2,649 research outputs found
Analytical treatment of 2D steady flames anchored in high-velocity streams
The problem of burning of high-velocity gas streams in channels is revisited.
Previous treatments of this issue are found to be incomplete. It is shown that
despite relative smallness of the transversal gas velocity, it plays crucial
role in determining flame structure. In particular, it is necessary in
formulating boundary conditions near the flame anchor, and for the proper
account of the flame propagation law. Using the on-shell description of steady
anchored flames, a consistent solution of the problem is given. Equations for
the flame front position and gas-velocity at the front are obtained. It is
demonstrated that they reduce to a second-order differential equation for the
front position. Numerical solutions of the derived equations are found.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure
An evaporation-based model of thermal neutron induced ternary fission of plutonium
Ternary fission probabilities for thermal neutron induced fission of
plutonium are analyzed within the framework of an evaporation-based model where
the complexity of time-varying potentials, associated with the neck collapse,
are included in a simplistic fashion. If the nuclear temperature at scission
and the fission-neck-collapse time are assumed to be ~1.2 MeV and ~10^-22 s,
respectively, then calculated relative probabilities of ternary-fission
light-charged-particle emission follow the trends seen in the experimental
data. The ability of this model to reproduce ternary fission probabilities
spanning seven orders of magnitude for a wide range of light-particle charges
and masses implies that ternary fission is caused by the coupling of an
evaporation-like process with the rapid re-arrangement of the nuclear fluid
following scission.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in IJMP
Isotropic reconstruction of 3D fluorescence microscopy images using convolutional neural networks
Fluorescence microscopy images usually show severe anisotropy in axial versus
lateral resolution. This hampers downstream processing, i.e. the automatic
extraction of quantitative biological data. While deconvolution methods and
other techniques to address this problem exist, they are either time consuming
to apply or limited in their ability to remove anisotropy. We propose a method
to recover isotropic resolution from readily acquired anisotropic data. We
achieve this using a convolutional neural network that is trained end-to-end
from the same anisotropic body of data we later apply the network to. The
network effectively learns to restore the full isotropic resolution by
restoring the image under a trained, sample specific image prior. We apply our
method to synthetic and real datasets and show that our results improve
on results from deconvolution and state-of-the-art super-resolution techniques.
Finally, we demonstrate that a standard 3D segmentation pipeline performs on
the output of our network with comparable accuracy as on the full isotropic
data
Self-organized transition to coherent activity in disordered media
Synchronized oscillations are of critical functional importance in many
biological systems. We show that such oscillations can arise without
centralized coordination in a disordered system of electrically coupled
excitable and passive cells. Increasing the coupling strength results in waves
that lead to coherent periodic activity, exhibiting cluster, local and global
synchronization under different conditions. Our results may explain the
self-organized transition in a pregnant uterus from transient, localized
activity initially to system-wide coherent excitations just before delivery.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Evolution of a fluorinated green fluorescent protein
The fluorescence of bacterial cells expressing a variant (GFPm) of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) was reduced to background levels by global replacement of the leucine residues of GFPm by 5,5,5-trifluoroleucine. Eleven rounds of random mutagenesis and screening via fluorescence-activated cell sorting yielded a GFP mutant containing 20 amino acid substitutions. The mutant protein in fluorinated form showed improved folding efficiency both in vivo and in vitro, and the median fluorescence of cells expressing the fluorinated protein was improved {approx}650-fold in comparison to that of cells expressing fluorinated GFPm. The success of this approach demonstrates the feasibility of engineering functional proteins containing many copies of abiological amino acid constituents
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Nerve-targeted probes for fluorescence-guided intraoperative imaging.
A fundamental goal of many surgeries is nerve preservation, as inadvertent injury can lead to patient morbidity including numbness, pain, localized paralysis and incontinence. Nerve identification during surgery relies on multiple parameters including anatomy, texture, color and relationship to surrounding structures using white light illumination. We propose that fluorescent labeling of nerves can enhance the contrast between nerves and adjacent tissue during surgery which may lead to improved outcomes. Methods: Nerve binding peptide sequences including HNP401 were identified by phage display using selective binding to dissected nerve tissue. Peptide dye conjugates including FAM-HNP401 and structural variants were synthesized and screened for nerve binding after topical application on fresh rodent and human tissue and in-vivo after systemic IV administration into both mice and rats. Nerve to muscle contrast was quantified by measuring fluorescent intensity after topical or systemic administration of peptide dye conjugate. Results: Peptide dye conjugate FAM-HNP401 showed selective binding to human sural nerve with 10.9x fluorescence signal intensity (1374.44 ± 425.96) compared to a previously identified peptide FAM-NP41 (126.17 ± 61.03). FAM-HNP401 showed nerve-to-muscle contrast of 3.03 ± 0.57. FAM-HNP401 binds and highlight multiple human peripheral nerves including lower leg sural, upper arm medial antebrachial as well as autonomic nerves isolated from human prostate. Conclusion: Phage display has identified a novel peptide that selectively binds to ex-vivo human nerves and in-vivo using rodent models. FAM-HNP401 or an optimized variant could be translated for use in a clinical setting for intraoperative identification of human nerves to improve visualization and potentially decrease the incidence of intra-surgical nerve injury
Anti-tubulin drugs conjugated to anti-ErbB antibodies selectively radiosensitize.
Tumour resistance to radiotherapy remains a barrier to improving cancer patient outcomes. To overcome radioresistance, certain drugs have been found to sensitize cells to ionizing radiation (IR). In theory, more potent radiosensitizing drugs should increase tumour kill and improve patient outcomes. In practice, clinical utility of potent radiosensitizing drugs is curtailed by off-target side effects. Here we report potent anti-tubulin drugs conjugated to anti-ErbB antibodies selectively radiosensitize to tumours based on surface receptor expression. While two classes of potent anti-tubulins, auristatins and maytansinoids, indiscriminately radiosensitize tumour cells, conjugating these potent anti-tubulins to anti-ErbB antibodies restrict their radiosensitizing capacity. Of translational significance, we report that a clinically used maytansinoid ADC, ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1), with IR prolongs tumour control in target expressing HER2+ tumours but not target negative tumours. In contrast to ErbB signal inhibition, our findings establish an alternative therapeutic paradigm for ErbB-based radiosensitization using antibodies to restrict radiosensitizer delivery
Development of fluorescent probes for bioimaging applications
Fluorescent probes, which allow visualization of cations such as Ca2+, Zn2+ etc., small biomolecules such as nitric oxide (NO) or enzyme activities in living cells by means of fluorescence microscopy, have become indispensable tools for clarifying functions in biological systems. This review deals with the general principles for the design of bioimaging fluorescent probes by modulating the fluorescence properties of fluorophores, employing mechanisms such as acceptor-excited Photoinduced electron Transfer (a-PeT), donor-excited Photoinduced electron Transfer (d-PeT), and spirocyclization, which have been established by our group. The a-PeT and d-PeT mechanisms are widely applicable for the design of bioimaging probes based on many fluorophores and the spirocyclization process is also expected to be useful as a fluorescence off/on switching mechanism. Fluorescence modulation mechanisms are essential for the rational design of novel fluorescence probes for target molecules. Based on these mechanisms, we have developed more than fifty bioimaging probes, of which fourteen are commercially available. The review also describes some applications of the probes developed by our group to in vitro and in vivo systems
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