11 research outputs found
Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound in the detection and characterization of liver tumors
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) has unique advantages over contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the characterization of hepatic tumors. These include the capability of real-time dynamic imaging depicting the enhancement pattern of tumors regardless of its rapidity, purely intravascular properties of the microbubble contrast agents more consistently demonstrating washout of malignancy, and capability of repetitive observation of tumor vascularity with multiple injections of microbubbles with an excellent safety profile and no nephrotoxicity. For an indeterminate mass detected on an ultrasound scan, an immediate benign diagnosis reduces the necessity of costly further imaging as well as patients’ anxiety and an immediate malignant diagnosis prompts the proper work-up and management. CEUS is often served as a problem-solving tool for indeterminate lesions on prior CT or MRI scans, obviating further invasive steps. CEUS offers excellent visualization of peripheral nodular enhancement in even flash-filling or very slow-filling hemangiomas. Careful observation of early arterial filling pattern is helpful in the differentiation of focal nodular hyperplasia versus adenoma. Hepatocellular carcinoma is typically characterized by arterial hypervascularity and often late, partial washout. Metastasis shows brief arterial hypervascularity and complete rapid washout, which can improve its detection during a portal phase survey. The washout phenomenon of malignant tumors in general is useful to differentiate them from benign lesions
Suppressing Grain Growth on Cu Foil Using Graphene
The effect of graphene coating on the growth of grains on bulk copper film was studied. When methane gas is catalytically decomposed on the surface of copper, and a carbon–copper solid solution is formed at high temperature, precipitated carbon on the copper surface forms graphene during rapid cooling through strong sp2 covalent bonding. The graphene layer can prevent the growth of grains by suppressing the diffusion of copper atoms on the surface, even after continuous heat treatment at high temperatures. The actual size of the copper grains was analyzed in terms of repetitive high-temperature heat treatment processes, and the grain growth process was simulated by using thermodynamic data, such as surface migration energy and the binding energy between copper and carbon. In general, transition metals can induce graphene growth on surfaces because they easily form carbon solid solutions at high temperatures. It is expected that the process of graphene growth will be able to suppress grain growth in transition metals used at high temperatures and could be applied to materials that are prone to thermal fatigue issues such as creep
A Study on Deep Learning Application of Vibration Data and Visualization of Defects for Predictive Maintenance of Gravity Acceleration Equipment
Hypergravity accelerators are a type of large machinery used for gravity training or medical research. A failure of such large equipment can be a serious problem in terms of safety or costs. This paper proposes a prediction model that can proactively prevent failures that may occur in a hypergravity accelerator. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the method proposed in this paper. A 4-channel accelerometer was attached to the bearing housing, which is a rotor, and time-amplitude data were obtained from the measured values by sampling. The method proposed in this paper was trained with transfer learning, a deep learning model that replaced the VGG19 model with a Fully Connected Layer (FCL) and Global Average Pooling (GAP) by converting the vibration signal into a short-time Fourier transform (STFT) or Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) spectrogram and converting the input into a 2D image. As a result, the model proposed in this paper has seven times decreased trainable parameters of VGG19, and it is possible to quantify the severity while looking at the defect areas that cannot be seen with 1D
Physiological and biochemical responses of Mychonaste afer to silver (Ag) and silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs)
High-Resolution Patterns of Quantum Dots Formed by Electrohydrodynamic Jet Printing for Light-Emitting Diodes
Here
we demonstrate materials and operating conditions that allow for high-resolution
printing of layers of quantum dots (QDs) with precise control over
thickness and submicron lateral resolution and capabilities for use
as active layers of QD light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The shapes and
thicknesses of the QD patterns exhibit systematic dependence on the
dimensions of the printing nozzle and the ink composition in ways
that allow nearly arbitrary, systematic control when exploited in
a fully automated printing tool. Homogeneous arrays of patterns of
QDs serve as the basis for corresponding arrays of QD LEDs that exhibit
excellent performance. Sequential printing of different types of QDs
in a multilayer stack or in an interdigitated geometry provides strategies
for continuous tuning of the effective, overall emission wavelengths
of the resulting QD LEDs. This strategy is useful to efficient, additive
use of QDs for wide ranging types of electronic and optoelectronic
devices