Bone mechanical stimulation with piezoelectric materials

This chapter summarized explores in vivo use of a piezoelectric polymer for bone mechanical stimulatio

Congenital ranula

The authors describe a case of congenital ranula diagnosed by a routine prenatal ultrasonography at 21 weeks of gestation. The fetal kariotype was normal. Follow-up ultrasound scans revealed no changes in the size or the position of the cyst. Fetal growth was normal as was the amniotic fluid volume. Surgical treatment was performed 3 days after a normal vaginal delivery, with excellent results

Active diffusion and advection in Drosophila oocytes result from the interplay of actin and microtubules

Transport in cells occurs via a delicate interplay of passive and active processes, including diffusion, directed transport and advection. Despite progress in super-resolution microscopy, discriminating and quantifying these processes is a challenge, requiring tracking of rapidly moving, sub-diffraction objects in a crowded, noisy environment. Here we use Differential Dynamic Microscopy with different contrast mechanisms to provide a thorough characterization of the dynamics in the Drosophila oocyte. We study the movement of vesicles and the elusive motion of a cytoplasmic F-actin mesh, a known regulator of cytoplasmic flows. We find that cytoplasmic motility constitutes a combination of directed motion and random diffusion. While advection is mainly attributed to microtubules, we find that active diffusion is driven by the actin cytoskeleton, although it is also enhanced by the flow. We also find that an important dynamic link exists between vesicles and cytoplasmic F-actin motion, as recently suggested in mouse oocytes.MD and IMP were supported by the BBSRC, the Department of Zoology (Cambridge), the University of Cambridge, and an Isaac Newton Trust fellowship to MD. FG and RC acknowledge funding by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research, Futuro in Ricerca Project ANISOFT (RBFR125H0M) and by Fondazione CARIPLO-Regione Lombardia Project Light for Life (2016-0998)

Microwave hydrothermal synthesis of tobermorite for the solidification of iron

Iron is one of the heavy metals that present in industrial wastewater and domestic waste which damage agricultural production as well as the landscape if there is no proper treatment. One popular method was to introduce the heavy metal ions into the raw material for the synthesis of tobermorite, as the main cement component. However, the conventional hydrothermal synthesis was time and intense energy consuming. Therefore, microwave hydrothermal synthesis of tobermorite was evaluated by comparing with the conventional method. The experimental results showed that the dominant products were Fe-tobermorite/ tobermorite via conventional method, whilst it turned to be Fe-containing hydrogarnet under microwave hydrothermal synthesis when the Fe/Si ratio was 0.15/0.2, which were found to be more stable, thus enhancing the safety of the solidification. Both methods exhibited 100 % of solidification of iron, and the microwave hydrothermal synthesis consumed a much shorter time than conventional method. Therefore, present work has demonstrated that microwave hydrothermal synthesis of tobermorite is an effective alternative to conventional method for the solidification of iron.</p

Quantifying the available capacity and resource needs for provision of CAR-T therapies in the National Health Service in Spain: a survey-based study

Leukaemia; Organisation of health services; TherapeuticsLeucemia; Organización de servicios de salud; TerapéuticaLeucèmia; Organització dels serveis sanitaris; TerapèuticaObjectives To estimate the readiness of Spanish National Health Service (NHS) hospitals to provide chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T), and to identify and quantify the different resources needed to provide CAR-T considering three scenarios defined by 10, 25 and 50 patients per centre per year. Design Targeted literature review and quantitative study using a questionnaire and telephone interviews. An algorithm was created to determine hospitals’ readiness based on their capacity and capability. All the requirements for quantification were assessed and validated by the steering committee, formed by members of the Spanish Group of Haematopoietic Transplantation and Cell Therapy. A weighting system (from 0 to 1) was established for capability quantification. For resources quantification, a scoring system was established, with 0 points representing the minimum and 3 points the maximum of additional resources that a hospital indicated necessary. Setting 40 Spanish hospital centres that perform allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation were invited to complete the questionnaire for capacity quantification, 28 of which provided valid responses. Nine hospitals participated in the interviews for resource quantification, eight of which had previously been designated by the Ministry of Health (MoH) to provide CAR-T. Outcome measure Current capacity of NHS Spanish sites to administer CAR-T under different theoretical scenarios with varying numbers of procedures, and the potential healthcare resources that would be needed to realise the theoretical capacity requirements. Results Four hospitals were optimally ready, 17 were somewhat ready and 7 were not ready. The actual extrapolated capacity of the currently designated MoH CAR-T sites would allow treatment of approximately 250 patients per year. Regarding healthcare resource needs, the numbers of haematologists, nurses and beds were the most important limiting factors, and those requiring further growth as patient numbers increased. Conclusions Increasing the number of CAR-T-qualified centres and/or increasing resources in the current designated sites are two potential strategies that should be considered to treat CAR-T-eligible patients in Spain.This study was conducted with a grant from GETH-TC (grant number: N/A)

Towards NFC Services

One of main objectives of Ambient Intelligence is the reduction to a minimum of the users interactive effort, the diversity and quantity of devices with which people are surrounded with, in existing environments, increase the level of difficulty to achieve this goal. The mobile phones and their amazing global penetration, makes it an excellent device for delivering new services to the user, without requiring a learning effort. An NFC - enabled mobile phone will allow the user to demand and obtain services, by touching its different elements in the environment. In this paper we present a proposal where we analyze the sco pe associated with touch interaction, and where a model to perceive touch interaction through the tagging context is designed

Electronic transport in polycrystalline graphene

Most materials in available macroscopic quantities are polycrystalline. Graphene, a recently discovered two-dimensional form of carbon with strong potential for replacing silicon in future electronics, is no exception. There is growing evidence of the polycrystalline nature of graphene samples obtained using various techniques. Grain boundaries, intrinsic topological defects of polycrystalline materials, are expected to dramatically alter the electronic transport in graphene. Here, we develop a theory of charge carrier transmission through grain boundaries composed of a periodic array of dislocations in graphene based on the momentum conservation principle. Depending on the grain boundary structure we find two distinct transport behaviours - either high transparency, or perfect reflection of charge carriers over remarkably large energy ranges. First-principles quantum transport calculations are used to verify and further investigate this striking behaviour. Our study sheds light on the transport properties of large-area graphene samples. Furthermore, purposeful engineering of periodic grain boundaries with tunable transport gaps would allow for controlling charge currents without the need of introducing bulk band gaps in otherwise semimetallic graphene. The proposed approach can be regarded as a means towards building practical graphene electronics.Comment: accepted in Nature Material

Broken symmetry states and divergent resistance in suspended bilayer graphene

Graphene [1] and its bilayer have generated tremendous excitement in the physics community due to their unique electronic properties [2]. The intrinsic physics of these materials, however, is partially masked by disorder, which can arise from various sources such as ripples [3] or charged impurities [4]. Recent improvements in quality have been achieved by suspending graphene flakes [5,6], yielding samples with very high mobilities and little charge inhomogeneity. Here we report the fabrication of suspended bilayer graphene devices with very little disorder. We observe fully developed quantized Hall states at magnetic fields of 0.2 T, as well as broken symmetry states at intermediate filling factors $\nu = 0$, $\pm 1$, $\pm 2$ and $\pm 3$. The devices exhibit extremely high resistance in the $\nu = 0$ state that grows with magnetic field and scales as magnetic field divided by temperature. This resistance is predominantly affected by the perpendicular component of the applied field, indicating that the broken symmetry states arise from many-body interactions.Comment: 23 pages, including 4 figures and supplementary information; accepted to Nature Physic

Causas de exodoncias en dientes permanentes de pacientes adultos atendidos en un establecimiento de salud público. Piura 2018 - 2020

El objetivo del presente estudio fue determinar las causas de exodoncias en dientes permanentes de pacientes adultos atendidos en un establecimiento de salud público de Piura durante el año 2018 al 2020. La investigación es de tipo básica, no experimental, transversal, observacional, descriptivo y retrospectivo; la data fue de 616 tratamientos de extracciones realizadas en el periodo 2018 al 2020. Según resultados obtenidos, la necrosis pulpar fue la causa más frecuente con 33.11%; las piezas dentales más frecuentes a extraerse son el primer premolar superior izquierdo con 7.3%; las causas predominantes según grupo etario son: en joven, la caries dental con 9.74%; en adulto, la necrosis pulpar con 24.35% y en adulto mayor, la periodontitis crónica con 6.49% mostrándose relación entre éstas variables; la causa de extracción según género, en varones fue periodontitis crónica con 6.33% y en mujeres fue necrosis pulpar con 29.22% encontrándose significancia estadística entre las variables. Se concluye que la necrosis pulpar fue la causa más frecuente de exodoncias