Polymer coatings on nano-sized remediation agents and subsurface heterogeneity will affect their transport, likely in a pH-dependent manner. The effect of pH on the aggregation of polymer-coated nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI) and its deposition onto sand and clay (kaolinite) surfaces was studied. nZVI coatings included a high molecular weight (90 kg/mol) strong polyanion, poly(methacrylic aci...

Deposition of minerals, particularly calcium phosphates such as hydroxyapatite, is an important process in the formation hard tissues bone. Herein, a new, affordable, straightforward and nondestructive method based on complex capacitance spectroscopy, application electrochemical impedance described which allows repeated real-time measurements same sample throughout phosphate deposition process....

Terrestrial soil is a large reservoir of atmospherically deposited mercury (Hg). However, few studies have evaluated the accumulation of Hg in terrestrial ecosystems in the northeastern United States, a region which is sensitive to atmospheric Hg deposition. We characterized Hg and organic matter in soil profiles from 139 sampling sites for five subregions across the northeastern United States ...

Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike deposited large quantities of sediment on coastal wetlands after making landfall in the northern Gulf of Mexico. We sampled sediments deposited on the wetland surface throughout the entire Louisiana and Texas depositional surfaces of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and the Louisiana portion of Hurricane Ike. We used spatial interpolation to model the ...

[1] Since iron is an important micronutrient, deposition of iron in mineral aerosols can impact the carbon cycle and atmospheric CO2. This paper reviews our current understanding of the global dust cycle and identifies future research needs. The global distribution of desert dust is estimated from a combination of observations of dust from in situ concentration, optical depth, and deposition da...

Induced biomineralization of materials has been employed as a strategy to increase integration with host tissue, and more recently as a method to control cell function in tissue engineering. However, mineralization is typically performed in the absence of cells, since hypertonic solutions that lack the nutrients and culture components required for the maintenance of cell viability are often use...

Several studies have suggested that high blood pressure is associated with the risk of bone loss. Since various antihypertensive drugs are in wide use for the treatment of hypertension, it is important to investigate the influences of these drugs on bone metabolism. Osteoblasts play a pivotal role in the regulation of bone formation. During differentiation, they sequentially express type I coll...

Numerous clinical conditions have been linked to ectopic mineralization (EM). This process of pathological biomineralization is complex and not fully elucidated, but thought to be started within matrix vesicles (MVs). We hypothesized that high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), a cytokine associated with biomineralizing process under physiological and pathological conditions, induces EM via promotin...

Mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) have been shown to differentiate into osteoblasts that, in turn, are capable of forming tissues analogous to bone. The present study was designed to investigate the inhibition of osteogenesis by hMSCs. Bone marrow-derived hMSCs were treated with transforming growth factor beta-3 (TGFbeta3) at various doses during or after their differentiation into osteogenic cell...

We have previously demonstrated that collagen type XV (ColXV) is a novel bone extracellular matrix (ECM) protein. It is well known that the complex mixture of multiple components present in ECM can help both to maintain stemness or to promote differentiation of stromal cells following change in qualitative characteristics or concentrations. We investigated the possible correlation between ColXV...