Hydrogels Containing Gradients in Vascular Density Reveal Dose-Dependent Role of Angiocrine Cues on Stem Cell Behavior

Biomaterials that replicate patterns of microenvironmental signals from the stem cell niche offer the potential to refine platforms to regulate stem cell behavior. While significant emphasis has been placed on understanding the effects of biophysical and biochemical cues on stem cell fate, vascular-derived or angiocrine cues offer an important alternative signaling axis for biomaterial-based stem cell platforms. Elucidating dose-dependent relationships between angiocrine cues and stem cell fate are largely intractable in animal models and 2D cell cultures. In this study, microfluidic mixing devices are leveraged to generate 3D hydrogels containing lateral gradients in vascular density alongside murine hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). Regional differences in vascular density can be generated via embossed gradients in cell, matrix, or growth factor density. HSCs co-cultured alongside vascular gradients reveal spatial patterns of HSC phenotype in response to angiocrine signals. Notably, decreased Akt signaling in high vessel density regions led to increased expansion of lineage-positive hematopoietic cells. This approach offers a combinatorial tool to rapidly screen a continuum of microenvironments with varying vascular, biophysical, and biochemical cues to reveal the influence of local angiocrine signals on HSC fate.     

MAAS: A mobile cloud assisted architecture for handling emergency situations

Recent advancements in the area of Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) have significantly contributed towards assisting mankind to handle varied types of emergency situations that may arise as a result of different natural calamities like earthquakes, floods, fire, etc, which may cause huge damage to public property and result in loss of wealth of the nation. In this work, we have proposed a mobile cloud assisted architecture that supports the multicloud and hybrid‐cloud environments, together with Cloud Probing Service (CPS) and Cloud Ranking Service (CRS). The proposed algorithm consumes data from the sensor nodes and offloads the data to the most suitable cloud. A three‐layered architecture has been proposed, and the anchor points facilitate in the creation of the interface between the different layers. The simulation results indicate that the proposed mobile cloud assisted architecture for handling emergency situations (MAAS) approach performs better than the baseline algorithms.     

Assignment of 13C resonances of a nematic liquid crystal using off-magic angle spinning

A novel method for assigning the resonances in the 13C NMR spectrum of a static liquid crystalline sample in its nematic phase is proposed. The method is based on the fact that the carbon chemical shifts in the isotropic phase and in the oriented phase under static and off-magic angle spinning (OMAS) conditions are uniquely related by the tensorial property of the CSA tensor, requiring just one OMAS spectrum and the assignment in the isotropic phase. A computational procedure is proposed to take into account deviations arising out of non-ideal experimental conditions and the assignments are made by identifying the minimum in the differences in the frequencies between calculated and experimental line positions. Practical implementation of the method has also been demonstrated in the case of the liquid crystal N-(4-ethoxybenzylidene)-4-n-butylaniline.     

Bacterial aerobic synthesis of nanocrystalline magnetite

The synthesis of iron oxide nanoparticles of the predominantly magnetite phase by the reaction of aqueous iron complexes with the bacterium, Actinobacter spp., is described. This reaction occurs at room temperature and under aerobic conditions, resulting in the formation of superparamagnetic magnetite.     

Hard X-ray Spectroscopic Nano-Imaging of Hierarchical Functional Materials at Work

Heterogeneous catalysts often consist of an active metal (oxide) in close contact with a support material and various promoter elements. Although macroscopic properties, such as activity, selectivity and stability, can be assessed with catalyst performance testing, the development of relevant, preferably quantitative structure–performance relationships require the use of advanced characterisation methods. Spectroscopic imaging in the hard X-ray region with nanometer-scale resolution has very recently emerged as a powerful approach to elucidate the hierarchical structure and related chemistry of catalytic solids in action under realistic reaction conditions. This X-ray-based chemical imaging method benefits from the combination of high resolution (∼30 nm) with large X-ray penetration and depth of focus, and the possibility for probing large areas with mosaic imaging. These capabilities make it possible to obtain spatial and temporal information on chemical changes in catalytic solids as well as a wide variety of other functional materials, such as fuel cells and batteries, in their full complexity and integrity. In this concept article we provide details on the method and setup of full-field hard X-ray spectroscopic imaging, illustrate its potential for spatiotemporal chemical imaging by making use of recent showcases, outline the pros and cons of this experimental approach and discuss some future directions for hierarchical functional materials research.     

A coplanar X-band AlGaN/GaN power amplifier MMIC on s.i. SiC substrate

This work presents a two-stage high-power amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) operating between 9 GHz and 11 GHz based on a fully integrated AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology on s.i. SiC substrate and is suitable for radar applications. The MMIC device with a chip size of 4.5/spl times/3 mm/sup 2/ yields a linear gain of 20 dB and a maximum pulsed saturated output power of 13.4 W at 10 GHz equivalent to 3.3 W/mm at V/sub DS/=35V, 10% duty cycle, and a gain compression level of 5 dB. Further, dc reliability data are given for the MMIC HEMT technology.     

BER evaluation and rate matching attribute selection for QoS support on the UMTS downlink

In UMTS technology, Coded Composite Transport Channels (CCTrCh-s) are used to carry multiple Transport Channels (TrCh-s) in parallel on (usually) one physical layer connection. Rate Matching Attributes (RMA-s) are used to share the CCTrCh resources among the transport channels. We consider I transport channels on the downlink of a UMTS network, with RMA values RMA ₁,RMA ₂,…,RMA _I . The QoS experienced by the multiplexed connections depends on the RMA values used. We derive analytical expressions for the Bit Error Probabilities (BER-s) seen by each uncoded TrCh in the multiplex when transmitted over an AWGN and a multipath channel. Simulations indicate that the expressions are very accurate. Next, we derive analytical expressions for bounds on the per-channel bit error probabilities seen when convolutional coding is employed by each channel and the multiplex is transmitted over an AWGN and a multipath channel, respectively. The derivation of these analytical expressions is the main contribution of this paper. Further, we use the expressions to obtain simple procedures that provide the RMA values required to achieve a target set of BER-s for a specified signal-to-noise ratio. The results of this paper indicate how differentiated QoS may be provided while maintaining high spectral efficiency. R. M. Karthik is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Centre for Electronics Design and Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He received his B. E. (Electronics and Communication Engineering) from Government College of Technology, Coimbatore, India in 1998 and M. E. (Applied Electronics) from College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University, India in 2000. His current research interests include communication networks and QoS in UMTS Networks. Joy Kuri has a B.E. in Electronics and Telecommunication engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. After a year in the industry, he joined the M.E. program in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science. He went on to receive a Ph.D. from the same department at IISc in 1995. Subsequently, he spent two years at Ecole Polytechnique, University of Montreal, Canada and one and a half years in INRS-Telecommunications, University of Quebec, Canada as a Research Associate. Since 1999 he has been with the Centre for Electronics Design and Technology, Indian Institute of Science, where he is currently Associate Professor. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of modelling, analysis and control of communication networks and stochastic systems. He is co-author of the book Communication Networking: An Analytical Approach by Kumar, Manjunath and Kuri, published by Morgan Kaufman/Elsevier.     

Numerical analysis of an explicit approximation scheme for the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation

The Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation describes magnetic behavior in ferromagnetic materials. Construction of numerical strategies to approximate weak solutions for this equation is made difficult by its top order nonlinearity and nonconvex constraint. In this paper, we discuss necessary scaling of numerical parameters and provide a refined convergence result for the scheme first proposed by Alouges and Jaisson (2006). As an application, we numerically study discrete finite time blowup in two dimensions.