There is growing evidence that amorphous silica nanoparticles cause toxic effects on lung cells in vivo as well as in vitro and induce inflammatory processes. The phagocytosis of silica by alveolar macrophages potentiates these effects. To understand the underlying molecular mechanisms of silica toxicity, we applied a co-culture system including the immortal alveolar epithelial mouse cell line ...

We formulate the problem of Markovian approximations for the action of a Bose quantum field reservoir R on a quantum mechanical system S as a functional quantum central limit theory. In particular, we study the effect of the time-dependent interaction Υ (λ) t = E11 ⊗ a + t (λ)a − t (λ) +E10⊗ a + t (λ)+E01⊗ a − t (λ) +E00⊗ 1 + R on the joint states space hS ⊗ hR where the a±t (λ) are approximati...

Thermophilic DNA polymerases of the polB family are of great importance in biotechnological applications including high-fidelity PCR. Of particular interest is the relative promiscuity of engineered versions of the exo- form of polymerases from the Thermo- and Pyrococcales families towards non-canonical substrates, which enables key advances in Next-generation sequencing. Despite this there is ...

In an active controlled noninferiority trial without a placebo arm, one of the major considerations is the selection of the noninferiority margin. Although the ICH E10 guideline provides general principles for the selection of appropriate noninferiority margins, there are no established rules or gold standards for the selection of noninferiority margins in active control trials. Hung et al. (20...

A novel extensional viscometer was developed to measure the extensional properties of aqueous solutions of polymeric material and coal water slurries (CWS) containing additives. When a drop of viscoelastic liquid or CWS containing additives is allowed to form at the end of a capillary tube, it starts to fall once its weight exceeds the retaining force exerted by surface tension. In experiments ...

We examined the massive early cell death that occurs in the ventral horn of the cervical spinal cord of the chick embryo between embryonic days 4 and 5 (E4 and E5). Studies with immunohistochemical, in situ hybridization, and retrograde-tracing methods revealed that many dying cells express Islet proteins and Lim-3 mRNA (motoneuron markers) and send their axons to the somatic region of the embr...

Six fluorinated precursors were synthesized from commercial polymer Fluorolink E10-H, 3-isocyanatepropyl ethoxysilane and 3-aminepropyl methoxysilane. The spin-coated on glass substrates annealed at 150 °C for 2 h to obtain hydrophobic coatings. Chemical structure of was determined by infrared spectroscopy. Hydrophobicity measured drop contact angle, ranging between 70 93º. increased with the n...