Polymer Scaffolds for Biomedical Applications in Peripheral Nerve Reconstruction

The nervous system is a significant part of the human body, and peripheral nerve injury caused by trauma can cause various functional disorders. When the broken end defect is large and cannot be repaired by direct suture, small gap sutures of nerve conduits can effectively replace nerve transplantation and avoid the side effect of donor area disorders. There are many choices for nerve conduits, and natural materials and synthetic polymers have their advantages. Among them, the nerve scaffold should meet the requirements of good degradability, biocompatibility, promoting axon growth, supporting axon expansion and regeneration, and higher cell adhesion. Polymer biological scaffolds can change some shortcomings of raw materials by using electrospinning filling technology and surface modification technology to make them more suitable for nerve regeneration. Therefore, polymer scaffolds have a substantial prospect in the field of biomedicine in future. This paper reviews the application of nerve conduits in the field of repairing peripheral nerve injury, and we discuss the latest progress of materials and fabrication techniques of these polymer scaffolds.     

A sharp‐interface immersed boundary framework for simulations of high‐speed inviscid compressible flows

A new finite‐volume flow solver based on the hybrid Cartesian immersed boundary (IB) framework is developed for the solution of high‐speed inviscid compressible flows. The IB method adopts a sharp‐interface approach, wherein the boundary conditions are enforced on the body geometry itself. A key component of the present solver is a novel reconstruction approach, in conjunction with inverse distance weighting, to compute the solutions in the vicinity of the solid‐fluid interface. We show that proposed reconstruction leads to second‐order spatial accuracy while also ensuring that the discrete conservation errors diminish linearly with grid refinement. Investigations of supersonic and hypersonic inviscid flows over different geometries are carried out for an extensive validation of the proposed flow solver. Studies on cylinder lift‐off and shape optimisation in supersonic flows further demonstrate the efficacy of the flow solver for computations with moving and shape‐changing geometries. These studies conclusively highlight the capability of the proposed IB methodology as a promising alternative for robust and accurate computations of compressible fluid flows on nonconformal Cartesian meshes.     

Comparison of two-dimensional integration methods for shape reconstruction from gradient data

As a requisite and key step in some gradient-based measurement techniques, the reconstruction of the shape, more generally the scalar potential, from the measured gradient data has been studied for many years. In this work, three types of two-dimensional integration methods are compared under various conditions. The merits and drawbacks of each integration method are consequently revealed to provide suggestions in selection of a proper integration method for a particular application.     

The adversary degree-associated reconstruction number of double-brooms

A vertex-deleted subgraph of a graph G is a card. A dacard specifies the degree of the deleted vertex along with the card. The adversary degree-associated reconstruction number $\mathrm{adrn}(G)$ is the least k such that every set of k dacards determines G. We determine $\mathrm{adrn}(D_{m,n,p})$, where the double-broom $D_{m,n,p}$ with $p\ge 2$ is the tree with $m+n+p$ vertices obtained from a path with p vertices by appending m leaves at one end and n leaves at the other end. We determine $\mathrm{adrn}(D_{m,n,p})$ for all $m,n,p$. For $2\le m\le n$, usually $\mathrm{adrn}(D_{m,n,p})=m+2$, except $\mathrm{adrn}(D_{m,m+1,p})=m+1$ and $\mathrm{adrn}(D_{m,m+2,p})=m+3$. There are exceptions when $(m,n)=(2,3)$ or $p=4$. For $m=1$ the usual value is 4, with exceptions when $p\in \{2,3\}$ or $n=2$.     

Structural and immunogenicity analysis of reconstructed ancestral and consensus P48/45 for cross-species anti malaria transmission-blocking vaccine

The development of the anti-malaria vaccine holds a promising future in malaria control. One of the anti-malaria vaccine strategies known as the transmission-blocking vaccine (TBV) is to inhibit the parasite transmission between humans and mosquitoes by targeting the parasite gametocyte. Previously, we found that P48/45 included in the 6-Cysteine protein family shared by Plasmodium sp. We also detected vaccine properties possessed by all human-infecting Plasmodium and could be used as a cross-species anti-malaria vaccine. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of P48/45 through the ancestral and consensus reconstruction approach. P48/45 phylogenetic and time tree analysis was done by RAXML and BEAST2. GRASP server and Ugene software were used to reconstruct ancestral and consensus sequences, respectively. The protein structural prediction was made by using a psipred and Rosetta program. Each protein characteristic of P48/45 was analyzed by assessing hydrophobicity and Post-Translational Modification sites. Meanwhile, the Epitope sequence for B-cell, T-cell, and HLA was determined using an immunoinformatics approach. Lastly, molecular docking simulation was done to determine native binding interactions of P48/45-P230. The result showed a distinct protein characteristic of ancestral and consensus sequences. The immunogenicity analysis revealed the number of epitopes in the ancestral sequence is greater than the consensus sequence. The study also found a conserved epitope located in the binding site and consists of specific Post-Translational Modification sites. Hence, our research provides detailed insight into ancestral and consensus P48/45 efficacy for the cross-species anti-malaria vaccine.     

Nonuniform sampling and maximum entropy reconstruction applied to the accurate measurement of residual dipolar couplings

Residual dipolar couplings (RDC) provide important global restraints for accurate structure determination by NMR. We show that nonuniform sampling in combination with maximum entropy reconstruction (MaxEnt) is a promising strategy for accelerating and potentially enhancing the acquisition of RDC spectra. Using MaxEnt-processed spectra of nonuniformly sampled data sets that are reduced up to one fifth relative to uniform sampling, accurate 13C'-13Calpha RDCs can be obtained that agree with an RMS of 0.67 Hz with those derived from uniformly sampled, Fourier transformed spectra. While confirming that frequency errors in MaxEnt spectra are very slight, an unexpected class of systematic errors was found to occur in the 6th significant figure of 13C' chemical shifts of doublets obtained by MaxEnt reconstruction. We show that this error stems from slight line shape perturbations and predict it should be encountered in other nonlinear spectral estimation algorithms. In the case of MaxEnt reconstruction, the error can easily be rendered systematic by straightforward optimization of MaxEnt reconstruction parameters and self-cancels in obtaining RDCs from nonuniformly sampled, MaxEnt reconstructed spectra.     

3D MRI of non-Gaussian (3)He gas diffusion in the rat lung

In (3)He magnetic resonance images of pulmonary air spaces, the confining architecture of the parenchymal tissue results in a non-Gaussian distribution of signal phase that non-exponentially attenuates image intensity as diffusion weighting is increased. Here, two approaches previously used for the analysis of non-Gaussian effects in the lung are compared and related using diffusion-weighted (3)He MR images of mechanically ventilated rats. One approach is model-based and was presented by Yablonskiy et al., while the other approach utilizes the second order decay contribution that is predicted from the cumulant expansion theorem. Total lung coverage is achieved using a hybrid 3D pulse sequence that combines conventional phase encoding with sparse radial sampling for efficient gas usage. This enables the acquisition of nine 3D images using a total of only approximately 1 L of hyperpolarized (3)He gas. Diffusion weighting ranges from 0 s/cm(2) to 40 s/cm(2). Results show that the non-Gaussian effects of (3)He gas diffusion in healthy rat lungs are directly attributed to the anisotropic geometry of lung microstructure as predicted by the Yablonskiy model, and that quantitative analysis over the entire lung can be reliably repeated in time-course studies of the same animal.     

低As压退火对GaAs(001)表面形貌与重构的影响

在低As压条件下退火处理原子级平坦的GaAs(001) βup 2(2×4)重构表面. 利用扫描隧道显微镜对表面进行研究, 发现随着低As压退火时间的延长, 表面形貌与表面重构的演变同步进行. 表面形貌经历了从有序平坦转变为无序平坦, 然后逐渐恢复到有序平坦状态的过程. 表面重构则由βup 2(2×4)重构逐渐转变为(2×6)重构, 然后再转变为锯齿状的(2×6)重构, 并且表面形貌与表面重构的演变存在一定的相互关系.