Cytocompatibility is critically important in design of biomaterials for application in tissue engineering. However, the currently well-accepted "cytocompatible" biomaterials are those which promote cells to sustain good attachment/spreading. The cells on such materials usually lack the self-assembled cell morphology and high cell functions as in vivo. In our view, biomaterials that can promote ...

A precursor of phagocytosis-stimulating factor (PSF) was identified by immunoblot assay with purified anti-PSF antibodies. The purified anti-PSF antibodies recognized not only the PSF with a molecular weight of 16,000 (16K) but also the 36K protein with a pI of 6.5 in the granule fraction of polymorphonuclear neutrophils, indicating that this 36K protein has an antigenic determinant common to P...

BACKGROUND PET reconstruction incorporating spatially variant 3D Point Spread Function (PSF) improves contrast and image resolution. "Cardiac Motion Frozen" (CMF) processing eliminates the influence of cardiac motion in static summed images. We have evaluated the combined use of CMF- and PSF-based reconstruction for high-resolution cardiac PET. METHODS Static and 16-bin ECG-gated images of 20...

Prostacyclin (PGI2) synthesis by vascular endothelial cells (ECs) decreases in diabetic subjects, possibly leading to development of diabetic angiopathies including that in atherosclerosis. We identified a bioactive peptide, prostacyclin-stimulating factor (PSF), which stimulates PGI2 synthesis in cultured aortic ECs. Our previous studies demonstrated that PSF was predominantly expressed by art...

Incorporation of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles has played an important role on the improvement unique membrane characterization and performance, most notably hydrophilic modification for higher pure water permeability. Additionally, permeability can be improved via introduction braid support by reducing thickness separation layer. Moreover, braided hollow fiber (BHFM) is able to perform under ...

Polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) for direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) applications were prepared from a graft-copolymer (PSF-g-PSSA) consisting of a polysulfone (PSF) main chain and poly(styrene sulfonic acid) (PSSA) side chains with various average distances between side chains (Lav) and side chain lengths (Lsc). The polymers were synthesized by grafting ethyl p-styrenesulfonate (EtSS) on ...

Although chemical solutions are widely employed to clean membranes, they can also be responsible for changes in membrane properties. The two major drawbacks are then either the functional properties of the membrane gradually change, so the production can no longer meet requirements in terms of volume or quality, or the membrane simply breaks up (hollow fibers), and the system has to be shut dow...