We report the capacitance of entangled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) synthesized on flexible carbon fabric via water-assisted chemical vapor deposition. The CNTs were grown at atmospheric pressure with iron (Fe) as the catalyst, ethylene (C2H4) and 5%/95% H2/Ar as precursor gasses, and aluminum oxide as a buffer/barrier layer. The effect of the catalyst thickness (5 and 10 nm) on the specific capacitance was studied. The capacitance behavior of CNTs was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry measurements via a three-electrode system. The highest specific capacitance, approximately 56 F/g, was obtained for electrodes with 5nm Fe thickness. A nearly rectangular shaped cyclic voltammogram was exhibited for the CNTs grown on the carbon fabric. A specific power density of 0.012 KW/Kg and specific energy density 0.15 Wh/Kg were calculated from the galvanic charge/discharge (CD) curves. In addition, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) revealed a characteristic supercapacitive behavior with a low equivalent series resistance of 7 Ωcm2.

Background: Recognition of bioterrorism-related infections by hospital and emergency department clinicians may be the first line of defense in a bioterrorist attack.

Methods: We identified unexplained infectious deaths consistent with the clinical presentation of anthrax, tularemia, smallpox, and botulism using Connecticut death certificates and hospital chart information. Minimum work-up criteria were established to assess the completeness of diagnostic testing.

Results: Of 4558 unexplained infectious deaths, 133 were consistent with anthrax (2.9%) and 6 (0.13%) with tularemia. None were consistent with smallpox or botulism. No deaths had anthrax or tularemia listed in the differential diagnosis or had disease-specific serology performed. Minimum work-up criteria were met for only 53% of cases.

Conclusions: Except for anthrax, few unexplained deaths in Connecticut could possibly be the result of the bioterrorism agents studied. In 47% of deaths from illnesses that could be anthrax, the diagnosis would likely have been missed. As of 2004, Connecticut physicians were not well prepared to intentionally or incidentally diagnose initial cases of anthrax or tularemia. More effective clinician education and surveillance strategies are needed to minimize the potential to miss initial cases in a bioterrorism attack. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2008;2:87–94)

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) can be easily and inexpensively integrated into modern light microscopes. There are numerous advantages of LEDs as illumination sources; most notably, they provide brightness and spectral control. We demonstrate that for transmitted light imaging, an LED can replace the traditional tungsten filament bulb while offering longer life; no color temperature change with intensity change; reduced emission in the infrared region, which is important for live cell imaging; and reduced cost of ownership. We show a direct substitution of the typical tungsten bulb with a commercially available LED and demonstrated the color stability by imaging a histology section over a wide range of light intensities. For fluorescent imaging, where the typical illumination sources are mercury or xenon lamps, we demonstrate that LEDs offer advantages of providing a longer lifespan, having a more constant intensity output over time, more homogeneous illumination, and significantly lower photon dose. Our LED equipped system was used to image and deconvolve dual fluorescently labeled cells, as well as image cells undergoing mitosis expressing green fluorescent protein–histone 2B complex. The timing of the stages of mitosis is well established as an indicator of cell viability.

There are many techniques for 3D imaging of biological specimens such as confocal, two-photon and, wide-field fluorescence microscopy, CAT scan, MRI, and optical coherence tomography. There are also many derivatives of these techniques, each having its strengths and weaknesses. Due to the differences in resolution, depth-of-field, and field-of-view, it is often difficult to compare images from the relatively high-resolution microscopy methods to the latter lower-resolution high-volume imaging methods. Effectively making this comparison could be very powerful in relating organ or organism level information to cellular level processes.

Automated three-dimensional (3-D) image analysis methods are presented for tracing of dye-injected neurons imaged by fluorescence confocal microscopy and HRP-stained neurons imaged by transmitted-light brightfield microscopy. An improved algorithm for adaptive 3-D skeletonization of noisy images enables the tracing. This algorithm operates by performing connectivity testing over large N × N × N voxel neighborhoods exploiting the sparseness of the structures of interest, robust surface detection that improves upon classical vacant neighbor schemes, improved handling of process ends or tips based on shape collapse prevention, and thickness-adaptive thinning. The confocal image stacks were skeletonized directly. The brightfield stacks required 3-D deconvolution. The results of skeletonization were analyzed to extract a graph representation. Topological and metric analyses can be carried out using this representation. A semiautomatic method was developed for reconnection of dendritic fragments that are disconnected due to insufficient dye penetration, an imaging deficiency, or skeletonization errors.

Advances in biotechnology in the past decade have raised the possibility of fabricating biocompatible, porous membranes for molecular sieving and dialysis separations of particles sized 20–50 nm or less. As a prerequisite for such applications, we demonstrate that thin films (∼ 400 nm) of monomeric bovine dermal collagen spin-deposited on a silicon substrate are patternable using standard semiconductor microlithographic processing techniques. Patterning via liftoff has reliably produced square features as small as 10–25 μm laterally, and 50 nm thick, in initial experiments.

HVEM (high vacuum electron microscope) images of these collagen membranes have revealed typical pore sizes ranging from 1–100 nm. Through-membrane diffusion of chromophores spanning this size range was quantified via UV/vis spectrometry. These studies revealed that a 400 nm thick collagen membrane crosslinked with 0.02% glutaraldehyde rejected detectable quantities of methyl orange dye (MW 327) for at least 48 hours, while a 100 nm thick layer admitted methyl orange in under 30 minutes. DNA has been demonstrated to pass through a 100 nm thick collagen layer more slowly than through a bare through-etched control wafer.

Proteins often deform, dehydrate or otherwise denature when adsorbed or patterned directly onto an inorganic substrate, thus losing specificity and biofunctionality. One method used to maintain function is to pattern the protein of interest directly onto another underlying protein or polypeptide that acts as a buffer layer between the substrate and the desired protein. We have used microcontact printing (μcp) to cross-stamp orthogonal linear arrays of two different proteins (e.g., IgG, poly-lysine, protein A) onto glass substrates. This created three separate types of protein-substrate microenvironments, including crossover structures of protein one on protein two. We report preliminary fluorescent microscopy and scanning force microscopy characterization of these structures, including commonly encountered structural defects.

Confocal Microscopy is now an essential, and widely used tool for biological research. Particularly valuable is its ability to image thick sections of intact tissue. A compelling need in this field is to improve the imaging depth, as well as quantitative accuracy, and minimize the possibility of missing important structures/phenomena due to attenuation of the imaging signal. Previous methods work by amplifying the signal from deeper parts of the specimen. In these methods, amplification of noise is an unavoidable artifact. We describe a novel method that not only corrects confocal stacks for attenuation without noise amplification, but also enhances the achievable imaging depth. Interestingly, it does not require explicit estimation of the extinction factor, It relies on a synergistic combination of specimen preparation and image reconstruction algorithms.

The key idea is to image the specimen from two angles (Fig. 1), separated by 180° and then to reconstruct the complete thick image using computational methods.

Automated, large-scale quantitative morphologic analysis of extended three-dimensional (3-D) branched structures such as neurons and vasculature is of broad interest to biomedicine, especially efforts such as the Human Brain Project, and angiogenesis. The present work has resulted in a key enabling technology for such studies - rapid, accurate fully-automatic 3-D tracing of such structures from confocal image stacks. The robustness and efficiency of the proposed method makes it attractive for large-scale applications such as high-throughput assays in the pharmaceutical industry, and initiatives such as the Human Brain Project. Also of interest are attempts to simulate computationally the electrochemical behavior of large collections of neurons for which actual, rather than simulated, neuro-anatomical data, would be valuable. Finally, of long-term interest are emerging studies of the development and growth of live neurons observed over time, for which the present method can provide a powerful morphometric tool.