Intervertebral disc degeneration is one of the leading causes of back pain, but treatment options remain limited. Recently, there have been advances in the development of biomaterials for nucleus augmentation; however, the testing of such materials preclinically has proved challenging. The aim of this study was to develop methods for fabricating and testing bone-disc-bone specimens in vitro for...

Neisseria gonorrhoeae is an obligate pathogen that hijacks iron from the human iron transport protein, holo-transferrin (Fe(2)-Tf), by expressing TonB-dependent outer membrane receptor proteins, TbpA and TbpB. Homologous to other TonB-dependent outer membrane transporters, TbpA is thought to consist of a β-barrel with an N-terminal plug domain. Previous reports by our laboratories show that the...

In der Anwendungsentwicklung kommen zunehmend Plug-in-basierte Ansätze zum Einsatz. Die Verwendung Plug-in-basierter Techniken hat Auswirkungen auf die Entwicklung der Software, in der die spezifischen Eigenschaften von Plug-ins berücksichtigt werden müssen. Dieser Beitrag identifiziert basierend auf Erfahrungen aus der Praxis Entwurfsfragen, die sich beim Einsatz von Plug-ins stellen, und disk...

edge detection and edge enhancement techniques play an essential role in interpreting potential field data. this paper describes the application of various edge detection techniques to gravity data in order to delineate the edges of subsurface structures. the edge detection methods comprise analytic signal, total horizontal derivative (thdr), theta angle, tilt angle, hyperbolic of tilt angle (h...

A plug computer is essentially a cross between an embedded computer and a traditional computer, and with many of the same capabilities. However, the architecture of a plug computer makes it difficult to apply commonly used digital forensic methods. This paper describes methods for extracting and analyzing digital evidence from plug computers. Two popular plug computer models are examined, the S...