Quantum Sensing in a Physiological‐Like Cell Niche Using Fluorescent Nanodiamonds Embedded in Electrospun Polymer Nanofibers

Fluorescent nanodiamonds (fNDs) containing nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers are promising candidates for quantum sensing in biological environments. This work describes the fabrication and implementation of electrospun poly lactic‐co‐glycolic acid (PLGA) nanofibers embedded with fNDs for optical quantum sensing in an environment, which recapitulates the nanoscale architecture and topography of the cell niche. A protocol that produces uniformly dispersed fNDs within electrospun nanofibers is demonstrated and the resulting fibers are characterized using fluorescent microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) and longitudinal spin relaxometry results for fNDs and embedded fNDs are compared. A new approach for fast detection of time varying magnetic fields external to the fND embedded nanofibers is demonstrated. ODMR spectra are successfully acquired from a culture of live differentiated neural stem cells functioning as a connected neural network grown on fND embedded nanofibers. This work advances the current state of the art in quantum sensing by providing a versatile sensing platform that can be tailored to produce physiological‐like cell niches to replicate biologically relevant growth environments and fast measurement protocols for the detection of co‐ordinated endogenous signals from clinically relevant populations of electrically active neuronal circuits.     

Self-Organized Monitoring in Ad-Hoc Networks

We propose in this paper a self-organized monitoring architecture for mobile ad-hoc networks based on a selective scheme where subsets of nodes are managed. These nodes are determined based on their network behavior in order to favor subsets of well-connected nodes. The key idea is to relax the requirements of the management plane, and to use these manageable subsets to monitor the performance of the overall network. We therefore propose a new performance metric to be monitored, in order to estimate the capability of ad-hoc nodes to communicate end-to-end in the network. Extensive simulations show how different parameters affect this metric.     

Molecular simulation of temperature-programmed desorption

We use accelerated molecular dynamics to probe the thermal desorption of n-alkanes from the Au(1 1 1) and C(0 0 0 1) surfaces. Studying an alkane series ranging from CH₄ to C₁₆H₃₄, we find that the desorption prefactor increases with increasing chain length for the short chains until a certain chain length is reached when it becomes essentially constant and independent of chain length. We can understand the dependence of the preexponential factor on alkane chain length in terms of conformational changes within the alkane molecules. For the shorter molecules, the desorption temperatures probed in experimental temperature-programmed desorption studies lie below those for which torsional motion is activated. Thus, the short alkanes can be treated as rigid rods, and the loss in translational and rotational entropy upon adsorption leads to a preexponential factor that increases with increasing chain length. As the alkane chain length increases, the binding energy and the experimental desorption temperatures also increase. Thus, torsional motion is activated to an extent that increases with increasing chain length. This torsional activation increases the entropy of adsorption and counteracts the entropy decrease due to a loss of translation and rotation. This leads to a virtually constant prefactor for sufficiently long chains. Our findings are consistent with experimental data for the thermal desorption of alkanes from the Au(1 1 1), Pt(1 1 1), MgO(1 0 0) and C(0 0 0 1) surfaces.     

Multifractal analysis of non-conformal repellers: a model case

For a model class of repellers of non-conformal expanding maps, we obtain sharp lower bounds for the dimension spectra of the Birkhoff averages of a Hölder continuous function. As in the well-studied case of conformal dynamics, the bounds are also expressed here in terms of the thermodynamic formalism.     

The influence of some vegetable extracts on the in vitro adherence of mouse and human lymphocytes to nylon fibers

We found that the total watery extracts obtained from roots of various plants such as Symphytum officinale, Phytolacca americana etc, precipitate human glycoproteins, agglutinate sheep red blood cells (SRBC) and stimulate lymphocyte adherence to nylon fibers. Five out of seven extracts precipitated human gammaglobulins and one of seven obviously agglutinate SRBC. If these cells were pretreated with rabbit antibodies against SRBC, all extracts agglutinated the cells at various degrees of intensity, the most active being Phytolacca americana. The adherence of mouse but not human lymphocytes to nylon fibers was stimulated by extracts of Symphytum officinale and Phytolacca americana. This process was neither stimulated nor inhibited by Mannose (Man), Galactose (Gal), Glucose (Glc), N-acethyl Galactose (GalNAc) and N-acethyl Glucose (Glc-NAc). These biological effects of the plant extracts could be the expression of a lectin-like ability to bind various sugars other than those mentioned. The results suggest the possibility of using different extracts as means to point out the presence in serum or at the cellular level of some carbohydrates influencing the cellular adhesion, phenomenon which plays an important role in the functions of hematopoietic cells.     

Meningocerebral lesions in children with iatrogenic AIDS

This study is focused on structural modifications of leptomeninges and cerebral matter in children deceased because of iatrogenic AIDS. Although we do not evidence the specific lesions of AIDS, we have noticed edema, hyperemia, hematic extravasation, microlesions of the small vessel walls, perivascular infiltrations with lymphocytes, macrophages and even plasmocytes, moderate tigrolysis, mild demyelination, gliosis and sidero-calcic deposits. We do not consider these lesions as specific to HIV-infected patients.