Assessment of coxarthritis risk with dimensionless biomechanical parameters

Janja Lap (1929–2004) is known to the Slovenian professional public as a first-rate glass designer and industrial designer in the field of electro-optical device development. For most of her pro-fessional life she was also a devoted researcher in the field of design, yet this facet of her work remained largely overlooked by both the professional and general public until the beginning of 2021, when the Museum of Architecture and Design acquired her archive. In this text we attempt to show that what sets her research apart is the way it thoughtfully weaves together two scien-tific approaches to design that each characterise a different school: one the Faculty of Architec-ture in Ljubljana and the other the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London. In other words, we can trace in her work the intertwining of two threads of knowledge: one arising from the archi-tectural and urbanistic background she acquired during her studies under the mentorship of Edvard Ravnikar in what was then Yugoslavia, and the other obtained at the RCA under the mentorship of Bruce Archer, the British mechanical engineer and the first professor to devote himself to systems-level research in design, and Sir Misha Black, a pioneer in the development of scientific research approaches in the field of design

Section: Curriculummentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pioneering Research Practices of Designer Janja Lap

Predan¹,

Šubic²

2022

Section: Curriculummentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of Extracellular Vesicles in Alopecia and its Treatment

Tehovnik¹

2022

Extracellular vesicles are cell-derived membranous bodies that function as intercellular commu-nicators, carrying proteins, lipids, DNA and RNA molecules. Many therapeutic approaches have focused on using extracellular vesicles, due to smaller risk compared to invasive cell-based therapies. Hair follicles are skin appendices that are composed of epidermal and mesenchymal component, with the former including a major reservoir of epithelial stem cells. Hair follicles continuously cycle, undergoing consecutive phases of resting, growing, and regression. Many molecules carried by extracellular vesicles are involved in the control of the hair follicle cycle and stem cell function. Thus, investigating the role of extracellular vesicles as signaling bodies potentially involved in hair cycling may be an important step in the attempt to design future alopecia treatment strategies.

Section: Curriculummentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonspecific Influence of Surfactin on Lipid Membranes is Temperature Dependent

Drab¹,

Pandur²,

Penič³

et al. 2022

Surfactin is a lipopeptide produced by bacillus subtilis, and is a membrane fusion inhibitor that has a strong anti-viral effect. Surfactin has shown to solubilize cell and model membranes with a detergent-like mechanism that is highly unspecific. Unlike typical detergents its peptide head-group is partially hydrophobic, resulting in a deeper insertion into the hydrophobic tail region of model membranes, which may be the reason for its high activity and specific, chain-tilting ef-fects on membrane order. In this work we exposed dipalmytoyl-oleoylphosphatidylcholine (DOPC) giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) to different concentrations of Surfactin and found that at room temperatures, the membranes are stabilized with a network of pores resembling crater-like structures in optic and fluorescent microscopy images. At higher temperatures (60 °C), the pores disappeared and the vesicles were smooth like the control groups. We used a three-dimensional Monte Carlo scheme emulating the permeabilization process and found that simulations are a good predictor of experiments is we take into account the tempera-ture-dependent spontaneous curvature of Surfactin. This is in line with previous experiments that show Surfactin disorders the acyl chains, rendering microdomain complexes on the mem-brane less negatively curved at an increased temperature.