Scalable Microgravity Simulator Used for Long-Term Musculoskeletal Cells and Tissue Engineering

We introduce a new benchtop microgravity simulator (MGS) that is scalable and easy to use. Its working principle is similar to that of random positioning machines (RPM), commonly used in research laboratories and regarded as one of the gold standards for simulating microgravity. The improvement of the MGS concerns mainly the algorithms controlling the movements of the samples and the design that, for the first time, guarantees equal treatment of all the culture flasks undergoing simulated microgravity. Qualification and validation tests of the new device were conducted with human bone marrow stem cells (bMSC) and mouse skeletal muscle myoblasts (C2C12). bMSC were cultured for 4 days on the MGS and the RPM in parallel. In the presence of osteogenic medium, an overexpression of osteogenic markers was detected in the samples from both devices. Similarly, C2C12 cells were maintained for 4 days on the MGS and the rotating wall vessel (RWV) device, another widely used microgravity simulator. Significant downregulation of myogenesis markers was observed in gravitationally unloaded cells. Therefore, similar results can be obtained regardless of the used simulated microgravity devices, namely MGS, RPM, or RWV. The newly developed MGS device thus offers easy and reliable long-term cell culture possibilities under simulated microgravity conditions. Currently, upgrades are in progress to allow real-time monitoring of the culture media and liquids exchange while running. This is of particular interest for long-term cultivation, needed for tissue engineering applications. Tissue grown under real or simulated microgravity has specific features, such as growth in three-dimensions (3D). Growth in weightlessness conditions fosters mechanical, structural, and chemical interactions between cells and the extracellular matrix in any direction.     

Size-controllable synthesis of chromium oxyhydroxide nanomaterials using a soft chemical hydrothermal route

Chromium oxyhydroxide nanomaterials were synthesised through a simple soft chemical hydrothermal method. The chromium oxyhydroxide materials display platelet morphology with clear edges, ~11 nm in diameter. CrO(OH) nanomaterials synthesised under different conditions were fully characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) combined with selected area electron diffraction (SAED), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), BET specific surface area analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). Bonding of the trivalent chromium from the oxyhydroxide nanomaterials was defined through the analysis of their high resolution XPS spectra for Cr 2p_3/2 and O 1s. The thermal stability of the nanomaterials CrO(OH) was established. This research has developed methodology for the synthesis of chromium oxyhydroxide nanoplates.     

On the optimum support size in meshfree methods: A variational adaptivity approach with maximum‐entropy approximants

We present a method for the automatic adaption of the support size of meshfree basis functions in the context of the numerical approximation of boundary value problems stemming from a minimum principle. The method is based on a variational approach, and the central idea is that the variational principle selects both the discretized physical fields and the discretization parameters, here those defining the support size of each basis function. We consider local maximum‐entropy approximation schemes, which exhibit smooth basis functions with respect to both space and the discretization parameters (the node location and the locality parameters). We illustrate by the Poisson, linear and non‐linear elasticity problems the effectivity of the method, which produces very accurate solutions with very coarse discretizations and finds unexpected patterns of the support size of the shape functions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing the potential for a wind power incentive for remote villages in Canada

This paper discusses the uptake potential for a wind–diesel production incentive designed specifically for Canadian northern and remote communities. In spite of having over 300 remote communities with extremely high electricity costs, Canada has had little success in developing remote wind energy projects. Most of Canada’s large-scale wind power has been developed as a direct result of a Federal production incentive implemented in 2002. Using this incentive structure as a successful model, this paper explores how an incentive tailored to remote wind power could be deployed. Micro-power simulations were done to demonstrate that the production incentive designed by the Canadian Wind Energy Association would cost on average $4.7 $Cdn million and could be expected to result in 14.5 MW of wind energy projects in remote villages in Canada over a 10 year period, saving 11.5 $Cdn million dollars in diesel costs annually, displacing 7600 tonnes of CO_2eq emissions and 9.6 million litres of diesel fuel every year.     

Unifying running-key approach and logistic map to generate enciphering sequences

The paper presents a new approach to generating enciphering sequences useful in information protection, with an illustration on images. The procedure is both theoretically and experimentally supported by combining elements derived from the running-key cipher, information theory and statistics. The enciphering key generator is based on the logistic map, and its theoretical properties are demonstrated by statistical tests. The new enciphering sequences comply with the fair coin model, and the randomly chosen initial conditions of the logistic map (defining the enciphering sequence) can be part of the secret key. Although dealing with a particular case of chaotic system, the paper contains the necessary elements so that the overall procedure can be applied to other chaotic maps (e.g., tent map).     

On Discrete Killing Vector Fields and Patterns on Surfaces

Symmetry is one of the most important properties of a shape, unifying form and function. It encodes semantic information on one hand, and affects the shape's aesthetic value on the other. Symmetry comes in many flavors, amongst the most interesting being intrinsic symmetry, which is defined only in terms of the intrinsic geometry of the shape. Continuous intrinsic symmetries can be represented using infinitesimal rigid transformations, which are given as tangent vector fields on the surface – known as Killing Vector Fields. As exact symmetries are quite rare, especially when considering noisy sampled surfaces, we propose a method for relaxing the exact symmetry constraint to allow for approximate symmetries and approximate Killing Vector Fields, and show how to discretize these concepts for generating such vector fields on a triangulated mesh. We discuss the properties of approximate Killing Vector Fields, and propose an application to utilize them for texture and geometry synthesis.     

Sunil de Silva-A Scientist and a Visionary

The objective of this work was to analyze the behavior of good conducting granules in a newly designed plate-type electrostatic separator. Commercial software was employed for the numerical analysis of the electric field generated by an original electrode configuration. This enabled the evaluation of the electric charge and forces on conducting particles. The trajectory of a single particle was calculated over a set of 1300 points. The simulated results show that the trajectories depend on the applied voltage, the radius, and the mass density of the granules. They were found in good agreement with the experiments carried out on a laboratory electrostatic separator.     

Top-down synthesis of mesocrystalline α-Fe2O3 submillimeter-sized rhombohedrons

ABSTRACT

Here, we focus on the obtaining of mesocrystalline submillimeter-sized (150/50 µm) rhombohedral hematite (α-Fe₂O₃) by thermal treatment in air of single crystalline submillimeter-sized (150/50 µm) rhombohedrons of ferrous carbonate (FeCO₃). Mass spectrometer-coupled thermogravimetric analysis and TGA-MS revealed the chemical reactions occurring during the thermal treatment of ferrous carbonate sample. The X-ray Diffraction (XRD) data sustain that the final product is hematite. The XRD line-profile analysis indicates that the resulted hematite is built of individual ordered crystallites with 66 ± 5 nm average sizes, confirmed by scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy images. Small-angle x-ray scattering investigation of hematite sample was presented. The log-log plot of scattering intensity decay showed the same slope, α = ?3.76, corresponding to both high and low scattering vector regions; the fractal surface is D_s = 2.24. This fractality is extended over a range of sizes and can touch high molecular dimensionality. The internal morphology and the synthesis mechanism of the obtained hierarchical superstructure were described.