In situ surface-sensitive x-ray diffraction and grazing incidence x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (GIXFS) methods are combined to determine the ionic distributions across the liquid/vapor interfaces of thiolatedpolyethylene-glycol–capped gold nanoparticle (PEG-AuNP) solutions. Induced by the addition of salts (i.e., Cs2SO4) to PEG-AuNPs solutions, two-dimensional hexagonal lattices of PEG-AuNPs...

Hydrogel is a useful material for biomedical applications because of its softness and solute permeability, but the use of hydrogel as a structural material for microfluidic devices is challenging due to the lack of a hydrogel-solid bonding method. We have developed a hydrogel reactive microbonding (HRMB) method that enables the use of Tetra-PEG gel, which has an extraordinarily uniform network ...

background: percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (peg) is the standard method for enteral feeding in patients predicted to require long-term enteral nutrition because of dysphagia. the aim of this study was to assess the complications of percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy performed using the pull technique. methods: between january 2011 and december 2011, 74 patients underwent percutaneous endo...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the cytotoxicity of poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(D,L-lactic acid) (PEG-PDLLA) nanovesicles loaded with doxorubicin (DOX) and the photosensitizer hematoporphyrin monomethyl ether (HMME) on human hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells and to investigate potential apoptotic mechanisms. METHODS PEG-PDLLA nanovesicles were simultaneously loaded with DOX and HMME (PEG-PDLLA-...

In this paper we give a comparative analysis of decoding algorithms of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes in a channel with the Nakagami distribution of the fading envelope. We consider the Progressive Edge-Growth (PEG) method and Improved PEG method for the parity check matrix construction, which can be used to avoid short girths, small trapping sets and a high level of error floor. A compa...

Available data demonstrate that oxygen free radicals and derived reactive species of oxygen are produced during myocardial ischemia as well as upon reperfusion of the ischemic tissue. The present study was designed to determine if polyethylene glycol-conjugated superoxide dismutase (PEG-SOD), with its extended plasma half-life in excess of 30 hours in contrast to the native form of the enzyme (...

Most of the studies on the key word method of second/foreign language vocabulary learning have been based on the evidence from laboratory experiments and have primarily involved the use of English key words to learn the vocabularies of other languages. Furthermore, comparatively quite limited number of such studies is done in authentic classroom contexts. The present study inquired into the eff...

Nanoscale metal-organic particles (NMOPs) have recently shown great promise in the area of nanomedicine owing to their tunable compositions, highly enriched functionalities, well-defined sizes/shapes and intrinsic biodegradability. Herein, we describe the fabrication of NMOPs with both core-shell and co-doped structures via a post-synthesis cation exchange method for applications in multimodal ...

Background. Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) placement using the "pull" technique is commonly utilized for providing nutritional support in head and neck cancer (HNC) patients, but it may be complicated by peristomal metastasis in up to 3% of patients. Overtube-assisted PEG placement might reduce this risk. However, this technique has not been systemically studied for this purpose to d...

BACKGROUND Intraoperative monitoring of motor evoked potentials by transcranial electric stimulation is popular in neurosurgery for monitoring motor function preservation. Some authors have reported that the peg-screw electrodes screwed into the skull can more effectively conduct current to the brain compared to subdermal cork-screw electrodes screwed into the skin. The aim of this study was to...