Injection of Microporous Annealing Particle (MAP) Hydrogels in the Stroke Cavity Reduces Gliosis and Inflammation and Promotes NPC Migration to the Lesion

With the number of deaths due to stroke decreasing, more individuals are forced to live with crippling disability resulting from the stroke. To date, no therapeutics exist after the first 4.5 h after the stroke onset, aside from rest and physical therapy. Following stroke, a large influx of astrocytes and microglia releasing proinflammatory cytokines leads to dramatic inflammation and glial scar formation, affecting brain tissue's ability to repair itself. Pathological conditions, such as a stroke, trigger neural progenitor cells (NPCs) proliferation and migration toward the damaged site. However, these progenitors are often found far from the cavity or the peri‐infarct tissue. Poststroke tissue remodeling results in a compartmentalized cavity that can directly accept a therapeutic material injection. Here, this paper shows that the injection of a porous hyaluronic acid hydrogel into the stroke cavity significantly reduces the inflammatory response following stroke while increasing peri‐infarct vascularization compared to nonporous hydrogel controls and stroke only controls. In addition, it is shown that the injection of this material impacts NPCs proliferation and migration at the subventricular zone niche and results, for the first time, in NPC migration into the stroke site.     

Electrochemical investigations on amorphous Fe-base alloys for alkaline water electrolysis

In this work different amorphous melt-spun Fe-alloys (Fe₈₂B₁₈, Fe₈₀Si₁₀B₁₀, Fe₆₀Co₂₀Si₁₀B₁₀) were investigated as cathode materials for the alkaline electrolysis of water. In particular, the influence of cobalt as well as the metalloids boron and silicon on the activity for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) was studied in 1 M KOH at 298 K using cyclic voltammetric, galvanostatic and polarization techniques. The electrocatalytic activity was evaluated in the view of the overpotential. It was found that cyclic voltammetric techniques can be used to activate the melt-spun Fe-alloys strongly. Different cyclic voltammetric activation procedures are discussed and the influence of the sweep rate and the potential window on the HER activity was elucidated. The experimental data indicate that the addition of metalloids and, most importantly, of cobalt improves the HER activity of the materials. Thus, the overpotential can be reduced by 200 mV compared to polycrystalline Ni.     

The mutual influence of surface energy and substrate temperature on the saturation mobility in organic semiconductors

We report on a mutual correlation between the substrate temperature during semiconductor deposition and the surface energy of the gate dielectric on the charge carrier mobility in bottom gate top contact organic field effect transistors (OFETs) with N,N′-diphenyl-3,4,9,10-perylene tetracarboxylic diimide (DP-PDI) as organic semiconductor.     

Rogue components: their effect and control using logical analysis of data

There is a small subset of any repairable component population that can develop a failure mode outside the scope of the standard repair and overhaul procedures, which makes them “rogue”. When this happens, a Darwinian-like “natural selection” phenomenon ensures that they will be placed in the most disadvantageous position in the asset management program, negatively affecting multiple aspects of the operational and maintenance organizations. Rogue components have long plagued the airline industry and created havoc in their asset management programs. In this paper, we describe how these rogues develop, outline the natural selection process that leads to their hampering the asset management program, and examine some of the negative impacts that ensue. Then we propose a Condition based maintenance approach to control the development of these components. We explore the use of a supervised learning data mining technique called Logical analysis of data (LAD) in CBM for the purpose of detecting rogues within a population of repairable components. We apply the resulting LAD based decision model on an inventory of turbo compressors belonging to an airline fleet. Finally, we evaluate the applicability of LAD to the rogue component detection problem and review its efficiency as a decision model for this type of problem.     

Extruded linseed and rapeseed both influenced fatty acid composition of total lipids and their polar and neutral fractions in longissimus thoracis and semitendinosus muscles of finishing Normand cows

The effects of extruded linseed and rapeseed on lipids and FA composition of total, polar and neutral lipids of longissimus thoracis (LT) and semitendinosus (ST) muscles were investigated in 21 Normand cull cows. Animals were assigned in a 100d finishing period to straw (30%) and concentrate (70%) based (C) or the same diet supplemented with linseed (L) or with rapeseed (66%) plus linseed (33%) (RL). Beef polar and neutral lipids were purified by liquid chromatography and their FA analysed by GLC. Trans and cis 18:1, purified by HPLC from total FA methyl esters, were analysed by GLC–MS. L and LR diets did not increase beef lipid deposition, but had modified FA composition of both LT and ST muscles in favouring deposition of 18:3n-3 and 9cis,11tr 18:2 (CLA), mainly to the detriment of 18:1?9 cis (neutral lipids) and 18:2n-6 (polar lipids). However, they did not favour deposition of LC n-3 PUFA in the two muscles, but had increased deposition of trans 18:1 significantly, especially of ?13tr to ?16tr isoforms to the detriment of ?10tr 18:1 (L diet) and of ?11tr 18:1 (RL diet).     

Photography and the Elphinstone Institution of Bombay

Abstract

Ralizing the potentials of photography, the Court of Directors of the East India company recommended to the Government of Bombay as early as 1845 ‘the encouragement of the study of this useful art of photography in any of the seientific or educational institutions under the control or inf1uence of your government’. They also offered to furnish students with the requisite apparatus, if they found it necessary to procure them from England¹. The proposal was repeated in their dispatch dated 29th December 1854, when they again expressed their desire to establish training in photography. Thereupon, W. Hart, Secretary to the Government of Bombay, requested the Board of Education of Bombay Presidency to submit a scheme for carrying out this project². Mr Stowell, Secretary to the Board of Education, called for the opinions of the Principal of the Elphinstone Institution, and of its Professor of Chemistry³. A small but interesting episode of early photography in India had its beginning in this way.     

Machine learning in continuous casting of steel: a state-of-the-art survey

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing - Continuous casting is the most important route for the production of steel today. Due to the physical, mechanical, and chemical components involved in the...     

On the integration of SIC and MIMO DoF for interference cancellation in wireless networks

Recent advances in MIMO degree-of-freedom (DoF) models allowed MIMO research to penetrate the networking community. Independent from MIMO, successive interference cancellation (SIC) is a powerful physical layer technique used in multi-user detection. Based on the understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of MIMO DoF and SIC, we propose to have DoF-based interference cancellation (IC) and SIC help each other so that (i) precious DoF resources can be conserved through the use of SIC and (ii) the stringent SINR threshold criteria can be met through the use of DoF-based IC. In this paper, we develop the necessary mathematical models to realize the two ideas in a multi-hop wireless network. Together with scheduling and routing constraints, we develop a cross-layer optimization framework with joint DoF IC and SIC. By applying the framework on a throughput maximization problem, we find that SIC and DoF IC can indeed work in harmony and achieve the two ideas that we propose.