Magnetically Guidable Proteinaceous Adhesive Microbots for Targeted Locoregional Therapeutics Delivery in the Highly Dynamic Environment of the Esophagus

The esophagus is a tubular-shaped muscular organ where swallowed fluids and muscular contractions constitute a highly dynamic environment. The turbulent, coordinated processes that occur through the oropharyngeal conduit can often compromise targeted administration of therapeutic drugs to a lesion, significantly reducing therapeutic efficacy. Here, magnetically guidable drug vehicles capable of strongly adhering to target sites using a bioengineered mussel adhesive protein (MAP) to achieve localized delivery of therapeutic drugs against the hydrodynamic physiological conditions are proposed. A suite of highly uniform microparticles embedded with iron oxide (IO) nanoparticles (MAP@IO MPs) is microfluidically fabricated using the genipin-mediated covalent cross-linking of bioengineered MAP. The MAP@IO MPs are successfully targeted to a specific region and prolongedly retained in the tubular-structured passageway. In particular, orally administered MAP@IO MPs are effectively captured in the esophagus in vivo in a magnetically guidable manner. Moreover, doxorubicin (DOX)-loaded MAP@IO MPs exhibit a sustainable DOX release profile, effective anticancer therapeutic activity, and excellent biocompatibility. Thus, the magnetically guidable locomotion and robust underwater adhesive properties of the proteinaceous soft microbots can provide an intelligent modular approach for targeted locoregional therapeutics delivery to a specific lesion site in dynamic fluid-associated tubular organs such as the esophagus.     

Agent-oriented techniques for network supervision

This paper presents the results of the Réseau futé (smart net) project, the goal of which is to use distributed AI and multi-agent techniques for network management and supervision. More precisely, these techniques have been applied to the partial automation of the dynamic processing (what is known about a network is always incomplete and can change at any time) of alarms and of various event notifications received by network management platforms. The system that we propose is able for example to automatically handle some alarms or to filter events of no-interest for a given operator. To achieve this goal, an assistant, or interface agent according to the model proposed by Patti Maes [MK93], has been realized. The goal of the assistant is first to learn, by observation, the behavior of the network supervision operator and second to reproduce such a behavior when the conditions in which the behavior has been learned are detected again. The learned information are stored using chronicles [Gha94]. A chronicle is a data-structure allowing programmers to represent sequences of events while taking temporal knowledge into account. Our assistant has been implemented and tested within Magenta which is a program, written in Smalltalk, that simulates (in a simplified way) a network management platform. This program respects roughly the gdmo and cmis standards.     

Output probability from a general combinational network

In this paper, we present the method which calculates the probability of the output of a general combinational network being 1, when the probabilities is given for each input being 1. Also we present the method which derives the output probability expression in terms of a given set of input probabilities.The method is based on a basic probability axiom and Binary Decision Diagrams. A Boolean function for a combinational network is transformed into a Binary Decision Diagram and the output probability expression is derived from it. Therefore a derivation of the output probability for a combinational network can be straightforward. Some examples are showed that the method using Binary Decision Diagrams is simple and efficient. We can see a variation of the output probability for a combinational network according to the given set of input probabilities.     

Luminescence,charge mobility,and optical waveguiding of two-dimensional organic rubrene nanosheets: Comparison with one-dimensional nanorods

Intrinsic characteristics of organic and inorganic nanostructures depend on their physical dimensions (i.e., size and shape) and crystallinity. Here, we compared the nanoscale optical and electrical properties of organic rubrene one-dimensional (1-D) nanorods (NRs) and two-dimensional (2-D) nanosheets (NSs). From high-resolution laser confocal microscope photoluminescence (PL) measurements, the light-emission characteristics of 2-D rubrene NSs varied with the crystalline domain direction, indicating intrinsic PL anisotropy, which was distinguishable from 1-D rubrene single NRs, because of anisotropy π–π stacking molecular arrangements. We also observed the variation of charge carrier mobility depending on the measured directions (i.e., anisotropy of charge transport) in rubrene NS-based field-effect transistors. The optical waveguiding properties of rubrene nanostructures were strongly correlated to the dimensionality of materials and PL anisotropy.     

Role of Cooper pairs for the generation of entangled photon pairs from single quantum dots

Generation of entangled photon pairs from semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) is highly desirable for realizing practical solid-state photon sources for quantum information processing and quantum cryptography. However, the energy splitting of exciton states in QDs almost prevent the generation of entangled photon pairs. This paper discusses the new possibility with the injection of electron as well as hole Cooper pairs into QDs.     

Surface Engineered Carboxymethylchitosan/Poly(amidoamine) Dendrimer Nanoparticles for Intracellular Targeting

Novel highly branched biodegradable macromolecular systems have been developed by grafting carboxymethylchitosan (CMCht) onto low generation poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimers. Such structures organize into sphere‐like nanoparticles that are proposed to be used as carriers to deliver bioactive molecules aimed at controlling the behavior of stem cells, namely their proliferation and differentiation. The nanoparticles did not exhibit significant cytotoxicity in the range of concentrations below 1 mg mL^?1, and fluorescent probe labeled nanoparticles were found to be internalized with highly efficiency by both human osteoblast‐like cells and rat bone marrow stromal cells, under fluorescence‐activated cell sorting and fluorescence microscopy analyses. Dexamethasone (Dex) has been incorporated into CMCht/PAMAM dendrimer nanoparticles and release rates were determined by high performance liquid chromatography. Moreover, the biochemical data demonstrates that the Dex‐loaded CMCht/PAMAM dendrimer nanoparticles promote the osteogenic differentiation of rat bone marrow stromal cells, in vitro. The nanoparticles exhibit interesting physicochemical and biological properties and have great potential to be used in fundamental cell biology studies as well as in a variety of biomedical applications, including tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.     

Smart CMOS Image Sensor With High SBR and Subpixel Resolution for Light-Section-Based Range Finding

Light-section (LS)-based range finders are commonly used for obstacle recognition in home service robots and autonomous vehicles. This paper proposes a smart CMOS image sensor for LS-based range finding. The proposed sensor can detect the laser light, even under very strong ambient-illumination levels by using a multiple-capture frame-correlated double sampling (F-CDS), which is realized with an inverter-based switched-capacitor F-CDS accumulator. The proposed sensor also includes on-chip winner-take-all circuits that significantly reduce the software and hardware complexity of interpolation for the subpixel resolution. The prototype chip was fabricated using a 0.35-mum CMOS process. The measurement results show that the proposed sensor can detect a laser line with an intensity that is 56.5 dB lower than that of the ambient illumination, providing a spatial resolution of plusmn0.16 pixels.     

Environmentally Friendly Graphene Inks for Touch Screen Sensors

Graphene-based materials have attracted significant attention in many technological fields, but scaling up graphene-based technologies still faces substantial challenges. High-throughput top-down methods generally require hazardous, toxic, and high-boiling-point solvents. Here, an efficient and inexpensive strategy is proposed to produce graphene dispersions by liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) through a combination of shear-mixing (SM) and tip sonication (TS) techniques, yielding highly concentrated graphene inks compatible with spray coating. The quality of graphene flakes (e.g., lateral size and thickness) and their concentration in the dispersions are compared using different spectroscopic and microscopy techniques. Several approaches (individual SM and TS, and their combination) are tested in three solvents (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, dimethylformamide, and cyrene). Interestingly, the combination of SM and TS in cyrene yields high-quality graphene dispersions, overcoming the environmental issues linked to the other two solvents. Starting from the cyrene dispersion, a graphene-based ink is prepared to spray-coat flexible electrodes and assemble a touch screen prototype. The electrodes feature a low sheet resistance (290 Ω □⁻¹) and high optical transmittance (78%), which provide the prototype with a high signal-to-noise ratio (14 dB) and multi-touch functionality (up to four simultaneous touches). These results illustrate a potential pathway toward the integration of LPE-graphene in commercial flexible electronics.     

A reliable overlay video transport protocol for multicast agents in wireless mesh networks

A new video transport protocol for multicast agents in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is proposed in this paper. The proposed protocol enables a significant reduction in the transmission overhead, while providing reliable communication for its use in multicast applications. This proposed reliable protocol provides a practical approach for an overlay peer‐to‐peer multicast facility supported within the application layer. This obviates the need to give upgraded routers capable of handling multicast broadcasting or modify the existing protocol stack. The protocol tolerates partial losses in multimedia transmissions, while supporting control of the delay sensitivity of such transmissions in WMNs. The key issue in this protocol is the ability to detect packet loss, anticipate retransmission requests, and use the anticipated retransmission requests to transmit the lost packets prior to requests from other receiving agents. The proposed protocol allows for the receiver to determine if retransmission of lost packets is required, ensuring the greatest flexibility needed for a reliable multicast protocol. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.