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Regeneration of nerve tissue is a challenging issue in regenerative medicine. Especially, the peripheral nerve defects related to the accidents are one of the leading health problems. For large degeneration of peripheral nerve, nerve grafts are used in order to obtain a connection. These grafts should be biodegradable to prevent second surgical intervention. In order to make more effective nerve tissue engineering materials, nanotechnological improvements were used. Especially, the addition of electrically conductive and biocompatible metallic particles and carbon structures has essential roles in the stimulation of nerves. However, the metabolizing of these structures remains to wonder because of their nondegradable nature. In this study, biodegradable and conductive nerve tissue engineering materials containing zero-valent iron (Fe) nanoparticles were developed and investigated under in vitro conditions. By using electrospinning technique, fibrous mats composed of electrospun poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) nanofibers and Fe nanoparticles were obtained. Both electrical conductivity and mechanical properties increased compared with control group that does not contain nanoparticles. Conductivity of PCL/Fe5 and PCL/Fe10 increased to 0.0041 and 0.0152 from 0.0013 Scm(-1), respectively. Cytotoxicity results indicated toxicity for composite mat containing 20% Fe nanoparticles (PCL/Fe20). SH-SY5Y cells were grown on PCL/Fe10 best, which contains 10% Fe nanoparticles. Beta III tubulin staining of dorsal root ganglion neurons seeded on mats revealed higher cell number on PCL/Fe10. This study demonstrated the impact of zero-valent Fe nanoparticles on nerve regeneration. The results showed the efficacy of the conductive nanoparticles, and the amount in the composition has essential roles in the promotion of the neurites.

WOS: 000469481500014, In this study, half-bridge LLC resonant DC-DC converter design was realized for 65 "AMOLED TV. The main objective of the design is to achieve the optimum level of reliability and to reach the appropriate life cycle of MTBF (Mean-time between failure). Reliability tests were carried out which cover the thermal, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and electrical tests of the designed power board and critical circuit components of this power board. Moreover, in order to analyze the operating characteristics of the circuit at different switching frequencies, simulation analyses were carried out by PSIM Program. As a result of the, all these simulations and empirical studies, a high level of reliability conditions have been achieved with a 120.215 hours MTBF value.

WOS: 000472481600024, In this study, the thermal behaviors of organic light emitting diodes (OLED) televisions are investigated experimentally and numerically. Organic light emitting diodes are very sensitive to temperature. For this reason, the heat emitted from the diodes must be removed quickly from the environment. The study consists of two parts. In the first part, the use of an effective heat spreader between the screen and the metal casing is proposed as a mechanism for improving the temperature distributions for heat transfer. Pyrolytic graphite plate and tempered pyrolytic graphite plate were used as heat spreader. The graphical heat transfer coefficients of the graphite plates are considerably higher than in the normal direction. The effectiveness of these proposed mechanisms is demonstrated by simulation. As an example model, OLED TV was selected in 15 "dimensions and both experimental and numerical thermal analyzes were performed. The temperature distributions of the OLED were obtained with the help of the ANSYS ICEPAK program, a commercial code that uses the finite volume method. Simulation and test results are obtained very close to each other. The thermal management contributions of OLED TVs using different thicknesses of pyrolytic and tempered pyrolytic graphite plates are presented experimentally and numerically. In the second part, a dual action piezo fan design is proposed. The design parameters of the piezo fan were determined and the numerical analyzes for these parameters were made with the Comsol Multiphysics program. Experimental measurements were made for design dimensions determined by numerical analysis. The result is that the use of a dual-acting piezo provides more efficient cooling than the existing synthetic jets.

To overcome efficiency losses due to overheating in outdoor photobioreactors for microbial hydrogen production, heat-resistant microorganisms are desirable. In this study, the comparative whole genome sequencing analyses of two previously obtained Rhodobacter capsulatus heat-resistant mutants; A52 and B41, with modified hydrogen production capacities, have been performed to identify mutations related to hydrogen production. In comparison with the reference strain DSM1710, the genomes of the mutants A52 and B41 contained 2137 and 2253 mutations, respectively. In the mutant B41 genome, mutations were characterized within the nifD, nifj, gInD, nifB1, ccpA, hupD, dmsA, and cbbR1 genes. On the other hand; in the A52 mutant, mutations were characterized in the nifB2, rnfF, nifj, cbbO, anfH, amt, moeA, and hupD genes. The effects of nitrogen metabolism and redox-related mutations were tested by quantitative reverse transcription PCR. The most promising mutation was found on the gInD gene of B41 strain with higher hydrogen production capacity. (C) 2017 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Microbial ethanol production is an important alternative energy resource to replace fossil fuels, but at high level, this product is highly toxic, which hampers its efficient production. Towards increasing ethanol-tolerance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the so far best industrial ethanol-producer, we evaluated an in vivo evolutionary engineering strategy based on batch selection under both constant (5%, v v(-1)) and gradually increasing (5-11A%, v v(-1)) ethanol concentrations. Selection under increasing ethanol levels yielded evolved clones that could tolerate up to 12% (v v(-1)) ethanol and had cross-resistance to other stresses. Quite surprisingly, diploidization of the yeast population took place already at 7% (v v(-1)) ethanol level during evolutionary engineering, and this event was abolished by the loss of MKTI, a gene previously identified as being implicated in ethanol tolerance (Swinnen et al., Genome Res., 22, 975-984, 2012). Transcriptomic analysis confirmed diploidization of the evolved clones with strong down-regulation in mating process, and in several haploid-specific genes. We selected two clones exhibiting the highest viability on 12% ethanol, and found productivity and titer of ethanol significantly higher than those of the reference strain under aerated fed-batch cultivation conditions. This higher fermentation performance could be related with a higher abundance of glycolytic and ribosomal proteins and with a relatively lower respiratory capacity of the evolved strain, as revealed by a comparative transcriptomic and proteomic analysis between the evolved and the reference strains. Altogether, these results emphasize the efficiency of the in vivo evolutionary engineering strategy for improving ethanol tolerance, and the link between ethanol tolerance and diploidization. (C) 2017, The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. All rights reserved.

Uniformity of magnetic fields are of great importance especially in magnetic resonance studies, namely in magnetic resonance spectroscopy applications (NMR, FMR, ESR, EPR etc.) and magnetic resonance imaging applications (MRI, FMRI). Field uniformity is also required in some other applications such as eddy current probes, magnetometers, magnetic traps, particle counters etc. Here we proposed a coil winding regime, which follows the surface of a spheroid (an ellipsoid of rotation); in light of previous theoretical studies suggesting perfect uniformity for a constant ampere per turn in the axial direction thereof. We demonstrated our theoretical results from finite element calculations suggesting 0.15% of field uniformity for the proposed structure, which we called a Spheroidal Helical Coil.

The draft genome sequences of two heat-resistant mutant strains, A52 and B41, derived from Rhodobacter capsulatus DSM 1710, and with different hydrogen production levels, are reported here. These sequences may help understand the molecular basis of heat resistance and hydrogen production in R. capsulatus.