"Omics" in traumatic brain injury: novel approaches to a complex disease

Background To date, there is neither any pharmacological treatment with efficacy in traumatic brain injury (TBI) nor any method to halt the disease progress. This is due to an incomplete understanding of the vast complexity of the biological cascades and failure to appreciate the diversity of secondary injury mechanisms in TBI. In recent years, techniques for high-throughput characterization and quantification of biological molecules that include genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have evolved and referred to as omics. Methods In this narrative review, we highlight how omics technology can be applied to potentiate diagnostics and prognostication as well as to advance our understanding of injury mechanisms in TBI. Results The omics platforms provide possibilities to study function, dynamics, and alterations of molecular pathways of normal and TBI disease states. Through advanced bioinformatics, large datasets of molecular information from small biological samples can be analyzed in detail and provide valuable knowledge of pathophysiological mechanisms, to include in prognostic modeling when connected to clinically relevant data. In such a complex disease as TBI, omics enables broad categories of studies from gene compositions associated with susceptibility to secondary injury or poor outcome, to potential alterations in metabolites following TBI. Conclusion The field of omics in TBI research is rapidly evolving. The recent data and novel methods reviewed herein may form the basis for improved precision medicine approaches, development of pharmacological approaches, and individualization of therapeutic efforts by implementing mathematical "big data" predictive modeling in the near future.Scientific Assessment and Innovation in Neurosurgical Treatment Strategie

MHD thermogravitational convection and thermal radiation of a micropolar nanoliquid in a porous chamber

This work studies the thermogravitational transmission and thermal radiation of micropolar nanoliquid within

Local and nonlocal isomer shifts in bcc Fe-X alloys (X=Al,Si,Ga,Ge)

We measured Mössbauer spectra from bcc alloys of compositions near Fe3Al, Fe3Si, and Fe3Ge, and reanalyzed older data from Fe3Ga. All four alloys developed some D03 chemical order, and their Mössbauer spectra were qualitatively similar. The local (first-nearest-neighbor) could be distinguished from the nonlocal (beyond the first-nearest-neighbor) contributions to the 57Fe isomer shifts from the solute atoms owing to differences in their hyperfine magnetic fields. The nonlocal isomer shift contributions correlated best to the valence of the solute atom, and not to the atomic volume. The local isomer shift contributions were best attributed to a loss of Fe 3d electrons at the solute sites

Structure and magnetic properties of sputtered thin films of Fe0.79Ge0.21

Films of Fe0.79Ge0.21 with thicknesses of 300 nm were synthesized by ion beam sputtering, and were annealed at temperatures from 200 to 550 °C. The materials were characterized by x-ray diffractometry, Mössbauer spectrometry, vibrating sample magnetometry, ferromagnetic resonance spectrometry, and electrical resistivity measurements. The as-prepared materials comprised chemically disordered bcc crystallites of sizes less than 20 nm, and were found to have a distribution of internal strains. Upon annealing at temperatures of 250 °C and below, there occurred strain relaxation, some evolution of short range chemical order, and an improvement in soft magnetic properties. The coercive field was a minimum for the sample annealed at 250 °C. Crystallite growth occurred at higher annealing temperatures, accompanied by a transition in several measured parameters from those of ultrafine grained materials to those typical of polycrystalline materials. This trend can be explained with the random anisotropy model. Mössbauer and magnetization measurements indicated that the Ge atoms behave as magnetic holes. The 57Fe hyperfine magnetic field distribution, and its change during chemical ordering, can be calculated approximately with a model of magnetic response. The large local isomer shifts at 57Fe atoms near Ge atoms suggest that a local depletion of 4s conduction electron density should be incorporated into the model

Magnetic enhancement of Co0.2_{0.2}Zn0.8_{0.8}Fe2_2O4_4 spinel oxide by mechanical milling

We report the magnetic properties of mechanically milled Co$_{0.2}$Zn$_{0.8}$Fe$_2$O$_4$ spinel oxide. After 24 hours milling of the bulk sample, the XRD spectra show nanostructure with average particle size $\approx$ 20 nm. The as milled sample shows an enhancement in magnetization and ordering temperature compared to the bulk sample. If the as milled sample is annealed at different temperatures for the same duration, recrystallization process occurs and approaches to the bulk structure on increasing the annealing temperatures. The magnetization of the annealed samples first increases and then decreases. At higher annealing temperature ($\sim$ 1000$^{0}$C) the system shows two coexisting magnetic phases {\it i.e.}, spin glass state and ferrimagnetic state, similar to the as prepared bulk sample. The room temperature M\"{o}ssbauer spectra of the as milled sample, annealed at 300$^{0}$C for different durations (upto 575 hours), suggest that the observed change in magnetic behaviour is strongly related with cations redistribution between tetrahedral (A) and octahedral (O) sites in the spinel structure. Apart from the cation redistribution, we suggest that the enhancement of magnetization and ordering temperature is related with the reduction of B site spin canting and increase of strain induced anisotropic energy during mechanical milling.Comment: 14 pages LaTeX, 10 ps figure

A comparison of laboratory and in situ methods to determine soil thermal conductivity for energy foundations and other ground heat exchanger applications

Soil thermal conductivity is an important factor in the design of energy foundations and other ground heat exchanger systems. It can be determined by a field thermal response test, which is both costly and time consuming, but tests a large volume of soil. Alternatively, cheaper and quicker laboratory test methods may be applied to smaller soil samples. This paper investigates two different laboratory methods: the steady-state thermal cell and the transient needle probe. U100 soil samples were taken during the site investigation for a small diameter test pile, for which a thermal response test was later conducted. The thermal conductivities of the samples were measured using the two laboratory methods. The results from the thermal cell and needle probe were significantly different, with the thermal cell consistently giving higher values for thermal conductivity. The main difficulty with the thermal cell was determining the rate of heat flow, as the apparatus experiences significant heat losses. The needle probe was found to have fewer significant sources of error, but tests a smaller soil sample than the thermal cell. However, both laboratory methods gave much lower values of thermal conductivity compared to the in situ thermal response test. Possible reasons for these discrepancies are discussed, including sample size, orientation and disturbance