Cell culture and orthopedic surgery. II. Medical applications. Diagnosis, biomaterials evaluation, therapy

Currently, cell cultures are used for 3 kinds of applications in orthopaedics: diagnosis: they can help to diagnose hereditary diseases like Marfan syndrome, osteogenesis imperfecta, or some osteochondrodysplasia. biomaterial evaluation: cell cultures bring information to ensure safety and efficacy of medical devices following the European Community's directive concerning medical devices. Results of in vitro biomaterial evaluation must be related to cell types (osteoblasts or fibroblasts), cell species (human or rat) and methods used (primary cell line or immortalised cell line). therapy: first clinical applications of cell cultures have been published recently. They concern cultured autologous chondrocytes reimplantation. Bone cells cultured on biomaterials have been tested in animal reimplantation experiments. Animal cells mediated gene therapy experiments are now developed on muscle cells. Cell cultures allow also to determine the best therapeutic way to cure bone tumors. For the moment, these applications are still limited but in the next years, they could develop considerably. Therefore, orthopaedic surgeons must keep interest in this new field.     

Fast optical switching in Sm/sup 3+/-doped fibers

We report an experimental investigation of the fast optical switching in a Sm/sup 3+/-doped fiber. We discovered that this fiber can effect a fast switching speed less than 5 ns. However, the required switching power is 472 W with pulsewidth 10 ns.     

The constant modulus array for cochannel signal copy and directionfinding

The constant modulus (CM) array is a blind adaptive beamformer capable of recovering a narrowband signal among several cochannel sources without using a pilot or training signal. It is a conventional weight-and-sum adaptive beamformer whose weights are updated by the constant modulus algorithm. An adaptive signal canceller follows the beamformer to remove the captured signal from the array input and to provide an estimate of its direction vector. Based on a Wiener model, we investigate the steady-state properties of the CM array and the signal canceller. For mutually uncorrelated sources and noise, it is shown that the signal canceller exactly removes the source captured by the array. Thus, identical stages of the CM array and signal canceller may be used in a multistage system to recover several cochannel sources. Computer simulations are presented to verify the analytical results and to illustrate the transient behavior of the system     

Effect of pressure gradient on MHD boundary layer over a flat plate

Summary The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) boundary layer flow over a flat plate is examined here for two cases, viz. a uniform free-stream velocity and a uniform hydrostatic pressure. The nonlinear boundary layer equations are solved using a reliable finite-difference method. The boundary layer physical parameters such as skin-friction coefficient, displacement, momentum and energy thicknesses of the boundary layer are determined. It is found that the normal surface velocity gradient decreases with the local magnetic interaction parameter for the cases of a uniform hydrostatic pressure, whereas in the case of a uniform free-stream volocity it increases with the interaction parameter.     

Multiterminal light-emitting logic device electricallyreprogrammable between OR and NAND functions

A monolithic multiterminal logic device that functions both optically and electrically as an ORNAND gate, is demonstrated for the first time. The device, based on the real-space transfer of hot electrons into a complementary collector layer, has been implemented in an InGaAs/InAlAs/InGaAs heterostructure grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Excellent performance is obtained at room temperature. The collector current and the optical output power both exhibit the OR and the NAND functions of any two of the three input terminals, these functions being interchangeable by the voltage on the third terminal     

Transconductance and mobility of Si:B delta MOSFETs

Delta-doped MOSFETs have been fabricated in MBE-grown silicon using for the first time boron as the dopant within the delta layer. Current-voltage characteristics have been measured, and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) is used to confirm the location of the delta layer and the extent of layer broadening by diffusion during processing. Precise threshold voltages of the devices are difficult to determine since the devices (which all operate in depletion mode) take several volts to switch off. Transconductances of the devices have been measured, and it is shown how analysis of these results can yield estimates of the carrier mobility for transport along the delta layers despite the uncertainty in the threshold voltage. A clear transition is observed in the results which is attributed to the formation of a parasitic surface-channel field-effect transistor, providing conclusive evidence that the devices are conducting along a delta channel for part of the measured range of applied gate biases     

Are large firms internationalizing the generation of technology?Some new evidence

Internationalization of technology remains a subject of considerable interest to analysts and policy makers in the 1990s. This paper is a modest attempt at providing some new empirical observations for debate and discussion on one dimension of the subject, namely, the nature and extent of the production of technology undertaken by large firms outside their home base. The evidence, based on the US patenting activities of the world's largest 539 firms (based in 13 countries and covering 16 product groups), shows that for an overwhelming majority of them technology production remains close to the home base. It also shows that firms devoting a large proportion of their resources to technology are amongst the least internationalized. When these firms do go abroad, there is no systematic relationship between their relative presence in a technical field and the relative strength of the host country. The analysis points to the dangers of generalizing on the basis of anecdotal evidence from a small sample of firms from a particular country or sector     

Novel diterpenoid diacylglycerols from marine molluscs: potent morphogens and protein kinase C activators

Five novel 1,2-sn-diacylglycerols with diterpenoid acyl moieties in the sn-1 position were isolated and characterized, together with the corresponding 1,3-sn-diacylglycerols, from three species of dorid nudibranchs molluscs. Their potent activity as morphogens in vivo in the Hydra tentacle regeneration assay and their parallel activity as activators of rat brain protein kinase C (PKC) in vitro are reported here. Our findings promote the use of these compounds as useful molecular probes for both in vivo and in vitro studies on the participation of PKC in cell development.