Risk Factors for operated carpal tunnel syndrome: a multicenter population-based case-control study

This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/34

Investigation of the SiC thin films synthetized by Thermionic Vacuum Arc method (TVA)

Thermionic Vacuum Arc method (TVA) was used for the first time to prepare SiC thin films. This method is very suitable for deposition of high purity thin films with compact structure and extremely smooth in vacuum conditions. The nanocomposites were investigated using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analyses provided with HR-TEM and SAED facilities. The structure of the films can be indexed as following three forms: cubic structure of SiC (F4-3m) a = 0.4348 nm, cubic Si (Fd3m) a = 0.54307 nm and graphite (P63/mmc) a = 0.2456 nm; c = 0.6696 nm. The morphology, topography, wettability and wear properties were also performed by SEE system and by Raman Spectroscopy, increasing the interest for emerging applications

Surface treatment of polycarbonate films aimed at biomedical application

Aiming to encapsulate pancreatic islets, a biocompatible polycarbonate membrane (Whatman) was treated with plasma argon in order to improve its surface properties. The argon plasma treatment decreased the hydrophobicity of the membrane by fixing polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) at the surface. The water angle contact decreased from 47 degrees to 20 degrees after this treatment, while the structure and pore diameter were preserved. The treatment also increased significantly the water permeability from 62 +/- 8 ml/min to 200 +/- 29 ml/min (P < 0.001). ToF-SIMS analyses revealed that the argon plasma treatment of the membrane allowed the installation of an uniform PVP layer at the surface. The concentration equilibrum in glucose was reached after 8 h diffusion for the treated membrane, while it was only 32.4 +/- 8.6% (P < 0.01) for the untreated membrane. The biocompatibility of the polycarbonate membrane was assessed after one month of implantation in rats and proved to be unaffected by the surface treatment. In conclusion, the present study provided sufficient information to establish a relationship between the physicochemical modifications of the PVP-plasma-treated polycarbonate membrane and the improvement in its permeability