Bio-electrosprays: a novel electrified jetting methodology for the safe handling and deployment of primary living organisms

Electrohydrodynamic jetting (EHDJ) which is also known as electrosprays (ES) has recently been elucidated as a unique electrified biotechnique for the safe handling and deployment of living organisms. This high intensity electric field driven jetting methodology is now referred to as "bioelectrosprays" (BES). Previously these charged jets have only been shown to jet-process immortalized cells which have undergone expected cellular behavior when compared with control cells. In this paper we demonstrate the ability to jet process primary living organisms in the stable conejetting mode. Finally the viability of the bio-electrosprayed living organisms has been assessed employing a flow cytometry approach which forms the discussion in this paper. Our findings further establish BES as a competing biotechnique, which could be employed for the deposition of primary living organisms according to a predetermined active cellular architecture. One day this could be used for the fabrication of viable tissues and organs for repair or replacement. These advanced studies carried out on BES have direct widespread applications ranging from developmental biology to regenerative and therapeutic medicine, which are a few amongst several other areas of study within the life sciences.     

Effect of enzyme additions on methane production and lignin degradation of landfilled sample of municipal solid waste

Operation of waste cells as landfill bioreactors with leachate recirculation is known to accelerate waste degradation and landfill gas generation. However, waste degradation rates in landfill bioreactors decrease with time, with the accumulation of difficult to degrade materials, such as lignin-rich waste. Although, potential exists to modify the leachate quality to promote further degradation of such waste, very little information is available in literature. The objective of this study was to determine the viability of augmenting leachate with enzymes to increase the rate of degradation of lignin-rich waste materials. Among the enzymes evaluated MnP enzyme showed the best performance in terms of methane yield and substrate (lignin) utilization. Methane production of 200 mL CH₄/g VS was observed for the MnP amended reactor as compared to 5.7 mL CH₄/g VS for the control reactor. The lignin reduction in the MnP amended reactor and control reactor was 68.4% and 6.2%, respectively.     

Simple and sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry methods for quantification of paraquat in plasma and urine: application to experimental and clinical toxicological studies

Simple, sensitive and specific liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) methods have been developed and validated for quantification of paraquat (PQ) in plasma and urine. Plasma and urine sample preparation were carried out by one-step protein precipitation using cold acetonitrile (-20 to -10 °C). After centrifugation, an aliquot of 10 μL of supernatant was injected into a Kinetex? hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) column with a KrudKatcher? Ultra in-line filter. The chromatographic separation was achieved using the mobile phase mixture of 250 mM ammonium formate (with 0.8% aqueous formic acid) in water and acetonitrile at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. Detection was performed using an API2000 triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode via an electrospray ionization (ESI) source. The calibration curve was linear over the concentration range of 10-5000 ng/mL, with an LLOQ of 10 ng/mL. The inter- and intra-day precision (% R.S.D.) were <8.5% and 6.4% for plasma and urine, respectively with the accuracies (%) within the range of 95.1-102.8%. PQ in plasma and urine samples was stable when stored at -70 °C for three freeze-thaw cycles. The methods were successfully applied to determine PQ concentration in rat and human samples.     

Aerodynamically assisted jetting and threading for processing concentrated suspensions containing advanced structural,functional and biological materials

In recent years material sciences have been interpreted right across the physical and the life sciences. Essentially this discipline broadly addresses the materials, processing, and/or fabrication right up to the structure. The materials and structures areas can range from the micro- to the nanometre scale and, in a materials sense, span from the structural, functional to the most complex, namely biological (living cells). It is generally recognised that the processing or fabrication is fundamental in bridging the materials with their structures. In a global perspective, processing has not only contributed to the materials sciences but its very nature has bridged the physical with the life sciences. In this review we discuss one such swiftly emerging fabrication approach having a plethora of applications spanning the physical and life sciences.     

Antifungal constituents of the stem bark of Bridelia retusa

Antifungal activity guided fractionation of solvent extracts of the stem bark of Bridelia retusa of the family Euphorbiaceae against Cladosporium cladosporioides, furnished new bisabolane sesquiterpenes, (E)-4-(1,5-dimethyl-3-oxo-1-hexenyl)benzoic acid, (E)-4-(1,5-dimethyl-3-oxo-1,4-hexadienyl) benzoic acid, (R)-4-(1,5-dimethyl-3-oxo-4-hexenyl)benzoic acid and (-)-isochaminic acid, together with the known (R)-4-(1,5-dimethyl-3-oxohexyl)benzoic acid (ar-todomatuic acid), 5-allyl-1,2,3-trimethoxybenzene (elemicin), (+)-sesamin and 4-isopropylbenzoic acid (cumic acid). All these compounds showed fungicidal activity on TLC bioautography method at very low concentrations except elemicin.     

Living scaffolds (specialized and unspecialized) for regenerative and therapeutic medicine

The physical sciences have increasingly demonstrated a significant influence on the life sciences. Engineering in particular has shown its input through the development of novel medical devices and processes having significance to the biomedical field. This review introduces and discusses several fiber generation protocols, which have recently undergone development and exploration for directly handling living cells from which continuous cell-bearing or living threads to scaffolds and membranes have been fabricated. In doing so these protocols have not only demonstrated their versatility but also opened several unique possibilities for the use of these scaffolds in a plethora of biological and medical applications. In particular, these living fibrous structural units could be explored for regeneration purposes, e.g., from accelerated wound healing to combating a wide range of pathologies when coupled with gene therapy. Thus, "living entities" such as these scaffolds could be most useful in surgery/medicine, including its exploration with stem cells for the preparation of unspecialized living scaffolds and membranes.     

A unique physical-chemistry approach for fabricating cell friendly surfaces

Recent interests in the fabrication of bio/cell-friendly surfaces are consistently gaining much scientific coverage as these methods could be explored as novel regenerative and therapeutic medicinal protocols. Essentially two main components govern this aspect, the processing methodology possessing the required robustness to fabricate a wide range of materials and, not least, the synthesised materials that need to be cell-compatible both in the short and long term after processing. In the study reported here we have combined one such robust jetting approach with a specially formulated siloxane sol. This has several unique properties in itself, and these have been demonstrated here to have a positive effect on the seeded cells. The current work demonstrates that this approach has great promise as a novel methodology for surface engineering for a wide range of applications spanning the physical to the life science areas of research.     

Gene expression studies on bio-electrosprayed primary cardiac myocytes

Cardiovascular pathology accounts for the greatest number of mortalities in the western world and thus the development of ex vivo cardiac tissue has vast potential in cardiac therapy. Bio-electrosprays (BES), a recently discovered direct cell engineering protocol, has demonstrated tremendous applicability for regenerative and therapeutic medicine. For bio-electrospraying to be carried forward as a novel method of cardiac tissue engineering, it is important that the process does not adversely affect cellular physiology. Our previous work has shown that bio-electrospraying does not induce cell death, activate intracellular stress pathways or induce DNA damage in primary cardiac myocytes. Here we show for the first time using genome-wide microarray analysis, that bio-electrospraying has no negative effects on global gene expression in cardiac myocytes. Moreover, we show that bio-electrospraying does not lead to endothelial cell activation. These data suggest that BES has minimal effect upon the physiology of cardiac myocytes and endothelial cells and thus paves the way for the development of BES in cardiac tissue engineering.     

Rural-urban differences in maternal responses to childhood fever in South East Nigeria

Background

Childhood fevers due to malaria remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality among under-five children in Nigeria. The degree of vulnerability perceived by mothers will affect their perception of the severity and threat of their child''s fever and the patterns of health care use. This study was undertaken to compare maternal responses to childhood fever in urban and rural areas of Enugu, south east Nigeria.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Data was collected with pre-tested interviewer-administered questionnaires from 276 and 124 urban and rural households respectively. In each household, only one woman aged 15–49 years who had lived in each of the urban and rural communities for at least one year and had at least one child less than 5 years old was interviewed. Malaria was mentioned as the commonest cause of childhood fevers. Rural mothers were more likely to recognize danger signs and symptoms than urban mothers. Rural mothers use more of informal than formal health services, and there is more home management of the fever with urban than rural mothers. Chloroquine, ACT, SP and Paracetamol are the main drugs given at home for childhood fevers, but the rural mothers were more likely to use leftover drugs from previous treatment to treat the fevers than urban mothers. The urban respondents were also more likely to use a preventive measure. Urban mothers sought actions faster than rural mothers and the total cost of treatment was also higher in urban areas.

Conclusions/Significance

Both urban and rural mothers are aware that malaria is the major cause of childhood fevers. Although rural mothers recognize childhood fever and danger signs better than urban mothers, the urban mothers'' responses to fever seem to be better than that for rural mothers. These responses and differences may be important for geographical targeting by policy makers for malaria interventions.     

Factors influencing diurnal variation in height among adults

This study evaluates height loss during the day in light of variables assessable through participant self-report. Participants were 19 female and 15 male staff and students who met with us twice with a mean interval between measurement sessions of 6.96 h (SD = 0.86). Hypotheses were evaluated using two-stage least squares regression analysis (SYSTAT 10). Males and females lost similar amounts of height between sessions $(\text{male},\overline{x}=6.9\text{mm};\text{female},\overline{x}=7.4\text{mm})$. Among factors considered to impact overall height loss, sleep duration (Adj. R² = 0.181, p = 0.022) and height (Adj. R² = 0.121, p = 0.048) were useful in univariate analyses, though they were not significant in any models that included variables other than sex. Judging from log-transformed BMI variation, heavier males and females lost more height (F_{(2, 31)} = 4.59, Adj. R² = 0.179, p = 0.018). Among factors anticipated to reduce height loss by acting prior to morning measurements, only time spent walking was significantly associated (β = 2.6 ± 0.8 mm, t = 3.16, p = 0.004) when included as a predictor along with sex (p = 0.17) and log-BMI (p = 0.003). This model explained about 38% of height loss variance. None of the factors considered as potentially acting between measurement sessions showed statistically significant influences when included in the model just described, though predictor coefficients were in the anticipated direction. Results suggest that self-reported activities may be an important supplement to anthropometric studies, both for planning and later evaluation, particularly in large studies.