Drying colloidal systems: laboratory models for a wide range of applications

The drying of complex fluids provides a powerful insight into phenomena that take place on time and length scales not normally accessible. An important feature of complex fluids, colloidal dispersions and polymer solutions is their high sensitivity to weak external actions. Thus, the drying of complex fluids involves a large number of physical and chemical processes. The scope of this review is the capacity to tune such systems to reproduce and explore specific properties in a physics laboratory. A wide variety of systems are presented, ranging from functional coatings, food science, cosmetology, medical diagnostics and forensics to geophysics and art

Greenhouse design for vegetable production in subtropical climate in Taiwan

In Taiwan open field vegetable production is threatened by subtropical climatic disasters, such as high wind speeds and heavy rainfall, which can cause the destruction of whole crops. Next to that vegetable production is threatened by pests and diseases resulting a high need for pesticides. Greenhouse production systems are able to provide protection for the crop. However, in current protected tomato production in Taiwan yields are extremely low (max. 4 kg cherry tomato m-2 per season, though with high Brix). Next to a deficiency in modern crop management, there is a lack of knowledge of what is the optimum greenhouse design for vegetable growing in Taiwan. Greenhouse design has been shown to be a multifactorial problem, which can be approached with a systematic design method (Van Henten et al., 2012). The method is based on the use of different models, which predict a suitable greenhouse design. The local climatic conditions (outside radiation, temperature, humidity, wind speed) are used as input for the greenhouse climate model, which is used to evaluate different greenhouse designs and technologies. The climate and crop growth inside the green¬house can be simulated. These data serve as input to an economic model, which can be used to come to the economic suitable greenhouse design. This greenhouse design approach was applied for Taiwanese climate conditions, which are characterised by a radiation sum of 6 GJ m-2, high temperatures up to an average maximum of 35°C and high humidity levels up to 100%. The greenhouse climate model of De Zwart (1996) and the crop model of Vanthoor (2011) were used for evaluation of different technologies, economic data was collected in Taiwan and used as input for the economic model

Comparative proteomic profiling of human lung adenocarcinoma cells (CL 1-0) expressing miR-372

Lung cancer is a common malignancy and has a poor overall prognosis. Widespread metastasis is a common phenomenon in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It has been demonstrated that cancer relapse and survival can be predicted by the presence of a five-microRNA (miRNA) signature independent of stage or histologic type in NSCLC patients. Among the five miRNAs in the signature, miR-372 has been shown to play a significant role in metastasis and in the development of human testicular germ cell tumors. In addition, there is evidence that miR-372 posttranscriptionally downregulates large tumor suppressor, homolog 2 (Lats2), resulting in tumorigenesis and proliferation. To further investigate the cellular mechanisms involved in miR-372-induced silencing, we conducted a comparative proteomic analysis of NSCLC CL 10 cells expressing miRNA-372 and/or vector only by using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DE), two-dimensional difference gel electrophoresis (2D-DIGE), and LC/MS/MS. Proteins identified as being up- or downregulated were further classified according to their biological functions. Many of the proteins identified in our study may be potential diagnostic biomarkers of NSCLC, particularly phosphorylated eIF4A-I