Feeling well surrounded: Perceived societal support fosters healthy eating.

Societal resources (e.g. recreational facilities, free online information, healthy food retail) are consistently found to be important facilitators for healthy eating.

Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices.

Every day, people make many food decisions without thinking, repeatedly falling for the unhealthy option instead of the healthy option. While making these mindless decisions, people often rely on heuristics. In this paper, we demonstrate that these heuristics can be exploited to nudge consumers towards healthy alternatives.

Baculovirus transit through insect cell membranes: A mechanistic approach.

Baculovirus systems are used for various purposes, but the kinetics of the infection process is not fully understood yet. We investigated the dynamics of virion movement from a medium toward the interior of insect cells and established a mechanistic model that shows an excellent fit to experimental results. It also makes possible a description of the viral dynamics on the cell surface.

New doxorubicin nanoparticles engineered from calcium-crosslinked carbomer and a microemulsion precursor.

The purpose of this study was to investigate a new polymeric system and production process in which self-assembled doxorubicin-loaded nanoparticles were synthetized by using a water-in-oil microemulsion as a template and calcium ions as cross-linkers. The manufacturing process combined cross-linking of carbomer within a W/O microemulsion followed by a phase-separation technique to avoid using organic solvents for extraction. To assess the sustained release behavior of doxorubicin from the nanoparticles, we have developed a new simple method based on the permeability coefficient of a synthetic membrane mounted on Franz diffusion cell system.

Harvesting Low Molecular Weight Biomarkers Using Gold Nanoparticles.

We developed and characterized a platform based on gold (Au) nanoparticles (NPs) coated with poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) for harvesting positively charged, low molecular weight (LMW) proteins. The particles are synthesized using a layer by layer (LbL) procedure: first the gold NPs are coated with positively charged polyethylenimine (PEI) and subsequently with PAA. This simple procedure produces stable PAA-PEI-Au (PPAu) NPs with high selectivity and specificity.

[Human Single Drug Exposures to Non-opioid Analgesics Reported to the Poisons Information Centre Erfurt from 2003 to 2012].

Aim Of The Study: Because of their frequency, non-opioid analgesics (NOA) single drug exposures registered by Poisons Information Centre (PIC) Erfurt have been studied over a decade.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of frequencies, circumstances of exposure, symptom severity, and age groups in NOA single drug exposures received by the PIC Erfurt from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2012 was undertaken.

Results: Of all 4749 NOA single drug exposures, the 10 most frequent were caused by paracetamol (n=1 686), ibuprofen (n=1 439), acetylsalicylic acid (n=456), dipyrone (n=274), diclofenac (n=267), flupirtine (n=138), naproxen (n=41), etoricoxib (n=36), indomethacin (n=24), and dexketoprofen (n=19).

[Human exposures to veterinary medicines reported to the Poisons Information Centre Erfurt from 2003 to 2012].

Aim Of The Study: The purpose of this study was to get information on all human exposures to veterinary medicines (HEVM) reported to the Poisons Information Centre (PIC) over a 10-year period.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of all HEVM was undertaken and a comparison was made to all human exposures (HE) registered by the PIC from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2012 according to frequencies, circumstances of exposure, symptom severity, age groups, and substances involved in HEVM.

Results: In total, 389 cases of HEVM with 409 veterinary medicines were registered (0.

Ultrasound mediated transdermal drug delivery.

Transdermal drug delivery offers an attractive alternative to the conventional drug delivery methods of oral administration and injections. However, the stratum corneum serves as a barrier that limits the penetration of substances to the skin. Application of ultrasound (US) irradiation to the skin increases its permeability (sonophoresis) and enables the delivery of various substances into and through the skin.

Calcium channel antagonist exposures reported to the Poisons Information Center Erfurt.

Background: We investigated the toxicity profile of the three main groups of calcium channel antagonists (CCA) and compared mixed CCA exposures (CCA plus another drug) with mono CCA exposures.

Methods: All CCA exposures reported to the PIC Erfurt from 2000 to 2009 were analyzed retrospectively.

Results: In total, 727 (230 mono and 497 mixed) CCA exposures were registered.

A mathematical model of drug release from liposomes by low frequency ultrasound.

Administration of drugs using small (<100 nm) unilamellar liposomes enables effective targeting of tumors and inflamed tissue. Therapeutic efficacy may be enhanced by triggering liposomal drug release in the desired organ in a controlled manner using a noninvasive external signal. Previous studies have demonstrated that low frequency ultrasound (LFUS) can be used to control the release of drugs from liposomes.

Bubble growth within the skin by rectified diffusion might play a significant role in sonophoresis.

Low frequency ultrasound has successfully been used for enhancing transdermal transport of a variety of different molecules. This phenomenon is referred to as sonophoresis. Several attempts have been made to investigate the enhancing mechanism in order to modulate the overall process.

A model of the dynamics of insect cell infection at low multiplicity of infection.

In the present paper, we offer a preliminary mathematical model that describes the dynamic process of cell infection with baculovirus at low multiplicity of infection (MOI). The model accounts for the chain of events that follow the infection of insect cells, namely the eclipse period, the budding of viral particles from those cells, their attachment to non-infected cells and the initiation of a new infection cycle. These cycles appear as fluctuations in the viral concentration of actual cell culture media.

Stratified multiphase model for blood flow in a venular bifurcation.

Available in vitro and in vivo experimental observations suggest that red cell aggregation and blood vessel geometry are important determinants of the flow characteristics of blood in venules. However, no consistent relationship has been observed between red blood cell aggregation and vascular resistance. The present work attempts to understand this relationship by evaluating computationally the effect of red cell aggregation on the flow characteristics of blood in a converging vessel bifurcation.

Converging three-dimensional Stokes flow of two fluids in a T-type bifurcation.

Studies of three-dimensional Stokes flow of two Newtonian fluids that converge in a T-type bifurcation have important applications in polymer coextrusion, blood flow through the venous microcirculation, and other problems of science and technology. This flow problem is simulated numerically by means of the finite element method, and the solution demonstrates that the viscosity ratio between the two fluids critically affects flow behaviour. For the parameters investigated, we find that as the viscosity ratio between the side branch and the main branch increases, the interface between the merging fluids bulges away from the side branch.

A numerical study of plasma skimming in small vascular bifurcations.

Owing in part to a plasma-skimming mechanism, the distribution of red blood cells (RBCs) into branches of microvascular bifurcations typically differs from the distribution of the bulk blood flow. This paper analyzes the plasma-skimming mechanism that causes phase separation due to uneven distribution of red blood cells at the inlet cross section of the parent vessel. In a previous study, the shape of the surface that divides the flow into the branches was found by numerical simulation of three-dimensional flow of a homogeneous Newtonian fluid in T-type bifurcations.

An analytical solution for steady flow of a Quemada fluid in a circular tube.

An analytical solution is obtained for steady flow of Quemada-type fluids in a circular tube driven by a constant pressure gradient. Expressions are derived for velocity distribution and for volumetric flow rate as a function of pressure gradient or wall shear stress.

A numerical study of the shape of the surface separating flow into branches in microvascular bifurcations.

The shape of the separating surface formed by the streamlines entering the branches of microvascular bifurcations plays a major role in determining the distribution of red blood cells and other blood constituents downstream from the bifurcation. Using the finite element method, we determined the shape of the surface through numerical solution of three dimensional Navier-Stokes equations for fluid flow at low Reynolds numbers in a T-type bifurcation of circular tubes. Calculations were done for a wide range of daughter branch to parent vessel diameter ratios and flow ratios.

A numerical simulation of the flow in a T-type bifurcation and its application to an "end to side" fistula.

Some recent surgical procedures such as arteriovenous fistula, or coronary and cerebral by-passes were observed to yield counterdirectional branching blood flows. There is a lack of knowledge about the role of the counterdirectional flow ratio, the angle of anastomosis and the shear stresses in the process of thrombogenesis that leads to shunt occlusion. The program developed to simulate these hemodynamic conditions uses an efficient numerical scheme for the solution of the 2-D Navier-Stokes equations and can be easily adapted to flows in other geometrical configurations.