The viability of coral populations in the Anthropocene

Andreas Dietzel examined demographic trends in corals at large spatial and temporal scales. He found that while few Pacific coral species face an elevated risk of global extinction, long-term shifts in colony sizes indicate declines in reproduction and the spatial scale of mass bleaching events jeopardizes population connectivity and recovery

Costs of restoration measures in the EU based on an assessment of LIFE projects

Restoring ecosystems to reverse biodiversity loss and to enhance ecosystem services is an important target of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. At global and European level the target is to restore 15% of degraded ecosystems. Identifying sites that should be considered for restoration in order to achieve the target requires spatial information on where degraded ecosystem are, on the kind of mitigation measures that are needed to restore ecosystems to a good condition, and on the costs and benefits of restoration in order to prioritise investments. At all these levels, detailed spatial information is lacking. This report contributes to the ecosystem restoration knowledge base by providing cost estimates of specific restoration measures.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Respiratory trigger signal generation by means of a stretchable sensor array

Respiratory monitoring is a clinical method which helps to examine the medical condition of patients. Patients diagnosed with types of respiratory distress are often supported through artificial respiration. To be able to adapt and synchronize airway pressures and flows to the patient’s own breathing for improved respiration efficiency, intelligent sensors are needed to detect the beginning and ending of the breathing cycle. An ultra-thin and stretchable 6x6 sensor array with skin-like properties is presented that is used to generate a trigger signal which is suitable to control and synchronize artificial respiration with the patient's own breathing. Stretchability of the sensor array is achieved by fs-laser structuring of the thin polyimide sensor substrate resulting in small sensor islands connected via slender meandering electrical leads. The resulting stretchable sensor grid is embedded in layers of PDMS whereby a skin-friendly sensor patch is created. To simulate respiration an externally ventilated dummy is used. The principle of trigger signal generation from multiple sensor signals is based on a self-developed algorithm that first evaluates the signal quality of each sensor based on adjustable parameters. Only the sensors selected as suitable are then used to calculate an averaged scaled signal, which is taken for trigger point detection. The best results were typically obtained when quality factures are set to a level where about half of the sensors are contributing to the trigger detection, leading to a trigger delay of about 80 ms relative to the pressure reference signal. It could also be shown that the algorithm can resume the trigger point detection within 2-3 seconds, after manually applying disturbances which could similarly occur in the clinical environment. The results show that the skin-friendly sensor patch provides suitable trigger signals for artificial respiration which are robust against drop out of single sensors, non-ideal sensor patch positioning on the thorax and mechanical irritations

Sheath-less high throughput inertial separation of small microparticles in spiral microchannels with trapezoidal cross-section

Various mechanisms of different designs have emerged for the purpose of microparticle separation and cell sorting. The main goals behind such designs are to create high throughput and high purity sample isolation. In this study, high efficiency, high throughput and precise separation of microparticles under inertial lift and drag forces induced by trapezoidal curvilinear channels are reported. This work is the first to focus and recover 2 from 5 μm and 2 from 10 μm particles in spiral channels in a sheath-less flow device, which reduces the overall complexity of the system and allows for higher throughput. The new microfluidic chip design is fabricated in glass using femtosecond laser ablation. In addition, mathematical force calculations were conducted during the design phase of the microfluidic channels and compared with experiments. The results show a close prediction of the equilibrium position of the tested microparticles

Tow-Photon Polymerization (2PP) enables 3D microsystems for Pharmatechnology

Two-photon polymerization(2PP) is a process for three-dimensional (3D) micro-and Nano structuring based on the locally controlled curing of liquid precursors (light-sensitive resins) by photochemical triggered polymerization. In this decade, will be hearing a lot about this technic being applied to pharmaceutical applications like fabricating 3D microchannels for nanoparticle precipitation, nano-porous membranes and scaffolds for cell culturing, biomimetic organ-on-chip systems. This paper presents 2pp applied microsystems for continuously generating lipid nanoparticles which are one of the most important drug carrier system. The most important advantages of 2pp is manufacturing 3D shapes that is not possible with lithographic micro and nano fabrication technologies. Also, it will be shown how 2pp fabricated microchannel can be integrated with continuous size measurement by flowDLS for the feed-back controlled generation of nanoparticles

High-Efficiency Small Sample Microparticle Fractionation on a Femtosecond Laser-Machined Microfluidic Disc

The fabrication and testing of microfluidic spinning compact discs with embedded trapezoidal microchambers for the purpose of inertial microparticle focusing is reported in this article. Microparticle focusing channels require small features that cannot be easily fabricated in acrylic sheets and are complicated to realize in glass by traditional lithography techniques; therefore, the fabrication of microfluidic discs with femtosecond laser ablation is reported for the first time in this paper. It could be demonstrated that high-efficiency inertial focusing of 5 and 10 µm particles is achieved in a channel with trapezoidal microchambers regardless of the direction of disc rotation, which correlates to the dominance of inertial forces over Coriolis forces. To achieve the highest throughput possible, the suspension concentration was increased from 0.001% (w/v) to 0.005% (w/v). The focusing efficiency was 98.7% for the 10 µm particles and 93.75% for the 5 µm particles

Patterning of Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode (FOLED) stack using an ultrafast laser

A femtosecond laser has been successfully utilized for patterning thin Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode (FOLED) structures of individual layer thickness around 100nm. The authors report in this paper a step-like ablation behavior at the layer interfaces which accounts for a local removal of entire layers. Various surface analyzing techniques are used to investigate the morphologies and chemical compositions within and in the vicinity of the ablation areas. This study opens a new avenue in selectively ablating different layers from a multilayer stack on flexible substrates using fs lasers allowing post deposition structuring of large area flexible organic electronic devices. (C)2010 Optical Society of Americ

Micro-clamps for precise positioning of 120° silicon double mirrors in a MOEMS gyroscope

Micro silicon double mirrors have been developed specifically for the design of a novel micro-optical gyroscope. By using wafers with a well-defined angular offset to the (100) plane, an etching angle of 60° can be achieved by wet-chemical etching with KOH. Two likewise structured wafers are connected by means of silicon direct bonding and consequently form 120°double mirrors. A big advantage of these double mirrors is that inaccuracies during assembly onto a micro optical table, such as shifts in the x- and y-direction and twists around the vertical axis are compensated by the mirror and a fixed angle of reflection is maintained. Assembly tolerances for the other two rotational degrees of freedom cannot be compensated in this way yet and a precise rotational alignment of the mirror elements in an optical resonator is still required. Therefore a micro clamping device was developed that can be used in the assembly of a micro-optical gyroscope. The key elements are micro spring structures integrated in the micro-optical table which can be pushed back to allow the insertion of the mirror elements and press the mirrors against two lithographically defined mechanical stops. Various designs of clamping devices were fabricated and their suitability in an optical gyroscope was evaluated

New parallelogram 3D-displacement sensor for micro probing and dimensional metrology

For the use in dimensional metrology a novel micro probing system composed of three silicon parallelogram linkages was developed. The parallelogram structure is assured by elastic silicon hinge and allows displacement in only one direction. For each parallelogram the displacement is evaluate using piezo-resistors integrated in the silicon hinges. Wide deflection ranges, isotropic behavior and low mechanical stiffness as predicted by simulations could be verified in experiments. With this combination of characteristics the micro probing system is an ideal sensor for the use in all conventional CMMs but also for many other 3D force/displacement measurement tasks