Microheated substrates for patterning cells and controlling development

Here, we seek to control cellular development by devising a means through which cells can be subjected to a microheated environment in standard culture conditions. Numerous techniques have been devised for controlling cellular function and development via manipulation of surface environmental cues at the micro- and nanoscale. It is well understood that temperature plays a significant role in the rate of cellular activities, migratory behavior (thermotaxis), and in some cases, protein expression. Yet, the effects and possible utilization of micrometer-scale temperature fields in cell cultures have not been explored. Toward this end, two types of thermally isolated microheated substrates were designed and fabricated, one with standard backside etching beneath a dielectric film and another with a combination of surface and bulk micromachining and backside etching. The substrates were characterized with infrared microscopy, finite element modeling, scanning electron microscopy, stylus profilometry, and electrothermal calibrations. Neuron culture studies were conducted on these substrates to 1) examine the feasibility of using a microheated environment to achieve patterned cell growth and 2) selectively accelerate neural development on regions less than 100$mu m$wide. Results show that attached neurons, grown on microheated regions set at 37$~^circ C$, extended processes substantially faster than those incubated at 25$~^circ C$on the same substrate. Further, unattached neurons were positioned precisely along the length of the heater filament (operating at 45$~^circ C$) using free convection currents. These preliminary findings indicate that microheated substrates may be used to direct cellular development spatially in a practical manner.$hfillhbox[1414]

De-smokeGCN: Generative Cooperative Networks for Joint Surgical Smoke Detection and Removal

Surgical smoke removal algorithms can improve the quality of intra-operative imaging and reduce hazards in image-guided surgery, a highly desirable post-process for many clinical applications. These algorithms also enable effective computer vision tasks for future robotic surgery. In this paper, we present a new unsupervised learning framework for high-quality pixel-wise smoke detection and removal. One of the well recognized grand challenges in using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for medical image processing is to obtain intra-operative medical imaging datasets for network training and validation, but availability and quality of these datasets are scarce. Our novel training framework does not require ground-truth image pairs. Instead, it learns purely from computer-generated simulation images. This approach opens up new avenues and bridges a substantial gap between conventional non-learning based methods and which requiring prior knowledge gained from extensive training datasets. Inspired by the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), we have developed a novel generative-collaborative learning scheme that decomposes the de-smoke process into two separate tasks: smoke detection and smoke removal. The detection network is used as prior knowledge, and also as a loss function to maximize its support for training of the smoke removal network. Quantitative and qualitative studies show that the proposed training framework outperforms the state-of-the-art de-smoking approaches including the latest GAN framework (such as PIX2PIX). Although trained on synthetic images, experimental results on clinical images have proved the effectiveness of the proposed network for detecting and removing surgical smoke on both simulated and real-world laparoscopic images

Improving adaptive bagging methods for evolving data streams

We propose two new improvements for bagging methods on evolving data streams. Recently, two new variants of Bagging were proposed: ADWIN Bagging and Adaptive-Size Hoeffding Tree (ASHT) Bagging. ASHT Bagging uses trees of different sizes, and ADWIN Bagging uses ADWIN as a change detector to decide when to discard underperforming ensemble members. We improve ADWIN Bagging using Hoeffding Adaptive Trees, trees that can adaptively learn from data streams that change over time. To speed up the time for adapting to change of Adaptive-Size Hoeffding Tree (ASHT) Bagging, we add an error change detector for each classifier. We test our improvements by performing an evaluation study on synthetic and real-world datasets comprising up to ten million examples

Doping dependence of superconducting gap in YBa_2Cu_3O_y from universal heat transport

Thermal transport in the T -> 0 limit was measured as a function of doping in high-quality single crystals of the cuprate superconductor YBa_2Cu_3O_y. The residual linear term kappa_0/T is found to decrease as one moves from the overdoped regime towards the Mott insulator region of the phase diagram. The doping dependence of the low-energy quasiparticle gap extracted from kappa_0/T is seen to scale closely with that of the pseudogap, arguing against a non-superconducting origin for the pseudogap. The presence of a linear term for all dopings is evidence against the existence of a quantum phase transition to an order parameter with a complex (ix) component.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, submitted to M2S-Rio 2003 Proceeding

Strain and temperature sensitivity of a singlemode polymer optical fibre

We report experimental measurements of the strain and temperature sensitivity of the optical phase in a singlemode polymer optical fibre. These values were obtained by measuring optical path length change using a Mach-Zender interferometer

Fabrication of FeSe1-x superconducting films with bulk properties

We have fabricated high-quality FeSe1-x superconducting films with a bulk Tc of 11-12 K on different substrates, Al2O3(0001), SrTiO3(100), MgO(100), and LaAlO3(100), by using a pulsed laser deposition technique. All the films were grown at a high substrate temperature of 610 oC, and were preferentially oriented along the (101) direction, the latter being to be a key to fabricating of FeSe1-x superconducting thin films with high Tc. According to the energy dispersive spectroscopy data, the Fe:Se composition ratio was 1:0.90+-0.02. The FeSe1-x film grown on a SrTiO3 substrate showed the best quality with a high upper critical magnetic field [Hc2(0)] of 56 T

Nodal Quasiparticle Dispersion in Strongly Correlated d-wave Superconductors

We analyze the effects of a momentum-dependent self-energy on the photoemission momentum distribution curve (MDC) lineshape, dispersion and linewidth. We illustrate this general analysis by a detailed examination of nodal quasiparticles in high Tc cuprates. We use variational results for the nodal quasiparticle weight Z (which varies rapidly with hole doping x) and the low energy Fermi velocity $v_F^{low}$ (which is independent of x), to show that the high energy MDC dispersion $v_{high} = v_F^{low}/Z$, so that it is much larger than the bare (band structure) velocity and also increases strongly with underdoping. We also present arguments for why the low energy Fermi velocity and the high energy dispersion are independent of the bare band structure at small x. All of these results are in good agreement with earlier and recent photoemission data [Zhou et al, Nature 423, 398 (2003)].Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps fig

Tilt Grain-Boundary Effects in S- and D-Wave Superconductors

We calculate the s- and d-wave superconductor order parameter in the vicinity of a tilt grain boundary. We do this self-consistently within the Bogoliubov de Gennes equations, using a realistic microscopic model of the grain boundary. We present the first self-consistent calculations of supercurrent flows in such boundaries, obtaining the current-phase characteristics of grain boundaries in both s-wave and d-wave superconductors

Experimental implications of quantum phase fluctuations in layered superconductors

I study the effect of quantum and thermal phase fluctuations on the in-plane and c-axis superfluid stiffness of layered d-wave superconductors. First, I show that quantum phase fluctuations in the superconductor can be damped in the presence of external screening of Coulomb interactions, and suggest an experiment to test the importance of these fluctuations, by placing a metal in close proximity to the superconductor to induce such screening. Second, I show that a combination of quantum phase fluctuations and the linear temperature dependence of the in-plane superfluid stiffness leads to a linear temperature dependence of the c-axis penetration depth, below a temperature scale determined by the magnitude of in-plane dissipation.Comment: 6 pgs, 1 figure, minor changes in comparison with c-axis expt, final published versio

On the nonlinear dynamics of topological solitons in DNA

Dynamics of topological solitons describing open states in the DNA double helix are studied in the frameworks of the model which takes into account asymmetry of the helix. It is shown that three types of topological solitons can occur in the DNA double chain. Interaction between the solitons, their interactions with the chain inhomogeneities and stability of the solitons with respect to thermal oscillations are investigated.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figure