2,754 research outputs found
The use of nanotechnology in cardiovascular disease
Cardiovascular diseases claim a number of lives globally; many of which are preventable. With the increase in diets that consist of high saturated fat, salt, and sugar, people often living sedentary lifestyles, and a rise in cases of obesity, the incidence of cardiovascular disease is increasing. These contributing factors, coupled with more advanced methods of diagnosis, have delivered statistics that clearly show that there is a rising trend in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease. Treatment for cardiovascular diseases is limited currently to oral medicines or invasive surgery. There is a huge gap in this area of medicine for novel therapeutics for improved patient outcomes. Nanotechnology may provide a solution to more effective treatment of disease, with better prognoses and a reduced side effect profile. This review will explore for potential solutions to the limited pharmacological therapies currently on the market and the future that lies ahead for the place of nanotechnology within cardiovascular medicine
On the importance of testing gravity at distances less than 1cm
If the mechanism responsible for the smallness of the vacuum energy is
consistent with local quantum field theory, general arguments suggest the
existence of at least one unobserved scalar particle with Compton wavelength
bounded from below by one tenth of a millimeter. We show that this bound is
saturated if vacuum energy is a substantial component of the energy density of
the universe. Therefore, the success of cosmological models with a significant
vacuum energy component suggests the existence of new macroscopic forces with
range in the sub-millimeter region. There are virtually no experimental
constraints on the existence of quanta with this range of interaction.Comment: 9 pages TeX, 2 eps figures, uses mtexsis.tex and epsf.tex. Entry in
1996 Gravity Research Foundation essay competition. To be published in the
Journal of General Relativity and Gravitatio
Potential of hybrid iron oxide–gold nanoparticles as thermal triggers for pancreatic cancer therapy
Theranostics are emerging platforms for rapid cancer diagnosis and therapy. Hybrid iron oxide–gold nanoparticles (HNPs) have shown potential as theranostics due to their ability for imaging using MRI, heating using laser irradiation and carrier abilities for drug molecules after surface functionalization. The ability of HNPs to act as localised nano-heaters has been well documented for tumour ablation applications where maximal heating effect is desired. However, the use of HNPs as thermal triggers for drug release requires more control over temperature output and careful consideration of heat dissipation. In this work we report the potential of HNPs to act as localised nano-heaters in vitro and ocument the cellular effect prior and post laser irradiation in human pancreatic adenocarcinoma (BxPC-3) cell lines. The data showed that after incubation of 50 mg mL 1 HNPs, a thermal increase of up to 9 C was observed in the cells after laser irradiation with the total area experiencing heat dissipation from the laser beam being 346 mm2. Although the total temperature experienced by cells was below the perceived temperature for irreversible cell damage, after 24 h significant levels of HSP27 and HSP70 were evident with a drop in cell viability to 85%. This indicated that even with rapid irradiation at low temperatures the cells were undergoing stress. Upon I.T. injection in pancreatic xenograft models, a similar heating capacity was observed at identical concentration which also resulted in bulk tumour dissipation. The findings from this work highlight the factors which must be taken into consideration when designing HNPs as theranostics for heat triggered drug delivery
587 - Thermally triggered theranostics for pancreatic cancer
Conference abstract
Bosonic String and String Field Theory: a solution using Ultradistributions of Exponential Type
In this paper we show that Ultradistributions of Exponential Type (UET) are
appropriate for the description in a consistent way string and string field
theories. A new Lagrangian for the closed string is obtained and shown to be
equivalent to Nambu-Goto's Lagrangian. We also show that the string field is a
linear superposition of UET of compact support CUET). We evaluate the
propagator for the string field, and calculate the convolution of two of them.Comment: 30 page
Rossby wave dynamics of the North Pacific extra-tropical response to El Niño: importance of the basic state in coupled GCMs
The extra-tropical response to El Nino in a "low" horizontal resolution coupled climate model, typical of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report simulations, is shown to have serious systematic errors. A high resolution configuration of the same model has a much improved response that is similar to observations. The errors in the low resolution model are traced to an incorrect representation of the atmospheric teleconnection mechanism that controls the extra-tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) during El Nino. This is due to an unrealistic atmospheric mean state, which changes the propagation characteristics of Rossby waves. These erroneous upper tropospheric circulation anomalies then induce erroneous surface circulation features over the North Pacific. The associated surface wind speed and direction errors create erroneous surface flux and upwelling anomalies which finally lead to the incorrect extra-tropical SST response to El Nino in the low resolution model. This highlights the sensitivity of the climate response to a single link in a chain of complex climatic processes. The correct representation of these processes in the high resolution model indicates the importance of horizontal resolution in resolving such processes
A Search for Scalar Chameleons with ADMX
Scalar fields with a "chameleon" property, in which the effective particle
mass is a function of its local environment, are common to many theories beyond
the standard model and could be responsible for dark energy. If these fields
couple weakly to the photon, they could be detectable through the "afterglow"
effect of photon-chameleon-photon transitions. The ADMX experiment was used in
the first chameleon search with a microwave cavity to set a new limit on scalar
chameleon-photon coupling excluding values between 2*10^9 and 5*10^14 for
effective chameleon masses between 1.9510 and 1.9525 micro-eV.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Volatilization-devolatilization reactions
Experiments that explore chemical and physical aspects of volatilization reactions that require the microgravity and low pressure in or near the projected Space Station are proposed
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