CT, with symptoms or signs of upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding and/or postprandial fullness. Clinical symptom improvement rate, complications, and symptomatic recurrence rate were observed and analyzed after treatment.
UNASSIGNED: All the procedures were performed successfully. Of all patients, 17 received the 2-step complete SAE procedure, 19 received only the first step of the 2-step protocol (i.e., partial splenic embolization [PSE] procedure), and the remaining three received the 1-step complete SAE procedure. After the procedures, the symptoms completely disappeared in all patients, and the main complications were post-embolization syndromes, with 27 patients (69.2%) developing a low-grade fever, 24 (61.5%) developing abdominal pain and 4 (10.3%) developing nausea or mild vomiting. During the prolonged follow-up, varicose veins were gradually reduced as detected by enhanced CT; liver function parameters and platelet count remained in the normal range. Only one patient who underwent PSE treatment developed upper GI rebleeding 7 months after the procedure.
UNASSIGNED: Two-step complete SAE is a safe and feasible procedure for the treatment of symptomatic SPH.

Formamidinium lead triiodide (FAPbI3) exhibits the smallest band gap among lead halide perovskites, which is more desirable for solar cell applications compared to methylammonium-based counterparts. However, it remains a big challenge to prepare phase-pure α-FAPbI3 in addition to controlling the crystal morphology during film formation. Herein, we developed a temperature-assisted crystal growth to prepare high-quality thin films of α-FAPbI3 by sequential blade coating. It is found that depositing organic cation FAI at elevated temperatures facilitates the growth of α-FAPbI3, which otherwise yields mainly a yellow δ-phase at room temperature. In parallel, the crystal morphology of the perovskite films can be effectively manipulated by taking advantage of the porous structure of PbI2. Solar cells prepared with the blade-coated α-FAPbI3 yield a champion efficiency of 18.41%, which is among the highest values for FAPbI3-only solar devices. These results suggest that two-step sequential blade deposition offers a viable approach to fabricate high-quality α-FAPbI3 films for optoelectronic applications.

Developing an effective and green method toward organic functional cocrystals based on the solubility-mismatched coformers is highly desirable and very important. Herein, we applied a green two-step liquid-assisted-grinding coassembly (LAGC) in fabricating tetracene-octafluoronaphthalene (TC-OFN) cocrystals from solubility-mismatched pairs of tetracene (TC, poorly soluble, 0.2 mg mL-1) and octafluoronaphthalene (OFN, highly soluble, 0.2 × 104 mg mL-1). Such cocrystals are extremely difficult to prepare through the common solution-processing strategies. More importantly, this two-step LAGC process could allow us to efficiently prepare TC-OFN cocrystals in gram scale. The as-prepared cocrystals displayed the intrinsic green emission of TC with much higher photoluminescence quantum yield (13.75%) comparing with the pure solid TC with the almost-quenched emission (0.41%, aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ)). The ultrafast spectra study on these cocrystals verifies the successful barrier function of OFN molecules in interrupting the well-known singlet fission (SF) in TC solids. Furthermore, this method can allow us to easily fabricate fluorescent TC-OFN water inks, which can be employed to prepare luminescent paintings or highly emissive ultratransparent/flexible films.

In this paper, the two-step high-risk immunization was investigated based on high-risk immunization for the SIRS model in small-world networks and scale-free networks. First, the effects of various immunization schemes are studied and compared. When the number of immune is same, the research result shows that the immune effect of the two-step high-risk immunization strategy is not the best nor the worst. However, the practicability is better compare with others. Furthermore, by changing the proportional of immunization the optimal immune effect can be achieved in the two-step high-risk immunization. Computation results verify that the two-step high-risk immunization is effective, and it is economic and feasible in practice.

In the past ten years, extensive research has witnessed the rapid development of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) and diversified preparation processing craft. At present, the most widely used methods of preparing perovskite solar cells are the one-step method and the two-step method. The main work of this paper is to study the effect of the solution deposition process on the quality of perovskite thin films, as well as modulating majority charge carrier types. Perovskite film was prepared in air by designing different processes, which were then adequately analyzed with corresponding methods. It was demonstrated that the preparation process plays a crucial role in modulating the type of majority carrier and in achieving high-quality perovskite thin film. The one-step prepared perovskite layer is enriched in MA+, leading to a P type majority carrier type thin film. The two-step prepared perovskite layer is enriched in Pb2+, leading to a N type majority carrier type thin film. In addition, we found that the one-step method caused PbI2 residue due to component segregation, which seriously affects the interface and film quality of the perovskite layer. This work aims to modulate the majority carrier type of perovskite film through different preparation processes, which can lay the foundation for the study of homojunction perovskite solar cells to improve the device performance of PSCs.

Ultrafine grained WC-12Co-0.2VC (named UYG12V) cemented carbides were prepared via the two-step spark plasma sintering (SPS) in this study. First, the effects of the sintering temperature on the relative density and WC grain size of UYG12V cemented carbides were studied. The results show that regular WC grains form when sintered at 1300 °C. The sintered body begins to rapidly densify and WC grains grow slowly when sintered at 1200 °C. Thus, the first-step (T1) and the second-step (T2) temperatures in the two-step SPS of UYG12V are 1300 °C and 1200 °C, respectively. The effect of the holding time during the first and second steps on the mechanical properties was also studied. The results show that the UYG12V cemented carbide sintered at 1300 °C for 3 min and then at 1200 °C for 5 min has the best comprehensive mechanical properties, exhibiting the average particle size, Vickers hardness, fracture toughness, relative density, and bending strength of 271 nm, 18.06 GPa, 12.25 MPa m1/2, 99.49%, and 1960 MPa, respectively.