Cellular Interactions and Modulated Osteoblasts Functions Mediated by Protein Adsorption

The rapid adsorption of proteins is one of the first few events that occur when a biomedical device is implanted and strongly affects attachment and proliferation of cells on the material surface. We describe here for the first time the favorable modulation of osteoblasts functions and cell–substrate interactions induced by protein adsorption (bovine serum albumin) on silicone elastomers. It was intriguing that the cell–substrate interactions on protein‐adsorbed silicone elastomer were significantly different from those observed in stand alone silicone. The origin and differences in cell–substrate interactions in terms of cell attachment, viability, and proliferation and assessment of proteins actin, vinculin, and fibronectin are addressed. Cell attachment and proliferation of cells were significantly enhanced on protein‐adsorbed surface in comparison to the bare surface. Similarly, the expression level of fibronectin, actin, and vinculin was appreciably greater on the protein‐adsorbed surface. The study underscores that protein adsorption on artificial biomedical devices can be envisaged as one of the methods to enhance the bioactivity on the surface and regulate biological functions.     

A reduced reaction mechanism for the simulation in ethylene flare combustion

Industrial ethylene flares are considered to be a probable major source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as formaldehyde. VOCs are chemicals that are responsible for the formation of other atmospheric pollutants like ozone. Due to the difficulty and cost of field measurements, on-line monitoring is not practical and other methods must be employed. Current methodologies for calculating speciated and total VOC emissions from flaring activities generally apply a simple mass reduction to the VOC species sent to the flare that does not consider the production of incomplete combustion or other intermediates. There arises a need of a speciation study for the inspection of these flare for their emission. However, most of the detailed kinetic mechanisms for the speciation study of flaring events are too complex, consist of large number of reactions and species, and also are computationally expensive. A reduced mechanism will thus be desirable for improving computational efficiency. In this study, a reduced mechanism for simulating ethylene flare combustion is presented. By retaining the important features of the detailed mechanism in the form of elementary reactions, and satisfying the species constraint of commercial CFD packages, the reduced mechanism, thereby, is useful for speciation study of flaring event.     

Segmentation & bitstream encoding of foreground objects in HEVC encoder for edge computing environment

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Segmentation of foreground object is pivotal in identifying the other finer details about objects in a scene. Our work serves to investigate ways to not only...     

Pathways of nanotoxicity: Modes of detection,impact, and challenges

Nanotoxicology has become the subject of intense research for more than two decades. Thousands of articles have been published but the space in understanding the nanotoxicity mechanism and the assessment is still unclear. Recent researches clearly show potential benefits of nanomaterials (NMs) in diagnostics and treatment, targeted drug delivery, and tissue engineering owing to their excellent physicochemical properties. However, these NMs display hazardous health effect then to the greater part of the materials because of small size, large surface area-to-volume ratio, quantum size effects, and environmental factors. Nowadays, a large number of NMs are used in industrial products including several medical applications, consumer, and healthcare products. However, they came into the environment without any safety test. The measurement of toxicity level has become important because of increasing toxic effects on living organisms. New realistic mechanism-based strategies are still needed to determine the toxic effects of NMs. For the assessment of NMs toxicity, reliable and standardized procedures are necessary. This review article provides systematic studies on toxicity of NMs involving manufacturing, environmental factors, eco-toxic and genotoxic effects, some parameters which have been ignored of NMs versus their biological counterparts, cell heterogeneity, and their current challenges and future perspectives.     

Ion beam-induced shaping of Ni nanoparticles embedded in a silica matrix: from spherical to prolate shape

Present work reports the elongation of spherical Ni nanoparticles (NPs) parallel to each other, due to bombardment with 120 MeV Au⁺⁹ ions at a fluence of 5 × 10¹³ ions/cm². The Ni NPs embedded in silica matrix have been prepared by atom beam sputtering technique and subsequent annealing. The elongation of Ni NPs due to interaction with Au⁺⁹ ions as investigated by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) shows a strong dependence on initial Ni particle size and is explained on the basis of thermal spike model. Irradiation induces a change from single crystalline nature of spherical particles to polycrystalline nature of elongated particles. Magnetization measurements indicate that changes in coercivity (H _c) and remanence ratio (M _r/M _s) are stronger in the ion beam direction due to the preferential easy axis of elongated particles in the beam direction.     

Effect of W and Ce additions on the electrochemical corrosion behaviour of 444-type ferritic stainless steel

In order to achieve excellent heat resistance and corrosion resistance, high melting-point and rare earth elements were added to ferritic stainless steel. The effect of W and Ce addition in ferritic stainless steel on the corrosion resistance in 0.1?M NaOH solution was studied. Potentiodynamic polarisation curves indicated that W- and Ce-containing samples had lower corrosion rate and lower passive current density. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements revealed that W–Ce-containing samples had higher polarisation resistance values and thicker passive films. Capacitance analysis indicated that the semiconducting behaviour and the properties of passive film remain unchanged. The addition of W and Ce led to a decrease in donor and acceptor density, which improved the passive film stability.     

Is Weibull distribution the most appropriate statistical strength distribution for brittle materials?

Strength reliability, one of the critical factors restricting wider use of brittle materials in various structural applications, is commonly characterized by Weibull strength distribution function. In the present work, the detailed statistical analysis of the strength data is carried out using a larger class of probability models including Weibull, normal, log-normal, gamma and generalized exponential distributions. Our analysis is validated using the strength data, measured with a number of structural ceramic materials and a glass material. An important implication of the present study is that the gamma or log-normal distribution function, in contrast to Weibull distribution, may describe more appropriately, in certain cases, the experimentally measured strength data.