Functionalization of Biodegradable Polyester for Tissue Engineering Applications

Summary: Chemical modification of polymer surface may potentially be used to create smart materials that can guide cellular adhesion, proliferation and maintenance of specific expression of molecules. The microbial polyester poly (3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) has been attracted attention as promising material for applications in tissue engineering. In this work, a wet-chemical method, base ethylenediamine aminolysis, was performed to improve the adhesion of chondrocytes isolated from human articular cartilage to PHB films. The effects of chemical treatment on PHB films was evaluated by following changes in morphology and surface chemical composition using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), respectively. While the effect on cells morphology was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The treatment with ethylenediamine did not change significantly the morphology of the structures of PHB films surface. However, the roughness of the aminolyzed films was slightly higher. The introduction of nitrogen-containing groups was confirmed by XPS. In vitro experiments indicated that the surface modification did not have toxic effects in cells, since they could adhere and proliferate on modified PHB films. It was observed that long-time treatment improved ability of PHB films to support cell growth, which could be accounted to physicochemical and topological effects.     

Audiogram of a harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) measured with narrow-band frequency-modulated signals

The underwater hearing sensitivity of a two-year-old harbor porpoise was measured in a pool using standard psycho-acoustic techniques. The go/no-go response paradigm and up-down staircase psychometric method were used. Auditory sensitivity was measured by using narrow-band frequency-modulated signals having center frequencies between 250 Hz and 180 kHz. The resulting audiogram was U-shaped with the range of best hearing (defined as 10 dB within maximum sensitivity) from 16 to 140 kHz, with a reduced sensitivity around 64 kHz. Maximum sensitivity (about 33 dB re 1 microPa) occurred between 100 and 140 kHz. This maximum sensitivity range corresponds with the peak frequency of echolocation pulses produced by harbor porpoises (120-130 kHz). Sensitivity falls about 10 dB per octave below 16 kHz and falls off sharply above 140 kHz (260 dB per octave). Compared to a previous audiogram of this species (Andersen, 1970), the present audiogram shows less sensitive hearing between 2 and 8 kHz and more sensitive hearing between 16 and 180 kHz. This harbor porpoise has the highest upper-frequency limit of all odontocetes investigated. The time it took for the porpoise to move its head 22 cm after the signal onset (movement time) was also measured. It increased from about 1 s at 10 dB above threshold, to about 1.5 s at threshold.     

Charge transfer excited states of hydroxyl ion impurities in alkali halide crystals

A theoretical investigation of the u.v. absorption anisotropy factor g and the transition energies of OH^? molecule in alkali halide crystals is presented in terms of a charge transfer model and the free OH^? ground wave-function. Comparison of calculated and observed transition energies for OH^? in KBr and NaCl shows reasonable agreement between theory and experiment. For KCl:OH^?, a reasonable result for the transition energy is also obtained through a confinement of the free K4s function used for the one-electron transfer function. The model fails, however, to explain the value of about 0·3 for the anisotropy factor which is observed in a number of host crystals.     

Heterogeneous in vivo MR images of soft tissue tumors: guide to gross specimen sampling.

Twelve soft tissue tumors preoperatively studied with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging contained areas of inhomogeneous intralesional signal intensity. The pathologist's selection of biopsy sites from gross specimens was based on specific MR images selected by a radiologist and depended on close cooperation between the radiologist and pathologist. The histopathology so sampled, further depended on the lesion's size, careful gross specimen orientation, discrete sampling, and a specially developed Grid Analysis technique. Our initial experience indicates that (1) histology may vary within different and often neighboring sites of a single soft tissue lesion; (2) that such variability is common in soft tissue tumors; (3) that histological variability within different sites of a single lesion influences signal heterogeneity; and (4) that although differing MR signal intensities per se are not tissue specific, MR may enhance the histopathological accuracy of pathologists who can be directed to particular gross specimen sites by magnetic resonance images. To our knowledge such a specific, detailed effort has not been made.     

Multi-staging of Jacobi relaxation to improved smoothing properties of multigrid methods for steady Euler equations

Multi-stage versions of Jacobi relaxation are studied for use in multigrid methods for steady Euler equations. It is shown that these multi-stage versions allow much more general and much more efficient multigrid methods than possible with classic relaxation methods.     

Dyadic Diaphony of Digital Nets Over ℤ<Subscript>2</Subscript>

The dyadic diaphony, introduced by Hellekalek and Leeb, is a quantitative measure for the irregularity of distribution of point sets in the unit-cube. In this paper we study the dyadic diaphony of digital nets over ℤ₂. We prove an upper bound for the dyadic diaphony of nets and show that the convergence order is best possible. This follows from a relation between the dyadic diaphony and the discrepancy. In order to investigate the case where the number of points is small compared to the dimension we introduce the limiting dyadic diaphony, which is defined as the limiting case where the dimension tends to infinity. We obtain a tight upper and lower bound and we compare this result with the limiting dyadic diaphony of a random sample.The first author is supported by the Australian Research Council under its Center of Excellence Program.The second author is supported by the Austrian Research Foundation (FWF), Project S 8305 and Project P17022-N12.