Petrographic and crystallographic study of silicate minerals in lunar rocks

Optical U-stage measurements, chemical microprobe data, and X-ray procession photographs of a bytownite twin group from rock 12032,44 are compared. Sharp but weak b and no c-reflections were observed for this An89 bytownite indicating a partly disordered structure. Euler angles, used to characterize the orientation of the optical indicatrix, compare better with values for plutonic than for volcanic plagioclase. This indicates that structural and optical properties cannot be directly correlated

Spin Hall Conductivity on the Anisotropic Triangular Lattice

We present a detailed study of the spin Hall conductivity on a two-dimensional triangular lattice in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling. In particular, we focus part of our attention on the effect of the anisotropy of the nearest neighbor hopping amplitude. It is found that the presence of anisotropy has drastic effects on the spin Hall conductivity, especially in the hole doped regime where a significant increase or/and reversed sign of the spin Hall conductivity has been obtained. We also provide a systematic analysis of the numerical results in terms of Berry phases. The changes of signs observed at particular density of carriers appear to be a consequence of both Fermi surface topology and change of sign of electron velocity. In addition, in contrast to the two-dimensional square lattice, it is shown that the tight binding spin-orbit Hamiltonian should be derived carefully from the continuous model on the triangular lattice.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

In situ TEM observations of plastic deformation in quartz crystals

With in situ nanocompression experiments in a transmission electron microscope, we investigated plastic deformation in natural quartz crystals and observed both dislocation plasticity as well as mechanical twinning. Through this experimental method, we are able to provide direct evidence of Dauphiné twin nucleation and could measure the intrinsic twinning stress. The twinning phenomena appear to include a memory effect, where the same twin can reappear upon successive loading and unloading events. The data provide insight into this twin generation mechanism and can be used as a benchmark for the use of twins in quartz for paleopiezometry. Together, the observation of room-temperature dislocation plasticity and reversible twinning adds new insight into the extensive field of quartz plasticity and demonstrates the usefulness of small-scale testing techniques for mineral physics

Shoot growth of woody trees and shrubs is predicted by maximum plant height and associated traits

1. The rate of elongation and thickening of individual branches (shoots) varies across plant species. This variation is important for the outcome of competition and other plant-plant interactions. Here we compared rates of shoot growth across 44 species from tropical, warm temperate, and cool temperate forests of eastern Australia.2. Shoot growth rate was found to correlate with a suite of traits including the potential height of the species, xylem-specific conductivity, leaf size, leaf area per xylem cross-section, twig diameter (at 40 cm length), wood density and modulus of elasticity.3. Within this suite of traits, maximum plant height was the clearest correlate of growth rates, explaining 50 to 67% of the variation in growth overall (p p 4. Growth rates were not strongly correlated with leaf nitrogen or leaf mass per unit leaf area.5. Correlations between growth and maximum height arose both across latitude (47%, p p p p < 0.0001), reflecting intrinsic differences across species and sites

APCalign: an R package workflow and app for aligning and updating flora names to the Australian Plant Census

Here we present ‘APCalign’, an R package and accompanying browser-sourced application to align and update scientific names for Australian vascular plants to the most likely currently accepted name in the Australian Plant Census (APC) or a name in the Australian Plant Names Index (APNI). Scientific names are the label assigned to unique taxon concepts by the scientific community, but this common terminology is most useful if a taxon concept is consistently referred to by the same name. These links can be broken because of either spelling mistakes or taxonomic changes. Automated tools are required to resolve taxon lists, aligning and updating long lists of possibly erroneous scientific names to the most likely currently accepted names. It is essential that tools specific to the APC/APNI be developed, because these lists specify an endorsed national-level nomenclature used in government legislation and include the uniquely Australian concept of phrase names, absent in global taxonomic datasets. To align input names to names within the APC or APNI, ‘APCalign’ works progressively through a sequence of checks that combine different permutations of the input name, exact versus fuzzy matches, matches that consider the entire name input versus a subset of words, and character strings that indicate a name can be resolved only to a genus or family. The aligned names are then, when possible, updated to a currently accepted taxon concept within the APC. This package should facilitate all research outputs that require diverse scientific name lists to be merged or outdated lists to be updated

Computational Sensitivity Investigation of Hydrogel Injection Characteristics for Myocardial Support

Biomaterial injection is a potential new therapy for augmenting ventricular mechanics after myocardial infarction (MI). Recent in vivo studies have demonstrated that hydrogel injections can mitigate the adverse remodeling due to MI. More importantly, the material properties of these injections influence the efficacy of the therapy. The goal of the current study is to explore the interrelated effects of injection stiffness and injection volume on diastolic ventricular wall stress and thickness. To achieve this, finite element models were constructed with different hydrogel injection volumes (150 µL and 300 µL), where the modulus was assessed over a range of 0.1 kPa to 100 kPa (based on experimental measurements). The results indicate that a larger injection volume and higher stiffness reduce diastolic myofiber stress the most, by maintaining the wall thickness during loading. Interestingly, the efficacy begins to taper after the hydrogel injection stiffness reaches a value of 50 kPa. This computational approach could be used in the future to evaluate the optimal properties of the hydrogel

Efficient Elimination of Inhaled Nanoparticles from the Alveolar Region: Evidence for Interstitial Uptake and Subsequent Reentrainment onto Airways Epithelium

BACKGROUND: There is ongoing discussion that inhaled nanoparticles (NPs, < 100 nm) may translocate from epithelial deposition sites of the lungs to systemic circulation. OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: We studied the disappearance of NPs from the epithelium by sequential lung retention and clearance and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) measurements in healthy adult Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats at various times over 6 months after administration of a single 60- to 100-min intratracheal inhalation of iridium-192 ((192)Ir)–radiolabeled NPs. A complete (192)Ir balance of all organs, tissues, excretion, remaining carcass, and BAL was performed at each time point. RESULTS: Directly after inhalation we found free NPs in the BAL; later, NPs were predominantly associated with alveolar macropages (AMs). After 3 weeks, lavageable NP fractions decreased to 0.06 of the actual NP lung burden. This is in stark contrast to the AM-associated fraction of micron-sized particles reported in the literature. These particles remained constant at about 0.8 throughout a 6-month period. Three weeks after inhalation, 80% of the retained Ir NPs was translocated into epithelium and interstitium. CONCLUSION: There is a strong size-selective difference in particle immobilization. Furthermore, AM-mediated NP transport to the larynx originates not only from the NP fraction retained on the epithelium but also from NPs being reentrained from the interstitium to the luminal side of epithelium. We conclude that NPs are much less phagocytized by AMs than large particles but are effectively removed from the lung surface into the interstitium. Even from these interstitial sites, they undergo AM-mediated long-term NP clearance to the larynx

A homotopy approach to the feedback stabilization of linear systems

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76174/1/AIAA-20236-533.pd

Formulation of Biologically-Inspired Silk-Based Drug Carriers for Pulmonary Delivery Targeted for Lung Cancer

The benefits of using silk fibroin, a major protein in silk, are widely established in many biomedical applications including tissue regeneration, bioactive coating and in vitro tissue models. The properties of silk such as biocompatibility and controlled degradation are utilized in this study to formulate for the first time as carriers for pulmonary drug delivery. Silk fibroin particles are spray dried or spray-freeze-dried to enable the delivery to the airways via dry powder inhalers. The addition of excipients such as mannitol is optimized for both the stabilization of protein during the spray-freezing process as well as for efficient dispersion using an in vitro aerosolisation impactor. Cisplatin is incorporated into the silk-based formulations with or without cross-linking, which show different release profiles. The particles show high aerosolisation performance through the measurement of in vitro lung deposition, which is at the level of commercially available dry powder inhalers. The silk-based particles are shown to be cytocompatible with A549 human lung epithelial cell line. The cytotoxicity of cisplatin is demonstrated to be enhanced when delivered using the cross-linked silk-based particles. These novel inhalable silk-based drug carriers have the potential to be used as anti-cancer drug delivery systems targeted for the lungs

Characterizing the nano and micro structure of concrete to improve its durability

New and advanced methodologies have been developed to characterize the nano and microstructure of cement paste and concrete exposed to aggressive environments. High resolution full-field soft X-ray imaging in the water window is providing new insight on the nano scale of the cement hydration process, which leads to a nano-optimization of cement-based systems. Hard X-ray microtomography images on ice inside cement paste and cracking caused by the alkali-silica reaction (ASR) enables three-dimensional structural identification. The potential of neutron diffraction to determine reactive aggregates by measuring their residual strains and preferred orientation is studied. Results of experiments using these tools will be shown on this paper