Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently suggested that prolonged inhalation of water aerosol containing biocide in humidifiers can bring about rapidly progressive respiratory fibrosis, which killed more than nine people, including four pregnant women in Korea, based on epidemiologic and toxicological studies [1-4]. It also ordered banning of six consumer products containing th...

Seawater greenhouse (SWGH) is a technology established to overcome issues related open field cultivation in arid areas, such as the high ambient temperature and shortage of freshwater. It adopts humidification-dehumidification concept where evaporated moisture from saline water source condensed produce freshwater within body. Various condenser designs are adopted increase production order meet ...

Video fluorescence microscopy was used to study adsorption and fusion of unilamellar phospholipid vesicles to solvent-free planar bilayer membranes. Large unilamellar vesicles (2-10 microns diam) were loaded with 200 mM of the membrane-impermeant fluorescent dye calcein. Vesicles were ejected from a pipette brought to within 10 microns of the planar membrane, thereby minimizing background fluor...

Biological and biomimetic membranes often contain aggregates of embedded or adsorbed macromolecules. In this paper, the indirect interactions of cylindrical objects adhering to a planar membrane are considered theoretically. The adhesion of the cylinders causes a local perturbation of the equilibrium membrane shape, which leads to membrane-mediated interactions. For a planar membrane under late...

It was previously shown (Cohen, F. S., J. Zimmerberg, and A. Finkelstein, 1980, J. Gen. Physiol., 75:251-270) that multilamellar phospholipid vesicles can fuse with decane-containing phospholipid bilayer membranes. An essential requirement for fusion was an osmotic gradient across the planar membrane, with the vesicle-containing (cis) side hyperosmotic with respect to the opposite (trans) side....

Physisorbed polymer-tethered lipid bilayers consisting of phospholipids and lipopolymers represent an attractive planar model membrane platform, in which bilayer fluidity and membrane elastic properties can be regulated through lipopolymer molar concentration. Herein we report a method for the fabrication of such a planar model membrane system with a lateral gradient of lipopolymer density. In ...