Jan Hinnerk Hansen¹, Lydia Kissner¹, Jana Logoteta¹, Olaf Jung¹, Peter Dütschke², Tim Attmann³, Jens Scheewe³, Hans‐Heiner Kramer^1,4

Congenital Heart Disease, Vol.14, No.3, pp. 427-437, 2019, DOI:10.1111/chd.12741

Abstract Objectives: Neonates and infants undergoing surgery for congenital heart disease are at risk for developmental impairment. Hypoxic‐ischemic brain injury might be one contributing factor. We aimed to investigate the perioperative release of the astro‐ cyte protein S100B and its relation to cerebral oxygenation.
Methods: Serum S100B was measured before and 0, 12, 24, and 48 hours after sur‐ gery. Cerebral oxygen saturation was derived by near‐infrared spectroscopy. S100B reference values based on preoperative samples; concentrations above the 75th per‐ centile were defined as elevated. Patients with elevated S100B at 24 or 48 hours were compared to cases with S100B in… More >

Nadezhda Petkova^1,*, Radka Arabadzhieva¹, Dragomir Vassilev², Gergana Gencheva¹, Yulian Tumbarski³, Tsveteslava Ignatova-Ivanova⁴, Sevginar Ibryamova⁴, Mina Todorova¹, Milena Koleva², Panteley Denev¹

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.8, No.4, pp. 365-381, 2020, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2020.09292

Abstract Microwave-assisted irradiation was performed for esterification of chicory inulin with high degree of polymerization with acetic anhydride without a solvent only with a catalyst. The resulting esters were characterized by melting point, hydrophilic-lipophilic balance, thin-layer chromatography, ultraviolet spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Inulin acetate demonstrated a high degree of acetylation (2.5–3.0) and presented a white, water-insoluble substance with bitter taste. The FTIR and NMR spectra confirmed esterification and demonstrated the incorporation of hydrophobic residue to the water soluble inulin backbone. Swelling capacity, water holding, oil-holding capacities, the foamability, foam stability and emulsifying properties… More >

Ibtissem Moussa^1,2, Ramzi Khiari^1,3,4,*, Ali Moussa², Gérard Mortha⁴, Mohamed Farouk Mhenni¹

Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.7, No.4, pp. 345-354, 2019, DOI:10.32604/jrm.2019.04011

Abstract The most abundant phenolic biopolymer in the biosphere is the lignin. This phenolic biopolymer commonly exists in combination with polysaccharides and other cell wall components. In this study, the solvent system dioxane-water is used to extract lignin, which is considered as unaltered native lignin. The dioxane lignin extracted from fig stems was characterized regarding to its structural feature, quantification of its functional groups, molecular weight, and evaluation of its thermal properties. Purity and molecular weight distribution of the studied lignin indicated that isolated lignin contained a low amount of sugar (c.a. 19%) and had a high weight-average molecular weight (10… More >

Yunfeng Chen^1,2,3,†,*, Jiexi Liao^4,†, Zhou Yuan¹, Kaitao Li⁴, Baoyu Liu⁴, Lining Arnold Ju^4,5,6, Cheng Zhu^1,2,4,*

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.16, No.3, pp. 211-223, 2019, DOI:10.32604/mcb.2019.07267

Abstract Force plays critical roles in cell adhesion and mechano-signaling, partially by regulating the dissociation rate, i.e., off-rate, of receptor-ligand bonds. However, the mechanism of such regulation still remains elusive. As a controversial topic of the field, when measuring the “off-rate vs. force” relation of the same molecular system, different dynamic force spectroscopy (DFS) assays (namely, force-clamp and force-ramp assays) often yield contradictive results. Such discrepancies hurdled our further understanding of molecular binding, and casted doubt on the existing theoretical models. In this work, we used a live-cell DFS technique, biomembrane force probe, to measure the single-bond dissociation in three receptor-ligand… More >

Ajith Rajapaksha^1,2, Michael Fink¹, Brian A. Todd¹

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.12, No.3, pp. 215-230, 2015, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2015.012.215

Abstract Delivery of therapeutic agents to the eye requires efficient transport through cellular and extracellular barriers. We evaluated the rate of diffusive transport in excised porcine corneal stroma using fluorescently labeled dextran molecules with hydrodynamic radii ranging from 1.3 to 34 nm. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) was used to measure diffusion coefficients of dextran molecules in the excised porcine corneal stroma. The preferential sensitivity of FCS to diffusion along two dimensions was used to differentially probe diffusion along the directions parallel to and perpendicular to the collagen lamellae of the corneal stroma. In order to develop an understanding of how size… More >

Vedula S.R.K.^*, Lim T.S.^†, Hunziker W.^‡, Lim C.T.^§

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, Vol.5, No.3, pp. 169-182, 2008, DOI:10.3970/mcb.2008.005.169

Abstract Intercellular adhesion molecules play an important role in regulating several cellular processes such as a proliferation, migration and differentiation. They also play an important role in regulating solute diffusion across monolayers of cells. The adhesion characteristics of several intercellular adhesion molecules have been studied using various biochemical assays. However, the advent of single molecule force spectroscopy as a powerful tool to analyze the kinetics and strength of protein interactions has provided us with an opportunity to investigate these interactions at the level of a single molecule. The study of interactions involving intercellular adhesion molecules has gained importance because of the… More >

Jun Xie¹, Dapeng Sun¹, Jiaxiang Cai², Fuhong Cai^1,*

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.59, No.2, pp. 687-695, 2019, DOI:10.32604/cmc.2019.03658

Abstract The level of chemical oxygen demand (COD) is an important index to evaluate whether sewage meets the discharge requirements, so corresponding tests should be carried out before discharge. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and attenuated total reflectance (ATR) can detect COD in sewage effectively, which has advantages over conventional chemical analysis methods. And the selection of characteristic bands was one of the key links in the application of FTIR/ATR spectroscopy. In this work, based on the moving window partial least-squares (MWPLS) regression to select a characteristic wavelength, a method of equivalent wavelength selection was proposed combining with paired t-test equivalent… More >

Liming Yang^1,2, Junjian Bai¹, Qun Sun³

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.108, No.1, pp. 49-65, 2015, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2015.108.049

Abstract Extreme learning machine (ELM) has demonstrated great potential in machine learning and data mining fields owing to its simplicity, rapidity and good generalization performance. In this work, a general framework for ELM regression is first investigated based on least absolute deviation (LAD) estimation (called LADELM), and then we develop two regularized LADELM formulations with the l₂-norm and l₁-norm regularization, respectively. Moreover, the proposed models are posed as simple linear programming or quadratic programming problems. Furthermore, the proposed models are used directly to analyze the hard rate of licorice seeds using near-infrared spectroscopy data. Experimental results on eight different spectral regions… More >

Balamati Choudhury¹, Pavani Vijay Reddy¹, Sanjana Bisoyi¹, R. M. Jha¹

CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.37, No.3, pp. 135-146, 2013, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2013.037.135

Abstract The terahertz region of the electromagnetic spectrum plays a vital role in biomedical imaging because of its sensitivity to vibrational modes of biomolecules. Advances in broadband terahertz imaging have been emerging in the field of biomedical spectroscopy. Biomedical imaging is used to distinguish between the infected (cancer) and the non-infected tissue, which requires broad band and highly efficient radar absorbing material (RAM) designs (to obtain high resolution image of the tissue). In this paper, a metamaterial broadband RAM design is proposed towards biomedical spectroscopy applications in the THz region. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is used for the design… More >