Non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasma (NTAPP) is an ionized gas at room temperature and has potential as a new apoptosis-promoting cancer therapy that acts by generating reactive oxygen species (ROS). However, it is imperative to determine its selectivity and standardize the components and composition of NTAPP. Here, we designed an NTAPP-generating apparatus combined with a He gas feeding system and demonstrated its high selectivity toward p53-mutated cancer cells. We first determined the proper conditions for NTAPP exposure to selectively induce apoptosis in cancer cells. The apoptotic effect of NTAPP was greater for p53-mutated cancer cells; artificial p53 expression in p53-negative HT29 cells decreased the pro-apoptotic effect of NTAPP. We also examined extra- and intracellular ROS levels in NTAPP-treated cells to deduce the mechanism of NTAPP action. While NTAPP-mediated increases in extracellular nitric oxide (NO) did not affect cell viability, intracellular ROS increased under NTAPP exposure and induced apoptotic cell death. This effect was dose-dependently reduced following treatment with ROS scavengers. NTAPP induced apoptosis even in doxorubicin-resistant cancer cell lines, demonstrating the feasibility of NTAPP as a potent cancer therapy. Collectively, these results strongly support the potential of NTAPP as a selective anticancer treatment, especially for p53-mutated cancer cells.

Fluid models have been widely used and conducted successfully in high pressure plasma simulations where the drift-diffusion and the local-field approximation are valid. However, fluid models are not able to demonstrate non-local effects related to large electron energy relaxation mean free path in low pressure plasmas. To overcome this weakness, a hybrid model coupling electron Monte Carlo collision (EMCC) method with the fluid model is introduced to obtain precise electron energy distribution functions using pseudo-particles. Steady state simulation results by a one-dimensional hybrid model which includes EMCC method for the collisional reactions but uses drift-diffusion approximation for electron transport in a fluid model are compared with those of a conventional particle-in-cell (PIC) and a fluid model for low pressure capacitively coupled plasmas. At a wide range of pressure, the hybrid model agrees well with the PIC simulation with a reduced calculation time while the fluid model shows discrepancy in the results of the plasma density and the electron temperature.

SummaryCable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) possess a lot of advantages over conventional parallel manipulators and link-based robot manipulators in terms of acceleration due to their low inertia. This paper deals with under-constrained CDPRs, which manipulate the end-effector to carrying the payload by using a number of cables less than six, often used preferably owing to their simple structures. Since a smaller number of cables than six are used, the end-effector of CDPR has uncontrollable degrees of freedom and that causes swaying motion and oscillations. In this paper, a scheme to curb on the unwanted oscillation of the end-effector of the CDPR with three cables is proposed based on multimode input shaping. The precise dynamic model of the under-constrained CDPR is obtained to find natural frequencies, which depends on the position of the end-effector. The advantage of the proposed method is that it is practicable to generate the trajectories for vibration suppression based on multi-mode input-shaping scheme in spite of the complexity in the dynamics and the difficulty in computing the natural frequencies of the CDPR, which are required in any input-shaping scheme. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed method, computer simulations and experiments were carried out by using 3-D motion for CDPR with three cables.

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