6,132 research outputs found
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Multi-Nozzle Biopolymer Deposition for Freeform Fabrication of Tissue Constructs
Advanced freeform fabrication techniques have been recently used for the construction of tissue
scaffolds because of the process repeatability and capability of high accuracy in fabrication
resolution at the macro and micro scales. Among many applicable tissue scaffolding materials,
polymeric materials have unique properties in terms of the biocompatibility and degradation, and
have thus been widely utilized in tissue engineering applications. Hydrogels, such as alginate,
has been one of the most important polymer scaffolding materials because of its biocompatibility
and internal structure similarity to that of the extracellular matrix of many tissues, and its
relatively moderate processing. Three-dimensional deposition has been an entreating freeform
fabrication method of biopolymer and particularly hydrogel scaffolds because of its readiness to
deposit fluids at ambient temperatures. This paper presents a recent development of biopolymer
deposition based freeform fabrication for 3-diemnsinal tissue scaffolds. The system
configuration of multi-nozzles used in the deposition of sodium alginate solutions and Poly-?-
Caprolactone (PCL) are described. Studies on polymer deposition feasibility and structural
formability are conducted, and the preliminary results are presented.Mechanical Engineerin
Hidden breakpoints in genome alignments
During the course of evolution, an organism's genome can undergo changes that
affect the large-scale structure of the genome. These changes include gene
gain, loss, duplication, chromosome fusion, fission, and rearrangement. When
gene gain and loss occurs in addition to other types of rearrangement,
breakpoints of rearrangement can exist that are only detectable by comparison
of three or more genomes. An arbitrarily large number of these "hidden"
breakpoints can exist among genomes that exhibit no rearrangements in pairwise
comparisons.
We present an extension of the multichromosomal breakpoint median problem to
genomes that have undergone gene gain and loss. We then demonstrate that the
median distance among three genomes can be used to calculate a lower bound on
the number of hidden breakpoints present. We provide an implementation of this
calculation including the median distance, along with some practical
improvements on the time complexity of the underlying algorithm.
We apply our approach to measure the abundance of hidden breakpoints in
simulated data sets under a wide range of evolutionary scenarios. We
demonstrate that in simulations the hidden breakpoint counts depend strongly on
relative rates of inversion and gene gain/loss. Finally we apply current
multiple genome aligners to the simulated genomes, and show that all aligners
introduce a high degree of error in hidden breakpoint counts, and that this
error grows with evolutionary distance in the simulation. Our results suggest
that hidden breakpoint error may be pervasive in genome alignments.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure
High-dimensional quantum dynamics of adsorption and desorption of H at Cu(111)
We performed high-dimensional quantum dynamical calculations of the
dissociative adsorption and associative desorption of hydrogen on Cu(111). The
potential energy surface (PES) is obtained from density functional theory
calculations. Two regimes of dynamics are found, at low energies sticking is
determined by the minimum energy barrier, at high energies by the distribution
of barrier heights. Experimental results are well-reproduced qualitatively, but
some quantitative discrepancies are identified as well.Comment: 4 two column pages, revtex, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
HI and OH absorption in the lensing galaxy of MG J0414+0534
We report the detection of \HI 21-cm absorption in the early-type
lensing galaxy towards MG J0414+0534 with the Green Bank Telescope. The
absorption, with total , is resolved into two strong components, probably due to the two
strongest lens components, which are separated by 0.4\arcsec. Unlike the other
three lenses which have been detected in \HI, J0414+0534 does not exhibit
strong OH absorption, giving a OH/\HI column density ratio of N_{\rm
OH}/N_{\rm HI}\lapp10^{-6} (for K, K and
). This underabundance of molecular gas may indicate
that the extreme optical--near-IR colour () along the line-of-sight
is not due to the lens. We therefore suggest that despite the strong upper
limits on molecular absorption at the quasar redshift, as traced by millimetre
lines, the extinction occurs primarily in the quasar host galaxy.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS Letters, 5 (and a bit) pages, 5 figure
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Precision Extruding Deposition and Characterization of Cellular Poly-e-Caprolactone Tissue Scaffolds
Successes in scaffold guided tissue engineering require scaffolds to have specific macroscopic
geometries and internal architectures in order to provide the needed biological and biophysical
functions. Freeform fabrication provides an effective process tool to manufacture many advanced
scaffolds with designed properties. This paper reports our recent study on using a novel Precision
Extruding Deposition (PED) process technique to directly fabricate cellular Poly-ε-Caprolactone
(PCL) scaffolds. Scaffolds with a controlled pore size of 250 µm and designed structural
orientations were fabricated. The scaffold morphology, internal micro-architecture and
mechanical properties were evaluated using SEM, Micro-Computed Tomography (µ-CT) and the
mechanical testing. Preliminary biological study was also conducted to investigate the cell
responses to the as-fabricated tissue scaffolds. The results and the characterizations demonstrate
the viability of the PED process to the scaffold fabrication as well as a good mechanical
property, structural integrity, controlled pore size, pore interconnectivity, and the anticipated
biological compatibility of the as-fabricated PCL scaffolds.The authors acknowledge the NSF-0219176 project funding support to graduate students
Andrew Darling and Saif Khalil, and the ONR research funding support to graduate student
Lauren Shor.Mechanical Engineerin
Thickness-dependent thermal properties of amorphous insulating thin films measured by photoreflectance microscopy
In this work, we report on the measurement of the thermal conductivity of thin insulating films of SiO2 obtained by thermal oxidation, and Al2O3 grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD), both on Si wafers. We used photoreflectance microscopy to determine the thermal properties of the films as a function of thickness in the 2 nm to 1000 nm range. The effective thermal conductivity of the Al2O3 layer is shown to decrease with thickness down to 70% for the thinnest layers. The data were analyzed upon considering that the change in the effective thermal conductivity corresponds to an intrinsic thermal conductivity associated to an additional interfacial thermal resistance. The intrinsic conductivity and interfacial thermal resistance of SiO2 were found to be equal to 0.95 W/m·K and 5.1 × 10− 9 m2K/W respectively; those of Al2O3 were found to be 1.56 W/m·K and 4.3 × 10− 9 m2K/W
Ab initio Quantum and ab initio Molecular Dynamics of the Dissociative Adsorption of Hydrogen on Pd(100)
The dissociative adsorption of hydrogen on Pd(100) has been studied by ab
initio quantum dynamics and ab initio molecular dynamics calculations. Treating
all hydrogen degrees of freedom as dynamical coordinates implies a high
dimensionality and requires statistical averages over thousands of
trajectories. An efficient and accurate treatment of such extensive statistics
is achieved in two steps: In a first step we evaluate the ab initio potential
energy surface (PES) and determine an analytical representation. Then, in an
independent second step dynamical calculations are performed on the analytical
representation of the PES. Thus the dissociation dynamics is investigated
without any crucial assumption except for the Born-Oppenheimer approximation
which is anyhow employed when density-functional theory calculations are
performed. The ab initio molecular dynamics is compared to detailed quantum
dynamical calculations on exactly the same ab initio PES. The occurence of
quantum oscillations in the sticking probability as a function of kinetic
energy is addressed. They turn out to be very sensitive to the symmetry of the
initial conditions. At low kinetic energies sticking is dominated by the
steering effect which is illustrated using classical trajectories. The steering
effects depends on the kinetic energy, but not on the mass of the molecules.
Zero-point effects lead to strong differences between quantum and classical
calculations of the sticking probability. The dependence of the sticking
probability on the angle of incidence is analysed; it is found to be in good
agreement with experimental data. The results show that the determination of
the potential energy surface combined with high-dimensional dynamical
calculations, in which all relevant degrees of freedon are taken into account,
leads to a detailed understanding of the dissociation dynamics of hydrogen at a
transition metal surface.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, subm. to Phys. Rev.
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