London Creative and Digital Fusion

date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000date-added: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000 date-modified: 2015-03-24 04:16:59 +0000The London Creative and Digital Fusion programme of interactive, tailored and in-depth support was designed to support the UK capital’s creative and digital companies to collaborate, innovate and grow. London is a globally recognised hub for technology, design and creative genius. While many cities around the world can claim to be hubs for technology entrepreneurship, London’s distinctive potential lies in the successful fusion of world-leading technology with world-leading design and creativity. As innovation thrives at the edge, where better to innovate than across the boundaries of these two clusters and cultures? This booklet tells the story of Fusion’s innovation journey, its partners and its unique business support. Most importantly of all it tells stories of companies that, having worked with London Fusion, have innovated and grown. We hope that it will inspire others to follow and build on our beginnings.European Regional Development Fund 2007-13

Lubrication at physiological pressures by polyzwitterionic brushes

The very low sliding friction at natural synovial joints, which have friction coefficients of mu < 0.002 at pressures up to 5 megapascals or more, has to date not been attained in any human-made joints or between model surfaces in aqueous environments. We found that surfaces in water bearing polyzwitterionic brushes that were polymerized directly from the surface can have m values as low as 0.0004 at pressures as high as 7.5 megapascals. This extreme lubrication is attributed primarily to the strong hydration of the phosphorylcholine-like monomers that make up the robustly attached brushes, and may have relevance to a wide range of human-made aqueous lubrication situations

Evaluation of the gn-->pi-p differential cross sections in the Delta-isobar region

Differential cross sections for the process gn-->pi-p have been extracted from MAMI-B measurements of gd-->pi-pp, accounting for final-state interaction effects, using a diagrammatic technique taking into account the NN and piN final-state interaction amplitudes. Results are compared to previous measurements of the inverse process, pi-p--> ng, and recent multipole analyses.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. v2: Further clarifications and minor changes. A new figure inserte

Extended Partial-Wave Analysis of piN Scattering Data

We present results from a comprehensive partial-wave analysis of pi+-p elastic scattering and charge-exchange data, covering the region from threshold to 2.6 GeV in the lab pion kinetic energy, employing a coupled-channel formalism to simultaneously fit pi-p-->eta n data to 0.8 GeV. Our main result, solution SP06, utilizes a complete set of forward and fixed-t dispersion relation constraints applied to the piN elastic amplitude. The results of these analyses are compared with previous solutions in terms of their resonance spectra and preferred values for couplings and low-energy parameters.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figure

Self-adhesive electrode applied to ZnO nanorod-based piezoelectric nanogenerators

ZnO nanorod-based piezoelectric devices have gained wide attention in energy harvesting systems as they can be processed at low temperatures onto flexible plastic substrates, giving a good potential for low cost. However, the vacuum-evaporated, precious metal contacts remain a high-cost element of the devices. This paper discusses the use of transparent conductive adhesives (TCAs) as an alternative top contact that is free from both vacuum-evaporation and precious metals. TCA films of various thicknesses were tape-cast onto nickel microgrid on PET substrates and adhered using low-pressure cold-lamination to bond the adhesive component of the TCA to piezoelectric generators with the final device structure of PET/ITO/ZnO-seed/ZnO-nanorods/CuSCN/PEDOT:PSS/TCA. The piezoelectric performances of the devices were compared by measuring output voltage in open-circuit and maximum power output across a range of resistive loads. The voltage output was observed to rise with increasing TCA thickness, reaching a maximum value of 0.72 V generated with 110 µm of TCA as top contact. However, the higher resistance due to increased TCA thickness led to decreased power output; a maximum calculated power of 0.25 μW was obtained from the device with the thinnest TCA layer of 22 µm. Finally, the performance of piezoelectric nanogenerators with TCA contacts were compared to a control device with an evaporated gold contact

Evaluation of serum galactomannan detection for diagnosis of feline upper respiratory tract aspergillosis

Measurement of serum galactomannan (GM), a polysaccharide fungal cell-wall component, is a non-invasive test for early diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis in humans. Feline upper respiratory tract (URT) aspergillosis is an emerging infectious disease in cats. Diagnosis requires biopsy for procurement of tissue specimens for cytological or histological detection of fungal hyphae and for fungal culture. The aim of this study was to evaluate serum GM measurement as a non-invasive diagnostic test for URT aspergillosis in cats. A one-stage, immunoenzymatic sandwich ELISA was used to detect serum GM in 4 groups of cats; Group 1 (URT aspergillosis) – confirmed URT aspergillosis (n=13, sinonasal aspergillosis (SNA) n=6, sino-orbital aspergillosis (SOA) n=7), Group 2 (URT other) – other URT diseases (n=15), Group 3 (β-lactam) – cats treated with β-lactam antibiotics for non-respiratory tract disease (n=14), Group 4a – healthy young cats (≤ 1y of age, n=28), Group 4b – healthy adult cats (>1 y of age, n=16). One cat with SNA and two cats with SOA caused by an Aspergillus fumigatus-mimetic species, tested positive for serum GM. For a cut-off optical density index of 1.5, the overall sensitivity and specificity of the assay was 23% and 78% respectively. False positive results occurred in 29 % of cats in Group 3 and 32% of cats in Group 4a. Specificity increased to 90% when Groups 3 and 4a were excluded from the analysis. Overall, serum GM measurement has a poor sensitivity but is a moderately specific, non-invasive screening test to rule out infection in patients with suspected feline upper respiratory tract aspergillosis.Feline Health Research Fund (FHRF

The first next-generation sequencing approach to the mitochondrial phylogeny of African monogenean parasites (Platyhelminthes: Gyrodactylidae and Dactylogyridae)

Abstract Background Monogenean flatworms are the main ectoparasites of fishes. Representatives of the species-rich families Gyrodactylidae and Dactylogyridae, especially those infecting cichlid fishes and clariid catfishes, are important parasites in African aquaculture, even more so due to the massive anthropogenic translocation of their hosts worldwide. Several questions on their evolution, such as the phylogenetic position of Macrogyrodactylus and the highly speciose Gyrodactylus, remain unresolved with available molecular markers. Also, diagnostics and population-level research would benefit from the development of higher-resolution genetic markers. We aim to offer genetic resources for work on African monogeneans by providing mitogenomic data of four species (two belonging to Gyrodactylidae, two to Dactylogyridae), and analysing their gene sequences and gene order from a phylogenetic perspective. Results Using Illumina technology, the first four mitochondrial genomes of African monogeneans were assembled and annotated for the cichlid parasites Gyrodactylus nyanzae, Cichlidogyrus halli, Cichlidogyrus mbirizei (near-complete mitogenome) and the catfish parasite Macrogyrodactylus karibae (near-complete mitogenome). Complete nuclear ribosomal operons were also retrieved, as molecular vouchers. The start codon TTG is new for Gyrodactylus and for Dactylogyridae, as is the incomplete stop codon TA for Dactylogyridae. Especially the nad2 gene is promising for primer development. Gene order was identical for protein-coding genes and differed between the African representatives of these families only in a tRNA gene transposition. A mitochondrial phylogeny based on an alignment of nearly 12,500 bp including 12 protein-coding and two ribosomal RNA genes confirms that the Neotropical oviparous Aglaiogyrodactylus forficulatus takes a sister group position with respect to the other gyrodactylids, instead of the supposedly ‘primitive’ African Macrogyrodactylus. Inclusion of the African Gyrodactylus nyanzae confirms the paraphyly of Gyrodactylus. The position of the African dactylogyrid Cichlidogyrus is unresolved, although gene order suggests it is closely related to marine ancyrocephalines. Conclusions The amount of mitogenomic data available for gyrodactylids and dactylogyrids is increased by roughly one-third. Our study underscores the potential of mitochondrial genes and gene order in flatworm phylogenetics, and of next-generation sequencing for marker development for these non-model helminths for which few primers are available

Secreted Lymphotoxin-α Is Essential for the Control of an Intracellular Bacterial Infection

Although the essential role of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) in the control of intracellular bac-terial infection is well established, it is uncertain whether the related cytokines lymphotoxin-α (LTα3) and lymphotoxin-β (LTβ) have independent roles in this process. Using C57Bl/6 mice in which the genes for these cytokines have been disrupted, we have examined the relative contribution of secreted LTα3 and membrane-bound LTβ in the host response to aerosol Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. To overcome the lack of peripheral lymph nodes in LTα−/− and LTβ−/− mice, bone marrow chimeric mice were constructed. LTα−/− chimeras, which lack both secreted LTα3 and membrane-bound LTβ (LTα1β2 and LTα2β1), were highly susceptible and succumbed 5 wk after infection. LTβ−/− chimeras, which lack only the membrane-bound LTβ, controlled the infection in a comparable manner to wild-type (WT) chimeric mice. T cell responses to mycobacterial antigens and macrophage responses in LTα−/− chimeras were equivalent to those of WT chimeras, but in LTα−/− chimeras, granuloma formation was abnormal. LTα−/− chimeras recruited normal numbers of T cells into their lungs, but the lymphocytes were restricted to perivascular and peribronchial areas and were not colocated with macrophages in granulomas. Therefore, LTα3 is essential for the control of pulmonary tuberculosis, and its critical role lies not in the activation of T cells and macrophages per se but in the local organization of the granulomatous response

Anomalous density dependence of static friction in sand

We measured experimentally the static friction force $F_s$ on the surface of a glass rod immersed in dry sand. We observed that $F_s$ is extremely sensitive to the closeness of packing of grains. A linear increase of the grain-density yields to an exponentially increasing friction force. We also report on a novel periodicity of $F_s$ during gradual pulling out of the rod. Our observations demonstrate the central role of grain bridges and arches in the macroscopic properties of granular packings.Comment: plain tex, 6 pages, to appear in Phys.Rev.