Detecting single molecules inside a carbon nanotube to control molecular sequences using inertia trapping phenomenon

Here we show the detection of single gas molecules inside a carbon nanotube based on the change in resonance frequency and amplitude associated with the inertia trapping phenomenon. As its direct implication, a method for controlling the sequence of small molecule is then proposed to realize the concept of manoeuvring of matter atom by atom in one dimension. The detection as well as the implication is demonstrated numerically with the molecular dynamics method. It is theoretically assessed that it is possible for a physical model to be fabricated in the very near future

Auditory Processing of the Brain Is Enhanced by Parental Singing for Preterm Infants

As the human auditory system is highly malleable in infancy, perinatal risk factors, such as preterm birth, may affect auditory development. In comparison to healthy full-term infants, preterm infants show abnormal auditory brain responses at term age, which may have long-term detrimental outcomes. To achieve an optimal neonatal care environment for preterm-born infants, many early interventions have been developed. Musical interventions developed for neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) have shown beneficial effects on vital functions and weight gain of preterm infants and might also influence basic auditory processing and thereby enhance outcomes. In the present study, we tested the effect of parental singing during kangaroo care on auditory processing of standardized audio stimuli. Preterm infants (born between 24 and 32 weeks of gestation) were randomized to singing intervention (n = 13) or control (n = 8) groups. The auditory processing was tested using two audio paradigms assessed with magnetoencephalography (MEG) at term corresponding age. To verify that the paradigms elicit responses in MEG, we studied 12 healthy full-term infants. In the singing intervention group, parents were instructed by a music therapist twice a week for 4 weeks to sing or hum during kangaroo care in an infant-directed way. The control group received standard kangaroo care. The results show that the infants in the singing intervention group show larger neural responses than those in the control group when controlling for the total amount of singing during kangaroo care. Our findings suggest that incorporating singing into kangaroo care may be beneficial for preterm infants, but the effect may not be due to exposure to singing but instead positive parenting, improved parental self-esteem and improved caregiver sensitivity.Peer reviewe

Dean flow-coupled inertial focusing in curved channels

Passive particle focusing based on inertial microfluidics was recently introduced as a high-throughput alternative to active focusing methods that require an external force field to manipulate particles. In inertial microfluidics, dominant inertial forces cause particles to move across streamlines and occupy equilibrium positions along the faces of walls in flows through straight micro channels. In this study, we systematically analyzed the addition of secondary Dean forces by introducing curvature and show how randomly distributed particles entering a simple u-shaped curved channel are focused to a fixed lateral position exiting the curvature. We found the lateral particle focusing position to be fixed and largely independent of radius of curvature and whether particles entering the curvature are pre-focused (at equilibrium) or randomly distributed. Unlike focusing in straight channels, where focusing typically is limited to channel cross-sections in the range of particle size to create single focusing point, we report here particle focusing in a large cross-section area (channel aspect ratio 1: 10). Furthermore, we describe a simple u-shaped curved channel, with single inlet and four outlets, for filtration applications. We demonstrate continuous focusing and filtration of 10 mu m particles (with > 90% filtration efficiency) from a suspension mixture at throughputs several orders of magnitude higher than flow through straight channels (volume flow rate of 4.25ml/min). Finally, as an example of high throughput cell processing application, white blood cells were continuously processed with a filtration efficiency of 78% with maintained high viability. We expect the study will aid in the fundamental understanding of flow through curved channels and open the door for the development of a whole set of bio-analytical applications

Clinical implications of diffuse excessive high signal intensity (DEHSI) on neonatal MRI in school age children born extremely preterm

Objective: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain carried out during the neonatal period shows that 55–80% of extremely preterm infants display white matter diffuse excessive high signal intensity (DEHSI). Our aim was to study differences in developmental outcome at the age of 6.5 years in children born extremely preterm with and without DEHSI.Study Design: This was a prospective cohort study of 83 children who were born in Stockholm, Sweden, between 2004 and 2007, born at gestational age of < 27 weeks + 0 days and who underwent an MRI scan of their brain at term equivalent age. The outcome measures at 6.5 years included testing 66 children with the modified Touwen neurology examination, the Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Fourth Edition, Beery Visual-motor Integration test—Sixth Edition, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Group-wise comparisons were done between children with and without DEHSI using Student t-test, Mann Whitney U test, Chi square test and regression analysis.Results: DEHSI was detected in 39 (59%) of the 66 children who were assessed at 6.5 years. The presence of DEHSI was not associated with mild neurological dysfunction, scores on M-ABC assessment, cognition, visual-motor integration, or behavior at 6.5 years.Conclusion: The presence of qualitatively defined DEHSI on neonatal MRI did not prove to be a useful predictor of long-term impairment in children born extremely preterm

Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19

SARS-CoV-2-specific memory T cells will likely prove critical for long-term immune protection against COVID-19. Here, we systematically mapped the functional and phenotypic landscape of SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell responses in unexposed individuals, exposed family members, and individuals with acute or convalescent COVID-19. Acute-phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells displayed a highly activated cytotoxic phenotype that correlated with various clinical markers of disease severity, whereas convalescent-phase SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were polyfunctional and displayed a stem-like memory phenotype. Importantly, SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells were detectable in antibody-seronegative exposed family members and convalescent individuals with a history of asymptomatic and mild COVID-19. Our collective dataset shows that SARS-CoV-2 elicits broadly directed and functionally replete memory T cell responses, suggesting that natural exposure or infection may prevent recurrent episodes of severe COVID-19

Analysis of laminar and turbulent flows with turbomachinery, biotechnology and biomechanical applications

The goal of this study was initially to gain a better understanding of the effects of rotation on turbulent flow in ducts. Knowledge concerning the influence of rotation on the structures of turbulence is of fundamental importance in many applications, e.g. centrifugal separators, turbines or cooling channels in rotating machinery, as well as meteorology and oceanography. Rapidly rotating duct flow is studied experimentally with rotation numbers in the interval [ 0, 1] . To achieve this, in combination with relatively high Reynolds numbers (5000 – 30000 based on the hydraulic radius), water was used as the working medium. The influence of the rotation on the pressure drop in the duct was investigated and suitable scalings of this quantity were studied. Due to questions that arose in the experimental study, two numerical studies were initiated. The first study probed the effect of rotation and geometrical configuration on the development length for turbulent flow, while the second comprised a direct numerical simulation of turbulent flow in a rotating duct. It is shown that while system rotation does not have a marked effect on the development length in a plane channel, the development length is substantially shortened in a duct. Additional systems subject to rotation or curvature effects were studied. The laminar flow of fluid in a rotating PCR-cone was analysed analytically and numerically to understand the increased mixing and temperature homogenization. The flow field in the cone was described and the increased mixing was due to a strong boundary layer flow incited by Coriolis and buoyancy effects. Comparisons of the numerical simulations with experiments yielded good results. A study to quantify the flow of blood in cerebral malformations using three-dimensional videodensitometry was performed. Data from experiments with an idealized flow phantom, as well clinical pathologies, showed that the proposed methodology in conjunction with clinical injection protocols can yield mean flux data with an error less than 20%. Protocol improvements are proposed

Simulation of a Non-Newtonian Dense Granular Suspension in a Microfluidic Contraction

<p> The success of a solder paste jet printer is based on an uninterrupted flow of fluid, specifically dense fluid suspensions, through a series of ducts inside the printing head. It is well known that the flow of dense suspensions is prone to jamming and sedimentation effects, both of which could entail detrimental failure modes in the printing heads. A thorough understanding of the fluid dynamics of suspensions as they flow through ducts and connections is of utmost importance. The purpose of this study is to propose a novel simulation framework and to show that it captures the main effects such as mass flow and partial jamming in a cylindrical duct test configuration. The granular suspension is a generic solder paste with solder particles immersed in a flux. </p> <p> The simulations are performed in the multi-phase flow solver IBOFlow. A two fluid model is used for the granular suspension and the discretization is done an Euler-Euler framework. The averaged momentum equations from Enwald et al. (1996) are solved together with the common continuity equation generating a shared pressure field. Explicit constitutive equations for the interfacial momentum transfer and particle pressure are employed. To capture the shear thinning effects of the non-Newtonian suspensions the standard Carreau rheology model is used. </p> <p> To study how the fluid flow affects the local volume fraction and partial jamming in the duct, simulations are performed for different applied pressure drops ranging from one to five bars. For both particle pressure models, the resulting mean bulk velocities are compared with experiments with good agreement, and partial jamming is observed. Hence, it is concluded that the proposed framework is suitable to model and simulate the granular suspension in a micro fluid contraction. </p

High resolution and rapid separation of bacteria from blood using elasto‐inertial microfluidics

Improved sample preparation has the potential to address unmet needs for fast turnaroundsepsis tests. In this work, we report elasto-inertial based rapid bacteria separation from diluted blood at high separation efficiency. In viscoelastic flows, we demonstrate novel findings where blood cells prepositioned at the outer wall entering a spiral device remain fullyfocused throughout the channel length while smaller bacteria migrate to the opposite wall.Initially, using microparticles, we show that particles above a certain size cut-off remainfully focused at the outer wall while smaller particles differentially migrate toward the inner wall. We demonstrate particle separation at 1 μm resolution at a total throughput of1 mL/min. For blood-based experiments, a minimum of 1:2 dilution was necessary to fullyfocus blood cells at the outer wall. Finally, Escherichia coli spiked in diluted blood were continuously separated at a total flow rate of 1 mL/min, with efficiencies between 82 and 90%depending on the blood dilution. Using a single spiral, it takes 40 min to process 1 mLof blood at a separation efficiency of 82%. The label-free, passive, and rapid bacteria isolation method has a great potential for speeding up downstream phenotypic and genotypicanalysis.QC 20211117</p

Discovery of Novel Sequences in 1,000 Swedish Genomes

Novel sequences (NSs), not present in the human reference genome, are abundant and remain largely unexplored. Here, we utilize de novo assembly to study NS in 1,000 Swedish individuals first sequenced as part of the SweGen project revealing a total of 46 Mb in 61,044 distinct contigs of sequences not present in GRCh38. The contigs were aligned to recently published catalogs of Icelandic and Pan-African NSs, as well as the chimpanzee genome, revealing a great diversity of shared sequences. Analyzing the positioning of NS across the chimpanzee genome, we find that 2,807 NS align confidently within 143 chimpanzee orthologs of human genes. Aligning the whole genome sequencing data to the chimpanzee genome, we discover ancestral NS common throughout the Swedish population. The NSs were searched for repeats and repeat elements: revealing a majority of repetitive sequence (56%), and enrichment of simple repeats (28%) and satellites (15%). Lastly, we align the unmappable reads of a subset of the thousand genomes data to our collection of NS, as well as the previously published Pan-African NS: revealing that both the Swedish and Pan-African NS are widespread, and that the Swedish NSs are largely a subset of the Pan-African NS. Overall, these results highlight the importance of creating a more diverse reference genome and illustrate that significant amounts of the NS may be of ancestral origin