A general method has been developed for the preparation of microspheres of nanoporous pigments, their formulation into chemically responsive pigment inks, and the printing of these inks as colorimetric sensor arrays. Using an ultrasonic-spray aerosol-gel synthesis from chemically responsive dyes and common silica precursors, 16 different nanoporous pigment microspheres have been prepared and ch...

Silver inks find applications in printed electronics as conductive electrodes. Amphiphilic silver microparticles are prepared by modifying PAA-capped particles with functional amines via an amidation reaction. These modified silver particles can be dispersed in a wide variety of solvents ranging from water (ε 1⁄4 80.4) to lipophilic alcohols (ε 1⁄4 3e17) to yield conductive inks with tunable we...

This ongoing project aims at converting the content on a physical whiteboard, captured by a digital camera, into an electronic document which can be easily manipulated as drawings in a MS Office document or as inks in a TabletPC. Through a series of image processing procedures, the originally captured image is first transformed into a rectangular bitmap with clean white background, and finally ...

CMYK Printers use CMYK – representing the colors, cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks, when printing 4-color process work. These are called subtractive colors, as combining them all gives the color black. Subtracting one or more of these colors will yield any other color. When combined in various percentages, these four inks will create an entire spectrum of colors, including those used in col...

A computer simulation was performed to investigate the optimum combinations of threeand four-chromatic inks in order to maximize the color gamut for halftone printing. A virtual printing model was created based on the YuleNielsen-spectral-Neugebauer equations and Kubelka-Munk turbid media theory and was used to predict the spectral reflectances and colorimetric coordinates of prints. In this ma...

Allergic reactions to metals and metal salts used in pigments for tattoos are surprisingly frequent. The objective of this study was to quantify the metal content of tattoo inks using the sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analysis (SF-ICP-MS). The inks were subjected to a robust microwave digestion in a mixture of nitric and fluoridric acids, and hydrogen-peroxide. A tot...

Tattooing for ornamental purposes is an ancient practice that remains popular in modern times. Tattoos are encountered by the dermatopathologist either as incidental findings on skin biopsies or because of complications specific to the tattoo. A range of neoplasms and inflammatory conditions are seen in association with tattoos, many of which may be attributed to hypersensitivity to tattoo inks...

Natural killer (NK) cells exert a crucial role in early immune responses as a major innate effector component. However, the underlying mechanisms of NK cell development remain largely elusive. Here we show that robust autophagy appears in the stage of immature NK cells (iNKs), which is required for NK cell development. Autophagy defects result in damaged mitochondria and accumulation of reactiv...

BACKGROUND The composition of cosmetic tattoos might prove relevant to their treatment by high-powered lasers. OBJECTIVES To test the accuracy and completeness of information supplied by the tattoo ink manufacturers and to perform an elemental assay of tattoo pigments using scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive x-ray analysis. DESIGN Samples of 30 tattoo inks were examined usi...

Different inks may have different mechanical and/or optical properties. Existing Yule-Nielsen modified Neugebauer spectral prediction models assume however that the inks forming a color halftone behave similarly, i.e. that a single n-factor can model the lateral propagation of light within the paper as well as non-uniformities of the ink dot thickness profiles. However, if the inks have very di...