No abstract

Blood banking has a broad public health impact influencing millions of lives daily. It could potentially benefit from emerging biopreservation technologies. However, although vitrification has shown advantages over traditional cryopreservation techniques, it has not been incorporated into transfusion medicine mainly due to throughput challenges. Here, we present a scalable method that can vitrify red blood cells in microdroplets. This approach enables the vitrification of large volumes of blood in a short amount of time, and makes it a viable and scalable biotechnology tool for blood cryopreservation.

PURPOSEThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the properties of a porous zirconia scaffold coated with bioactive materials and compare the in vitro cellular behavior of MC3T3-E1 preosteoblastic cells to titanium and zirconia disks and porous zirconia scaffolds.MATERIALS AND METHODSTitanium and zirconia disks were prepared. A porous zirconia scaffold was fabricated with an open cell polyurethane disk foam template. The porous zirconia scaffolds were coated with β-TCP, HA and a compound of β-TCP and HA (BCP). The characteristics of the specimens were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive x-ray spectrometer (EDX), and x-ray diffractometry (XRD). The dissolution tests were analyzed by an inductively coupled plasma spectrometer (ICP). The osteogenic effect of MC3T3-E1 cells was assessed via cell counting and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).RESULTSThe EDX profiles showed the substrate of zirconia, which was surrounded by the Ca-P layer. In the dissolution test, dissolved Ca2+ ions were observed in the following decreasing order; β-TCP > BCP > HA (P<.05). In the cellular experiments, the cell proliferation on titanium disks appeared significantly lower in comparison to the other groups after 5 days (P<.05). The zirconia scaffolds had greater values than the zirconia disks (P<.05). The mRNA level of osteocalcin was highest on the non-coated zirconia scaffolds after 7 days.CONCLUSIONZirconia had greater osteoblast cell activity than titanium. The interconnecting pores of the zirconia scaffolds showed enhanced proliferation and cell differentiation. The activity of osteoblast was more affected by microstructure than by coating materials.

Through far-infrared studies of La 2−x Sr x CuO 4 single crystals for x = 0.063, 0.07, 0.09, and 0.11, we found that only ∼0.2% of the total holes participated in the nearly dissipationless normal state charge transport and superconductivity. We have also observed characteristic collective modes at ω ∼ 18 and 22 cm −1 due to the bound carriers in an electronic lattice (EL) state, and the free carriers are massively screened by the EL. Our findings lead us to propose a composite picture of the charge system where the free carriers are coupled to and riding on the EL. This unique composite system of charge carriers may provide further insights into the understanding of the cuprate physics.