Biomimetic microtopography to enhance osteogenesis <i>in vitro</i>

Biomimicry is being used in the next generation of biomaterials. Tuning material surface features such as chemistry, stiffness and topography allow the control of cell adhesion, proliferation, growth and differentiation. Here, microtopographical features with nanoscale depths, similar in scale to osteoclast resorption pits, were used to promote &lt;i&gt;in&lt;/i&gt; vitro bone formation in basal medium. Primary human osteoblasts were used to represent an orthopaedically relevant cell type and analysis of adhesions, cytoskeleton, osteospecific proteins (phospho-Runx2 and osteopontin) and mineralisation (alizarin red) was performed. The results further demonstrate the potential for biomimicry in material design and show that the osteoblast response can be tuned from changes in feature size

Making Sense of a Sequence of Events: A Psychologically Supported AI Implementation

International audiencePeople try to make sense of the usually incomplete reports they receive about events that take place. For doing this, they make use of what they believe the normal course of thing should be. An agent's beliefs may be consonant or dissonant with what is reported. For making sense people usually ascribe different types of relations between events. A prototypical example is the ascription of causality between events. The paper proposes a systematic study of consonance and dissonance between beliefs and reports. The approach is shown to be consistent with findings in psychology. An implementation is presented with some illustrative examples