Abnormal cell mechanical stiffness can point to the development of various diseases including cancers and infections. We report a new microfluidic technique for continuous cell separation utilizing variation in cell stiffness. We use a microfluidic channel decorated by periodic diagonal ridges that compress the flowing cells in rapid succession. The compression in combination with secondary flows in the ridged microfluidic channel translates each cell perpendicular to the channel axis in proportion to its stiffness. We demonstrate the physical principle of the cell sorting mechanism and show that our microfluidic approach can be effectively used to separate a variety of cell types which are similar in size but of different stiffnesses, spanning a range from 210 Pa to 23 kPa. Atomic force microscopy is used to directly measure the stiffness of the separated cells and we found that the trajectories in the microchannel correlated to stiffness. We have demonstrated that the current processing throughput is 250 cells per second. This microfluidic separation technique opens new ways for conducting rapid and low-cost cell analysis and disease diagnostics through biophysical markers.
Quality inspection of food and agricultural produce are difficult and labor intensive. Simultaneously, with increased expectations for food products of high quality and safety standards, the need for accurate, fast and objective quality determination of these characteristics in food products continues to grow. However, these operations generally in India are manual which is costly as well as unreliable because human decision in identifying quality factors such as appearance, flavor, nutrient, texture, etc., is inconsistent, subjective and slow. Machine vision provides one alternative for an automated, non-destructive and cost-effective technique to accomplish these requirements. This inspection approach based on image analysis and processing has found a variety of different applications in the food industry. Considerable research has highlighted its potential for the inspection and grading of fruits and vegetables, grain quality and characteristic examination and quality evaluation of other food products like bakery products, pizza, cheese, and noodles etc. The objective of this paper is to provide in depth introduction of machine vision system, its components and recent work reported on food and agricultural produce.
Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxy-tryptamine), which is generally considered as pleiotropic and multitasking molecule, secretes from pineal gland at night under normal light or dark conditions. Apart from circadian regulations, Melatonin also has antioxidant, anti-ageing, immunomodulation and anticancer properties. From the epidemiological research, it was postulated that Melatonin has significant apoptotic, angiogenic, oncostatic and anti-proliferative effects on various oncological cells. In this review, the underlying anticancer mechanisms of Melatonin such as stimulation of apoptosis, Melatonin receptors (MT1 and MT2) stimulation, paro-survival signal regulation, the hindering of angiogenesis, epigenetic alteration and metastasis have been discussed with recent findings. The Melatonin utilization as an adjuvant with chemotherapeutic drugs for the reinforcement of therapeutic effects was also discussed. This review precisely emphasizes the anticancer effect of Melatonin on various cancer cells. This review exemplifies the epidemiology and anticancer efficiency of Melatonin with prior attention to the mechanisms of actions.
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