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The search for new electrode materials including new electrode modification methods is crucial for improving long-term performance of neuroprosthetic devices. In this study, an investigation of electrochemically co-deposited polypyrrole/single-walled carbon nanotube (PPy/SWCNT) films for improving the electrode-neural interface was reported. The PPy/SWCNT microelectrodes exhibited a particularly high safe charge injection (Q(inj)) limit of approximately 7.5 mC/cm(2) and low electrode impedance at 1 kHz, as well as good stability. Cell attachment and neurite outgrowth of rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cells on the PPy/SWCNT deposited substrates were clearly observed by Calcein-AM staining and scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis. Furthermore, tissue response was studied by a 6-week implantation in the cortex of rats. A significantly lower (p

Preparation for the N-alkylated derivatives of enantiomerically pure (2S)-4-fluoroproline and (2S)-4-fluoropyrrolidine-2-acetic acid is described. The final compounds were evaluated as potential GAT-1 uptake inhibitors via cultured cell lines expressing mouse GAT-1. Compared with their corresponding 4-hydroxy compounds, these derivatives exhibited slight improvement on their inhibitory potency, but still much weaker than their corresponding compounds with no substituents at the C-4 of the pyrrolidine moiety, with the most potent affinity being about 1/15 fold as that of Tiagabine. The drastic decrease of their affinity may arise from sharp reduction of their basicity due to strong inductive effect of the 4-fluorine. However the configuration of the C-4 linking fluorine did not have much influence on their affinity for GAT-1.

A special designed long pulse XeCl MOPA laser system and its initial laser-target experiments are introduced. Laser produced plasmas of carbon, aluminum and copper are concerned. Based on measured results of plasma spectra and framing pictures of ejected plume, Plasma temperature and expanded speed of plasma flume are obtained.

Development of a long-pulse spark preionized XeCl-lasers pumped by a self-sustained discharge using a double-discharge circuit is reported. The pre-pulse is formed by novel generator with an inductive energy storage and semiconductor opening switch. The lasers produce up to 1-1.5 J in a pulse with total duration up to 500 ns and total efficiency up to 1.5-2%. Circuit for the discharge current correction is suggested for further extension of the optical pulse. The laser producing 300 ns (FWHM) was used as a master oscillator in a powerful XeCl-laser system.© (2004) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

A high power XeCl and KrF excimer lasers pumped by an intense relativistic electron beam have been developed. The pump power density ranges between 1.5 to 2.0 MW/cm3. The maximum output energy of 136 J with the peak power of 1.5 GW is obtained for the XeCl laser. In KrF laser case, the maximum output energy is 157 J and the peak power 2.0 GW. The UV laser interaction with some materials has been studied by this excimer laser.© (1996) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

A novel adaptive high-performance and nonlinear filtering algorithm (AHPNFA) is proposed for the removal of mixed noise from corrupted images. This algorithm contains two stages: noise determining and noise removing. In the first stage, for each filtering window of the processed image, the center pixel and its nearest neighbors are modeled as a statistical variable. By exploiting Chebyshev's theorem, the fuzzy mean process is used to estimate adaptively the detection parameters that are required in determining whether the current pixel is corrupted or not. In the second stage, the Radon transform is performed to determine the texture direction probability density distributions of local areas of images, then using the texture direction probability density distributions and the local features of the image remove the noisy pixels. To demonstrate the advantages, the proposed AHPNFA is compared with the other test filters both visually and quantitatively. Simulation results show that the proposed AHPNFA has better values in important evaluation metrics; in particular, the computational complexity of the AHPNFA is about five to 11 times lower than the other test filters used in the comparison, therefore, the proposed AHPNFA has better performances.

Vascular endothelial growth inhibitor (VEGI, also known as TNFSF15) is an anti-angiogenic cytokine found to be associated with tumour-related vasculature in certain maligancies. Three isoforms, VEGI 251, VEGI192, and VEGI174, have been identified, all sharing a common extracellular domain of 151 C-terminal amino acid sequence critical for biological activity of all three isoforms. Previous studies showed tumor inhibitory effect of truncated recombinant VEGI proteins in breast and colorectal cancer xenograft models, however, the antitumor activity of the full length VEGI molecules have not been well characterized in other malignancies, including kidney neoplasm. The objective of the present study was set to evaluate biological impact of forced expression of full length VEGI-174 in a renal cell carcinoma (RCC) cell line, 786-O, and in 786-O derived xenograft models. We found that Increased VEGI-174 expression in 786-O cells did not affect cell growth and apoptosis in vitro, but did reduce cell adhesion and the ability of endothelial cells to form capillary-like structures in co-culture. Subcutaneous xenograft models were successfully established using the 786-O RCC cells with or without forced expression of VEGI-174. Significantly reduced tumor volume, accompanied by reduced tumor microvessel density and decreased Ki67 and VEGFR2 expression, was observed in animals injected with VEGI-174 transfected 786-O cells compared to those in the control groups. Our results demonstrated that increased expression of full length VEGI-174 in RCC 786-O cells resulted in significant reduction in tumor volume most likely via angiogenic inhibition rather than on tumor growth per se. Despite the lack of antitumor effect of full length VEGI174 in some xenograft tumor models in other studies, our results suggest that antitumor effect of the full length VEGI-174 may be cancer type specific, and VEGI-174 may still be a valuable candidate toward angiogenesis based cancer therapy. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 1356. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-1356