Microfluidic bacterial traps for simultaneous fluorescence and atomic force microscopy

The atomic force microscope has become an established research tool for imaging microorganisms with unprecedented resolution.However,its use in microbiology has been limited by the difficulty of proper bacterial immobilization.Here,we have developed a microfluidic device that solves the issue of bacterial immobilization for atomic force microscopy under physiological conditions.Our device is able to rapidly immobilize bacteria in well-defined positions and subsequently release the cells for quick sample exchange.The developed device also allows simultaneous fluorescence analysis to assess the bacterial viability during atomic force microscope imaging.We demonstrated the potential of our approach for the immobilization of rod-shaped Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis.Using our device,we observed buffer-dependent morphological changes of the bacterial envelope mediated by the antimicrobial peptide CM15.Our approach to bacterial immobilization makes sample preparation much simpler and more reliable,thereby accelerating atomic force microscopy studies at the single-cell level.     

The IoT Architectural Framework,Design Issues and Application Domains

The challenge raised by the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) concept will permanently shape the networking and communications landscape and will therefore have a significant social impact. The ongoing IoT research activities are directed towards the definition and design of open architectures and standards, but there are still many issues requiring a global consensus before the final deployment. The paper presents and discusses the IoT architectural frameworks proposed under the ongoing standardization efforts, design issues in terms of IoT hardware and software components, as well as the IoT application domain representatives, such as smart cities, healthcare, agriculture, and nano-scale applications (addressed within the concept of Internet of Nano-Things). In order to obtain the performances related to recently proposed protocols for emerging Industrial Internet of Things applications, the preliminary results for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport and Time-Slotted Channel Hopping protocols are provided. The testing was performed on OpenMote hardware platform and two IoT operating systems: Contiki and OpenWSN.     

On The Nonlinear Dynamics of Potential Relaxation Instability in a Weakly Magnetized Discharge Plasma

Some aspects of the nonlinear dynamics of the potential relaxation instability (PRI) that is triggered by a positive electrode (collector) in a weakly magnetized discharge plasma column are investigated experimentally. Some properties of the instability can be described by the van der Pol equation with an external force term. When the collector bias is increased the oscillations of plasma parameters become irregular. No low dimensional attractor can be positively identified for these signals. At high collector biases the plasma is probably in the state of a fully developed turbulence.     

An efficient two-digit adaptive delta modulation for Laplacian source coding

Delta Modulation (DM) is a simple waveform coding algorithm used mostly when timely data delivery is more important than the transmitted data quality. While the implementation of DM is fairly simple and inexpensive, it suffers from several limitations, such as slope overload and granular noise, which can be overcome using Adaptive Delta Modulation (ADM). This paper presents novel 2-digit ADM with six-level quantization using variable-length coding, for encoding the time-varying signals modelled by Laplacian distribution. Two variants of quantizer are employed, distortion-constrained quantizer which is optimally designed for minimal mean-squared error (MSE), and rate-constrained quantizer, which is suboptimal in the minimal MSE sense, but enables minimal loss in SQNR for the target bit rate. Experimental results using real speech signal are provided, indicating that the proposed configuration outperforms the baseline ADM algorithms, including Constant Factor Delta Modulation (CFDM), Continuously Variable Slope Delta Modulation (CVSDM), 2-digit and 2-bit ADM, and operates in a much wider dynamic range.     

A precise resonance frequency measurement method based on ISO‐standardized setups for contactless chip cards

A method for measuring the resonance frequency of contactless chip cards is proposed in this article. Compared to the vector network analyzer (VNA) based state‐of‐the‐art method, the method gives a more accurate definition of resonance frequency, removes the subjectivity associated with the state‐of‐the‐art method, and makes the measurement integrable into ISO‐standardized test setups. Signal processing and system modeling are applied in order to determine the maximum active power in the chip card over a chosen frequency range. This is achieved by using a transfer function obtained from the model and by setting a chirp signal as input to the system. The determined maximum of active power is mapped to the corresponding frequency in the chirp signal, which is defined as the resonance frequency. The proposed method is verified by simulations and by comparing measurement results with the state‐of‐the‐art. The results show that the proposed method offers significant advantages over the state‐of‐the‐art method.     

Stripe sensor tomography

We introduce a general concept of tomographic imaging for the case of an imaging sensor that has a stripelike shape. We first show that there is no difference, in principle, between two-dimensional tomography using conventional electromagnetic or particle radiation and tomography where a stripe sensor is mechanically scanned over a sample at a sequence of different angles. For a single stripe detector imaging, linear motion and angular rotation are required. We experimentally demonstrate single stripe sensor imaging principle using an elongated inductive coil detector. By utilizing an array of parallel stripe sensors that can be individually addressed, two-dimensional imaging can be performed with rotation only, eliminating the requirement for linear motion, as we also experimentally demonstrate with parallel coil array. We conclude that imaging with a stripe-type sensor of particular width and thickness (where the width is much larger than the thickness) is resolution limited only by the thickness (smaller parameter) of the sensor. We give examples of multiple sensor families where this imaging technique may be beneficial such as magnetoresistive, inductive, superconducting quantum interference device, and Hall effect sensors, and, in particular, discuss the possibilities of the technique in the field of magnetic resonance imaging.     

Preparation and uranyl sorption of extractant resin containing ammonium groups

Summary An extractant resin was synthesized by radical polymerization of [3-(methacryloyl amino)propyl] trimethyl ammonium chloride in presence of N,N-methylene-bis-methacrylamide as crosslinker agent at different concentrations. All the resins are insoluble in water. The resins showed high affinity and selectivity for uranium. The resins do not retain significantly copper (<6%). Elution assays with sulfuric acid and sodium carbonate, were also carried out.     

A contribution to the design of fast code converters for position encoders

Pseudorandom binary sequences (PRBS) are very useful in many areas of applications. Absolute position encoders based on PRBS have many advantages. However, the pseudorandom code is not directly applicable to the digital electronic systems, hence a converter from pseudorandom to natural binary code is needed. Recently, a fast pseudorandom/natural code converter based on Galois PRBS generator (much faster than previously used converter based on Fibonacci PRBS generator) was proposed. One of the main parts of the Galois code converter is an initial logic. The problem of the design of the initial logic has been solved only for some single values of resolution, but it is still not solved for any value of resolution, which significantly limits the applicability of the fast Galois code converter. This paper solves this problem presenting the solution for the design of the initial logic of the fast Galois pseudorandom/natural code converters used in the pseudorandom position encoders, in general manner, that is for any value of the resolution, allowing for a wide applicability of the fast Galois pseudorandom position encoders. Rigorous mathematical derivation of the formula for the designing of the initial logic is presented. Simulation of the proposed converter is performed in NI MultiSim software. The proposed solution, although developed for pseudorandom position encoders, can be used in many other fields where PRBS are used.     

Antioxidant capacity and vasodilatory properties of Mediterranean food: The case of Cannonau wine,myrtle berries liqueur and strawberry-tree honey

The aim of this work was to use different assays to evaluate the antioxidant and vasodilatory properties of three typical food products from the Mediterranean area and to correlate these activities with their phenolic content. For this purpose, red wines Cannonau, liqueurs obtained by cold maceration of myrtle (Myrtus communis L.) berries and bitter honeys obtained from strawberry-tree flowers (Arbutus unedo L.) were analysed. The total phenolic (TP) content was measured spectrophotometrically with a modified Folin–Ciocalteau method and phenolic compounds were identified and dosed by HPLC-DAD and LC-MS/MS. Antioxidant activities were evaluated with DPPH, FRAP and ABTS assays and the in vitro vasodilatory effects were assessed using norepinephrine precontracted rat aortic rings. Cannonau wines and myrtle liqueurs showed high levels of TP (1978 ± 279 and 1741 ± 150 mg GAE/L, respectively), linearly correlated to the results of FRAP, ABTS, and DPPH assays. Their maximal vasodilatory activity was 61.7 ± 4.1% and 53.0 ± 3.0%, respectively. Although strawberry-tree honey contained relatively high levels of phenolic compounds (922 ± 38 mg GAE/kg), it did not induce vasodilation, even at the highest dose tested (0.206 g/L). These results indicate that foods with high levels of phenolic compounds should be studied using several different biological assays before being recommended to the general public as functional foods.