Implantable devices including fixed tissues

Disclosed are implantable tissues including one or more enzyme inhibitors bound in the tissues, bioprostheses including the tissue, and methods for incorporating enzyme inhibitors in implantable tissues. Disclosed tissue can exhibit increased resistance to degradation, and specifically, degradation due to enzyme activity following implantation. Moreover, the disclosed methods can lead to increased levels of beneficial components bound in implantable tissues following a fixation/stabilization protocol. Increased levels of beneficial agents in an implantable tissue can further improve the implantable tissues and bioprostheses incorporating the tissues through improved mechanical characteristics and longer lifespan

Computer simulation of defects and oxygen transport in yttria-stabilized zirconia

We have used molecular dynamics simulations and energy minimization calculations to examine defect energetics and oxygen diffusion in yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ). Oxygen vacancies prefer to be second nearest neighbors to yttrium dopants. The oxygen diffusion coefficient shows a peak at 8 mol% yttria consistent with experimental findings. The activation energy for oxygen diffusion varies from 0.6 to 1.0 eV depending on the yttria content. The YZr' VO YZr' complex with a binding energy of -0.85 eV may play an important role in any conductivity degradation of YSZ

DATA FUSION OF PANCHROMATIC AND MULTISPECTRAL IMAGES BASED ON OPTIMIZATION USING LAGRANGE MULTIPLIER

The remote sensing satellites provide complementary images of different resolutions which need to be integrated using the techniques of image fusion. In this paper, image fusion using the IKONOS satellite data is discussed. Unlike other models which are based on sensor model, our approach is data centric including the effects of the sensor as well as the reflectance characteristics of the imaged object. A linear relationship is built between the panchromatic channel and the multispectral channel data. We then formulate a minimisation function in terms of Lagrange multiplier to optimally maximise the spectral consistency and minimise the error in variance. The variances of the downsampled multispectral channels are observed and compared with the original multispectral data. A chi-square goodness of fit test is performed to evaluate the data computed based on our algorithm. Simulation results are presented using the IKONOS 1m resolution panchromatic and 4 m resolution multispectral data