Accretion Disks Around Young Objects. III. Grain Growth

We present detailed models of irradiated T Tauri disks including dust grain growth with power-law size distributions. The models assume complete mixing between dust and gas and solve for the vertical disk structure self-consistentlyincluding the heating effects of stellar irradiation as well as local viscous heating. For a given total dust mass, grain growth is found to decrease the vertical height of the surface where the optical depth to the stellar radiation becomes unit and thus the local irradiation heating, while increasing the disk emission at mm and sub-mm wavelengths. The resulting disk models are less geometrically thick than our previous models assuming interstellar medium dust, and agree better with observed spectral energy distributions and images of edge-on disks, like HK Tau/c and HH 30. The implications of models with grain growth for determining disk masses from long-wavelength emission are considered.Comment: 29 pages, including 11 figures and 1 table, APJ accepte

Synthesis and Functionalization of Monodisperse Near-ultraviolet and Visible Excitable Multifunctional Eu3+, Bi3+:REVO4 Nanophosphors for Bioimaging and Biosensing Applications

Near-ultraviolet and visible excitable Eu- and Bi-doped NPs based on rare earth vanadates (REVO4, RE = Y, Gd) have been synthesized by a facile route from appropriate RE precursors, europium and bismuth nitrate, and sodium orthovanadate, by homogeneous precipitation in an ethylene glycol/water mixture at 120 °C. The NPs can be functionalized either by a one-pot synthesis with polyacrylic acid (PAA) or by a Layer-by-Layer approach with poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) and PAA. In the first case, the particle size can also be tuned by adjusting the amount of PAA. The Eu- Bi-doped REVO4 based nanophosphors show the typical red luminescence of Eu(III), which can be excited through an energy transfer process from the vanadate anions, resulting in a much higher luminescence intensity in comparison to the direct excitation of the europium cations. The incorporation of Bi into the REVO4 structure shifts the original absorption band of the vanadate anions towards longer wavelengths, giving rise to nanophosphors with an excitation maximum at 342 nm, which can also be excited in the visible range. The suitability of such nanophosphors for bioimaging and biosensing applications, as well as their colloidal stability in different buffer media of biological interest, their cytotoxicity, their degradability at low pH, and their uptake by HeLa cells have been evaluated. Their suitability for bioimaging and biosensing applications is also demonstrated.European Union 267226Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MAT2014-54852-

Rare earth based nanostructured materials: Synthesis, functionalization, properties and bioimaging and biosensing applications

Rare earth based nanostructures constitute a type of functional materials widely used and studied in the recent literature. The purpose of this review is to provide a general and comprehensive overview of the current state of the art, with special focus on the commonly employed synthesis methods and functionalization strategies of rare earth based nanoparticles and on their different bioimaging and biosensing applications. The luminescent (including downconversion, upconversion and permanent luminescence) and magnetic properties of rare earth based nanoparticles, as well as their ability to absorb X-rays, will also be explained and connected with their luminescent, magnetic resonance and X-ray computed tomography bioimaging applications, respectively. This review is not only restricted to nanoparticles, and recent advances reported for in other nanostructures containing rare earths, such as metal organic frameworks and lanthanide complexes conjugated with biological structures, will also be commented on.European Union 267226Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MAT2014-54852-

AAO Starbugs: software control and associated algorithms

The Australian Astronomical Observatory's TAIPAN instrument deploys 150 Starbug robots to position optical fibres to accuracies of 0.3 arcsec, on a 32 cm glass field plate on the focal plane of the 1.2 m UK-Schmidt telescope. This paper describes the software system developed to control and monitor the Starbugs, with particular emphasis on the automated path-finding algorithms, and the metrology software which keeps track of the position and motion of individual Starbugs as they independently move in a crowded field. The software employs a tiered approach to find a collision-free path for every Starbug, from its current position to its target location. This consists of three path-finding stages of increasing complexity and computational cost. For each Starbug a path is attempted using a simple method. If unsuccessful, subsequently more complex (and expensive) methods are tried until a valid path is found or the target is flagged as unreachable.Comment: 10 pages, to be published in Proc. SPIE 9913, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy IV; 201

Human synthetic lethal inference as potential anti-cancer target gene detection

Background: Two genes are called synthetic lethal (SL) if mutation of either alone is not lethal, but mutation of both leads to death or a significant decrease in organism's fitness. The detection of SL gene pairs constitutes a promising alternative for anti-cancer therapy. As cancer cells exhibit a large number of mutations, the identification of these mutated genes' SL partners may provide specific anti-cancer drug candidates, with minor perturbations to the healthy cells. Since existent SL data is mainly restricted to yeast screenings, the road towards human SL candidates is limited to inference methods. Results: In the present work, we use phylogenetic analysis and database manipulation (BioGRID for interactions, Ensembl and NCBI for homology, Gene Ontology for GO attributes) in order to reconstruct the phylogenetically-inferred SL gene network for human. In addition, available data on cancer mutated genes (COSMIC and Cancer Gene Census databases) as well as on existent approved drugs (DrugBank database) supports our selection of cancer-therapy candidates./nConclusions: Our work provides a complementary alternative to the current methods for drug discovering and gene target identification in anti-cancer research. Novel SL screening analysis and the use of highly curated databases would contribute to improve the results of this methodology

Detection of pathogenic Bacteria by Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy: Influence of the immobilization strategies on the sensor performance

Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is applied to detect pathogenic E. coli O157:H7 bacteria via a label free immunoassay-based detection method. Polyclonal anti-E.coli antibodies (PAb) are immobilized onto gold electrodes following two different strategies, via chemical bond formation between antibody amino groups and a carboxylic acid containing self-assembled molecular monolayer (SAM) and alternatively by linking a biotinylated anti-E. coli to Neutravidin on a mixed-SAM. Impedance spectra for sensors of both designs for increasing concentrations of E. coli are recorded in phosphate buffered saline (PBS). The Nyquist plots can be modeled with a Randle equivalent circuit, identifying the charge transfer resistance RCT as the relevant concentration dependent parameter. Sensors fabricated from both designs are able to detect very low concentration of E. coli with limits of detection as low as 10-100 cfu/ml. The influence of the different immobilization protocols on the sensor performance is evaluated in terms of sensitivity, dynamic range and resistance against nonspecific absorption

Effect of indirect composite treatment microtensile bond strength of self-adhesive resin cements

Background: No specific indications about the pre-treatment of indirect composite restorations is provided by the manufacturers of most self-adhesive resin cements. The potential effect of silane treatment to the bond strength of the complete tooth/indirect restoration complex is not available.The aim of this study was to determine the contribution of different surface treatments on microtensile bond strength of composite overlays to dentin using several self-adhesive resin cements and a total-etch one. Material and Methods: Composite overlays were fabricated and bonding surfaces were airborne-particle abraded and randomly assigned to two different surface treatments: no treatment or silane application (RelyX Ceramic Primer) followed by an adhesive (Adper Scotchbond 1 XT). Composite overlays were luted to flat dentin surfaces using the following self-adhesive resin cements: RelyX Unicem, G-Cem, Speedcem, Maxcem Elite or Smartcem2, and the total-etch resin cement RelyX ARC. After 24 h, bonded specimens were cut into sticks 1 mm thick and stressed in tension until failure. Two-way ANOVA and SNK tests were applied at α=0.05. Results: Bond strength values were significantly influenced by the resin cement used ( p <0.001). However, composite surface treatment and the interaction between the resin cement applied and surface treatment did not significantly affect dentin bond strength ( p >0.05). All self-adhesive resin cements showed lower bond strength values than the total-etch RelyX ARC. Among self-adhesive resin cements, RelyX Unicem and G-Cem attained statistically higher bond strength values. Smartcem2 and Maxcem Elite exhibited 80-90% of pre-test failures. Conclusions: The silane and adhesive application after indirect resin composite sandblasting did not improve the bond strength of dentin-composite overlay complex. Selection of the resin cement seems to be a more relevant factor when bonding indirect composites to dentin than its surface treatmen

Parallel readout of pathway-specific inputs to laminated brain structures

Local field potentials (LFPs) capture the electrical activity produced by principal cells during integration of converging synaptic inputs from multiple neuronal populations. However, since synaptic currents mix in the extracellular volume, LFPs have complex spatiotempo-ral structure, making them hard to exploit. Here we propose a biophysical framework to identify and separate LFP-generators. First we use a computational multineuronal model that scales up single cell electrogenesis driven by several synaptic inputs to realistic aggregate LFPs. This approach relies on the fixed but distinct locations of synaptic inputs from different presynaptic populations targeting a laminated brain structure. Thus the LFPs are contributed by several pathway-specific LFP-generators, whose electrical activity is defined by the spatial distribution of synaptic terminals and the time course of synaptic currents initiated in target cells by the corresponding presynaptic population. Then we explore the efficacy of independent component analysis to blindly separate converging sources and reconstruct pathway-specific LFP-generators. This approach can optimally locate synaptic inputs with subcellular accuracy while the reconstructed time course of pathway-specific LFP-generators is reliable in the millisecond scale. We also describe few cases where the non-linear intracellular interaction of strongly overlapping LFP-generators may lead to a significant cross-contamination and the appearance of derivative generators. We show that the approach reliably disentangle ongoing LFPs in the hippocampus into contribution of several LFP-generators.We were able to readout in parallel the pathway-specific presynap-tic activity of projection cells in the entorhinal cortex and pyramidal cells in the ipsilateral and contralateral CA3. Thus we provide formal mathematical and experimental support for parallel readout of the activity of converging presynaptic populations in working neuronal circuits from common LFPs. © 2011 Makarova, Ibarz, Makarov, Benito and Herreras.This study has been financed by grants FIS2010-20054 and BFU2010-19192 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.Peer Reviewe

The link between foreign institutional owners and multinational enterprises’ environmental outcomes

Many institutional investors claim to be leaders in their commitment to sustainability, yet their real impact is undetermined. We look at the relationship between the presence of foreign institutional owners and the firm’s environmental outcomes in terms of performance and innovation. We argue that foreign institutional owners seek to mitigate their exposure to reputational risks by encouraging their investee firms to move towards better environmental performance. However, these owners are less likely to engage in long-term investments derived from environmental innovations. We examine these paradoxical motivations in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the chemical industry across 33 countries in emerging and developed markets and further explore how these investee firms’ international diversification affects these relationships. Our findings contribute to international corporate governance and sustainability research by uncovering that, contrary to institutional owners’ popular claims, foreign institutional owners have a positive effect on their investees’ environmental performance, but their influence is not statistically significant on environmental innovation. Specifically, the influence of foreign institutional owners on environmental performance is strong for MNEs with a low level of international diversification and marginal for those with a higher level of internationalization; meanwhile, domestic institutional owners are committed to advancing both environmental performance and innovation in their MNE investees. In sum, we show that environmental concerns are still quite localized.The University of Granada authors recognize the partial funding from PID2019-106725GB-I00 and PID2019-107767GA-I00 research grants (Spanish State Research Agency—Innovation and Science Min istry, 10.13039/501100011033), and the A-SEJ-291-UGR18 grant (Regional Government of Andalucia, European FEDER funds, and University of Granada)