Alcohol influences human health condition by starving red blood cells (RBCs) of oxygen, which results in poor blood circulation. Starved RBCs clump together and restrict blood flow, especially in capillaries. In this study, a finite element method-based moving mesh technique was applied to simulate the motion and deformation of a single RBC under different flow conditions. A 2-D model of a single RBC floating in plasma-alcohol solution was created using Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method with moving mesh for a fluid structure interaction problem. Cell deformability and stability were studied in an alcoholic plasma solution at different fluid flow conditions. Poor blood circulation was observed with RBC tending to rotate and oscillate at low flow rates. Moreover, RBC exhibited a parachute shape while moving without oscillation, which indicated improved micro-circulation at increased flow rates. In both cases, RBC exhibited a parachute shape while moving through micro-channel at increased flow rates. The simulation also showed the significant increase of RBC deformability with the increasing viscosity of plasma as a result of alcohol presence in blood.
Achieving high efficiency in graphene production and
printing process
simultaneously is challenging, but it needs to be addressed as it
is critical for realizing the commercial viability of printed graphene
devices. This study successfully substantiates these requirements
by significantly improving the efficiency of graphene production and
subsequently developing an inkjet-printable graphene ink that enables
the rapid formation of the percolation network of graphene flakes.
The integration of a flow coil reactor into an ultrasonic bath results
in scalable and rapid graphene production, with graphene productivity
up to three orders of magnitude higher than conventional liquid-phase
exfoliation (LPE), offering the potential that ultrasonic LPE can
benefit the scalability and simplicity of graphene production. In
addition, the graphene ink, optimized by ink formulation, has a stable
high graphene concentration of 3.5 g L–1, resulting
in the formation of stable percolation networks of graphene flakes
only after two printing passes under optimized printing conditions.
The printed graphene patterns are also confirmed to be conformable
to various substrates and durable against repeated stretching and
bending stress. By ensuring high efficiency in graphene production
and inkjet-printable ink preparation, this study would promote the
commercialization of graphene production and the resulting printed
graphene devices.
In this study, the feasibility of spectral domain optical Doppler tomography for measuring blood flow characteristics in a micro-tube was demonstrated through several experiments. The use of an SD-ODT system in blood flow measurement can provide high resolution images (5 microns resolution). We prepared three capillary tubes to reveal the effect of different concentrations of hematocrit ratio (HR). One tube serves as the control. The two other tubes contained different concentrations of HR (5%, 25%). Three different capillary tube inlet flow velocities were tested in the present study. The Reynolds number (Re) which is based on the capillary tube inner diameter ranges from Re=6 to 48. We calculated a Doppler shift of the power spectrum of the temporal interference fringes with Kasai autocorrelation function to achieve the velocity profile of the flow. As a result, SD-ODT systems could not detect the cell depletion layer in the present study due to the limitation of spatial resolution. Nevertheless, these systems were proven to be capable of observing the RBCs of blood.
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