Evaluation of laser bacterial anti-fouling of transparent nanocrystalline yttria-stabilized-zirconia cranial implant.

Background and objectiveThe development and feasibility of a novel nanocrystalline yttria-stabilized-zirconia (nc-YSZ) cranial implant has been recently established. The purpose of what we now call "window to the brain (WttB)" implant (or platform), is to improve patient care by providing a technique for delivery and/or collection of light into/from the brain, on demand, over large areas, and on a chronically recurring basis without the need for repeated craniotomies. WttB holds the transformative potential for enhancing light-based diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety of brain pathologies including cerebral edema, traumatic brain injury, stroke, glioma, and neurodegenerative diseases. However, bacterial adhesion to the cranial implant is the leading factor for biofilm formation (fouling), infection, and treatment failure. Escherichia coli (E. coli), in particular, is the most common isolate in gram-negative bacillary meningitis after cranial surgery or trauma. The transparency of our WttB implant may provide a unique opportunity for non-invasive treatment of bacterial infection under the implant using medical lasers.Study design/materials and methodsA drop of a diluted overnight culture of BL21-293 E. coli expressing luciferase was seeded between the nc-YSZ implant and the agar plate. This was followed by immediate irradiation with selected laser. After each laser treatment the nc-YSZ was removed, and cultures were incubated for 24 hours at 37 °C. The study examined continuous wave (CW) and pulsed wave (PW) modes of near-infrared (NIR) 810 nm laser wavelength with a power output ranging from 1 to 3 W. During irradiation, the temperature distribution of nc-YSZ surface was monitored using an infrared thermal camera. Relative luminescence unit (RLU) was used to evaluate the viability of bacteria after the NIR laser treatment.ResultsAnalysis of RLU suggests that the viability of E. coli biofilm formation was reduced with NIR laser treatment when compared to the control group (P < 0.01) and loss of viability depends on both laser fluence and operation mode (CW or PW). The results demonstrate that while CW laser reduces the biofilm formation more than PW laser with the same power, the higher surface temperature of the implant generated by CW laser limits its medical efficacy. In contrast, with the right parameters, PW laser produces a more moderate photothermal effect which can be equally effective at controlling bacterial growth.ConclusionsOur results show that E. coli biofilm formation across the thickness of the nc-YSZ implant can be disrupted using NIR laser treatment. The results of this in vitro study suggest that using nc-YSZ as a cranial implant in vivo may also allow for locally selective, non-invasive, chronic treatment of bacterial layers (fouling) that might form under cranial implants, without causing adverse thermal damage to the underlying host tissue when appropriate laser parameters are used. Lasers Surg. Med. 48:782-789, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Gluon mass generation without seagull divergences

Dynamical gluon mass generation has been traditionally plagued with seagull divergences, and all regularization procedures proposed over the years yield finite but scheme-dependent gluon masses. In this work we show how such divergences can be eliminated completely by virtue of a characteristic identity, valid in dimensional regularization. The ability to trigger the aforementioned identity hinges crucially on the particular Ansatz employed for the three-gluon vertex entering into the Schwinger-Dyson equation governing the gluon propagator. The use of the appropriate three-gluon vertex brings about an additional advantage: one obtains two separate (but coupled) integral equations, one for the effective charge and one for the gluon mass. This system of integral equations has a unique solution, which unambiguously determines these two quantities. Most notably, the effective charge freezes in the infrared, and the gluon mass displays power-law running in the ultraviolet, in agreement with earlier considerations.Comment: 37 pages, 9 figures; minor typos corrected and a few brief explanatory remarks adde

Characterization of ageing resistant transparent nanocrystalline yttria-stabilized zirconia implants.

The "Window to the Brain" is a transparent cranial implant under development, based on nanocrystalline yttria-stabilized zirconia (nc-YSZ) transparent ceramic material. Previous work has demonstrated the feasibility of this material to facilitate brain imaging over time, but the long-term stability of the material over decades in the body is unknown. In this study, the low-temperature degradation (LTD) of nc-YSZ of 3, 6, and 8 mol % yttria is compared before and after accelerated ageing treatments following ISO standards for assessing the ageing resistance of zirconia ceramics. After 100 hr of accelerated ageing (equivalent to many decades of ageing in the body), the samples do not show any signs of phase transformation to monoclinic by X-ray diffraction and micro-Raman spectroscopy. Moreover, the mechanical hardness of the samples did not decrease, and changes in optical transmittance from 500 to 1000 nm due to ageing treatments was minimal (below 3% for all samples), and unlikely to be due to phase transformation of surface crystals to monoclinic. These results indicate the nc-YSZ has excellent ageing resistance and can withstand long-term implantation conditions without exhibiting LTD

Universality in the Electroproduction of Vector Mesons

We study universality in the electroproduction of vector mesons using a unified nonperturbative approach which has already proved to reproduce extremely well the available experimental data. In this framework, after the extraction of factors that are specific of each vector meson, we arrive at a reduced integrated elastic cross section which is universal. Our calculations suggest a finite infrared behavior for the strong coupling constant.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure

Representation of Quantum Mechanical Resonances in the Lax-Phillips Hilbert Space

We discuss the quantum Lax-Phillips theory of scattering and unstable systems. In this framework, the decay of an unstable system is described by a semigroup. The spectrum of the generator of the semigroup corresponds to the singularities of the Lax-Phillips $S$-matrix. In the case of discrete (complex) spectrum of the generator of the semigroup, associated with resonances, the decay law is exactly exponential. The states corresponding to these resonances (eigenfunctions of the generator of the semigroup) lie in the Lax-Phillips Hilbert space, and therefore all physical properties of the resonant states can be computed. We show that the Lax-Phillips $S$-matrix is unitarily related to the $S$-matrix of standard scattering theory by a unitary transformation parametrized by the spectral variable $\sigma$ of the Lax-Phillips theory. Analytic continuation in $\sigma$ has some of the properties of a method developed some time ago for application to dilation analytic potentials. We work out an illustrative example using a Lee-Friedrichs model for the underlying dynamical system.Comment: Plain TeX, 26 pages. Minor revision

Dusty Cometary Globules in W5

We report the discovery of four dusty cometary tails around low mass stars in two young clusters belonging to the W5 star forming region. Fits to the observed emission profiles from 24 micron observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope give tail lifetimes < 30 Myr, but more likely < 5 Myr. This result suggests that the cometary phase is a short lived phenomenon, occurring after photoevaporation by a nearby O star has removed gas from the outer disk of a young low mass star (see also Balog et al. 2006; Balog et al. 2008).Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication to ApJ Letter