Oligosaccharide model of the vascular endothelial glycocalyx in physiological flow

Experiments have consistently revealed the pivotal role of the endothelial glycocalyx layer in vasoregulation and the layer’s contribution to mechanotransduction pathways. However, the exact mechanism by which the glycocalyx mediates fluid shear stress remains elusive. This study employs atomic-scale molecular simulations with the aim of investigating the conformational and orientation properties of highly flexible oligosaccharide components of the glycocalyx and their suitability as transduction molecules under hydrodynamic loading. Fluid flow was shown to have nearly no effect on the conformation populations explored by the oligosaccharide, in comparison with static (diffusion) conditions. However, the glycan exhibited a significant orientation change, when compared to simple diffusion, aligning itself with the flow direction. It is the tethered end of the glycan, an asparagine amino acid, which experienced conformational changes as a result of this flow-induced bias. Our results suggest that shear flow through the layer can have an impact on the conformational properties of saccharide-decorated transmembrane proteins, thus acting as a mechanosensor.     

An evidential approach for detection of abnormal behaviour in the presence of unreliable sensors

We address the problem of abnormal behaviour recognition of the inhabitant of a smart home in the presence of unreliable sensors. The corner stone of this work is a two-level architecture sensor fusion based on the Transferable Belief Model (TBM). The novelty of our work lies in the way we detect both unreliable sensors and abnormal behaviour within our architecture by using a temporal analysis of conflict resulting from the fusion of sensors. Detection of abnormal behaviour is based on a prediction/observation process and the influence of the faulty sources is discarded by discounting coefficients. Our architecture is tested in a real-life setting using three heterogeneous sensors enabling the detection of impossible transitions between three possible postures: Sitting, Standing and Lying. The impact of having a faulty sensor management is also tested in the real-life experiment for posture detection.     

Improvement of fermentative biohydrogen production by Clostridium butyricum CWBI1009 in sequenced-batch,horizontal fixed bed and biodisc-like anaerobic reactors with biomass retention

A horizontal tubular fixed bed bioreactor (HFBR) and an anaerobic biodisc-like reactor (AnBDR) were designed to both fix Clostridium biomass and enable rapid transfer of the hydrogen produced to gas phase in order to decrease the strong effect of H₂ partial pressure and H₂ supersaturation on the performances of Clostridium strains. The highest H₂ production rate (703 mL H₂/L h) and yield (302 mL/g glucose consumed i.e. 2.4 mol/mol) with the pure culture were recorded in the AnBDR with 300 mL culture medium (total volume 2.3 L) at pH 5.2 and a glucose loading rate of 2.87 g/L h. These results are about 2.3 and 1.3-fold higher than those achieved in the same bioreactor with 500 mL liquid medium and with the same glucose consumption rate. Therefore, our experimentations and a short review of the literature reported in this paper emphasize the relevance of performing bioreactors with high L/G transfer.     

Anisotropic loss of toughness with physical aging of work toughened polycarbonate

We have studied the response of mechanically toughened and physically aged polycarbonate primarily using Charpy impact and ultrasonic wave speed measurements. The toughening was conducted through plastic compression on as‐received PC. The Charpy impact tests showed anisotropic toughening, both in the absorbed energy and in the mode of fracture. The amount of toughening with plastic compression, even though anisotropic, is centered around the response of annealed and quenched samples, which represent the response of an unaged PC. There was an anisotropic drop in the toughness of some samples with aging. The time of this drop was uncorrelated in the different directions and disappeared for the highly toughened samples. This transition was bimodal and statistically distributed between either a fully ductile or a fully brittle failure. As the samples were prepared in a manner to remove induced residual stresses, this drop in toughening may be associated with an intrinsic anisotropic thermal aging of the deformed material. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 54:794–804, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Social network architecture and the maintenance of deleterious cultural traits

How have changes in communications technology affected the way that misinformation spreads through a population and persists? To what extent do differences in the architecture of social networks affect the spread of misinformation, relative to the rates and rules by which individuals transmit or eliminate different pieces of information (cultural traits)? Here, we use analytical models and individual-based simulations to study how a ‘cultural load’ of misinformation can be maintained in a population under a balance between social transmission and selective elimination of cultural traits with low intrinsic value. While considerable research has explored how network architecture affects percolation processes, we find that the relative rates at which individuals transmit or eliminate traits can have much more profound impacts on the cultural load than differences in network architecture. In particular, the cultural load is insensitive to correlations between an individual''s network degree and rate of elimination when these quantities vary among individuals. Taken together, these results suggest that changes in communications technology may have influenced cultural evolution more strongly through changes in the amount of information flow, rather than the details of who is connected to whom.     

Surface ageing at drop scale

Surface ageing of a micro-drop populated by surfactants below the critical micellar concentration and subject to evaporation is considered, motivated by our interest in the transport of biomolecules in digital microfluidics. The classical approach based on diffusion–sorption processes is reviewed in order to address a finite-sized system of digital microfluidics. Short-time and long-time asymptotic approximations for a diffusion-limited regime, as well as full analytical expressions for adsorption- and evaporation-limited regimes, are constructed, which help to validate numerical calculations of full coupling between all these kinetics. The impact of the small drop size and the continuous lack of equilibrium induced by evaporation are described by introducing specific dimensionless numbers. By taking into account evaporative mass transfer in the mass balance, the boundary condition for surfactant transport to and from the interface is modified. Furthermore, the small size of the geometry suggests allowing a novel non-dimensionalisation for surface concentration, following from the mass balance of surfactant molecules in thermo-dynamic equilibrium. This order of magnitude quantifies the equilibrium surface concentration for small-sized geometries.     

In vitro evaluation of S-(+)-ibuprofen as drug candidate for intra-articular drug delivery system

Intra-articular drug delivery systems (DDSs) are envisaged as interesting alternative to locally release non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen to reduce pain in patients with osteoarthritis. The present study examines the efficacy of S-(+)-ibuprofen on cartilage degradation as drug candidate for DDS loading. Humeral cartilage and joint capsule explants were collected from healthy sheep shoulder joints and they were cultured in mono- or in co-culture for 13?days with LPS in combination with S-(+)-ibuprofen at 50?µM and 1?mM. S-(+)-ibuprofen (50?µM) blocked prostaglandins production in LPS-activated explants but did not reduce cartilage degradation. By contrast, 1?mM S-(+)-ibuprofen treatment of cartilage explants reduced nitric oxide synthesis by 51% (p?=?0.0072), proteoglycans degradation by 35% (p?=?0.0114) and expression of serum amyloid protein – the main protein induced upon LPS challenge – by 44% (p?相似文献