18,206 research outputs found
Focus on the Physics of Cancer
Despite the spectacular achievements of molecular biology in the second half
of the twentieth century and the crucial advances it permitted in cancer
research, the fight against cancer has brought some disillusions. It is
nowadays more and more apparent that getting a global picture of the very
diverse and interlinked aspects of cancer development necessitates, in synergy
with these achievements, other perspectives and investigating tools. In this
undertaking, multidisciplinary approaches that include quantitative sciences in
general and physics in particular play a crucial role. This `focus on'
collection contains 19 articles representative of the diversity and
state-of-the-art of the contributions that physics can bring to the field of
cancer research.Comment: Invited editorial review for the `Focus on the Physics of Cancer'
published by the New journal of Physics in 2011--201
Review of the Synergies Between Computational Modeling and Experimental Characterization of Materials Across Length Scales
With the increasing interplay between experimental and computational
approaches at multiple length scales, new research directions are emerging in
materials science and computational mechanics. Such cooperative interactions
find many applications in the development, characterization and design of
complex material systems. This manuscript provides a broad and comprehensive
overview of recent trends where predictive modeling capabilities are developed
in conjunction with experiments and advanced characterization to gain a greater
insight into structure-properties relationships and study various physical
phenomena and mechanisms. The focus of this review is on the intersections of
multiscale materials experiments and modeling relevant to the materials
mechanics community. After a general discussion on the perspective from various
communities, the article focuses on the latest experimental and theoretical
opportunities. Emphasis is given to the role of experiments in multiscale
models, including insights into how computations can be used as discovery tools
for materials engineering, rather than to "simply" support experimental work.
This is illustrated by examples from several application areas on structural
materials. This manuscript ends with a discussion on some problems and open
scientific questions that are being explored in order to advance this
relatively new field of research.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, review article accepted for publication in J.
Mater. Sc
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Multi-scale cellular engineering: From molecules to organ-on-a-chip.
Recent technological advances in cellular and molecular engineering have provided new insights into biology and enabled the design, manufacturing, and manipulation of complex living systems. Here, we summarize the state of advances at the molecular, cellular, and multi-cellular levels using experimental and computational tools. The areas of focus include intrinsically disordered proteins, synthetic proteins, spatiotemporally dynamic extracellular matrices, organ-on-a-chip approaches, and computational modeling, which all have tremendous potential for advancing fundamental and translational science. Perspectives on the current limitations and future directions are also described, with the goal of stimulating interest to overcome these hurdles using multi-disciplinary approaches
Biophotonic Tools in Cell and Tissue Diagnostics.
In order to maintain the rapid advance of biophotonics in the U.S. and enhance our competitiveness worldwide, key measurement tools must be in place. As part of a wide-reaching effort to improve the U.S. technology base, the National Institute of Standards and Technology sponsored a workshop titled "Biophotonic tools for cell and tissue diagnostics." The workshop focused on diagnostic techniques involving the interaction between biological systems and photons. Through invited presentations by industry representatives and panel discussion, near- and far-term measurement needs were evaluated. As a result of this workshop, this document has been prepared on the measurement tools needed for biophotonic cell and tissue diagnostics. This will become a part of the larger measurement road-mapping effort to be presented to the Nation as an assessment of the U.S. Measurement System. The information will be used to highlight measurement needs to the community and to facilitate solutions
Taking aim at moving targets in computational cell migration
Cell migration is central to the development and maintenance of multicellular organisms. Fundamental understanding of cell migration can, for example, direct novel therapeutic strategies to control invasive tumor cells. However, the study of cell migration yields an overabundance of experimental data that require demanding processing and analysis for results extraction. Computational methods and tools have therefore become essential in the quantification and modeling of cell migration data. We review computational approaches for the key tasks in the quantification of in vitro cell migration: image pre-processing, motion estimation and feature extraction. Moreover, we summarize the current state-of-the-art for in silico modeling of cell migration. Finally, we provide a list of available software tools for cell migration to assist researchers in choosing the most appropriate solution for their needs
Ensemble Analysis of Angiogenic Growth in Three-Dimensional Microfluidic Cell Cultures
We demonstrate ensemble three-dimensional cell cultures and quantitative analysis of angiogenic growth from uniform endothelial monolayers. Our approach combines two key elements: a micro-fluidic assay that enables parallelized angiogenic growth instances subject to common extracellular conditions, and an automated image acquisition and processing scheme enabling high-throughput, unbiased quantification of angiogenic growth. Because of the increased throughput of the assay in comparison to existing three-dimensional morphogenic assays, statistical properties of angiogenic growth can be reliably estimated. We used the assay to evaluate the combined effects of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and the signaling lipid sphingoshine-1-phosphate (S1P). Our results show the importance of S1P in amplifying the angiogenic response in the presence of VEGF gradients. Furthermore, the application of S1P with VEGF gradients resulted in angiogenic sprouts with higher aspect ratio than S1P with background levels of VEGF, despite reduced total migratory activity. This implies a synergistic effect between the growth factors in promoting angiogenic activity. Finally, the variance in the computed angiogenic metrics (as measured by ensemble standard deviation) was found to increase linearly with the ensemble mean. This finding is consistent with stochastic agent-based mathematical models of angiogenesis that represent angiogenic growth as a series of independent stochastic cell-level decisions
Ensemble Analysis of Angiogenic Growth in Three-Dimensional Microfluidic Cell Cultures
We demonstrate ensemble three-dimensional cell cultures and quantitative analysis of angiogenic growth from uniform endothelial monolayers. Our approach combines two key elements: a micro-fluidic assay that enables parallelized angiogenic growth instances subject to common extracellular conditions, and an automated image acquisition and processing scheme enabling high-throughput, unbiased quantification of angiogenic growth. Because of the increased throughput of the assay in comparison to existing three-dimensional morphogenic assays, statistical properties of angiogenic growth can be reliably estimated. We used the assay to evaluate the combined effects of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and the signaling lipid sphingoshine-1-phosphate (S1P). Our results show the importance of S1P in amplifying the angiogenic response in the presence of VEGF gradients. Furthermore, the application of S1P with VEGF gradients resulted in angiogenic sprouts with higher aspect ratio than S1P with background levels of VEGF, despite reduced total migratory activity. This implies a synergistic effect between the growth factors in promoting angiogenic activity. Finally, the variance in the computed angiogenic metrics (as measured by ensemble standard deviation) was found to increase linearly with the ensemble mean. This finding is consistent with stochastic agent-based mathematical models of angiogenesis that represent angiogenic growth as a series of independent stochastic cell-level decisions.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (grant #0735997
Flooding through the lens of mobile phone activity
Natural disasters affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide every year.
Emergency response efforts depend upon the availability of timely information,
such as information concerning the movements of affected populations. The
analysis of aggregated and anonymized Call Detail Records (CDR) captured from
the mobile phone infrastructure provides new possibilities to characterize
human behavior during critical events. In this work, we investigate the
viability of using CDR data combined with other sources of information to
characterize the floods that occurred in Tabasco, Mexico in 2009. An impact map
has been reconstructed using Landsat-7 images to identify the floods. Within
this frame, the underlying communication activity signals in the CDR data have
been analyzed and compared against rainfall levels extracted from data of the
NASA-TRMM project. The variations in the number of active phones connected to
each cell tower reveal abnormal activity patterns in the most affected
locations during and after the floods that could be used as signatures of the
floods - both in terms of infrastructure impact assessment and population
information awareness. The representativeness of the analysis has been assessed
using census data and civil protection records. While a more extensive
validation is required, these early results suggest high potential in using
cell tower activity information to improve early warning and emergency
management mechanisms.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Global Humanitarian Technologies Conference (GHTC)
201
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