Polymer composites with electrically conductive fillers have been developed as mechanically flexible, easily processable electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials. Although there are a few elastomeric composites with nanostructured silvers and carbon nanotubes showing moderate stretchability, their EMI shielding effectiveness (SE) deteriorates consistently with stretching. Here, a highly stretchable polymer composite embedded with a three‐dimensional (3D) liquid‐metal (LM) network exhibiting substantial increases of EMI SE when stretched is reported, which matches the EMI SE of metallic plates over an exceptionally broad frequency range of 2.65–40 GHz. The electrical conductivities achieved in the 3D LM composite are among the state‐of‐the‐art in stretchable conductors under large mechanical deformations. With skin‐like elastic compliance and toughness, the material provides a route to meet the demands for emerging soft and human‐friendly electronics.

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The CAD scheme can assist radiologists in the detection of lung nodules on chest radiographs.

High‐temperature dielectric materials for capacitive energy storage are in urgent demand for modern power electronic and electrical systems. However, the drastically degraded energy storage capabilities owing to the inevitable conduction loss severely limit the utility of dielectric polymers at elevated temperatures. Herein, a new approach based on the in situ preparation of oxides onto polyimide (PI) films to high‐temperature laminated polymer dielectrics is described. As confirmed by computational simulations, the charge injection at the electrode/dielectric interface and electrical conduction in dielectric films are substantially depressed via engineering the in situ prepared oxide layer in the laminated composites. Consequently, ultrahigh dielectric energy densities and high efficiencies are simultaneously achieved at elevated temperatures. Especially, an excellent energy density of 1.59 J cm−3 at a charge–discharge efficiency of above 90% has been achieved at 200 °C, outperforming the current dielectric polymers and composites. Together with its excellent discharging capability and cyclic reliability, the laminate‐structured film is demonstrated to be a promising class of polymer dielectrics for high‐power energy storage capacitors operating at elevated temperatures. The facile preparation method reported herein is readily adaptable to a variety of polymer thin films for energy applications under extreme environments.

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Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in men and women in the United States, with a 5-year survival rate of only about 13%. However, this survival rate can be improved to 47% if the disease is diagnosed and treated at an early stage. In this study, we developed an improved computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) scheme for the automated detection of lung nodules in digital chest images to assist radiologists, who could miss up to 30% of the actually positive cases in their daily practice. Two hundred PA chest radiographs, 100 normals and 100 abnormals, were used as the database for our study. The presence of nodules in the 100 abnormal cases was confirmed by two experienced radiologists on the basis of CT scans or radiographic follow-up. In our CAD scheme, nodule candidates were selected initially by multiple gray-level thresholding of the difference image (which corresponds to the subtraction of a signal-enhanced image and a signal-suppressed image) and then classified into six groups. A large number of false positives were eliminated by adaptive rule-based tests and an artificial neural network (ANN). The CAD scheme achieved, on average, a sensitivity of 70% with 1.7 false positives per chest image, a performance which was substantially better as compared with other studies. The CPU time for the processing of one chest image was about 20 seconds on an IBM RISC/6000 Powerstation 590. We believe that the CAD scheme with the current performance is ready for initial clinical evaluation.