Narrow Results

Cell membrane’s fatty acids (FAs) have been carefully investigated in neurons and platelets in order to study a possible connection to psychopathologies. An important link between the FA distribution and membrane dynamics appears to emerge with the cytoskeleton dynamics. Microtubules (MTs) in particular have been implicated in some recent quantum consciousness models and analyses. The recently proposed quantum model of Craddock et al. (2014) states that MTs possess structural and functional characteristics that are consistent with collective quantum coherent excitations in the aromatic groups of their tryptophan residues. These excitations are consistent with a clocking mechanism on a sub-nanosecond scale. This mechanism and analogous phenomena in light-harvesting complexes in plants and bacteria, are induced by photons and have been touted as evidence of quantum processes in biology. A possible source of intra-cellular photons could be membrane lipid peroxidation processes, so the FA profile could then be linked to the bio-photon emission. The model presented here suggests new ways to understand the role serotonin plays in relation to FAs. In plants, tryptophan conversion of light to exciton energy can participate in the directional orientation of leaves toward sunlight. Since serotonin is structurally similar to tryptophan, in the human brain, neurons could use tryptophan to capture photons and also use serotonin to initiate movement toward the source of light. Hence, we postulate two possible new roles for serotonin: (1) as an antioxidant, in order to counter-balance the oxidative effect of FAs, and (2) to participate in quantum interactions with MTs, in the same way as anesthetics and psychoactive compounds have been recently shown to act. In this latter case, the FA profile could provide an indirect measure of serotonin levels.

Numerical modeling of whole blood still faces great challenges although significant progress has been achieved in recent decades, because of the large differences of physical and geometric properties among blood components, including red blood cells (RBCs), platelets (PLTs) and white blood cells (WBCs). In this work, we develop a three-dimensional (3D) smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model to study the whole blood in shear flow. The immersed boundary method (IBM) is used to deal with the interaction between the fluid and cells, which provides a possibility to model the RBCs, PLTs and WBCs simultaneously. The deformation of a small capsule, comparable to a PLT in size, is first examined to show the feasibility of SPH model for the PLTs’ behaviors. The motion of a single RBC in shear flow is then studied, and three typical modes, tank-treading, swinging and tumbling motions, are reproduced, which further confirm the reliability of the SPH model. After that, a simulation of the whole blood in shear flow is carried out, in which the margination trend is observed for both PLTs and WBC. This shows the capability of SPH model with IBM for the simulation of whole blood.

A novel platelet boron nitride (BN) nanowire was synthesized through a floating catalyst enhanced thermal reaction method by using nickelocene as a catalyst precursor. The nanowires are composed of series-wound cup-like single crystalline hexagonal-BN sections with (0002) planes perpendicular to the nanowire axis direction. A low turn-on electric field of 4.85 V/μm and sound field emission stability were achieved for the BN nanowires. The excellent field emission performance can be attributed to the unique structural characteristics of the platelet BN nanowires.