Proliferation dynamics of germinative zone cells in the intact and excitotoxically lesioned postnatal rat brain

Background  

The forebrain subventricular zone (SVZ)-olfactory bulb pathway and hippocampal subgranular zone (SGZ) generate neurons into adulthood in the mammalian brain. Neurogenesis increases after injury to the adult brain, but few studies examine the effect of injury on neural and glial precursors in the postnatal brain. To characterize the spatio-temporal dynamics of cell proliferation in the germinative zones, this study utilized a model of postnatal damage induced by NMDA injection in the right sensorimotor cortex at postnatal day 9.     

Experimental implementation of a concatenated quantum error-correcting code

Concatenated coding provides a general strategy to achieve the desired level of noise protection in quantum information processing. We report the implementation of a concatenated quantum error-correcting code able to correct phase errors with a strong correlated component. The experiment was performed using liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance techniques on a four spin subsystem of labeled crotonic acid. Our results show that concatenation between active and passive quantum error correction is a practical tool to handle realistic noise involving both independent and correlated errors.     

Complexation of thorium(IV) with acetate at variable temperatures

The complexation between Th(IV) and acetate in 1.05 mol kg(-1) NaClO4 was studied at variable temperatures (10, 25, 40, 55 and 70 degrees C). The formation constants of five successive complexes, Th(Ac)j(4-j)+ where Ac = CH3COO- and j = 1-5, and the molar enthalpies of complexation were determined by potentiometry and calorimetry. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (EXAFS) provided additional information on the complexes in solution. The effect of temperature on the stability of the complexes is discussed in terms of the electrostatic model.     

Enhanced accuracy by post-processing for finite element methods for hyperbolic equations

We consider the enhancement of accuracy, by means of a simple post-processing technique, for finite element approximations to transient hyperbolic equations. The post-processing is a convolution with a kernel whose support has measure of order one in the case of arbitrary unstructured meshes; if the mesh is locally translation invariant, the support of the kernel is a cube whose edges are of size of the order of only. For example, when polynomials of degree are used in the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method, and the exact solution is globally smooth, the DG method is of order in the -norm, whereas the post-processed approximation is of order ; if the exact solution is in only, in which case no order of convergence is available for the DG method, the post-processed approximation converges with order in , where is a subdomain over which the exact solution is smooth. Numerical results displaying the sharpness of the estimates are presented.

     

A study on shielding gas contamination in laser welding of non-ferrous alloys

Laser welding of non-ferrous alloys is a high-productivity and cost-effective joining technology, which gained an undoubted interest especially in aerospace, chemical and medical industry, where high strength and corrosion resistant mechanical parts are required. Unfortunately some of the most used non-ferrous alloys are highly reactive with respect to the components of the environmental atmosphere: oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and humidity. This reactivity leads to the formation of porosities and to oxides and nitrides inclusion, which are responsible for a decrease of ductility and strength in welded joints.According to this a good shielding technique of the weld pool is of primary importance in order to obtain sound beads and reliable manufacturings. This paper deals with the opportunity of simulating the shielding gas behavior by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics software in order to understand the relationship among the outlet position, the shielding gas type and its flow rate.A simulation activity was carried out in order to evaluate the behavior of shielding gas concentration surrounding the weld pool. The simulated welding environment was simplified without considering the presence and the effect of the plasma plume. The main results concern the shielding gas contamination prediction with respect to the distance from the beam-material interaction zone.     

Normal form maps for grazing bifurcations in n-dimensional piecewise-smooth dynamical systems

This paper presents a unified framework for performing local analysis of grazing bifurcations in n-dimensional piecewise-smooth systems of ODEs. These occur when a periodic orbit has a point of tangency with a smooth (n−1)-dimensional boundary dividing distinct regions in phase space where the vector field is smooth. It is shown under quite general circumstances that this leads to a normal-form map that contains to lowest order either a square-root or a (3/2)-type singularity according to whether the vector field is discontinuous or not at the grazing point. In particular, contrary to what has been reported in the literature, piecewise-linear local maps do not occur generically. First, the concept of a grazing bifurcation is carefully defined using appropriate non-degeneracy conditions. Next, complete expressions are derived for calculating the leading-order term in the normal form Poincaré map at a grazing bifurcation point in arbitrary systems, using the concept of a discontinuity mapping. Finally, the theory is compared with numerical examples including bilinear oscillators, a relay feedback controller and general third-order systems.     

Zur Stickstoffbestimmung in Sprengstoffen von der Konstitution der Salpeters?ureester

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Neuroprotection from NMDA excitotoxic lesion by Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase gene delivery to the postnatal rat brain by a modular protein vector

Background  

Superoxide mediated oxidative stress is a key neuropathologic mechanism in acute central nervous system injuries. We have analyzed the neuroprotective efficacy of the transient overexpression of antioxidant enzyme Cu/Zn Superoxide dismutase (SOD) after excitotoxic injury to the immature rat brain by using a recently constructed modular protein vector for non-viral gene delivery termed NLSCt. For this purpose, animals were injected with the NLSCt vector carrying the Cu/Zn SOD or the control GFP transgenes 2 hours after intracortical N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) administration, and daily functional evaluation was performed. Moreover, 3 days after, lesion volume, neuronal degeneration and nitrotyrosine immunoreactivity were evaluated.     

Electronics with and on paper

Today there is a strong interest in the scientific and industrial community concerning the use of biopolymers for electronic applications, driven mainly by low‐cost and disposable applications. Adding to this interest, we must recognise the importance of the dream of wireless auto‐sustained and low‐energy‐consumption electronics. This dream can be fulfilled by cellulose paper, the lightest and the cheapest known substrate material, as well as the Earth's major biopolymer and of tremendous global economic importance. Most of the paper used up to now is optimised in terms of the required mechanical and physical properties to be used as the support of inks of different origins. In the future, specific electronic heterogeneous paper sheets should be fabricated aiming to get paper fibers with required bulk and surface functionalities, proper water/vapour barrier, size and diameter/thickness of the fibrils and full paper thickness. This will be the function of components/devices to be incorporated/integrated such as thin‐film transistors, complementary metal oxide semiconductor devices, passive electronic components (resistances, inductors and capacitors), memory transistors, electrochromics and thin‐film paper batteries. (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)