Measuring Electric Charge and Molecular Coverage on Electrode Surface from Transient Induced Molecular Electronic Signal (TIMES).

Charge density and molecular coverage on the surface of electrode play major roles in the science and technology of surface chemistry and biochemical sensing. However, there has been no easy and direct method to characterize these quantities. By extending the method of Transient Induced Molecular Electronic Signal (TIMES) which we have used to measure molecular interactions, we are able to quantify the amount of charge in the double layers at the solution/electrode interface for different buffer strengths, buffer types, and pH values. Most uniquely, such capabilities can be applied to study surface coverage of immobilized molecules. As an example, we have measured the surface coverage for thiol-modified single-strand deoxyribonucleic acid (ssDNA) as anchored probe and 6-Mercapto-1-hexanol (MCH) as blocking agent on the platinum surface. Through these experiments, we demonstrate that TIMES offers a simple and accurate method to quantify surface charge and coverage of molecules on a metal surface, as an enabling tool for studies of surface properties and surface functionalization for biochemical sensing and reactions

Integrin-mediated membrane blebbing is dependent on the NHE1 and NCX1 activities.

Integrin-mediated signal transduction and membrane blebbing have been well studied to modulate cell adhesion, spreading and migration^1-6^. However, the relationship between membrane blebbing and integrin signaling has not been explored. Here we show that integrin-ligand interaction induces membrane blebbing and membrane permeability change. We found that sodium-proton exchanger 1 (NHE1) and sodium-calcium exchanger 1 (NCX1) are located in the membrane blebbing sites and inhibition of NHE1 disrupts membrane blebbing and decreases membrane permeability change. However, inhibition of NCX1 enhances cell blebbing to cause cell swelling which is correlated with an intracellular sodium accumulation induced by NHE17. These data suggest that sodium influx induced by NHE1 is a driving force for membrane blebbing growth, while sodium efflux induced by NCX1 in a reverse mode causes membrane blebbing retraction. Together, these data reveal a novel function of NHE1 and NCX1 in membrane permeability change and blebbing and provide the link for integrin signaling and membrane blebbing

Effects of epidural compression on stellate neurons and thalamocortical afferent fibers in the rat primary somatosensory cortex

A number of neurological disorders such as epidural hematoma can cause compression of cerebral cortex. We here tested the hypothesis that sustained compression of primary somatosensory cortex may affect stellate neurons and thalamocortical afferent (TCA) fibers. A rat model with barrel cortex subjected to bead epidural compression was used. Golgi‑Cox staining analyses showed the shrinkage of dendritic arbors and the stripping of dendritic spines of stellate neurons for at least 3 months post‑lesion. Anterograde tracing analyses exhibited a progressive decline of TCA fiber density in barrel field for 6 months post‑lesion. Due to the abrupt decrease of TCA fiber density at 3 days after compression, we further used electron microscopy to investigate the ultrastructure of TCA fibers at this time. Some TCA fiber terminal profiles with dissolved or darkened mitochondria and fewer synaptic vesicles were distorted and broken. Furthermore, the disruption of mitochondria and myelin sheath was observed in some myelinated TCA fibers. In addition, expressions of oxidative markers 3‑nitrotyrosine and 4‑hydroxynonenal were elevated in barrel field post‑lesion. Treatment of antioxidant ascorbic acid or apocynin was able to reverse the increase of oxidative stress and the decline of TCA fiber density, rather than the shrinkage of dendrites and the stripping of dendritic spines of stellate neurons post‑lesion. Together, these results indicate that sustained epidural compression of primary somatosensory cortex affects the TCA fibers and the dendrites of stellate neurons for a prolonged period. In addition, oxidative stress is responsible for the reduction of TCA fiber density in barrels rather than the shrinkage of dendrites and the stripping of dendritic spines of stellate neurons

Dissociation of Colloidal Silver into Ionic Form through Membrane under Electric Field

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In vivo sub-femtoliter resolution photoacoustic microscopy with higher frame rates

Microscopy based on non-fluorescent absorption dye staining is widely used in various fields of biomedicine for 400 years. Unlike its fluorescent counterpart, non-fluorescent absorption microscopy lacks proper methodologies to realize its in vivo applications with a sub-femtoliter 3D resolution. Regardless of the most advanced high-resolution photoacoustic microscopy, sub-femtoliter spatial resolution is still unattainable, and the imaging speed is relatively slow. In this paper, based on the two-photon photoacoustic mechanism, we demonstrated a in vivo label free laser-scanning photoacoustic imaging modality featuring high frame rates and sub-femtoliter 3D resolution simultaneously, which stands as a perfect solution to 3D high resolution non-fluorescent absorption microscopy. Furthermore, we first demonstrated in vivo label-free two-photon acoustic microscopy on the observation of non-fluorescent melanin distribution within mouse skin

RISK OF SLEEP DISORDERS IN PATIENTS WITH DECOMPRESSION SICKNESS: A NATIONWIDE, POPULATION-BASED STUDY IN TAIWAN

Background: Decompression sickness (DCS) primarily manifests musculoskeletal pain, cutaneous manifestations, lymphatic symptoms, and neurological symptoms. DCS might affect the central nervous system and induce the stress in the patients, but few studies about the psychiatric morbidity after DCS have been conducted. This study aimed to investigate the association between DCS and the risk of developing psychiatric disorders. Subjects and methods: This study was a population-based, matched cohort design. A total of 738 enrolled patients, with 123 study subjects who had suffered from DCS, and 615 controls matched for sex and age, from the Longitudinal Health Insurance Databank from 2000-2010 in Taiwan, and selected from the National Health Insurance Research Database. After adjusting for the confounding factors, Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to compare the risk of developing psychiatric disorders during the 10 years of follow-up period. Results: Of the study subjects, 10 (8.13%) developed psychiatric disorders when compared to 35 (5.69%) in the control group. The study subjects were more likely to develop psychiatric disorders (crude hazard ratio [HR]: 2.79 (95% CI=1.37-5.69, P<0.01). After adjusting for sex, age, monthly income, urbanization level, geographic region, and comorbidities, the adjusted HR was 3.83 (95% CI=1.60-9.16, P<0.01). Sleep disorders was associated with DCS with the adjusted HR as 5.74 (95% CI=1.04-31.56, P<0.01). Hyperbaric oxygenation therapy was not associated with a lower risk of psychiatric disorders. Conclusions: Patients who suffered from DCS have a 3.8-fold risk of developing psychiatric disorders, and a 5.7-fold risk of sleep disorders. This finding is a reminder for the clinicians that a regular psychiatric follow-up might well be needed for these patients

Text mining techniques for patent analysis.

Abstract Patent documents contain important research results. However, they are lengthy and rich in technical terminology such that it takes a lot of human efforts for analyses. Automatic tools for assisting patent engineers or decision makers in patent analysis are in great demand. This paper describes a series of text mining techniques that conforms to the analytical process used by patent analysts. These techniques include text segmentation, summary extraction, feature selection, term association, cluster generation, topic identification, and information mapping. The issues of efficiency and effectiveness are considered in the design of these techniques. Some important features of the proposed methodology include a rigorous approach to verify the usefulness of segment extracts as the document surrogates, a corpus-and dictionary-free algorithm for keyphrase extraction, an efficient co-word analysis method that can be applied to large volume of patents, and an automatic procedure to create generic cluster titles for ease of result interpretation. Evaluation of these techniques was conducted. The results confirm that the machine-generated summaries do preserve more important content words than some other sections for classification. To demonstrate the feasibility, the proposed methodology was applied to a realworld patent set for domain analysis and mapping, which shows that our approach is more effective than existing classification systems. The attempt in this paper to automate the whole process not only helps create final patent maps for topic analyses, but also facilitates or improves other patent analysis tasks such as patent classification, organization, knowledge sharing, and prior art searches