Comparative analysis of dental enamel polyvinylsiloxane impression and polyurethane casting methods for SEM research

Dental casting is a very common procedure for making high-quality replicas of paleo-anthropological remains. Replicas are frequently used, instead of original remains, to study both fossil and extant Primate teeth in morphological and metrical analyses. Several commercial products can be used in molds. This study analyzed SEM image resolution and enamel surface feature definition of tooth molds at various magnification levels and obtained, with both Coltène and 3M low-viscosity body polyvinylsiloxane impression, materials and polyurethane casts. Results, through comparison with the original teeth, show that both the negative molds and the positive casts are highly reliable in replicating enamel surfaces. However, positive cast quality is optimal for SEM observation only till the fourth consecutive replica from the original mold, especially at high SEM magnification levels.     

Structure of His94->Asp carbonic anhydrase II in a new crystalline form reveals a partially occupied zinc binding site

The structure of histidine 94aspartate (H94D) carbonic anhydraseII (CAII) crystallized in an orthorhombic space group has beendetermined to 2.5 Å resolution. This crystal form is notisomorphous with monoclinic wild-type enzyme crystals or withthe monoclinic crystal form of H94D CAII reported earlier [Kiefer,L.L.,Ippolito,J.A., Fierke,C.A. and Christianson,D.W. (1993) J. Am.Chem. Soc., 115, 12581–12582]. In monoclinic H94D CAII,a fully occupied zinc ion is tetrahedrally coordinated by D94,H96, H119 and a water molecule. In orthorhombic H94D CAII, apartially occupied zinc ion is coordinated by H96 and H119 andonly weakly coordinated by a disordered D94 side chain.Thesedifferences are particularly surprising given that the two crystalforms co-precipitate in the same drop in the same experiment.Re-refinement of the orthorhombic crystal form of H94C CAIIand comparison with its corresponding monoclinic crystal formyield similar results. It appears that partial—but notfull—zinc dissociation accompanies the crystallizationof CAII variants in the orthorhombic crystal form, and significantdifferences on the protein surface presumably affect the relativestability of each crystal lattice. These results underscoreanunexpected ambiguity in this protein engineering experiment:which crystal structure of H94D CAII should be correlated withfunctional measurements made in solution?     

Nanoscale Mapping of the Conductivity and Interfacial Capacitance of an Electrolyte-Gated Organic Field-Effect Transistor under Operation

Probing nanoscale electrical properties of organic semiconducting materials at the interface with an electrolyte solution under externally applied voltages is key in the field of organic bioelectronics. It is demonstrated that the conductivity and interfacial capacitance of the active channel of an electrolyte-gated organic field-effect transistor (EGOFET) under operation can be probed at the nanoscale using scanning dielectric microscopy in force detection mode in liquid environment. Local electrostatic force versus gate voltage transfer characteristics are obtained on the device and correlated with the global current–voltage transfer characteristics of the EGOFET. Nanoscale maps of the conductivity of the semiconducting channel show the dependence of the channel conductivity on the gate voltage and its variation along the channel due to the space charge limited conduction. The maps reveal very small electrical heterogeneities, which correspond to local interfacial capacitance variations due to an ultrathin non-uniform insulating layer resulting from a phase separation in the organic semiconducting blend. Present results offer insights into the transduction mechanism at the organic semiconductor/electrolyte interfaces at scales down to ≈100 nm, which can bring substantial optimization of organic electronic devices for bioelectronic applications such as electrical recording on excitable cells or label-free biosensing.     

Macroscopic and microscopic techno-economic analyses highlighting aspects of 5G transport network deployments

Photonic Network Communications - 5G networks will comprise multiple, versatile infrastructures at finest granularity consisting of multiple disaggregated pools of network, compute and storage...     

System for monitoring the wellness state of people in domestic environments employing emoticon-based HCI

Wellness state is affected by the habitability state of the domestic environment. Monitoring it can help to discover the causes of a low wellness levels aiding people in the improvement of their quality of life. In this paper, we propose a system to monitor the wellness state of people utilizing Likert’s scale to determine the state of the user through an emoticon-based human–computer interaction. The system is intended for domestic environments and measures the habitability conditions of the dwelling (such as temperature, humidity, luminosity and noise) employing sensors. An algorithm is designed in order to establish how to measure those conditions and to calculate the statistics that allows tracking their progress. The obtained information is presented to the user to compare his/her wellness state with the habitability conditions. Measures in a real domestic environment were performed in order to determine the configuration of our system. The energy efficiency of the algorithm provides an improvement between 99.36 and 99.62% in the energy consumption depending on the selected parameters.

     

The ARTEMIS under‐ice AUV docking system

The ARTEMIS docking system demonstrates autonomous docking capability applicable to robotic exploration of sub‐ice oceans and sub‐glacial lakes on planetary bodies, as well as here on Earth. In these applications, melted or drilled vertical access shafts restrict vehicle geometry as well as the in‐water infrastructure that may be deployed. The ability of the vehicle to return reliably and precisely to the access point is critical for data return, battery charging, and/or vehicle recovery. This paper presents the mechanical, sensor, and software components that make up the ARTEMIS docking system, as well as results from field deployment of the system to McMurdo Sound, Antarctica in the austral spring of 2015. The mechanical design of the system allows the vehicle to approach the dock from any direction and to pitch up after docking for recovery through a vertical access shaft. It uses only a small volume of in‐water equipment and may be deployed through a narrow vertical access shaft. The software of the system reduces position estimation error with a hierarchical combination of dead reckoning, acoustic aiding, and machine vision. The system provides critical operational robustness, enabling the vehicle to return autonomously and precisely to the access shaft and latch to the dock with no operator input.     

Dead‐beat regulation of mechanical juggling systems

In this paper, mechanical systems subject to impacts and contacts, that would be not controllable if the impacts were absent (usually called jugglers), are considered. On the basis of an algorithm taken from the literature and of a new procedure to determine a reference trajectory for such a class of systems, a fully algorithmic procedure, able to compute a control input that achieves dead–beat regulation of the “uncontrollable” subsystem just by using impacts, is given. Such a procedure exploits some tools borrowed from algebraic geometry that allow to solve parametric systems of equalities and inequalities. A practical example of application of the given procedure is reported.     

Discovering anomalous frequent patterns from partially ordered event logs

Conformance checking allows organizations to compare process executions recorded by the IT system against a process model representing the normative behavior. Most of the existing techniques, however, are only able to pinpoint where individual process executions deviate from the normative behavior, without considering neither possible correlations among occurred deviations nor their frequency. Moreover, the actual control-flow of the process is not taken into account in the analysis. Neglecting possible parallelisms among process activities can lead to inaccurate diagnostics; it also poses some challenges in interpreting the results, since deviations occurring in parallel behaviors are often instantiated in different sequential behaviors in different traces. In this work, we present an approach to extract anomalous frequent patterns from historical logging data. The extracted patterns can exhibit parallel behaviors and correlate recurrent deviations that have occurred in possibly different portions of the process, thus providing analysts with a valuable aid for investigating nonconforming behaviors. Our approach has been implemented as a plug-in of the ESub tool and evaluated using both synthetic and real-life logs.     

An Injectable Hybrid Hydrogel with Oriented Short Fibers Induces Unidirectional Growth of Functional Nerve Cells

To regenerate soft aligned tissues in living organisms, low invasive biomaterials are required to create 3D microenvironments with a structural complexity to mimic the tissue's native architecture. Here, a tunable injectable hydrogel is reported, which allows precise engineering of the construct's anisotropy in situ. This material is defined as an Anisogel, representing a new type of tissue regenerative therapy. The Anisogel comprises a soft hydrogel, surrounding magneto‐responsive, cell adhesive, short fibers, which orient in situ in the direction of a low external magnetic field, before complete gelation of the matrix. The magnetic field can be removed after gelation of the biocompatible gel precursor, which fixes the aligned fibers and preserves the anisotropic structure of the Anisogel. Fibroblasts and nerve cells grow and extend unidirectionally within the Anisogels, in comparison to hydrogels without fibers or with randomly oriented fibers. The neurons inside the Anisogel show spontaneous electrical activity with calcium signals propagating along the anisotropy axis of the material. The reported system is simple and elegant and the short magneto‐responsive fibers can be produced with an effective high‐throughput method, ideal for a minimal invasive route for aligned tissue therapy.     

Modulating the growth of cysteine-capped cadmium sulfide quantum dots with enzymatically produced hydrogen peroxide

Cysteine (CSH) readily stabilizes cadmium sulfide quantum dots (CdS QDs) that grow in aqueous buffered solutions.The oxidation of CSH by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) at room temperature yields cystine (CSSC),which is less efficient in stabilizing CdS QDs compared to CSH.Herein,we demonstrate that such oxidation causes a decrease in the formation rate of CSH-capped CdS QDs from Cd2+ and S2-ions.For the first time,we combined the oxidation of CSH with the glucose oxidase (GOx)-assisted biocatalytic oxidation of D-glucose,which leads to a buildup of H2O2 in the reaction mixture.The enzymatically modulated in situ growth of CdS QDs was monitored using two techniques:fluorescence spectroscopy and photoelectrochemical (PEC) analysis.This system enables quantification of GOx and glucose in human serum.