16,828 research outputs found
INJECTABLE HYBRID SYSTEM FOR STRONTIUM LOCAL DELIVERY TO PROMOTE BONE REGENERATION
In bone tissue regeneration strategies, injectable bone substitutes are very attractive since they can
be applied with minimally invasive surgical procedures and can perfectly fill irregular defects created
in cases of trauma, infection or tumor resection. These materials must combine adequate mechanical
properties with the ability to induce new bone formation. Incorporating strontium (Sr) in bone
substitute biomaterials may be a strategy to achieve high Sr concentrations, not in a systemic but in
a local environment, taking advantage of the osteoanabolic and anti-osteoclastic activity of Sr, for
the enhancement of new bone formation. In this context, the aim of the present work was to
evaluate the response of a Sr-hybrid injectable system for bone regeneration, designed by our
group, consisting of hydroxyapatite microspheres doped with Sr and an alginate vehicle crosslinked in
situ with Sr, in an in vivo scenario. Two different animal models were used, rat (Wistar) and sheep
(Merino Branco) critical sized bone defect. Non Sr-doped similar materials (Ca-hybrid) or empty
defects were used as control. Sr-hybrid system led to an increased bone formation in both center
and periphery of a rat critical sized defect compared to a non Sr–doped similar system, where new
bone formation was restricted to the periphery. Moreover newly formed bone was identified as early
as one week after its implantation in a sheep model. After eight weeks, the bone surrounded the
microspheres, both in the periphery and in the center of the defect. Most importantly, the hybrid
system provided a scaffold for cell migration and tissue ingrowth and offered structural support, as
observed in both models. The effective improvement of local bone formation suggests that this might
be a promising approach for bone regeneration, especially in osteoporotic conditions
Enhanced Optical Dichroism of Graphene Nanoribbons
The optical conductivity of graphene nanoribbons is analytical and exactly
derived. It is shown that the absence of translation invariance along the
transverse direction allows considerable intra-band absorption in a narrow
frequency window that varies with the ribbon width, and lies in the THz range
domain for ribbons 10-100nm wide. In this spectral region the absorption
anisotropy can be as high as two orders of magnitude, which renders the medium
strongly dichroic, and allows for a very high degree of polarization (up to
~85) with just a single layer of graphene. The effect is resilient to level
broadening of the ribbon spectrum potentially induced by disorder. Using a
cavity for impedance enhancement, or a stack of few layer nanoribbons, these
values can reach almost 100%. This opens a potential prospect of employing
graphene ribbon structures as efficient polarizers in the far IR and THz
frequencies.Comment: Revised version. 10 pages, 7 figure
Optical Properties of Strained Graphene
The optical conductivity of graphene strained uniaxially is studied within
the Kubo-Greenwood formalism. Focusing on inter-band absorption, we analyze and
quantify the breakdown of universal transparency in the visible region of the
spectrum, and analytically characterize the transparency as a function of
strain and polarization. Measuring transmittance as a function of incident
polarization directly reflects the magnitude and direction of strain. Moreover,
direction-dependent selection rules permit identification of the lattice
orientation by monitoring the van-Hove transitions. These photoelastic effects
in graphene can be explored towards atomically thin, broadband optical
elements
Inducing energy gaps in graphene monolayer and bilayer
In this paper we propose a mechanism for the induction of energy gaps in the
spectrum of graphene and its bilayer, when both these materials are covered
with water and ammonia molecules. The energy gaps obtained are within the range
20-30 meV, values compatible to those found in experimental studies of graphene
bilayer. We further show that the binding energies are large enough for the
adsorption of the molecules to be maintained even at room temperature
Entanglement dynamics via coherent-state propagators
The dynamical generation of entanglement in closed bipartite systems is
investigated in the semiclassical regime. We consider a model of two particles,
initially prepared in a product of coherent states, evolving in time according
to a generic Hamiltonian, and derive a formula for the linear entropy of the
reduced density matrix using the semiclassical propagator in the coherent-state
representation. The formula is explicitly written in terms of quantities that
define the stability of classical trajectories of the underlying classical
system. The formalism is then applied to the problem of two nonlinearly coupled
harmonic oscillators and the result is shown to be in remarkable agreement with
the exact quantum measure of entanglement in the short-time regime. An
important byproduct of our approach is a unified semiclassical formula which
contemplates both the coherent-state propagator and its complex conjugate.Comment: 10 page
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