Hyaluronic Acid: Its Role in Voice

The extracellular matrix (ECM), once regarded simply as a structural scaffold, is now recognized as an important modulator of cellular behavior and function. One component that plays a prominent role in this process is hyaluronic acid (HA)--a molecule found in many different tissues. Research into the roles of HA indicates that it plays a key role in tissue viscosity, shock absorption, and space filling. Specifically, research into the role of HA in laryngology indicates that it has profound effects on the structure and viscosity of vocal folds. This article provides an introduction to the structure and biological functions of HA and its importance in voice. In addition, an overview of the pharmaceutical applications of HA is discussed.     

Vocal Nodules and Laryngeal Morphology

Our purpose was to study the occurrence of vocal fold nodules under conditions of habitual vocal abuse associated with increased laryngeal muscle tension, to identify the existence of a relationship between vocal nodules and laryngeal morphology. We studied one group of 30 subjects with vocal nodules, 18 to 50 years old, who were compared with two control groups, one of females and one of males, consisting of 30 subjects each. The parameters evaluated were: type of vocal folds coaptation, glottic proportion (GP) and abduction angle (AA), obtained by videotelelaryngoscopy. In the nodules group, the larynges presented a mean value of GP similar to that of the female group, both of which were lower than the mean GP value of the male group. On the other hand, the mean AA was lower than the one in the female group, and closer to the one in the male group. We concluded that vocal nodules were present only in larynges with a predominantly young female morphology, with functional limitations of abduction.     

Effects of photoactivated titanium dioxide nanopowders and coating on planktonic and biofilm growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

We exploited the ability of photocatalytic titanium dioxide (TiO(2)) as an agent for the biofilm control. Two photocatalytic systems were investigated: a 3 g L(-1) suspension of TiO(2) nanopowder in demineralized water and glass slides coated with a TiO(2) thin film, achieved by sol-gel deposition. A running protocol for the photoactivation of TiO(2) was set up using the dye rhodamine B. The microorganisms studied were Pseudomonas stutzeri, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and a Bacillus cereus-group as planktonic cells. P. aeruginosa biofilms were also studied at both the solid-liquid and the solid-air interface. The TiO(2) nanopowder produced 1-log reduction of Bacillus sp. planktonic cells in 24 h, 2-log reduction of P. stutzeri planktonic cells in 30 min and 1-log reduction of P. aeruginosa planktonic cells in 2 h compared with non-photo-activated TiO(2). TiO(2) thin film produced almost a complete eradication of P. aeruginosa planktonic cells (initial concentration 10(8) cells mL(-1)) in 24 h compared to a 3-log reduction caused by UV-A light alone. In contrast, neither the photocatalytic treatment with TiO(2) film nor that with TiO(2) nanopowder had any effect on P. aeruginosa biofilms at all the interfaces investigated. Possible explanations for these findings, and for the discrepancy between this work and literature data, are discussed.     

Gold on carbon: one billion catalysts under a single label

Despite the wide use of carbon materials as supports for heterogeneous catalysis, generic labels are often used to describe the catalysts, i.e. Au/C, making comparisons between different Au/C catalysts difficult even for the same application. A variety of structures and chemically modified surfaces are in fact available, making gold nanoparticles supported on carbonaceous supports extremely versatile catalysts.     

Stable Projective Homotopy Theory of Modules,Tails, and Koszul Duality

A contravariant functor is constructed from the stable projective homotopy theory of finitely generated graded modules over a finite-dimensional algebra to the derived category of its Yoneda algebra modulo finite complexes of modules of finite length. If the algebra is Koszul with a noetherian Yoneda algebra, then the constructed functor is a duality between triangulated categories. If the algebra is self-injective, then stable homotopy theory specializes trivially to stable module theory. In particular, for an exterior algebra the constructed duality specializes to (a contravariant analog of) the Bernstein–Gelfand–Gelfand correspondence.     

Minimizing weighted earliness–tardiness on a single machine with a common due date using quadratic models

In this paper we study the problem of minimizing weighted earliness and tardiness on a single machine when all the jobs share the same due date. We propose two quadratic integer programming models for solving both cases of unrestricted and restricted due dates, an auxiliary model based on unconstrained quadratic integer programming and an algorithmic scheme for solving each instance, according to its size and characteristics, in the most efficient way. The scheme is tested on a set of well-known test problems. By combining the solutions of the three models we prove the optimality of the solutions obtained for most of the problems. For large instances, although optimality cannot be proved, we actually obtain optimal solutions for all the tested instances.     

Coibacins A-D, Antileishmanial Marine Cyanobacterial Polyketides with Intriguing Biosynthetic Origins

Four unsaturated polyketide lactone derivatives, coibacins A-D, were isolated from a Panamanian marine cyanobacterium, cf. Oscillatoria sp. The two different types of termini observed in these co-occurring metabolites, either a methyl cyclopropyl ring as seen in curacin A or a methyl vinyl chloride similar to that observed in the jamaicamides, suggest an intriguing flexibility in the "beta branch" forming biosynthetic process. The coibacins possess selective antileishmanial activity as well as potent anti-inflammatory activity.     

Implicit tracking for multi-fluid simulations

In this work, we introduce a new method for tracking the interfaces among several immiscible fluids. To advance the solution in time, we use a MUSCL-type scheme which couples a partial volume representation with a level set one to build the numerical fluxes. In particular we show the positiveness and conservation properties of this method. Some numerical tests are given to demonstrate the conservativeness and the performances of our method.