Flows in rectangular microchannels driven by capillary force and gravity

Capillary phenomena was studied and discussed by the scholars about 200 years ago, but the progress was slow due to the limited equipment and manufacture precision of the microchannel. In recent years, because of the rapid development of MEMS and micromachining, many applications of the capillary flow is widely developing in some modern processes, such as underfilling of flip chip, flow in microfluidic chip or biochip, and a variety of other fields.     

A study on UV-curable coatings for HD-DVD: Primer and top coats

This study relates to the development of coatings for optical discs in high-density digital versatile disc systems (HD-DVD or blue lay disk) that use a high numerical aperture of 0.85 at 405 nm wavelength and have a protective top layer over a primer layer for protection against damage and dust. Ultraviolet-curable raw materials of two acrylic monofunctional monomers ( isobornylacrylate, IBA and tetrahydrofurfurylacrylate, THFA) and two kinds of urethaneacrylate oligomers (OUMD and OUME) have been easily mixed with photoinitiators. Curing rate of these materials was characterized by FT-IR. In case of top coats, VTES (vinyltriethoxysilane) and acrylic acid were added to enhance the abrasion resistance. These two kinds of UV-curable resinous materials having no solvent were synthesized and investigated as means for making a blue ray disk having good optical and mechanical properties. In addition, dynamic characteristics including reflectivity, fluctuation of RF signal and noise level were also investigated.     

Describing metal surfaces and nanostructures with orbital-free density functional theory

Orbital-free density functional theory (OF-DFT) can be made to scale linearly with sample size, allowing thousands of atoms to be treated explicitly with quantum mechanics. State-of-the-art kinetic energy density functionals and ion–electron pseudopotentials are used to obtain accurate structural property predictions for nanoparticles, nanowires, extended surfaces, and nanoindentation of simple metals.     

Bibliometric analysis of tsunami research

The use of the bibilometric analytical technique for examining tsunami research does not exist in the literature. The objective of the study was to perform a bibliometric analysis of all tsunami-related publications in the Science Citation Index (SCI). Analyzed parameters included document type, language of publication, publication output, authorship, publication patterns, distribution of subject category, distribution of author keywords, country of publication, most-frequently cited article, and document distribution after the Indonesia tsunami. The US and Japan produced 53% of the total output where the seven major industrial countries accounted for the majority of the total production. English was the dominant language, comprising 95% of articles. A simulation model was applied to describe the relationship between the number of authors and the number of articles, the number of journals and the number of articles, and the percentage of total articles and the number of times a certain keyword was used. Moreover the tsunami publication patterns in the first 8 months after the Indonesia tsunami occurred on 26 December 2004 indicated a high percentage of non-article publications and more documents being published in journals with higher impact factors.     

Nickel- and copper-coated carbon fibre reinforced tin-lead alloy composites

Nickel and copper were deposited over brominated, surface treated, and pristine P-100 carbon fibres using cementation and electroplating techniques. The fibres were brominated by bromine vapour for 48 h and then desorbed at 200 °C in air for 12 h. The anodic oxidation treatment of the fibres involved electrochemical etching in a dilute sodium hydroxide electrolyte for 3 min. Electroplated coated fibres showed better tensile properties than cementation coated fibres. In addition, nickel coating exhibited better bonding with the carbon fibres compared to copper coating. The effect of bromination and surface treatment was improved adhesion between coating and fibres. Nickel- and copper-coated fibres, which were brominated, anodically oxidized, and pristine, reinforced tin-lead alloy composites were fabricated by squeeze casting. The composites containing coated treated carbon fibres had higher tensile and shear strength than the ones containing coated pristine carbon fibres. Moreover, the composite with coated brominated carbon fibres had better tensile strength and shear strength than the surface treatment. The results also showed the composites containing nickel-coated fibres had higher tensile and shear strength than the ones containing copper-coated fibres.     

Identification of clinical yeast isolates by using the Microring YT

We investigated predisposing factors for the development of heterotopic ossification in a retrospective study of 637 hip arthroplasties, of which 484 were unilateral, 62 bilateral and 29 revision operations. The frequency of heterotopic ossification after a primary hip arthroplasty was 57 percent. In a univariate analysis, men, patients with hypertrophic arthrosis, and cemented arthroplasty were all at risk of developing heterotopic ossification. After a multivariate analysis, the male sex and the cemented arthroplasty remained as significant factors. In bilateral operations, the contralateral side developed heterotopic ossification in 82 percent when the primary hip operation had already caused ossification. There was no increase in ossifications after the contralateral operation. Half of the revision operations had an increase of heterotopic ossification from 1 to 4 Brooker classes.     

Development of a vibratory white finger prevention program for shipyard workers: an exploratory study

OBJECTIVE: To study the effects of thevetoside (TS), a cardiac glycoside, and an inhibitor of Na+, K(+)-ATPase, on tumor cells cultured in vitro. METHODS: The cytotoxic effects of TS on tumor cells were determined by trypan blue dye exclusion, neutral red vital staining and clonogenic assay. The time-effect relationship and growth inhibition of tumor cells by TS were assayed with trypan blue exclusion method. RESULTS: TS at low doses (0.005-0.1 mg.L-1), with dose dependence, was able to kill SMMC-7721, SGC-7901 and HeLa cells. IC50 values for SMMC-7721, SGC-7901 and HeLa cells were 0.007, 0.011 and 0.018 mg.L-1 by trypan blue dye exclusion test and 0.016, 0.055 and 0.078 mg.L-1 by neutral red vital staining test. TS inhibited the clonal forming rate of SMMC-7721 and SGC-7901 significantly with IC50 values of 0.021 and 0.036 mg.L-1, respectively. Only when the cells were continuously treated with TS for more than 8 hours, the drug-induced cell lethality could be displayed and strengthened quickly. The growth of tumor cells was notably inhibited after they were exposed to 0.1 microgram/ml of TS for 12 hours. All the experimental results of antitumor activity in vitro showed that SMMC-7721 was most sensitive to TS among the three kinds of tumor cells. CONCLUSIONS: TS has cytotoxic action on tumor cells cultured in vitro and this lethal effect must have an action process, in which tumor cells are not dead but suffer from deadly injury and lost the capability of unlimited proliferation.     

Epitope specificity of CD44 for monoclonal antibody-dependent facilitation of marrow engraftment in a canine model

Primary graft rejection after marrow transplantation occurs more frequently in patients receiving HLA-haploidentical compared with HLA-identical sibling transplants. Both human and experimental animal data suggest that the cells responsible for this phenomenon are either host natural killer (NK) cells, T cells, or both. To investigate the mechanisms of graft rejection, we have developed a canine model of marrow transplantation, which uses DLA-nonidentical unrelated donors in the absence of postgrafting immunosuppression. In this model most animals rejected their marrow grafts after a preparative regimen of 9.2 Gy total body irradiation (TBI). However, engraftment of DLA-nonidentical marrow can be facilitated when the recipients are pretreated with monoclonal antibody (MoAb) S5, which recognizes CD44. In this report, we extended these observations by first cloning the canine CD44 and, next, mapping the epitope recognized by S5, which was located in a region conserved among human and canine CD44 and was distinct from the hyaluronan binding domain. However, in vitro binding of S5 caused a conformational change in CD44, which allowed increased hyaluronan binding. Then, we reexamined the in vivo model of marrow transplantation and compared results with MoAb S5 to those with two other anti-CD44 MoAbs, IM7 and S3. Only MoAb S5 significantly increased the engraftment rate of DLA-nonidentical unrelated marrow, whereas the two other anti-CD44 MoAbs were ineffective. The enhanced in vivo effect was not related to differences in the MoAbs' avidities, since both S5 and IM7 had equivalent binding to CD44, but most likely related to the specific epitope that S5 recognizes. Thus, this study shows that the effect of the anti-CD44 MoAb S5 in facilitating engraftment is epitope specific and if one is to use an anti-CD44 to facilitate engraftment of marrow in humans, one cannot assume that any anti-CD44 would work.