Evaluation of Cocaine Effect on Endogenous Metabolites of HepG2 Cells Using Targeted Metabolomics

Cocaine toxicity has been a subject of study because cocaine is one of the most common and potent drugs of abuse. In the current study the effect of cocaine on human liver cancer cell line (HepG2) was assessed. Cocaine toxicity (IC50) on HepG2 cells was experimentally calculated using an XTT assay at 2.428 mM. The metabolic profile of HepG2 cells was further evaluated to investigate the cytotoxic activity of cocaine at 2 mM at three different time points. Cell medium and intracellular material samples were analyzed with a validated HILIC-MS/MS method for targeted metabolomics on an ACQUITY Amide column in gradient mode with detection on a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer in multiple reaction monitoring. About 106 hydrophilic metabolites from different metabolic pathways were monitored. Multivariate analysis clearly separated the studied groups (cocaine-treated and control samples) and revealed potential biomarkers in the extracellular and intracellular samples. A predominant effect of cocaine administration on alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolic pathway was observed. Moreover, taurine and hypotaurine metabolism were found to be affected in cocaine-treated cells. Targeted metabolomics managed to reveal metabolic changes upon cocaine administration, however deciphering the exact cocaine cytotoxic mechanism is still challenging.     

Investigation of proper modeling of very dense granular flows in the recirculation system of CFBs

The aim of this paper is the development of new models and/or the improvement of existing numerical models, used for simulating granular flow in CFB (circulating fluidized bed) recirculation systems. Most recent models follow the TFM (two-fluid model) methodology, but they cannot effectively simulate the inter-particle friction forces in the recirculation system, because the respective stress tensor does not incorporate compressibility of flow due to change of effective particle density. As a consequence, the induced normal and shear stresses are not modeled appropriately during the flow of the granular phase in the CFB recirculation system. The failure of conventional models, such as that of von Mises/Coulomb, is mainly caused by false approximation of the yield criterion which is not applicable to the CFB recirculation system. The present work adopts an alternative yield function, used for the first time in TFM Eulerian modeling. The proposed model is based on the Pitman–Schaeffer–Gray–Stiles yield criterion. Both the temporal deformation of the solid granular phase and the repose angle that the granular phase forms are more accurately simulated by this model. The numerical results of the proposed model agree well with experimental data, implying that frictional forces are efficiently simulated by the new model.     

Surface-plasmon-assisted guiding of broadband slow and subwavelength light in air

A class of axially uniform waveguides is introduced, employing a new mechanism to guide light inside a low-index dielectric material without the use of photonic band gap, and simultaneously exhibiting subwavelength modal size and very slow group velocity over an unusually large frequency bandwidth. Their basis is the presence of plasmonic modes on the interfaces between dielectric regions and the flat unpatterned surface of a bulk metallic substrate. These novel waveguides allow for easy broadband coupling and exhibit absorption losses limited only by the intrinsic loss of the metal.