Biodetection grinder

Grinder, which employs shearing action with minimum energy input, obtains desired particle sizes in materials ranging from soft plastics to hard rocks. Modified version of this grinder might be used in hospitals and biological laboratories involved with bacteriological research and testing

An affordable and modular development environment for PLC-Training

[EN] This paper focuses mainly on educational programs in the fields of mechatronics and electrical engineering. Building, programming and testing electrical circuits with programmable logic controllers (PLC) is an integral part of practical final exams in this sector.Beyerle, W. (2017). An affordable and modular development environment for PLC-Training. En Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 179-187. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD17.2017.510217918

Civil Resistance and the Corruption-Violence Nexus

There are multiple ways in which corruption is linked to violent conflict, some direct and some indirect. For ordinary citizens, the experience of this nexus is the denial of basic freedoms and rights. In spite of such bleak circumstances, people can move from being victims and bystanders to becoming a force for transforming their societies. Citizens are engaging in civil resistance to curb corruption and win accountability and justice. This article: explores the linkages between corruption and violence; identifies the conceptual and practical limitations of top-down, technical approaches to combating corruption; articulates a bottom-up approach in which the civic realm is included in the anti-corruption equation; and presents case studies of civic action campaigns and movements under conditions of violence, post-conflict transformation or state capture by violent crime syndicates. From these, general lessons learned are distilled

Global monitoring of tropospheric water vapor with GPS radio occultation aboard CHAMP

The paper deals with application of GPS radio occultation (RO) measurements aboard CHAMP for the retrieval of tropospheric water vapor profiles. The GPS RO technique provides a powerful tool for atmospheric sounding which requires no calibration, is not affected by clouds, aerosols or precipitation, and provides an almost uniform global coverage. We briefly overview data processing and retrieval of vertical refractivity, temperature and water vapor profiles from GPS RO observations. CHAMP RO data are available since 2001 with up to 200 high resolution atmospheric profiles per day. Global validation of CHAMP water vapor profiles with radiosonde data reveals a bias of about 0.2 g/kg and a standard deviation of less than 1 g/kg specific humidity in the lower troposphere. We demonstrate potentials of CHAMP RO retrievals for monitoring the mean tropospheric water vapor distribution on a global scale.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Toxicological Evaluation of Poly(ethylene imine) -based non-viral vector systems for pulmonary siRNA application

In this thesis, toxicity of PEI-based non-viral vector systems for siRNA application into the lungs was comprehensively described and analyzed in vitro as well as in vivo. Chapter 1 introduced in basic information about the lung anatomy and physiology and general considerations for pulmonary application as well as gave an overview of the two major groups of non-viral vector systems for pulmonary application and highlighted their impact in nanomedicine and nanotoxicology. The search for more predictive toxicity tools for (polymeric) non-viral vector systems is still of great concern in the community and was pointed out in this chapter. Chapter 2 described the toxicicological and immunomoldulatory effects of two different PEI-based nanocarriers for siRNA delivery in different murine lung cells. Two different PEI nanocarriers (branched vs. linear, and low vs. high molecular weight PEI) were evaluated regarding standard toxicity endpoints, but also immunomodulatory effects caused by the pure polymers and their respective polyplexes with siRNA. The results pointed out, that epithelial cells were much more sensitive in response to such polymers and the polyplexes appeared to be less toxic than the pure polymers. In addition, the immunomodulatory effects of such polymeric non-viral vector systems should be further investigated for their underlying mechanism. Chapter 3 hypothesized that poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) reduces the cytotoxicity of high molecular weight, branched PEI25 kDa and investigated the cell-compatibility and cytotoxicity of a panel of different PEI-PEG polymers in vitro. This in vitro study highlighted the inflammatory potential of such PEI-PEG polymers which seemed to be higher when cytotoxicity was extremely reduced. Hypothesizing that inflammatory and oxidative stress response play an important role when using PEI-based nanocarriers, especially for pulmonary application, in Chapter 4 a toxicity and stress pathway focused gene expression profiling was described for selected PEI-PEG polymers. This gene array clearly stressed the inflammatory potential of the modified PEI-PEG polymers with reduced apoptotic signalling pathways, but increasing inflammatory and oxidative stress response, in contrast to PEI25 kDa. Due to the higher proinflammatory potential and elevated oxidative stress parameters, the question of genotoxicity was addressed in Chapter 5. The mutant frequency of selected PEI-based nanocarriers was investigated by using a transgenic lung epithelial cell culture in vitro model, but was regarded to be less and PEI-based nanocarriers were not mutagenic in such an in vitro model. After toxicity analysis in vitro two main questions raised (i) what kind of effects would be induced by the polymers or their polyplexes in vivo when directly administered to the lungs and (ii) could we find any in vitro/ in vivo correlation for biomarkers indicating toxicity, inflammation and/or oxidative stress? Chapter 6 focused on the in vivo toxicity, inflammatory, and oxidative stress response of selected PEI-based nanocarriers for siRNA in mice after intratracheal instillation and tried to answer the two upcoming questions from the in vitro studies. Almost all modified PEI-based nanocarriers showed very high acute inflammation, but with different resolving kinetics. Hydrophobic modification of low molecular weight PEI and highly hydrophilic PEGylated PEI-based nanocarriers seemed to be well tolerable in contrast to moderate hydrophilic PEGylated and fatty-acid modified PEI-based polymers which showed very high and sustained inflammation in the lungs. In contrast to safety issues (which represent the main part of this thesis) in chapter 7 the in vivo efficacy and the cell–type specific targeting was reported of PEI-based nanocarriers, same carriers selected as in Chapter 6, for pulmonary siRNA delivery. Surprisingly, the highly inflammatory PEI-based nanocarriers yielded high knock down effects, but only the fatty acid modified PEI-based nanocarrier, seemed to avoid off-target effects. Leucocytes were targeted to some extent, but seemed not to be the main targeted cell type in the lung after PEI-based nanocarriers application for siRNA delivery. Thus, for clinical trials the polymers should be carefully optimized and evaluated for cytotoxicity, high acute inflammatory and oxidative stress response and their in vivo performance of siRNA delivery. Development of polymers with reduced cytotoxicity and negligible off-target effects, but high in vivo efficacy represents one of the biggest challenges for the next decades before entry to clinics. In addition, optimized in vitro models for predictive toxicity are still needed