Low-dose chemotherapy of hepatocellular carcinoma through triggered-release from bilayer-decorated magnetoliposomes

Low-dose (LD) chemotherapy is a promising treatment strategy that may be improved by controlled delivery. Polyethylene glycol-stabilized bilayer-decorated magnetoliposomes (dMLs) have been designed as a stimuli-responsive LD chemotherapy drug delivery system and tested in vitro using Huh-7 hepatocellular carcinoma cell line. The dMLs contained hydrophobic superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles within the lipid bilayer and doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX, 2 μM) within the aqueous core. Structural analysis by cryogenic transmission electron microscopy and dynamic light scattering showed that the assemblies were approximately 120 nm in diameter. Furthermore, the samples consisted of a mixture of dMLs and bare liposomes (no nanoparticles), which provided dual burst and spontaneous DOX release profiles, respectively. Cell viability results show that the cytotoxicity of DOX-loaded dMLs was similar to that of bare dMLs (∼10%), which indicates that spontaneous DOX leakage had little cytotoxic effect. However, when subjected to a physiologically acceptable radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic field, cell viability was reduced up to 40% after 8 h and significant cell death (\u3e90%) was observed after 24 h. The therapeutic mechanism was intracellular RF-triggered DOX release from the dMLs and not intracellular hyperthermia due to nanoparticle heating via magnetic losses. [Refer to PDF for graphical abstract

Probing of local ferroelectricity in BiFeO3 thin films and (BiFeO3)m(SrTiO3)m superlattices

Ferroelectric BiFeO3 thin films and artificial superlattices of (BiFeO3)m(SrTiO3)m (m~ 1 to 10 unit cells) were fabricated on (001)-oriented SrTiO3 substrates by pulsed laser ablation. The variation of leakage current and macroscopic polarization with periodicity was studied. Piezo force microscopy studies revealed the presence of large ferroelectric domains in the case of BiFeO3 thin films while a size reduction in ferroelectric domains was observed in the case of superlattice structures. The results show that the modification of ferroelectric domains through superlattice, could provide an additional control on engineering the domain wall mediated functional properties.Comment: 14 pages, To be published in J. Mag. Mag Mater. proceedings of EMRS 200

Degradabilidade ruminal da fibra em detergente neutro e do nitrogênio insolúvel em detergente neutro da silagem de milho e do farelo de soja, em bovinos da Raça Nelore.

Empregou-se a técnica da degradação in situ, utilizando-se quatro animais Nelores com peso vivo médio de 520k e 36 meses de idade

Direct Introduction of a Dimesitylboryl Group Using Base-Mediated Substitution of Aryl Halides with Silyldimesitylborane

The first dimesitylboryl substitution of aryl halides with a silylborane bearing a dimesitylboryl group in the presence of alkali-metal alkoxides is described. The reactions of aryl bromides or iodides with Ph2MeSi-BMes(2) and Na(OtBu) afforded the desired aryl dimesitylboranes in good to high yields and with high borylation/silylation ratios. Selective reaction of the sterically less-hindered C-Br bond of dibromoarenes provided monoborylated products. This reaction was used to rapidly construct a D-pi-A aryl dimesityl borane with a non-symmetrical biphenyl spacer

Application of the small punch test to evaluate hydrogen embrittlement in steels and nickel alloys

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A human tau seeded neuronal cell model recapitulates molecular responses associated with Alzheimer's disease

Cellular models recapitulating features of tauopathies are useful tools to investigate the causes and consequences of tau aggregation and the identification of novel treatments. We seeded rat primary cortical neurons with tau isolated from Alzheimer's disease brains to induce a time-dependent increase in endogenous tau inclusions. Transcriptomics of seeded and control cells identified 1075 differentially expressed genes (including 26 altered at two time points). These were enriched for lipid/steroid metabolism and neuronal/glial cell development genes. 50 genes were correlated with tau inclusion formation at both transcriptomic and proteomic levels, including several microtubule and cytoskeleton-related proteins such as Tubb2a, Tubb4a, Nefl and Snca. Several genes (such as Fyn kinase and PTBP1, a tau exon 10 repressor) interact directly with or regulate tau. We conclude that this neuronal model may be a suitable platform for high-throughput screens for target or hit compound identification and validation

Phase selective growth of Cu12Sb4S13 and Cu3SbS4 thin films by chalcogenization of simultaneous sputtered metal precursors

In this work, it is presented a procedure to grow single phase Cu12Sb4S13 and Cu3SbS4 thin films consisting on the annealing of simultaneously sputtered metal precursors fllowed by a annealing treatment in a sulphur atmosphere. The selection of the ternary phase which is intended to grow is performed by adjusting the sulfur evaporation temperature in chalcogenization process. It is shown that for a sulphur evaporation temperature of 140 ◦C the predominant phase is Cu12Sb4S13 and for 180 ◦C the predominant phase is Cu3SbS4. In order to ensure precursor composition homogeneity, the Cu-Sb metallic precursors are deposited simultaneously by rf magnetron sputtering using adjustable segmented targets. The morphological characterization of the films was made by scanning electron microscopy and the composition was analysed by energy dispersive spectroscopy. The structural analysis and phase identification were performed by X-ray diffraction and Raman scattering. The optical properties were studied through spectrophotometry on films deposited directly on bare glass.publishe

Gravitational waves: search results, data analysis and parameter estimation

The Amaldi 10 Parallel Session C2 on gravitational wave (GW) search results, data analysis and parameter estimation included three lively sessions of lectures by 13 presenters, and 34 posters. The talks and posters covered a huge range of material, including results and analysis techniques for ground-based GW detectors, targeting anticipated signals from different astrophysical sources: compact binary inspiral, merger and ringdown; GW bursts from intermediate mass binary black hole mergers, cosmic string cusps, core-collapse supernovae, and other unmodeled sources; continuous waves from spinning neutron stars; and a stochastic GW background. There was considerable emphasis on Bayesian techniques for estimating the parameters of coalescing compact binary systems from the gravitational waveforms extracted from the data from the advanced detector network. This included methods to distinguish deviations of the signals from what is expected in the context of General Relativity