Sequential deacetylation/self-gelling chitin hydrogels and scaffolds functionalized with fucoidan for enhanced BMP-2 loading and sustained release.

Bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) is a potent osteoinductive factor that promotes bone formation. A major obstacle to the clinical application of BMP-2 is its inherent instability and complications caused by its rapid release from implants. Chitin based materials have excellent biocompatibility and mechanical properties, making them ideal for bone tissue engineering applications.

Low sink demand caused net photosynthetic rate decrease is closely related to the irrecoverable damage of oxygen-releasing complex and electron receptor in peach trees.

Source sink balance is one of the major determinants of carbon partitioning in plants. However, its effects on photosynthesis in fruit trees are largely unknown. In this work, the effects of low sink demand on net photosynthetic rate (P) and chlorophyll fluorescence after fruit removal (-fruit) in peach (Prunus persica (L.

Development of Pinhole-Free Amorphous Aluminum Oxide Protective Layers for Biomedical Device Applications.

This paper describes synthesis of ultrathin pinhole-free insulating aluminum oxide layers for electronic device protection in corrosive liquid environments, such as phosphate buffered saline (PBS) or clinical fluids, to enable emerging biomedical applications such as biomolecular sensors. A pinhole-free 25-nm thick amorphous aluminum oxide layer has been achieved using ultra-high vacuum DC magnetron reactive sputtering of aluminum in oxygen/argon plasma followed by oxygen plasma post-processing. Deposition parameters were optimized to achieve the best corrosion protection of lithographically defined device structures.

High-throughput top-down fabrication of uniform magnetic particles.

Ion Beam Aperture Array Lithography was applied to top-down fabrication of large dense (10(8)-10(9) particles/cm(2)) arrays of uniform micron-scale particles at rates hundreds of times faster than electron beam lithography. In this process, a large array of helium ion beamlets is formed when a stencil mask containing an array of circular openings is illuminated by a broad beam of energetic (5-8 keV) ions, and is used to write arrays of specific repetitive patterns. A commercial 5-micrometer metal mesh was used as a stencil mask; the mesh size was adjusted by shrinking the stencil openings using conformal sputter-deposition of copper.

Overexpression of chloroplast-localized small molecular heat-shock protein enhances chilling tolerance in tomato plant.

There are many reports about the correlation between small molecular heat-shock protein (sHSP) and the acquirement of chilling tolerance, but no direct evidence that sHSP confers enhanced chilling tolerance to plant has been reported. A DNA construct, including tomato chloroplast-localized small molecular heat-shock protein (CPsHSP) cDNA under the control of cauliflower mosaic virus 35S (35SCaMV) promoter, was introduced into the genome of tomato plants. The chilling tolerance of the transgenic tomato lines and the non-transgenic tomato was evaluated.