In Vivo Biological Behavior of Polymer Scaffolds of Natural Origin in the Bone Repair Process

Autologous bone grafts, used mainly in extensive bone loss, are considered the gold standard treatment in regenerative medicine, but still have limitations mainly in relation to the amount of bone available, donor area, morbidity and creation of additional surgical area. This fact encourages tissue engineering in relation to the need to develop new biomaterials, from sources other than the individual himself. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of an elastin and collagen matrix on the bone repair process in critical size defects in rat calvaria. The animals (Wistar rats, n = 30) were submitted to a surgical procedure to create the bone defect and were divided into three groups: Control Group (CG, n = 10), defects filled with blood clot; E24/37 Group (E24/37, n = 10), defects filled with bovine elastin matrix hydrolyzed for 24 h at 37 °C and C24/25 Group (C24/25, n = 10), defects filled with porcine collagen matrix hydrolyzed for 24 h at 25 °C. Macroscopic and radiographic analyses demonstrated the absence of inflammatory signs and infection. Microtomographical 2D and 3D images showed centripetal bone growth and restricted margins of the bone defect. Histologically, the images confirmed the pattern of bone deposition at the margins of the remaining bone and without complete closure by bone tissue. In the morphometric analysis, the groups E24/37 and C24/25 (13.68 ± 1.44; 53.20 ± 4.47, respectively) showed statistically significant differences in relation to the CG (5.86 ± 2.87). It was concluded that the matrices used as scaffolds are biocompatible and increase the formation of new bone in a critical size defect, with greater formation in the polymer derived from the intestinal serous layer of porcine origin (C24/25).     

Analogue Models of and for Gravity

Condensed matter systems, such as acoustics in flowing fluids, light in moving dielectrics, or quasiparticles in a moving superfluid, can be used to mimic aspects of general relativity. More precisely these systems (and others) provide experimentally accessible models of curved-space quantum field theory. As such they mimic kinematic aspects of general relativity, though typically they do not mimic the dynamics. Although these analogue models are thereby limited in their ability to duplicate all the effects of Einstein gravity they nevertheless are extremely important—they provide black hole analogues (some of which have already been seen experimentally) and lead to tests of basic principles of curved-space quantum field theory. Currently these tests are still in the realm of gedanken-experiments, but there are plausible candidate models that should lead to laboratory experiments in the not too distant future.     

The Neumann problem for some degenerate elliptic equations

In the paper we study the equation L _u = f, where L is a degenerate elliptic operator, with Neumann boundary condition in a bounded open set μ. We prove existence and uniqueness of solutions in the space H(μ) for the Neumann problem.     

High-throughput experimentation in synthetic polymer chemistry: From RAFT and anionic polymerizations to process development

The application of combinatorial and high-throughput approaches in polymer research is described. An overview of the utilized synthesis robots is given, including different parallel synthesizers and a process development robot. In addition, the application of the parallel synthesis robots to reversible addition fragmentation termination (RAFT) radical polymerizations and ionic copolymerizations is overviewed. Moreover, first results concerning the process development of semi-batch free radical polymerizations are described.     

New examples of Osserman metrics with nondiagonalizable Jacobi operators

Explicit examples of Osserman 4-manifolds with exactly two distinct eigenvalues of the Jacobi operators, α and β=4α≠0, are given. The former has multiplicity two and is a double root of the minimal polynomial of the Jacobi operators.     

Complementary regioselective esterification of non-reducing oligosaccharides catalyzed by different hydrolases

The enzymatic transesterification of several tri- and tetrasaccharides with vinyl laurate is described. The lipases from Candida antarctica B (Novozym 435) and Thermomyces lanuginosus (Lipozyme TL IM) and the alkaline protease from Bacillus licheniformis (subtilisin Carlsberg) have been used with each carbohydrate to obtain different regioisomers. By using the sugars in their amorphous form, complete solubility is achieved in the reaction media (tert-butanol/pyridine mixtures for the lipases and pyridine for the protease) and high isolated yields of the corresponding monoesters are obtained. Good to excellent regioselectivity is observed for all the enzymes, showing a final complementary picture respect to the primary hydroxyls of the oligosaccharides studied.     

Modification of the surface state of rough substrates by two different varnishes and influence on the reflected light

Modification of the visual appearance when a rough surface is covered by a varnish is mostly attributed to the levelling of the substrate surface, which depends on the molecular weight of the varnish. The topography of varnished surfaces, however, has never been measured directly. Surfaces of varnishes applied over glass substrates of varying roughness were studied, therefore, using mechanical profilometry. Two different varnishes made with a low and a high molecular weight resin were studied. Both varnishes lower the r.m.s. roughness of the substrates and filter the high spatial frequencies. These results are amplified for the varnish containing the low molecular weight resin. The light reflected by the varnished samples is modelled from these topographical data. Its angular distribution, calculated from the probability density of slopes is presented, taking into account separately the air/varnish and the varnish/substrate interfaces. These analyses are presented in a back-scattering configuration. They show that varnishing significantly reduces the angular width of the reflected light and that this effect is magnified for the low molecular weight resin. Modelling furthermore shows that the influence of the roughness of the varnish/substrate interface is negligible in the total reflected light.     

A Genetic Search for Exploiting a Fuzzy Preference Model of Portfolio Problems with Public Projects

When an organization solves a portfolio problem with public projects evaluated by multiple criteria, in which the economic dimension is not essential or not well characterized, the classical methods are not useful. We propose a non-linear preference model developed from normative Value Theory and using fuzzy sets to model some sources of imprecision. This model can be considered as a generalization of the classical approaches. However, the optimization problem is very complex in order to be solved with non-linear programming techniques. Therefore, the model is exploited by an evolutionary algorithm, able to achieve a strong improvement of the quality of solution.