Towards a Better Prediction of Cell Settling on Nanostructure Arrays—Simple Means to Complicated Ends

Vertical arrays of nanostructures (NSs) are emerging as promising platforms for probing and manipulating live mammalian cells. The broad range of applications requires different types of interfaces, but cell settling on NS arrays is not yet fully controlled and understood. Cells are both seen to deform completely into NS arrays and to stay suspended like tiny fakirs, which have hitherto been explained with differences in NS spacing or density. Here, a better understanding of this phenomenon is provided by using a model that takes into account the extreme membrane deformation needed for a cell to settle into a NS array. It is shown that, in addition to the NS density, cell settling depends strongly on the dimensions of the single NS, and that the settling can be predicted for a given NS array geometry. The predictive power of the model is confirmed by experiments and good agreement with cases from the literature. Furthermore, the influence of cell‐related parameters is evaluated theoretically and a generic method of tuning cell settling through surface coating is demonstrated experimentally. These findings allow a more rational design of NS arrays for the numerous exciting biological applications where the mode of cell settling is crucial.     

Correction to: EKLT: Asynchronous Photometric Feature Tracking Using Events and Frames

International Journal of Computer Vision - The original version of this article was unfortunately omitted to publish the footnote “The best result per row is highlighted in bold” in...     

The effect of annealing on the elastoplastic and viscoelastic responses of isotactic polypropylene

Observations are reported on isotactic polypropylene (i) in a series of tensile tests with a constant strain rate on specimens annealed for 24 h at various temperatures in the range from 110 to 150 °C, (ii) in two series of creep tests in the subyield region of deformations on samples not subjected to thermal treatment and on specimens annealed at 140 °C, and (iii) in a series of tensile relaxation tests on non-annealed specimens. Constitutive equations are derived for the elastoplastic and non-linear viscoelastic responses of semicrystalline polymers. A polymer is treated as an equivalent transient network of macro-molecules bridged by junctions (physical cross-links, entanglements and lamellar blocks). The network is assumed to be highly heterogeneous, and it is thought of as an ensemble of meso-regions with different activation energies for separation of strands from temporary nodes. The elastoplastic behavior is modelled as sliding of junctions in meso-domains with respect to their reference positions driven by macro-deformation. The viscoelastic response is attributed to detachment of active strands from temporary junctions and attachment of dangling chains to the network. Constitutive equations for isothermal deformations with small strains are derived by using the laws of thermodynamics. Adjustable parameters in the stress–strain relations are found by fitting the experimental data.     

Theory of correlations in partly labelled homopolymer melts

Small-angle neutron scattering by a polymer melt with partly tagged chains is considered. When several types of chain (differently labelled) are present in the system a new long-range correlation effect which modifies the scattering spectrum is predicted. This effect will arise because of the chemical polydispersity of the sample. A general formalism is developed to calculate the scattering intensity and is applied to special cases: diblock and triblock chains. It is shown that even a small chemical polydispersity leads to important long-range fluctuations and modifies the scattering spectrum substantially.     

Extrapolation of fuzzy values from incomplete data bases

This paper presents different approaches which enable a data base management system to obtain a plausible fuzzy estimate for an attribute value of an item for which the information is not explicitly stored in the data base. This can be made either by a kind of analogical reasoning from information about particular items or by means of expert rules which specify the (fuzzy) sets of possible values of the attribute under consideration, for various classes of items. Another kind of expert rules enables the system to compute an estimate from the attribute value of another item provided that, in other respects, this latter item sufficiently resembles the item, the value of which we are interested in; then these expert rules are used either for controlling the analogical reasoning process or for enlarging the scope of application of the first kind of expert rules. The different approaches are discussed in the framework of possibility theory.     

UtilisatIon D’un Processus de Renormalisation Pour L’étude Électromagnétique des Structures Fractales Bidimensionnelles

In this article, we apply the renormalization technique, used possibly in theorical physics, for electromagnetic studying of bi dimensional fractal structures. A recurrence relation based on the auto-similar nature of structures and on the model of the surface impedance, has permitted, thanks to the convergence to a fixed point, to determine the input impedance of these structures at any scale. Though, the suggested method has been validated by calculus of one-dimensional structures (Iris de Cantor) it may be applied easily to the analysis of planar circuits as the Sierpensky antenna.     

DILIGENT: integrating digital library and Grid technologies for a new Earth observation research infrastructure

This paper introduces DILIGENT, a digital library infrastructure built by integrating digital library and Grid technologies and resources. This infrastructure allows different communities to dynamically build specialised digital libraries capable to support the entire e-Science knowledge production and consumption life-cycle by using shared computing, storage, content, and application resources. The paper presents some of the main software services that implement the DILIGENT system. Moreover, it exemplifies the provided features by presenting how the DILIGENT infrastructure is being exploited in supporting the activity of user communities working in the Earth Science Environmental sector. This work is partially funded by the European Commission in the context of the DILIGENT project, under the 2nd call of FP6 IST priority.     

Facility layout problems: A survey

Layout problems are found in several types of manufacturing systems. Typically, layout problems are related to the location of facilities (e.g., machines, departments) in a plant. They are known to greatly impact the system performance. Most of these problems are NP hard. Numerous research works related to facility layout have been published. A few literature reviews exist, but they are not recent or are restricted to certain specific aspects of these problems. The literature analysis given here is recent and not restricted to specific considerations about layout design.

We suggest a general framework to analyze the literature and present existing works using such criteria as: the manufacturing system features, static/dynamic considerations, continual/discrete representation, problem formulation, and resolution approach. Several research directions are pointed out and discussed in our conclusion.     

Morphology and structure of poly(p-phenylene terephthalamide) crystallized from dilute organic solution

The high-temperature crystallization of poly(p-phenylene terephthalamide) (PPTA) from dilute organic solutions was achieved through the introduction of a non-solvent, or precipitating agent, at the desired crystallization temperature. The morphology and crystal structure were examined for crystals produced from PPTA polymer with two different molecular weights (M_w = 46000 and 3430 g mol⁻¹), using transmission electron microscopy. For the high-molecular-weight polymer, ribbon-like crystals were produced, while the low-molecular-weight polymer yielded small needles or platelets. In both cases, electron diffraction showed that the Northolt allomorph was obtained. For the high-molecular-weight polymer, the molecular axes were parallel to the ribbon axes in a chain-extended type structure. A hypothesis for the orientation of the low-molecular-weight PPTA in the small platelets, is also given.