From Reparative Surgery to Regenerative Surgery: State of the Art of Porous Hydroxyapatite in Cranioplasty

Decompressive craniectomy is one of the most common neurosurgical procedures, usually performed after neuropathological disorders, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), but also vascular accidents (strokes), erosive tumours, infections and other congenital abnormalities. This procedure is usually followed by the reconstruction of the cranial vault, which is also known as cranioplasty (CP). The gold-standard material for the reconstruction process is the autologous bone of the patient. However, this is not always a feasible option for all patients. Several heterologous materials have been created in the last decades to overcome such limitation. One of the most prominent materials that started to be used in CP is porous hydroxyapatite. PHA is a bioceramic material from the calcium phosphate family. It is already widely used in other medical specialties and only recently in neurosurgery. In this narrative review of the literature, we summarize the evidence on the use of PHA for cranial reconstruction, highlighting the clinical properties and limitations. We also explain how this material contributed to changing the concept of cranial reconstruction from reparative to regenerative surgery.     

An Antisense Oligonucleotide against a Splicing Enhancer Sequence within Exon 1 of the MSTN Gene Inhibits Pre-mRNA Maturation to Act as a Novel Myostatin Inhibitor

Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are agents that modulate gene function. ASO-mediated out-of-frame exon skipping has been employed to suppress gene function. Myostatin, encoded by the MSTN gene, is a potent negative regulator of skeletal muscle growth. ASOs that induce skipping of out-of-frame exon 2 of the MSTN gene have been studied for their use in increasing muscle mass. However, no ASOs are currently available for clinical use. We hypothesized that ASOs against the splicing enhancer sequence within exon 1 of the MSTN gene would inhibit maturation of pre-mRNA, thereby suppressing gene function. To explore this hypothesis, ASOs against sequences of exon 1 of the MSTN gene were screened for their ability to reduce mature MSTN mRNA levels. One screened ASO, named KMM001, decreased MSTN mRNA levels in a dose-dependent manner and reciprocally increased MSTN pre-mRNA levels. Accordingly, KMM001 decreased myostatin protein levels. KMM001 inhibited SMAD-mediated myostatin signaling in rhabdomyosarcoma cells. Remarkably, it did not decrease GDF11 mRNA levels, indicating myostatin-specific inhibition. As expected, KMM001 enhanced the proliferation of human myoblasts. We conclude that KMM001 is a novel myostatin inhibitor that inhibits pre-mRNA maturation. KMM001 has great promise for clinical applications and should be examined for its ability to treat various muscle-wasting conditions.     

Numerical and Experimental Study of the Impact of Key Parameters on a PVT Air Collector: Mass Flow Rate and Duct Depth

The PVT-air solar system simultaneously generates electrical and thermal energy. Therefore, increasing the cost-effectiveness of the system requires an appropriate choice of key parameters such as mass flow rate and air channel depth. In this paper, a PVT-air kit of a single module with a 30° slope was used to measure photovoltaic electricity and air heating power in the city of Sfax, Tunisia. Besides, a computer method was implemented using the ANSYS Fluent 17.0 software and the MATLAB program to analyse the properties of the airflow and to characterise PVT-air yields under different mass flow rates and depths. From the comparison of numerical and experimental data, the numerical method was validated with a good agreement. Indeed, we have found that increasing of the airflow rate improves the thermal efficiency with a slight change on electrical output. However, the reduction in depth shows an improvement on thermal efficiency and a negligible effect on electrical efficiency. Also, we have presented the thermal and electrical performance of PVT-air as a function of the key parameters with the Hottel-Whillier-Bliss formulation.     

Optical study of poly(vinyl alcohol)/hydroxypropyl methylcellulose blends

The proposal in this study was to evaluate the optical properties of different biopolymers films. The materials used were poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC). PVA/HPMC blends were prepared by casting technique. Variations in the group coordination in the infrared region were followed. The effects of HPMC concentrations on the optical properties of the PVA films were studied by near infrared, ultraviolet/visible, transmittance, and reflectance in the spectral region 200–2500 nm. Absorption, transmittance, and reflectance spectra were used for the determination of the optical constants. The study has been also extended to include the changes in the optical parameters including the band tail width and band gap energies and extinction coefficient for the investigated films. The results indicate that the optical band gap was derived from Tauc’s extrapolation and decreases with the HPMC contents. The obtained optical parameters were found to be strongly affected by HPMC contents.     

Analysis of three-dimensional turbo codes

Our paper presents a detailed study of the three-dimensional turbo code (3D TC). This code which combines both parallel and serial concatenation is derived from the classical TC by concatenating a rate-1 post-encoder at its output. The 3D TC provides very low error rates for a wide range of block lengths and coding rates, at the expense of an increase in complexity and a loss in convergence. This paper deals with the performance improvement of the 3D TC. First, we optimize the distance spectrum of the 3D TC by means of the adoption of a non regular post-encoding pattern. This allows us to increase the minimum hamming distance (MHD) and thereby to improve the performance at very low error rates. Then, we propose a time varying construction of the post-encoded parity in order to reduce the observable loss of convergence at high error rates. Performance comparisons are made between the 3GPP2 standardized TC and the corresponding 3D code. The different improvement stages are illustrated with simulation results, asymptotical bounds, and EXIT charts.     

Tunable liquid crystal reflectarray patch element

Numerical and measured results are employed at X-band to demonstrate that the electrical properties of nematic state liquid crystal can be exploited to produce phase shifters for beam scanning printed reflectarray antennas with a tunable range greater than 180/spl deg/.     

Statistical Design of the Four-MOSFET Structure

The statistical design of the four-MOSFET structure is presented in this paper. The quantitative measure of the effect of mismatch between the four transistors on nonlinearity and offset current is provided through contours. Statistical optimization of the transistor and values is demonstrated. The four-MOSFET structure was fabricated through the MOSIS 2 m process using MOS transistor Level-3 model parameters. Experimental results are included in the paper.     

Exploiting the on-chip inductance in high-speed clock distributionnetworks

On-chip inductance effects can be used to improve the performance of high-speed integrated circuits. Specifically, inductance improves the signal slew rate (the rise time), virtually eliminates short-circuit power consumption and reduces the area of the active devices and repeaters inserted to optimize the performance of long interconnects. These positive effects suggest the development of design strategies that benefit from on-chip inductance. An example of a clock distribution network is presented to illustrate the process in which inductance can be used to improve the performance of high-speed integrated circuits     

Performance analysis of the forward link cdma2000 1xEV‐DO evolution for multirate services in cellular wireless system

In this paper, we propose a combined analytical and simulation framework for performance evaluation of the forward link in the cdma2000 evolution for data only (1xEV‐DO) cellular systems with throughput and spectral efficiency being used as performance metrics. A closed form expression for the aggregate average throughput is derived in terms of system‐dependent parameters and a discrete random process that reflects the stochastic behavior of the transmission channel. The random process is expressed in terms of the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the users signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise ratio (SINR). Quantitative results for throughput and spectral efficiency are presented for a variety of users distribution models, base station antenna types and frequency reuse factors for the cases of sectorized and non‐sectorized cells. Furthermore, we study the impact of the cell radius on the system performance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.