Development and AFM study of porous scaffolds for wound healing applications

An engineering approach to the development of biomaterials for promotion of wound healing emphasises the importance of a well-controlled architecture and concentrates on optimisation of morphology and surface chemistry to stimulate guidance of the cells within the wound environment. A series of three-dimensional porous scaffolds with 80–90% bulk porosity and fully interconnected macropores were prepared from two biodegradable materials – cellulose acetate (CA) and poly (lacticco-glycolic acid) (PLGA) through the phase inversion mechanism of formation. Surface morphology of obtained scaffolds was determined using atomic force microscopy (AFM) in conjunction with optical microscopy. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was applied to characterise scaffolds bulk morphology. Biocompatibility and biofunctionality of the prepared materials were assessed through a systematic study of cell/material interactions using atomic force microscopy (AFM) methodologies together with in vitro cellular assays. Preliminary data with human fibroblasts demonstrated a positive influence of both scaffolds on cellular attachment and growth. The adhesion of cells on both biomaterials were quantified by AFM force measurements in conjunction with a cell probe technique since, for the first time, a fibroblast probe has been successfully developed and optimal conditions of immobilisation of the cells on the AFM cantilever have been experimentally determined

Word-Level Fine-Grained Story Visualization

Story visualization aims to generate a sequence of images to narrate each sentence in a multi-sentence story with a global consistency across dynamic scenes and characters. Current works still struggle with output images' quality and consistency, and rely on additional semantic information or auxiliary captioning networks. To address these challenges, we first introduce a new sentence representation, which incorporates word information from all story sentences to mitigate the inconsistency problem. Then, we propose a new discriminator with fusion features and further extend the spatial attention to improve image quality and story consistency. Extensive experiments on different datasets and human evaluation demonstrate the superior performance of our approach, compared to state-of-the-art methods, neither using segmentation masks nor auxiliary captioning networks.Comment: ECCV 202

Manipulating texture and cohesion in academic writing: A keystroke logging study

Research has repeatedly shown that problems arise when students are asked to link information co-textually and contextually across larger phases of discourse. Within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), a text-oriented theory of language, co-textual and contextual links are analyzed and operationalized in terms of textual and logical metafunctions, both of which work together to connect and enable experiential and interpersonal metafunctions. While most writing studies to date have investigated text as product (synoptic approach), there has been increasing interest in studying text as an evolving process (dynamic approach). The current study contributes to this emerging research by examining the real-time choices made by six student writers. Drawing on keystroke logging software (Inputlog), it explores writers’ revision choices within the systems of theme, information, and identification, in conjunction with the logical metafunction. Results indicate that complex choices contribute to unfolding cohesiveness and information flow, where choices in specificity and congruency are key contributors to managing texture while also manipulating complexity and context-dependency. Overall findings suggest that students may benefit from an explicit focus on the nominal group as a means to create and maintain texture and cohesion through over-specification, classification (pre-modifiers), and qualification (post-modifiers)

Effect of particle size on the formation of Ti₂AlC using combustion synthesis

This paper provides an insight into the effect of particle size of elemental metal powders and carbon source on the formation mechanism of Ti2AlC MAX-phase ceramic produced by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS). The effect of titanium, aluminium and carbon particle size on the 2Ti+Al+C→Ti2AlC reaction, the phase evolution of the final product and the porosity in both the green body and product has been examined. The effect of the carbon source in the form of graphite, carbon black and short carbon fibres on the reaction mechanism is explained. It is found that the particle size of the titanium and aluminium reactants had little effect on the phases formed but affected the green density of the reactants and the porosity in the final product. The carbon source used in the combustion reaction had an influence on the phases formed by the SHS reaction and was influenced by the dispersion of carbon particles and the titanium-aluminium particle contact.</p