Newtonian gravity and resonance on de-Sitter branes

A dS brane on the boundary between two five-dimensional spacetimes is determined. We consider asymmetric scenarios with AdS${}_5$ vacua at each side of the dS brane; and as a result, a resonant mode inside of the spectrum of the gravitational fluctuations is found. We analyze the deviations to the Newton potential generated by the gravitational excitations, finding that, for scenarios with large values of the cosmological constants, the contribution of the resonant mode is exponentially suppressed. However, when one of the vacua is null, the resonant mode belongs to the light states set of the gravitational fluctuations and five-dimensional gravity is recovered on the dS brane.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Close to the edge: hierarchy in a double braneworld

We show that the hierarchy between the Planck and the weak scales can follow from the tendency of gravitons and fermions to localize at different edges of a thick double wall embedded in an $AdS_5$ spacetime without reflection symmetry. This double wall is a stable BPS thick-wall solution with two sub-walls located at its edges; fermions are coupled to the scalar field through Yukawa interactions, but the the lack of reflection symmetry forces them to be localized in one of the sub-walls. We show that the graviton zero-mode wavefunction is suppressed in the fermion edge by an exponential function of the distance between the sub-walls, and that the massive modes decouple so that Newtonian gravity is recuperated.Comment: Some typos corrected, references adde

Gauge field localization on brane worlds

We consider the effects of spacetime curvature and brane thickness on the localization of gauge fields on a brane via kinetic terms induced by localized fermions. We find that in a warped geometry with and infinitely thin brane, both the infrared and the ultraviolet behavior of the electromagnetic propagator are affected, providing a more stringent bound on the brane's tension than that coming from the requirement of four-dimensional gravity on the brane. On the other hand, for a thick wall in a flat spacetime, where the fermions are localized by means of a Yukawa coupling, we find that 4-dimensional electromagnetism is recovered in a region bounded from above by the same critical distance appearing in the thin case, but also from below by a new scale related to the brane's thickness and the electromagnetic couplings.Comment: 7 page

Titanium addition influences antibacterial activity of bioactive glass coatings on metallic implants

© 2017 The Authors In an attempt to combat the possibility of bacterial infection and insufficient bone growth around metallic, surgical implants, bioactive glasses may be employed as coatings. In this work, silica-based and borate-based glass series were synthesized for this purpose and subsequently characterized in terms of antibacterial behavior, solubility and cytotoxicity. Borate-based glasses were found to exhibit significantly superior antibacterial properties and increased solubility compared to their silica-based counterparts, with BRT0 and BRT3 (borate-based glasses with 0 and 15 mol% of titanium dioxide incorporated, respectively) outperforming the remainder of the glasses, both borate and silicate based, in these respects. Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy confirmed the release of zinc ions (Zn2+), which has been linked to the antibacterial abilities of glasses SRT0, BRT0 and BRT3, with inhibition effectively achieved at concentrations lower than 0.7 ppm. In vitro cytotoxicity studies using MC3T3-E1 osteoblasts confirmed that cell proliferation was affected by all glasses in this study, with decreased proliferation attributed to a faster release of sodium ions over calcium ions in both glass series, factor known to slow cell proliferation in vitro

Effect of TiO2 Doping on Degradation Rate, Microstructure and Strength of Borate Bioactive Glass Scaffolds

A titanium-containing borate glass series based on the system (52-X) B2O3–12CaO–6P2O5–14Na2O–16ZnO-XTiO2 with X varying from 0, 5 and 15 mol% of TiO2 incorporated, identified as BRT0, BRT1 and BRT3, respectively, were used in this study. Scaffolds (pore sizes, 165–230 μm and porosity, 53.51–69.51%) were prepared using a polymer foam replication technique. BRT3 scaffolds exhibited higher compressive strength (7.16 ± 0.22 MPa) when compared to BRT0 (6.02 ± 0.47 MPa) and BRT1 (5.65 ± 0.28 MPa) scaffolds with lower, or no, TiO2 content. The solubility of the scaffolds decreased as the TiO2 content increased up to 15 mol% when samples of each scaffold were immersed in DI water and the pH of all these extracts went up from 7.0 to 8.5 in 30 days. The cumulative ion release from the scaffolds showed significant difference with respect to TiO2 content; addition of 5 mol% TiO2 at the expense of borate (B2O3) decreased the ion release remarkably. Furthermore, it was found that for all three scaffolds, cumulative ion release increased with incubation time. The results indicate that the degradation rates and compressive strengths of borate bioactive glass scaffolds could be controlled by varying the amount of TiO2 incorporated, confirming their potential as scaffolds in TKA and rTKA

The role of poly(methyl methacrylate) in management of bone loss and infection in revision total knee arthroplasty: A review

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is widely used in joint arthroplasty to secure an implant to the host bone. Complications including fracture, bone loss and infection might cause failure of total knee arthroplasty (TKA), resulting in the need for revision total knee arthroplasty (rTKA). The goals of this paper are: (1) to identify the most common complications, outside of sepsis, arising from the application of PMMA following rTKA, (2) to discuss the current applications and drawbacks of employing PMMA in managing bone loss, (3) to review the role of PMMA in addressing bone infection following complications in rTKA. Papers published between 1970 to 2018 have been considered through searching in Springer, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, Engineering village, PubMed and weblinks. This review considers the use of PMMA as both a bone void filler and as a spacer material in two-stage revision. To manage bone loss, PMMA is widely used to fill peripheral bone defects whose depth is less than 5 mm and covers less than 50% of the bone surface. Treatment of bone infections with PMMA is mainly for two-stage rTKA where antibiotic-loaded PMMA is inserted as a spacer. This review also shows that using antibiotic-loaded PMMA might cause complications such as toxicity to surrounding tissue, incomplete antibiotic agent release from the PMMA, roughness and bacterial colonization on the surface of PMMA. Although PMMA is the only commercial bone cement used in rTKA, there are concerns associated with using PMMA following rTKA. More research and clinical studies are needed to address these complications