Search

The article discusses a feasibility study of a numerical technique to analyze the gas-diffusion layer (GDL) of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC). The technique combines a digitally reconstructed three-dimensional (3-D) model of carbon paper GDL and 3-D two-phase lattice Boltzmann numerical model. A description of the X-ray nanotomography image generation and digital reconstruction process is presented. The study showed the effect of liquid intrusion pressures on intruded volume.

Electrical cochlear implants (eCIs) partially restore hearing and enable speech comprehension to more than half a million users, thereby re-connecting deaf patients to the auditory scene surrounding them. Yet, eCIs suffer from limited spectral selectivity, resulting from current spread around each electrode contact and causing poor speech recognition in the presence of background noise. Optogenetic stimulation of the auditory nerve might overcome this limitation as light can be conveniently confined in space. Here, we combined virus-mediated optogenetic manipulation of cochlear spiral ganglion neurons (SGNs) and microsystems engineering to establish acute multi-channel optical cochlear implant (oCI) stimulation in adult Mongolian gerbils. oCIs based on 16 microscale thin-film light-emitting diodes (μLEDs) evoked tonotopic activation of the auditory pathway with high spectral selectivity and modest power requirements in hearing and deaf gerbils. These results prove the feasibility of μLED-based oCIs for spectrally selective activation of the auditory nerve., (© 2020 The Authors. Published under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.)

The aim of the present study was to calculate critical closing pressure (CCP) of the cerebral vasculature at rest and during exercise to estimate cerebral vascular tone. Five men and two women were seated upright for 15 min and then performed 15 min of right-legged knee extension exercise at 40, 60 and 75% of their maximal workload (WL(max)). Middle cerebral artery blood velocity (MCA V) and blood pressure in the radial artery were recorded. The CCP was calculated by linear extrapolation from 1 min recordings of pairs of systolic and diastolic pressure and MCA V waveforms from both the right and the left MCA. In both arteries, the CCP increased (right MCA, +6.6 +/- 8.5 mmHg, P = 0.023; left MCA, +7.3 +/- 9.1 mmHg, P = 0.016) during 75% WL(max) without changes in resistance-area product, while femoral vascular resistance of the non-exercising leg decreased (from 0.32 +/- 0.07 to 0.18 +/- 0.05 mmHg min ml(1); P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in CCP between the right and left MCA (P = 0.31). These findings suggest an increase in cerebral vascular tone in both the right and the left MCA from rest to exercise despite a decrease in vascular resistance of the systemic vasculature. In addition, the increases in CCP were related to the increases in plasma noradrenaline concentrations (right, P = 0.001; left, P = 0.025) and decreases in the partial pressure of arterial carbon dioxide (right, P = 0.008; left, P = 0.086), but not to changes in mean arterial pressure (right, P = 0.282; left, P = 0.564) or adrenaline concentrations (right, P = 0.138; left, P = 0.108). We consider that an exercise-induced increase in cerebral vascular tone serves to protect the blood-brain barrier from the exercise-induced hypertension.