Helium diffraction and acoustic phonons of graphene grown on copper foil.

We report helium diffraction from graphene grown by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) using copper foil. This method reveals acoustic phonons, which are physically important to thermal conductance as well as a sensitive probe of graphene's interactions with the underlying substrate. Helium diffraction is made possible by the high quality of graphene produced by a recently reported "peel-off method". The graphene lattice parameter was found to remain constant in the temperature range between 110 and 500 K. The measured parabolic dispersion of the flexural mode along (Gamma) over bar (M) over bar allows determining the bending rigidity k = ( 1.30 +/- 0.15) eV, and the graphene-Cu coupling strength g = ( 5.7 +/- 0.4) x 10(19) N/m(3). Unlike analytics employing atomic resolution microscopy, we obtain information on the atomic-scale quality of the graphene over mm length scales, suggesting the potential for Helium atom scattering to become an important tool for controlling the quality of industrially produced graphene

A Neutral and Stable Macrocyclic Mn(II) Complex for MRI Tumor Visualization

A stable and inert amphiphilic Mn(II) complex based on a bisamide derivative of 1,4-DO2A (DO2A=tetraazacyclododecane-1,4-diacetic acid) was synthesized and its H-1 NMR relaxometric behavior was investigated as a function of the magnetic field strength, pH and temperature. The interaction with human serum albumin (HSA) was also studied via relaxometry showing a good relaxivity enhancement at low field (at 1T and 298 K the relaxivity increases from 4.5 mM(-1) s(-1) of the Mn(II)-complex to 14.0 mM(-1) s(-1) of the complex-HSA supramolecular adduct). In vivo biodistribution and MRI studies highlighted a rapid and mixed renal/liver elimination without spleen accumulation from healthy mice and good contrast enhancing properties in a breast tumor murine model. A comparison with a clinically approved Gd(III) agent (GdBOPTA, Multihance (R)) underlined that the proposed Mn(II) contrast agent gave comparable tumor contrast enhancement up to 3 hours post-injection

An Object-Oriented Approach to Extracting Productive Fossil Localities from Remotely Sensed Imagery

2015-2016 UNCG University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund Grant Winner. Most vertebrate fossils are rare and difficult to find and although paleontologists andpaleoanthropologists use geological maps to identify potential fossil-bearing deposits, theprocess of locating fossiliferous localities often involves a great deal of luck. One way to reducethe role of serendipity is to develop predictive models that increase the likelihood of locatingfossils by identifying combinations of geological, geospatial, and spectral features that arecommon to productive localities. We applied GEographic Object-Based Image Analysis(GEOBIA) of high resolution QuickBird and medium resolution images from the Landsat 8Operational Land Imager (OLI) along with GIS data such as slope and surface geology layers toidentify potentially productive Eocene vertebrate fossil localities in the Great Divide Basin,Wyoming. The spectral and spatial characteristics of the image objects that represent a highlyproductive locality (WMU-VP-222) were used to extract similar image objects in the areacovered by the high resolution imagery and throughout the basin using the Landsat imagery.During the 2013 summer field season, twenty-six locations that would not have been spottedfrom the road in a traditional ground survey were visited. Fourteen of the eighteen localities thatwere fossiliferous were identified by the predictive model. In 2014, the GEOBIA techniqueswere applied to Landsat 8 imagery of the entire basin, correctly identifying six new productivelocalities in a previously unsurveyed part of the basin

What do we know about dynamic glucose-enhanced (DGE) MRI and how close is it to the clinics? Horizon 2020 GLINT consortium report

Cancer is one of the most devastating diseases that the world is currently facing, accounting for 10 million deaths in 2020 (WHO). In the last two decades, advanced medical imaging has played an ever more important role in the early detection of the disease, as it increases the chances of survival and the potential for full recovery. To date, dynamic glucose-enhanced (DGE) MRI using glucose-based chemical exchange saturation transfer (glucoCEST) has demonstrated the sensitivity to detect both D-glucose and glucose analogs, such as 3-oxy-methyl-D-glucose (3OMG) uptake in tumors. As one of the recent international efforts aiming at pushing the boundaries of translation of the DGE MRI technique into clinical practice, a multidisciplinary team of eight partners came together to form the "glucoCEST Imaging of Neoplastic Tumors (GLINT)" consortium, funded by the Horizon 2020 European Commission. This paper summarizes the progress made to date both by these groups and others in increasing our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms related to this technique as well as translating it into clinical practice

Association Between Serum Lipids and Survival in Patients With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: A Meta-analysis and Population-Based Study

Background and ObjectiveTo explore the association between lipids, polygenic profile scores (PPS) for biomarkers of lipid metabolism, markers of disease severity, and survival in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).MethodsWe meta-analyzed the current literature on the prognostic value of lipids in patients with ALS. Subsequently, we evaluated the relationship between lipid levels at diagnosis, clinical disease stage, and survival in all consecutive patients diagnosed in the Netherlands. We determined the hazard ratio (HR) of each lipid for overall survival, defined as death from any cause. A subset of patients was matched to a previous genome-wide association study; data were used to calculate PPS for biomarkers of lipid metabolism and to determine the association between observed lipid levels at diagnosis and survival.ResultsMeta-analysis of 4 studies indicated that none of the biomarkers of the lipid metabolism were statistically significantly associated with overall survival; there was, however, considerable heterogeneity between study results. Using individual patient data (N = 1,324), we found that increased high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol was associated with poorer survival (HR of 1.33 (95% CI 1.14-1.55, p 0.50).DiscussionLipids may contain valuable information about disease severity and prognosis, but their main value may be driven as a consequence of disease progression. Our results underscore that gaining further insight into lipid metabolism and longitudinal data on serum concentrations of the lipid profile could improve the monitoring of patients and potentially further disentangle ALS pathogenesis