A Computational Study of the Effects of Tachycardia-Induced Remodeling on Calcium Wave Propagation in Rabbit Atrial Myocytes.

In atrial cardiomyocytes without a well-developed T-tubule system, calcium diffuses from the periphery toward the center creating a centripetal wave pattern. During atrial fibrillation, rapid activation of atrial myocytes induces complex remodeling in diffusion properties that result in failure of calcium to propagate in a fully regenerative manner toward the center; a phenomenon termed "calcium silencing." This has been observed in rabbit atrial myocytes after exposure to prolonged rapid pacing.

A Novel Computational Model of the Rabbit Atrial Cardiomyocyte With Spatial Calcium Dynamics.

Models of cardiac electrophysiology are widely used to supplement experimental results and to provide insight into mechanisms of cardiac function and pathology. The rabbit has been a particularly important animal model for studying mechanisms of atrial pathophysiology and atrial fibrillation, which has motivated the development of models for the rabbit atrial cardiomyocyte electrophysiology. Previously developed models include detailed representations of membrane currents and intracellular ionic concentrations, but these so-called "common-pool" models lack a spatially distributed description of the calcium handling system, which reflects the detailed ultrastructure likely found in cells .

Carbon Nanotube/Poly(dimethylsiloxane) Composite Materials to Reduce Bacterial Adhesion.

Different studies have shown that the incorporation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) enables the production of composite materials with enhanced properties, which can find important applications in the biomedical field. In the present work, CNT/PDMS composite materials have been prepared to evaluate the effects of pristine and chemically functionalized CNT incorporation into PDMS on the composite's thermal, electrical, and surface properties on bacterial adhesion in dynamic conditions. Initial bacterial adhesion was studied using a parallel-plate flow chamber assay performed in conditions prevailing in urinary tract devices (catheters and stents) using as a model organism and PDMS as a control due to its relevance in these applications.

A computational framework for testing arrhythmia marker sensitivities to model parameters in functionally calibrated populations of atrial cells.

Models of cardiac cell electrophysiology are complex non-linear systems which can be used to gain insight into mechanisms of cardiac dynamics in both healthy and pathological conditions. However, the complexity of cardiac models can make mechanistic insight difficult. Moreover, these are typically fitted to averaged experimental data which do not incorporate the variability in observations.