Improvement of mechanical and biological properties of Polycaprolactone loaded with Hydroxyapatite and Halloysite Nanotubes

[EN] Hydroxyapatite (HA) and Halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) percentages have been optimized in Polycaprolactone (PCL) polymeric matrices to improve mechanical, thermal and biological properties of the composites, thus, to be applied in bone tissue engineering or as fixation plates. Addition of HA guarantees a proper compatibility with human bone due to its osteoconductive and osteoinductive properties, facilitating bone regeneration in tissue engineering applications. Addition of HNTs ensures the presence of tubular structures for subsequent drug loading in their lumen, of molecules such as curcumin, acting as controlled drug delivery systems. The addition of 20% of HA and different amounts of HNTs leads to a substantial improvement in mechanical properties with values of flexural strength up to 40% over raw PCL, with an increase in degradation temperature. DMA analyses showed stability in mechanical and thermal properties, having as a result a potential composite to be used as tissue engineering scaffold or resorbable fixation plate.Torres-Roca, E.; Fombuena, V.; Vallés Lluch, A.; Ellingham, T. (2017). Improvement of mechanical and biological properties of Polycaprolactone loaded with Hydroxyapatite and Halloysite Nanotubes. Materials Science and Engineering C. 75:418-424. doi:10.1016/j.msec.2017.02.087S4184247

Modulation control and spectral shaping of optical fiber supercontinuum generation in the picosecond regime

Numerical simulations are used to study how fiber supercontinuum generation seeded by picosecond pulses can be actively controlled through the use of input pulse modulation. By carrying out multiple simulations in the presence of noise, we show how tailored supercontinuum Spectra with increased bandwidth and improved stability can be generated using an input envelope modulation of appropriate frequency and depth. The results are discussed in terms of the non-linear propagation dynamics and pump depletion.Comment: Aspects of this work were presented in Paper ThJ2 at OECC/ACOFT 2008, Sydney Australia 7-10 July (2008). Journal paper submitted for publication 30 July 200

Skin, paper, tiles: a cross-cultural history of Kadiwéu art

This article focuses on the global traffic in images relating to Kadiwéu culture in South America, analyzing the extent to which they are entangled in the group’s continuing sense of presence. It begins with Kadiwéu designs as they appeared in the sketchbook of the artist-explorer Guido Boggiani in the late nineteenth century. It then explores the mapping of Kadiwéu territory and the practices and protocols informing a politics of land rights, cultural property and economic survival, looking in particular at the commissioning of Kadiwéu designs for a housing estate and an associated exhibition in Berlin early in the twentieth-first century. By developing a cross-cultural history of Kadiwéu art that considers the transnational networks across different times and spaces, including the case of a transcultural history of copyright, the article seeks to contribute to the ongoing re-thinking of the colonial archive and its afterlife

Training Teachers to Select Educational Computer Software: results of a formative evaluation of an Open University pack

This paper considers the problem of training teachers to select suitable educational programs to use in their classroom. We argue that selecting good programs is difficult and that training teachers to do this has been largely neglected, both by the available literature and by in-service training courses. We describe an Opeyn University course (Open University Press 1984) which addresses this issue, and report on a formative evaluation of an activity within the course in which teachers examined three commercially available educational software packages. We conclude by emphasising the importance of a sound framework in which teachers can develop selection skills so that they can go beyond the supervicial technical features of the program to consider whether the underlying pedagogy is sound and suitable for their needs

Quasi-lossless optical links for broad-band transmission and data processing

We present the first experimental implementation of a recently designed quasi-lossless fiber span with strongly reduced signal power excursion. The resulting fiber waveguide medium can be advantageously used both in lightwave communications and in all-optical nonlinear data processing