Real, rubber or virtual: The vision of “one’s own” body as a means for pain modulation. A narrative review

In the last few years a branch of pain research has been focussing on the modulatory effects of the vision of the body on pain perception. So, for instance, the vision of one’s own real body has been proven to induce analgesic effects. On the other hand, bodily illusions such as the rubber hand illusion have provided new tools for the study of perceptual processes during altered body ownership states. Recently, new paradigms of body ownership made use of a technology that is going places both in clinical and in experimental settings, i.e. virtual reality. While the vision of one’s own real body has been proven to yield compelling analgesic effects, slightly more controversial are those attributed to the vision of “owned” dummy bodies. This review will discuss the studies that examined the effects on pain perception of the vision of the own body, with or without body ownership illusions.

BETA-GA2O3: A TRANSPARENT CONDUCTIVE OXIDE FOR POTENTIAL RESISTIVE SWITCHING APPLICATIONS

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Silicone thiomers- conquerers of innovative drug delivery systems

eingereicht von Alexandra Partenhauser

Próteses para membro superior de alta definição em silicone

O interesse de Pillet em próteses cosméticas de mão, começou em 1950 com o reconhecimento que até mesmo a perda de um único dedo poderia ter um profundo efeito sobre a imagem corporal, auto-estima, e estado psicológico do amputado. A atitude comum naquela época era que, devido à prótese ser inerte e insensível, seria não-funcionais. No entanto, os 39 anos de experiência do autor na aplicação de mais de 6.000 próteses demonstra que o restabelecimento da aparência quase normal, muitas vezes melhora a função do paciente num sentido global, permitindo-lhe optimizar as funções residuais no complexo ambiente socioeconómico da sociedade de hoje. Além disso, ao fornecer uma parte da oposição para os dedos restantes ou o polegar, a prótese também pode fornecer alguma capacidade de preensão, que pode ser muito útil. A perda do membro superior ou parte deste pode ser mais catastrófico para o individuo do que a mais comum perda do membro inferior. A perda de ambas as mãos cria uma incapacidade apenas excedida por uma lesão vertebro-medular. Wedder-Burn comentou, em 1986, que “amputados parciais da mão são mais passíveis de rejeitar a protetização do que amputados a outro nível do membro superior. A Rejeição baseia-se na falta de sensibilidade, uma cosmética deficitária, ausência de ventilação da prótese e função limitada”. Como resultado muitos amputados parciais da mão preferem realizar as suas actividades diárias sem a prótese.

Investigating wetting characteristics on microstructured surfaces for superhydrophobicity and metal microcasting

The engineering of liquid behavior on surfaces is important for infrastructure, transportation, manufacturing, and sensing. Surfaces can be rendered superhydrophobic by microstructuring, and superhydrophobic devices could lead to practical corrosion inhibition, self-cleaning, fluid flow control, and surface drag reduction. To more fully understand how liquid interacts with microstructured surfaces, this dissertation introduces a direct method for determining droplet solid-liquid-vapor interfacial geometry on microstructured surfaces. The technique performs metrology on molten metal droplets deposited onto microstructured surfaces and then frozen. Unlike other techniques, this visualization technique can be used on large areas of curved and opaque microstructured surfaces to determine contact line. This dissertation also presents measurements and models for how curvature and flexing of microstructured polymers affects hydrophobicity. Increasing curvature of microstructured surfaces leads to decreased slide angle for liquid droplets suspended on the surface asperities. For a surface with regularly spaced asperities, as curvature becomes more positive, droplets suspended on the tops of asperities are suspended on fewer asperities. Curvature affects superhydrophobicity because microscopic curvature changes solid-liquid interaction, pitch is altered, and curvature changes the shape of the three phase contact line. This dissertation presents a model of droplet interactions with curved microstructured surfaces that can be used to design microstructure geometries that maintain the suspension of a droplet when curved surfaces are covered with microstructured polymers. Controlling droplet dynamics could improve microfluidic devices and the shedding of liquids from expensive equipment, preventing corrosion and detrimental performance. This dissertation demonstrates redirection of dynamic droplet spray with anisotropic microstructures. Superhydrophobic microstructured surfaces can be economically fabricated using metal embossing masters, so this dissertation describes casting-based microfabrication of metal microstructures and nanostructures. Low melting temperature metal was cast into flexible silicone molds which were themselves cast from microfabricated silicon templates. The flexibility of the silicone mold permits casting of curved surfaces, which this dissertation demonstrates by fabricating a cylindrical metal roller with microstructures. The metal microstructures can be in turn used as a reusable molding tool. This dissertation also describes an industrial investment casting process to produce aluminum molds having integrated microstructures. Unlike conventional micromolding tools, the aluminum mold was large and had complex curved surfaces. The aluminum was cast into curved microstructured ceramic molds which were themselves cast from curved microstructured rubber. Many structures were successfully cast into the aluminum with excellent replication fidelity, including circular, square, and triangular holes. This dissertation demonstrates molding of large, curved surfaces having surface microstructures using the aluminum mold. This work contributes a more full understanding of the phenomenon of superhydrophobicity and techniques for the economic fabrication of superhydrophobic microstructures.

Diketonylpyridinium cations as a support of new ionic liquid crystals and ion-conductive materials: analysis of counter-ion effects

Ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) allow the combination of the high ionic conductivity of ionic liquids (ILs) with the supramolecular organization of liquid crystals (LCs). ILCs salts were obtained by the assembly of long-chained diketonylpyridinium cations of the type [HOO^(R(n)pyH)] + and BF_(4)^(-) , ReO_(4)^(-), NO_(3)^(-), CF_(3)SO_(3)^(-), CuCl_(4)^(2-) counter-ions. We have studied the thermal behavior of five series of compounds by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and hot stage polarized light optical microscopy (POM). All materials show thermotropic mesomorphism as well as crystalline polymorphism. X-ray diffraction of the [HOO^(R(12)pyH)][ReO_(4)] crystal reveals a layered structure with alternating polar and apolar sublayers. The mesophases also exhibit a lamellar arrangement detected by variable temperature powder X-ray diffraction. The CuCl_(4)^(2-) salts exhibit the best LC properties followed by the ReO_(4)^(-) ones due to low melting temperature and wide range of existence. The conductivity was probed for the mesophases in one species each from the ReO_(4)^(-) , and CuCl_(4)^(2-) families, and for the solid phase in one of the non-mesomorphic Cl^(-) salts. The highest ionic conductivity was found for the smectic mesophase of the ReO_(4)^(-) containing salt, whereas the solid phases of all salts were dominated by electronic contributions. The ionic conductivity may be favored by the mesophase lamellar structure.

In vitro and in vivo delivery of the secretagogue diadenosine tetraphosphate from conventional and silicone hydrogel soft contact lenses

Purpose To evaluate the possible use of soft contact lenses (CL) to improve the secretagogue role of diadenosine tetraphosphate (Ap4A) promoting tear secretion. Methods Two conventional hydrogel CL (Omafilcon A and Ocufilcon D) and two silicone hydrogel (SiH) CL (Comfilcon A and Balafilcon A) were used. Ap4A was loaded into the lenses by soaking in a 1 mM Ap4A solution during 12 h. In vitro experiments were performed by placing the lenses in multi-wells during 2 h containing 1 ml of ultrapure water. 100 μl aliquots were taken at time zero and every minute for the first 10 min, and then every 15 min. In vivo experiments were performed in New Zealand rabbits and both the dinucleotide release from SiH and tear secretion were measured by means of Schirmer strips and high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. Results Ap4A in vitro release experiments in hydrogel CL presented a release time 50 (RT50) of 3.9 ± 0.2 min and 3.1 ± 0.1 min for the non-ionic and the ionic CL, respectively. SiH CL released also Ap4A with RT50 values of 5.1 ± 0.1 min for the non-ionic and 2.7 ± 0.1 min for the ionic CL. In vivo experiments with SiH CL showed RT50 values of 9.3 ± 0.2 min and 8.5 ± 0.2 min for the non-ionic and the ionic respectively. The non-ionic lens Ap4A release was able to induce tear secretion above baseline tear levels for almost 360 min. Conclusion The delivery of Ap4A is slower and the effect lasts longer with non-ionic lenses than ionic lenses.

Periodic emission of droplets from an oscillating electrified meniscus of a low-viscosity, highly conductive liquid

The generation of identical droplets of controllable size in the micrometer range is a problem of much interest owing to the numerous technological applications of such droplets. This work reports an investigation of the regime of periodic emission of droplets from an electrified oscillating meniscus of a liquid of low viscosity and high electrical conductivity attached to the end of a capillary tube, which may be used to produce droplets more than ten times smaller than the diameter of the tube. To attain this periodic microdripping regime, termed axial spray mode II by Juraschek and Röllgen [R. Juraschek and F. W. Röllgen, Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 177, 1 (1998)], liquid is continuously supplied through the tube at a given constant flow rate, while a dc voltage is applied between the tube and a nearby counter electrode. The resulting electric field induces a stress at the surface of the liquid that stretches the meniscus until, in certain ranges of voltage and flow rate, it develops a ligament that eventually detaches, forming a single droplet, in a process that repeats itself periodically. While it is being stretched, the ligament develops a conical tip that emits ultrafine droplets, but the total mass emitted is practically contained in the main droplet. In the parametrical domain studied, we find that the process depends on two main dimensionless parameters, the flow rate nondimensionalized with the diameter of the tube and the capillary time, q, and the electric Bond number BE, which is a nondimensional measure of the square of the applied voltage. The meniscus oscillation frequency made nondimensional with the capillary time, f, is of order unity for very small flow rates and tends to decrease as the inverse of the square root of q for larger values of this parameter. The product of the meniscus mean volume times the oscillation frequency is nearly constant. The characteristic length and width of the liquid ligament immediately before its detachment approximately scale as powers of the flow rate and depend only weakly on the applied voltage. The diameter of the main droplets nondimensionalized with the diameter of the tube satisfies dd≈(6/π)1/3(q/f)1/3, from mass conservation, while the electric charge of these droplets is about 1/4 of the Rayleigh charge. At the minimum flow rate compatible with the periodic regimen, the dimensionless diameter of the droplets is smaller than one-tenth, which presents a way to use electrohydrodynamic atomization to generate droplets of highly conducting liquids in the micron-size range, in marked contrast with the cone-jet electrospray whose typical droplet size is in the nanometric regime for these liquids. In contrast with other microdripping regimes where the mass is emitted upon the periodic formation of a narrow capillary jet, the present regime gives one single droplet per oscillation, except for the almost massless fine aerosol emitted in the form of an electrospray.

Taraxacum koksaghyz Rodin as an alternative source of natural rubber and inulin; agronomic advances and genetic linkage map

126 p. El contenido del capítulo 3 está sujeto a confidencialidad.

Dimensional stability of an addition silicone after disinfection/sterilization

Poster presented at the “From Basic Sciences to Clinical Research” – First International Congress of CiiEM. Egas Moniz, Caparica, Portugal, 27-28 November 2015

Leaf anatomy of rubber-tree clones

A seringueira é uma planta de fácil reconhecimento por ser lenhosa, de porte mediano a grande, que apresenta um padrão característico de desfolha e reenfolhamento e, sobretudo, pela produção de látex. O objetivo do trabalho foi efetuar um estudo anatômico e morfológico foliar, comparando os clones RRIM 600 e GT 1 de seringueira &91;Hevea brasiliensis (Wild. ex Adr. de Juss.) Muell.- Arg&93;, desenvolvidos sob as mesmas condições edáficas e climáticas, para obtenção de informações que possam fornecer subsídios para correlações com dados fisiológicos e também diferenciar os clones em relação ao conteúdo de fibras, espessamento de tecidos do parênquima paliçádico e do parênquima lacunoso, caracterização anatômica do pecíolo, número e tamanho de estômatos e fornecer dados referentes a morfologia foliolar. Foram realizadas secções transversais na região do mesófilo, nervura central e pecíolo, seguindo-se os métodos usuais de preparação de lâminas permanentes. Foram realizadas análises biométricas de extensões de tecidos dos parênquimas paliçádico e lacunoso e contagem do número de células do parênquima lacunoso. Paralelamente foram realizadas análises biométricas para aferições de estômatos. Não houve diferenças para a altura das células epidérmicas, altura e número de camadas do parênquima lacunoso e para o comprimento e para a maior largura do limbo foliolar. Porém houve variação para a espessura das células do parênquima paliçádico, sendo que GT 1 apresentou maior espessura em relação a RRIM 600. GT1 apresentou maior número de estômatos em relação a RRIM 600, porém com menor tamanho. GT1 apresentou maior diâmetro da nervura central da folha e do pecíolo e maior quantidade de fibras de esclerênquima que RRIM 600.

Microclimate, development and productivity of robusta coffee shaded by rubber trees and at full sun.

Existem poucos estudos sobre arborização de café conilon com seringueira. Objetivou-se avaliar o microclima, desenvolvimento e produtividade do cafeeiro conilon cultivado a pleno sol e sob sombreamento proporcionado pela seringueira. O experimento foi composto por uma lavoura de café conilon (Coffea canephora), cultivada a pleno sol e outra lavoura de café consorciada com seringueira (Hevea brasiliensis). A seringueira e o cafeeiro foram plantados no sentido Leste/Oeste, em Jaguaré, Espírito Santo, Brasil. Avaliou-se a luminosidade, temperatura e umidade relativa do ar, concentração foliar de nutrientes, medição dos internódios dos ramos plagiotrópicos e ortotrópicos, área foliar, índice relativo de clorofila, e a produtividade do cafeeiro. O sombreamento influenciou diretamente no microclima, reduzindo a temperatura do ar no verão e no inverno e aumentando a umidade relativa. A luminosidade no verão teve uma redução media de 905 lumens ft-2 ao longo de todo dia, equivalente a 72,49%, e no inverno de 1665 lumens ft-2, equivalente a 88,04%. O sombreamento proporcionou maior estiolamento dos ramos plagiotrópicos e ortotrópicos, bem como maior expansão foliar. A concentração foliar de Fe e Mn foram maiores no cafeeiro arborizado. A clorofila b e total estimada foram maior no cafeeiro cultivado a pleno sol. O denso sombreamento oferecido pela seringueira nas condições estudadas proporcionou perdas na produtividade do cafeeiro, contudo, ocorre a formação da seringueira.

More than Metadata: Where the Rubber Meets the Road in DLS Migration

This panel presentation provided several use cases that detail the complexity of large-scale digital library system (DLS) migration from the perspective of three university libraries and a statewide academic library services consortium. Each described the methodologies developed at the beginning of their migration process, the unique challenges that arose along the way, how issues were managed, and the outcomes of their work. Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, and the University of Central Florida are members of the state's academic library services consortium, the Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC). In 2011, the Digital Services Committee members began exploring alternatives to DigiTool, their shared FLVC hosted DLS. After completing a review of functional requirements and existing systems, the universities and FLVC began the implementation process of their chosen platforms. Migrations began in 2013 with limited sets of materials. As functionalities were enhanced to support additional categories of materials from the legacy system, migration paths were created for the remaining materials. Some of the challenges experienced with the institutional and statewide collaborative legacy collections were due to gradual changes in standards, technology, policies, and personnel. This was manifested in the quality of original digital files and metadata, as well as collection and record structures. Additionally, the complexities involved with multiple institutions collaborating and compromising throughout the migration process, as well as the move from a consortial support structure with a vendor solution to open source systems (both locally and consortially supported), presented their own sets of unique challenges. Following the presentation, the speakers discussed commonalities in their migration experience, including learning opportunities for future migrations.

A finite element framework for the interplay between delamination and buckling of rubber-like bi-material systems and stretchable electronics

In this study, a finite element (FE) framework for the analysis of the interplay between buckling and delamination of thin layers bonded to soft substrates is proposed. The current framework incorporates the following modeling features: (i) geometrically nonlinear solid shell elements, (ii) geometrically nonlinear cohesive interface elements, and (iii) hyperelastic material constitutive response for the bodies that compose the system. A fully implicit Newton–Raphson solution strategy is adopted to deal with the complex simultaneous presence of geometrical and material nonlinearities through the derivation of the consistent FE formulation. Applications to a rubber-like bi-material system under finite bending and to patterned stiff islands resting on soft substrate for stretchable solar cells subjected to tensile loading are proposed. The results obtained are in good agreement with benchmark results available in the literature, confirming the accuracy and the capabilities of the proposed numerical method for the analysis of complex three-dimensional fracture mechanics problems under finite deformations.

Development and chemo-mechanical characterization of eco-compatible extenders containing REOB and recycled tyres’ rubber for the production of greener bituminous binders

The concepts of circular economy and sustainability are the basis of the present experimental research that seeks to reduce the environmental impact of traditional road construction materials. This study mainly focuses on the development and the chemo-mechanical characterization of bitumen extenders containing rubber (R) from end-of-life tyres (ELTs) and re-refined engine oil bottoms (REOBs) for the production of innovative and eco-friendly extended bitumens (i.e. bituminous binders containing 25%wt. of recycled products) and asphalt mixtures. In order to create more sustainable asphalt mixes, also recycled aggregates are used for partial replacement of virgin natural aggregates in the aggregate skeleton. The experimental program encompassed five successive steps: (i) the evaluation of physicochemical properties of R and REOB, (ii) the definition of the optimal extenders by the development of a new protocol and their characterizations, (iii) the realization and investigation of the chemo-rheological responses of the extended bitumens at different boundary conditions, (iv) the assessment of the effectiveness of analytical method to predict the rheological parameters of extended bitumens and, finally, (v) the analysis of the mechanical performances of the corresponding asphalt mixtures. A standard 50/70 penetration grade bitumen was chosen as a reference material and the main constituent of the innovative bituminous products. The results of this study underlined the importance of material characterization. The incorporation of R-REOB extenders strongly affects the chemo-rheological responses of the resulting extended bitumens and asphalt mixtures overall the boundary conditions. While the presence of R and the consequent formation of a polymer network improves the elasticity of the final products, especially at high test temperatures; the addition of REOB, softens the bituminous binders and asphalt mixes increasing their response at low test temperatures. Nonetheless, the use of recycled products increased the susceptibility of bituminous material under damaging conditions, which would need further investigations.