'Antibacterial Surfaces' covers the advances being made in the design of antibacterial surfaces, which have the ability to either prevent the initial attachment of bacterial cells, or kill any cells that come into contact with these surfaces. This book discusses the mechanisms associated with the attachment of bacteria to surfaces and the main strategies currently being employed to control the initial attachment processes. These strategies are expanded upon in the subsequent chapters, where the definition and description of antibacterial surfaces are clarified, as are the mechanisms that come into play when determining the effectiveness of an antibacterial surface. Subsequent chapters discuss a number of naturally occurring antibacterial surfaces, the methods currently being used for producing synthetic antibacterial surfaces, and the current and potential applications of such materials. This book will be of great interest to people who work with materials that need to remain free of bacterial films, from designing safer biomedical implants to the production of self-cleaning materials where the prevention of biofilm formation has significant economic advantages.

Biological chemistry has changed since the completion of the human genome project. There is a renewed interest and market for individuals trained in biophysical chemistry and molecular biophysics. The Physical Basis of Biochemistry, Second Edition, emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of biophysical chemistry by incorporating the quantitative perspective of the physical sciences without sacrificing the complexity and diversity of the biological systems, applies physical and chemical principles to the understanding of the biology of cells and explores the explosive developments in the area of genomics, and in turn, proteomics, bioinformatics, and computational and visualization technologies that have occurred in the past seven years. The book features problem sets and examples, clear illustrations, and extensive appendixes that provide additional information on related topics in mathematics, physics and chemistry.

Neural Engineering, 2nd Edition, contains reviews and discussions of contemporary and relevant topics by leading investigators in the field. It is intended to serve as a textbook at the graduate and advanced undergraduate level in a bioengineering curriculum. This principles and applications approach to neural engineering is essential reading for all academics, biomedical engineers, neuroscientists, neurophysiologists, and industry professionals wishing to take advantage of the latest and greatest in this emerging field.

The book is dedicated to the method and application potential of micro segmented flow. The recent state of development of this powerful technique is presented in 12 chapters by leading researchers from different countries. In the first section, the principles of generation and manipulation of micro-fluidic segments are explained. In the second section, the micro continuous-flow synthesis of different types of nanomaterials is shown as a typical example for the use of advantages of the technique in chemistry. In the third part, the particular importance of the technique in biotechnical applications is presented demonstrating the progress for miniaturized cell-free processes, for molecular biology and DNA-based diagnostics and sequencing as well as for the development of antibiotics and the evaluation of toxic effects in medicine and environment.

The cell cycle is a sequence of biochemical events that are controlled by complex but robust molecular machinery. This enables cells to achieve accurate self-reproduction under a broad range of conditions. Environmental changes are transmitted by molecular signaling networks, which coordinate their actions with the cell cycle. This work presents the first description of two complementary computational models describing the influence of osmotic stress on the entire cell cycle of S. cerevisiae. Our models condense a vast amount of experimental evidence on the interaction of the cell cycle network components with the osmotic stress pathway. Importantly, it is only by considering the entire cell cycle that we are able to make a series of novel predictions which emerge from the coupling between the molecular components of different cell cycle phases. The model-based predictions are supported by experiments in S. cerevisiae and, moreover, have recently been observed in other eukaryotes. Furthermore our models reveal the mechanisms that emerge as a result of the interaction between the cell cycle and stress response networks.

Part I. Application of Microarray Technologies: Electronic Microarray Technology and Applications in Genomics and Proteomics.- Gene Expression Profiling Utilizing Microarray Technology and RT-PCR.- Microarray and Fluidic Chip for Extracellular Sensing.- Cell Physiometry Tools Based on Dielectrophoresis.- Hitting the Spot: The Promise of Protein Microarrays.- Use of Electric Field Array Devices for Assisted Assembly of DNA Nanocomponents and Other Nanofabrication Applications.- Peptide Arrays in Proteomics and Drug Discovery.- From One-bead One-compound Combinatorial Libraries to Chemical Microarrays.- Part II. Advanced Microfluidic Devices and Human Genome Project.- Plastic Microfluidic Devices for DNA and Protein Analyses.- Centrifuge Based Fluidic Platforms.- Sequencing the human genome: A historical perspective on challenges for systems integration.- Part III. Nanoprobes for Imaging, Sensing and Therapy.- Hairpin Nanoprobes for Gene Detection.- Fluorescent Lanthanide Labels with Time-resolved Fluorometry in DNA Analysis.- Role of SNPs and Haplotypes in Human Disease and Drug Development.- Control of Biomolecular Activity by Nanoparticle Antennas.- Sequence-dependent Rigidity of DNA: Influence on DNA-protein interactions and DNA in Nanochannels.- Engineered Ribozymes: Efficient Tools for Molecular Gene Therapy and Gene Discovery

This book starts at an introductory level and leads reader to the most advanced topics in fluorescence imaging and super-resolution techniques that have enabled new developments such as nanobioimaging, multiphoton microscopy, nanometrology and nanosensors. The interdisciplinary subject of fluorescence microscopy and imaging requires complete knowledge of imaging optics and molecular physics. So, this book approaches the subject by introducing optical imaging concepts before going in more depth about advanced imaging systems and their applications. Additionally, molecular orbital theory is the important basis to present molecular physics and gain a complete understanding of light-matter interaction at the geometrical focus. The two disciplines have some overlap since light controls the molecular states of molecules and conversely, molecular states control the emitted light. These two mechanisms together determine essential imaging factors such as, molecular cross-section, Stoke shift, emission and absorption spectra, quantum yield, signal-to-noise ratio, Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET), fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) and fluorescence lifetime. These factors form the basis of many fluorescence based devices. The book is organized into two parts. The first part deals with basics of imaging optics and its applications. The advanced part takes care of several imaging techniques and related instrumentation that are developed in the last decade pointing towards far-field diffraction unlimited imaging.

This lecture notes book presents how enhanced structural information of biomolecular ions can be obtained from interaction with photons of specific frequency - laser light. The methods described in the book "Laser photodissociation and spectroscopy of mass-separated biomolecular ions" make use of the fact that the discrete energy and fast time scale of photoexcitation can provide more control in ion activation. This activation is the crucial process producing structure-informative product ions that cannot be generated with more conventional heating methods, such as collisional activation. The book describes how the powerful separation capabilities and sensitivity of mass spectrometry (MS) can be combined with the structural insights from spectroscopy by measuring vibrational and electronic spectra of trapped analytes. The implementation of laser-based photodissociation techniques in MS requires basic knowledge of tunable light sources and ion trapping devices. This book introduces the reader to key concepts and approaches in molecular spectroscopy, and the light sources and ion traps employed in such experiments. The power of the methods is demonstrated by spectroscopic interrogation of a range of important biomolecular systems, including peptides, proteins, and saccharides, with laser light in the ultraviolet-visible, and infrared range. The book "Laser photodissociation and spectroscopy of mass-separated biomolecular ions" is an indispensable resource for students and researchers engaged or interested in this emerging field. It provides the solid background of key concepts and technologies for the measurements, discusses state-of-the-art experiments, and provides an outlook on future developments and applications.

This book describes the unique characean experimental system, which provides a simplified model for many aspects of the physiology, transport and electrophysiology of higher plants. The first chapter offers a thorough grounding in the morphology, taxonomy and ecology of Characeae plants. Research on characean detached cells in steady state is summarised in Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 covers characean detached cells subjected to calibrated and mostly abiotic types of stress: touch, wounding, voltage clamp to depolarised and hyperpolarised potential difference levels, osmotic and saline stress. Chapter 4 highlights cytoplasmic streaming, cell-to-cell transport, gravitropism, cell walls and the role of Characeae in phytoremediation. The book is intended for researchers and students using the characean system and will also serve as an invaluable reference resource for electrophysiologists working on higher plants.

This monograph presents the latest results related to bio-mechanical systems and materials. The bio-mechanical systems with which his book is concerned are prostheses, implants, medical operation robots and muscular re-training systems. To characterize and design such systems, a multi-disciplinary approach is required which involves the classical disciplines of mechanical/materials engineering and biology and medicine. The challenge in such an approach is that views, concepts or even language are sometimes different from discipline to discipline and the interaction and communication of the scientists must be first developed and adjusted. Within the context of materials' science, the book covers the interaction of materials with mechanical systems, their description as a mechanical system or their mechanical properties.

This volume provides a comprehensive selection of recent studies addressing insect hearing and acoustic communication. The variety of signalling behaviours and hearing organs makes insects highly suitable animals for exploring and analysing signal generation and hearing in the context of neural processing, ecology, evolution and genetics. Across a variety of hearing species like moths, crickets, bush-crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and flies, the leading researchers in the field cover recent scientific progress and address key points in current research, such as: - How can we approach the evolution of hearing in insects and what is the developmental and neural origin of the auditory organs? - How are hearing and sound production embedded in the natural lifestyle of the animals, allowing intraspecific communication but also predator avoidance and even predation? - What are the functional properties of hearing organs and how are they achieved at the molecular, biophysical and neural levels? - What are the neural mechanisms of central auditory processing and signal generation? The book is intended for students and researchers both inside and outside of the fascinating field of bioacoustics and aims to foster understanding of hearing and acoustic communication in insects.

This book focuses on the assembly, organization and resultant collective dynamics of soft matter systems maintained away from equilibrium by an energy flux. Living matter is the ultimate example of such systems, which are comprised of different constituents on very different scales (ions, nucleic acids, proteins, cells). The result of their diverse interactions, maintained using the energy from physiological processes, is a fantastically well-organized and dynamic whole. This work describes results from minimal, biomimetic systems and primarily investigates membranes and active emulsions, as well as key aspects of both soft matter and non-equilibrium phenomena. It is shown that these minimal reconstitutions are already capable of a range of complex behaviour such as nonlinear electric responses, chemical communication and locomotion. These studies will bring us closer to a fundamental understanding of complex systems by reconstituting key aspects of their form and function in simple model systems. Further, they may also serve as the first technological steps towards artificial soft functional matter.

The physical principles of swimming and flying in animals are intriguingly different from those of ships and airplanes. The study of animal locomotion therefore holds a special place not only at the frontiers of pure fluid dynamics research, but also in the applied field of biomimetics, which aims to emulate salient aspects of the performance and function of living organisms. For example, fluid dynamic loads are so significant for swimming fish that they are expected to have developed efficient flow control procedures through the evolutionary process of adaptation by natural selection, which might in turn be applied to the design of robotic swimmers. And yet, sharply contrasting views as to the energetic efficiency of oscillatory propulsion - especially for marine animals - demand a careful assessment of the forces and energy expended at realistic Reynolds numbers. For this and many other research questions, an experimental approach is often the most appropriate methodology. This holds as much for flying animals as it does for swimming ones, and similar experimental challenges apply - studying tethered as opposed to free locomotion, or studying the flow around robotic models as opposed to real animals. This book provides a wide-ranging snapshot of the state-of-the-art in experimental research on the physics of swimming and flying animals. The resulting picture reflects not only upon the questions that are of interest in current pure and applied research, but also upon the experimental techniques that are available to answer them.

This book is dedicated to the channels and pores that belong to an eclectic and ubiquitous class of unconventional - perhaps at times strange - pore-forming molecules, which nevertheless play fundamental roles in various organisms. These non-canonical channels may take on various and sometimes complex architectures, such as large beta-barrels or lipid-containing pores. They may originate from bacteria, viruses or intracellular organelles. For some of them, the physiologically relevant substrate may indeed be ions, and for others folded polypeptides. Some are released by cells in a soluble form that has the ability to insert into biological membranes to exert its permeabilizing effect. Many of these unconventional pores have been investigated by electrophysiology, which, by its virtue of focusing on a few or even a single unit, has provided invaluable insight into the mechanisms and structure-function relationships of these remarkable membrane entities. The chapters of this book highlight a representative set of these interesting investigations.

Together, the volumes in this series present all of the data needed at various length scales for a multidisciplinary approach to modeling and simulation of flows in the cardiovascular and ventilatory systems, especially multiscale modeling and coupled simulations. The cardiovascular and respiratory systems are tightly coupled, as their primary function is to supply oxygen to, and remove carbon dioxide from, the body's cells. Because physiological conduits have deformable and reactive walls, macroscopic flow behavior and prediction must be coupled to nano- and microscopic events in a corrector scheme of regulated mechanism. Therefore, investigation of flows of blood and air in physiological conduits requires an understanding of the biology, chemistry, and physics of these systems, together with the mathematical tools to describe their functioning in quantitative terms. The present volume focuses on macroscopic aspects of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems in normal conditions, i.e., anatomy and physiology, as well as the acquisition and processing of medical images and physiological signals.

The analysis of recurrences in dynamical systems by using recurrence plots and their quantification is still an emerging field. Over the past decades recurrence plots have proven to be valuable data visualization and analysis tools in the theoretical study of complex, time-varying dynamical systems as well as in various applications in biology, neuroscience, kinesiology, psychology, physiology, engineering, physics, geosciences, linguistics, finance, economics, and other disciplines. This multi-authored book intends to comprehensively introduce and showcase recent advances as well as established best practices concerning both theoretical and practical aspects of recurrence plot based analysis. Edited and authored by leading researcher in the field, the various chapters address an interdisciplinary readership, ranging from theoretical physicists to application-oriented scientists in all data-providing disciplines.

This is the first book that is not exclusively focused on ion channels functioning in sensory mechanisms that are characteristic of animals and humans, but also describes the role of ion channels in signal transduction mechanisms found in microbial cells and plants. It summarizes comprehensively the progress that has been made in studies of ion channels and their role in sensory physiology.

Part I. Micro and Nanoscale Biosensors and Materials: Biosensors and Biochips.- Cantilever Assays: A Universal Platform for Multi-plexed Label-Free Bioassays.- An On-chip Artificial Pore For Molecular Sensing.- Cell Based Chemical Sensing Technologies.- Fabrication issues of Biomedical Micro Devices.- Intelligent Polymeric Networks in Biomolecular Sensing.- Part II Processing and Integrated Systems: A Multi-Functional Micro Total Analysis System ( TAS) Platform for Transport and Sensing of Biological Fluids using Microchannel Parallel Electrodes.- Dielectrophoretic Traps for Cell Manipulation.- BioMEMS for Cellular Manipulation and Analysis.- Implantable Wireless Microsystems.- Microfluidic Tectonics: An integrated organic autonomous platform.- AC Electrokinetic Stirring and Focusing of Nanoparticles.- Part III. Micro-fluidics and Characterization: Particle Dynamics in a Dielectrophoretic Microdevice.- Microfluidics Simulations I.- Modeling Electroosmotic Flow in Nanochannels.- Nano-Particle Image Velocimetry: A Near-Wall Velocimetry Technique with Submicron Spatial Resolution.- Optical MEMS-Based Sensor Development with Applications to Microfluidics.- Vascular Cell Responses to Fluid Shear Stress.

Janne Marie Soetbeer determines the optimal dynamical decoupling (DD) scheme for efficient reduction of electron spin coherence loss in model systems for spin labelled biomolecules depending on their particular relaxation behavior. Extending the nth order DD scheme to double electron-electron resonance (DEER) experiments require the addition of multiple pump pulses for 1. Incomplete excitation of pump spin packets introduce signal artefacts which are minimized by pump pulse optimization including linear-chirp and asymmetric hyperbolic secant pulses. Prolonging the dipolar evolution time with decreased signal artefact allows to extent the measurable interspin distances in biomolecules which were otherwise not accessible due to spin echo relaxation.

This brief is the result of the research the author has performed in recent years covering electrical fluctuations in numerous systems, including molecular electrical fluctuations, ionic fluctuations, ionic dielectric relaxation, spherical and cylindrical polyelectrolytes, ionic polarizability in polyelectrolytes, pH fluctuation in vesicles and electrical fluctuations in proteins. The importance of estimating electrical fluctuations resides in its richness of information and omnipresence in biological systems. In order to understand how these systems work it is vital to know the magnitude of their electrical fluctuations. Electromagnetic fluctuations are the origin of London (Van der Waals) forces between molecules, and Lifshitz forces between macro objects. Protonic fluctuations are the origin of Kirkwood and Shumaker forces between molecules and pH fluctuations. Furthermore, protonic fluctuations could be the cause of the dielectric increment of proteins in solution. Local electrical fluctuations can influence chemical reactions and so on. This book addresses the interplay of these pervasive phenomena. .

This book summarizes several years of research carried out by a collaboration of many groups on ultrafast photochemical reactions. It emphasizes the analysis and characterization of the nuclear dynamics within molecular systems in various environments induced by optical excitations and the study of the resulting molecular dynamics by further interaction with an optical field.

Matthias Wurl presents two essential steps to implement offline PET monitoring of proton dose delivery at a clinical facility, namely the setting up of an accurate Monte Carlo model of the clinical beamline and the experimental validation of positron emitter production cross-sections. In the first part, the field size dependence of the dose output is described for scanned proton beams. Both the Monte Carlo and an analytical computational beam model were able to accurately predict target dose, while the latter tends to overestimate dose in normal tissue. In the second part, the author presents PET measurements of different phantom materials, which were activated by the proton beam. The results indicate that for an irradiation with a high number of protons for the sake of good statistics, dead time losses of the PET scanner may become important and lead to an underestimation of positron-emitter production yields.

Annette Barchanski deals with the question how to design nanoparticles for biomedical research. She considers properties such as size, charge, biocompatibility, and functionalization of nanoparticles from a biologist's point of view in order to achieve specific cellular responses. The author discusses the structure-function relationship of nanoparticle conjugates derived from a laser-based fabrication method. Both the limits and perspectives of tunable conjugate functions are presented, providing a general outline for researchers to configure functionalized nanoparticles with a specifically optimized design for biomedical requests, e.g. in biomedical engineering regenerative science and reproductive biology.

This book offers a succinct but comprehensive description of the mechanics of muscle contraction and legged terrestrial locomotion. It describes on the one hand how the fundamental properties of muscle tissue affect the mechanics of locomotion, and on the other, how the mechanics of locomotion modify the mechanism of muscle operation under different conditions. Further, the book reports on the design and results of experiments conducted with two goals. The first was to describe the physiological function of muscle tissue (which may be considered as the "motor") contracting at a constant length, during shortening, during lengthening, and under a condition that occurs most frequently in the back-and-forth movement of the limbs during locomotion, namely the stretch-shortening cycle of the active muscle. The second objective was to analyze the interaction between the motor and the "machine" (the skeletal lever system) during walking and running in different scenarios with respect to speed, step frequency, body mass, gravity, age, and pathological gait. The book will be of considerable interest to physiology, biology and physics students, and provides researchers with stimuli for further experimental and analytical work.

This thesis describes lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs) with exotic elastic and viscous properties. The first part of the thesis presents a thorough analysis of the elastic and viscous properties of LCLCs as functions of concentration, temperature and ionic contents, while the second part explores an active nematic system: living liquid crystals, which represent a combination of LCLC and living bacteria. LCLCs are an emerging class of liquid crystals that have shown profound connections to biological systems in two aspects. First, the assembly process of the chromonic aggregates is essentially the same as DNA oligomers and other super-molecular assemblies of biological origin. LCLCs thus provide an excellent model system for studying physical properties such as the elasticity and viscosity of these supramolecular assemblies. Second, LCLCs are biocompatible, thus serving as a unique anisotropic matrix to interface with living systems such as bacteria. This thesis deepens our understanding of both aspects. The noncovalent nature of chromonic aggregation produces the unique viscoelasticity to be found in LCLCs, which differs dramatically from that of traditional LCs. Anisotropic interactions between LCLCs and bacteria lead to fascinating phenomena such as the deformation of LCLCs with a characteristic wavelength determined by the elasticity of the LCLCs and the activity of the bacteria, orientationally controlled trajectories of bacteria and visualization of 24 nm flagella motion.