Polymer Hot Embossing with Soft Stamps

Microfluidic channels are fabricated in thick polycarbonate (PC) substrates by hot embossing using soft poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) stamps. The embossing force is in the range of 2.5-3 kN for a 4-inch diameter substrate, and the embossed microchannel is 70 μm deep. We investigate the influence of soft stamp precursor and curing agent mix ratio, and post thermal treatment on embossing conditions. Experimental results show that a soft stamp fabricated with 5:1 mix ratio and post-annealed at 150c results in better embossing properties than conventional un-annealed stamps

Hazardous Processes and Their Risk Mitigation Techniques in Iron and Steel Industry Emission in CFB Boiler- A Review

Steel manufacturing industries are one of the major industries in the world where number of hazards are being involved in Daily work practices. While working in such steel industries safe operating/work procedures are too much significant as employees are exposed to various threats due to nature of job and work operations. For any industry labour is considered as a great asset which follows the work as trades. As per the New Occupational Safety and Health CODE – Hazardous Process is mentioned in two ways (i) consequence in toxic waste of universal atmosphere or (ii) reason material injury to health of a worker occupied [1]. The working environment in steel industry is too much noisy with excessive heat. In today’s world most of the steel industries are using new technologies where control systems are used in various steel manufacturing industries to control number of incidents and accidents and have precise control over steel composition addition which reflects the quality. As the safety is being considered paramount in today’s working environment, so regardless the hazardous process of various steel manufacturing industries achieving an accident free environment is achievable. Several Risk Assessment Techniques like Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (HIRA) Techniques/Job Safety Analysis are used to reduce the work place injuries i.e. Frequency rate, severity rate and incident rate statistically and statistics of several years has been studied on the various mentioned process and injuries resulting in ill-health is mitigated [2]

Cross-talk compensation of hyperfine control in donor qubit architectures

We theoretically investigate cross-talk in hyperfine gate control of donor-qubit quantum computer architectures, in particular the Kane proposal. By numerically solving the Poisson and Schr\"{o}dinger equations for the gated donor system, we calculate the change in hyperfine coupling and thus the error in spin-rotation for the donor nuclear-electron spin system, as the gate-donor distance is varied. We thus determine the effect of cross-talk - the inadvertent effect on non-target neighbouring qubits - which occurs due to closeness of the control gates (20-30nm). The use of compensation protocols is investigated, whereby the extent of crosstalk is limited by the application of compensation bias to a series of gates. In light of these factors the architectural implications are then considered.Comment: 15 pages, 22 figures, submitted to Nanotechnolog

Database Search Strategies for Proteomic Data Sets Generated by Electron Capture Dissociation Mass Spectrometry

Large data sets of electron capture dissociation (ECD) mass spectra from proteomic experiments are rich in information; however, extracting that information in an optimal manner is not straightforward. Protein database search engines currently available are designed for low resolution CID data, from which Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) ECD data differs significantly. ECD mass spectra contain both z-prime and z-dot fragment ions (and c-prime and c-dot); ECD mass spectra contain abundant peaks derived from neutral losses from charge-reduced precursor ions; FT-ICR ECD spectra are acquired with a larger precursor m/z isolation window than their low-resolution CID counterparts. Here, we consider three distinct stages of postacquisition analysis: (1) processing of ECD mass spectra prior to the database search; (2) the database search step itself and (3) postsearch processing of results. We demonstrate that each of these steps has an effect on the number of peptides identified, with the postsearch processing of results having the largest effect. We compare two commonly used search engines: Mascot and OMSSA. Using an ECD data set of modest size (3341 mass spectra) from a complex sample (mouse whole cell lysate), we demonstrate that search results can be improved from 630 identifications (19% identification success rate) to 1643 identifications (49% identification success rate). We focus in particular on improving identification rates for doubly charged precursors, which are typically low for ECD fragmentation. We compare our presearch processing algorithm with a similar algorithm recently developed for electron transfer dissociation (ETD) data

Double inhibition of XIAP and Bcl-2 axis is beneficial for retrieving sensitivity of renal cell cancer to apoptosis

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is known to be resistant to chemo- and radiotherapy due to a high apoptotic threshold. Smac and XIAP (X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein) proteins were detected in all RCC cell lines and tissue samples examined. We modulated the function of XIAP, either through its constitutional downregulation with an shRNA vector or by applying a Smac-mimicking peptide. Among RCC cell lines, Caki1 expresses the highest levels of XIAP. We transfected Caki1 with XIAP-targeting shRNA vector and generated stable clones. XIAP was knocked down by RNA interference in clone no. 14 by 81.6% and in clone no. 19 by 85.3%. Compared to the parental and mock-transfected cells, neither clone was more sensitive to conventional chemotherapeutic agents, but both clones were more susceptible to Fas stimulation (P<0.0001) and to pharmacological Bcl-2 inhibition (P<0.0001), as well as to a combination of the two (P<0.0001). Mature Smac binds to XIAP via the N-terminal residues, disrupting its interaction with caspases and promoting their activity. We determined that exposure of Caki1 cells to Smac-N7 peptide (AVPIAQK) resulted in a slight but significant decrease in viability (P=0.0031) and potentiated cisplatin's effect (P=0.0027). In contrast with point targeting of XIAP by shRNA, Smac-N7 peptide is active against several IAP (inhibitor of apoptosis protein) family members, which can explain its role in sensitising cells to cisplatin. Our results suggest that multiple targeting of both Bcl-2 and XIAP or, alternatively, of several IAP family members by the Smac-N7 peptide is a potent way to overcome resistance of RCC to apoptosis-triggering treatment modalities, and might be a new tool for molecular targeted therapy