Postkendall5176

The process proposed herein has potential applications for fabricating stable antibacterial coatings on silicone implant surfaces, especially for patient-specific silicone implants such as silicone tracheal stents.This paper aims to propose a novel approach to model the dynamics of objects that move within the soil, e.g. plants roots. One can assume that external forces are significant only at the tip of the roots, where the plant's growth is actuated. We formulate an optimal control problem that minimises the energy spent by a growing root subject to physical constraints imposed by the surrounding soil at the tip. We study the motion strategy adopted by plant roots to facilitate penetration into the soil, which we hypothesize to be a circumnutation movement. By solving the proposed optimal control problem numerically, we validate the hypothesis that plant roots adopt a circumnutation motion pattern to reduce soil penetration resistance during growth. The proposed formalisation could be applied to replicate such a biological behaviour in robotic systems, to adopt the most efficient strategy for autonomous devices in soil exploration.Increasing evidence has demonstrated the diverse functionalities of nanomaterials in oncotherapies such as drug delivery, imaging and cancer cell killing, and the unique traits of physical plasma in aiding oncotherapy such as its multi-modal activity and ability to create environmental perturbations and induce epigenetic and genetic modulations to control processes fundamental to cancer development and progression. This review aims to offer an authoritative guide for the development of nanomaterials and physical plasma based oncotherapies and shed light on emerging yet understudied cancer hallmarks where nanoparticles help improve cancer control. With this aim, three nanomaterials, i.e., those based on gold, graphene and liposome, were selected to represent and encompass metal inorganic, nonmetal inorganic and organic nanomaterials, and four oncotherapies, i.e., phototherapies, immunotherapies, cancer stem cell therapies and metabolic therapies, were characterized based on the differential cancer hallmarks they target. This review provides clear understanding on how the physico-chemical features of particles at the nanoscale contribute alone or create synergistic effects with current treatment modalities in combating each of the cancer hallmarks that ultimately leads to desired therapeutic outcomes and shapes the toolbox for cancer control.Multi-energy CT imaging of large patients with conventional dual-energy (DE)-CT using an energy-integrating-detector (EID) is challenging due to photon starvation-induced image artifacts, especially in lower tube potential (80-100 kV) images. Here, we performed phantom experiments to investigate the performance of DECT for morbidly obese patients, using an iodine and water material decomposition task as an example, on an emulated dual-source (DS)-photon-counting-detector (PCD)-CT, and compared its performance with a clinical DS-EID-CT. An abdominal CT phantom with iodine inserts of different concentrations was wrapped with tissue-equivalent gel layers to emulate a large patient (50 cm lateral size). The phantom was scanned on a research whole-body single-source (SS)-PCD-CT (140 kV tube potential), a DS-PCD-CT (100/Sn140 kV; Sn140 indicates 140 kV with Sn filter), and a clinical DS-EID-CT (100/Sn140 kV) with the same radiation dose. Phantom scans were repeated five times on each system. The DS-PCD-CT acquisitiantom emulating obese patients by reducing image artifacts and improving iodine quantification (RMSE reduced by 20%). With DS-PCD-CT, multi-energy CT can be performed on large patients that cannot be accommodated with current DECT.Patterning of silk allows for manufacturing various structures with advanced functionalities for optical, tissue engineering, and drug delivery applications. Here, we propose a high-resolution nanoscale patterning method based on field-emission scanning probe lithography (FE-SPL) that crosslinks the biomaterial silk on conductive indium tin oxide promoting the use of a biodegradable material as resist and water as a developer. During the lithographic process, Fowler-Nordheim electron emission from a sharp tip was used to modify the structure of silk fibroin from random coil to beta sheet and the emission formed nanoscale latent patterns with a critical dimension (CD) of ~50 nm. Terephthalic nmr To demonstrate the versatility of the method, we patterned standard and complex shapes. This method is particularly attractive due to its ease of operation without relying on a vacuum or a special gaseous environment and without any need for complex electronics or optics. Therefore, this study paves a practical and cost-effective way toward patterning biopolymers at ultra-high level resolution.Probe-based storage memories have been considered as one of the most promising solutions to address the mass storage issues in near future. However, data size arising from conventional probe memories is usually larger than probe size due to the thermal diffusion effect. To eliminate such thermal interference and make data dimension fully dominated by probe dimension, we proposed a concept of carbon-based resistive probe memory and developed a comprehensive computational model to predict its write, rewrite and readout performances governed by electro-thermal and mass concentration processes. The physical reality of such theoretical model was demonstrated through the good agreement between calculated and experimental measured threshold voltages for different layered thickness. The data bit of carbon-based resistive probe memory, considered as the sp2 filament inside sp3 background, is formed completely underneath the tip edge owing to the localized electric field induced here. This makes the bit size fully determined by probe tip dimension and allows for the achievement of ultra-high density using ultra-small probe tip with low energy consumption. Such conductive filament can be also rewritten back to its pristine sp3 state at relatively high temperature ( 250 C) and detected by sensing the device reading contrast ( 1). The designed carbon-based resistive probe memory can remain its bit completeness even if reducing the bit pitch to 28 nm for probe size of 25 nm, exhibiting a superior immunity to thermal cross-talk effect. It however induces strong readout cross-talk, revealed from the resistance image of the multiple bit pattern. This adversely reduces the achievable recording density due to the required large bit pitch, which can be alleviated using either a very sharp tip apex or the optical readout scheme.