Evaluation of liver fibrosis using Raman spectroscopy and infrared thermography: A pilot study.

Liver fibrosis is a pathological process that can escalate to cirrhosis and then liver failure, a major public health concern that affect hundreds of millions of people in both developed and developing countries. Detection of liver fibrosis during its earlier stages is a matter of great importance which may allow prevention of development of cirrhosis in patients with chronic liver disease. In this work, Raman spectroscopy and thermography were evaluated to detect early pathological signs of liver fibrosis in rats in which liver fibrosis was induced using carbon tetrachloride. Results show that Raman spectra of healthy and fibrotic livers significantly differ among each other and can be classified by principal component analysis and discriminant analysis. The PCA-LDA method has a sensitivity of 100%, specificity 85% and diagnostic accuracy of 93.5%. Thermography also revealed characteristic temperature patterns for fibrotic livers compared to healthy livers. Current data suggest that Raman spectroscopy and thermography could be used to detect fibrosis in ex vivo liver samples.

Influence of Background Noise Produced in University Facilities on the Brain Waves Associated With Attention of Students and Employees.

As a consequence of noise exposure, lack of attention badly affects directly the academic and work performance. The study of the brain and the waves that it produces is the most objective way to evaluate this process. Attentional improvement is associated with increases of the amplitude in both beta and theta bands. The objective of this work is to study the influence of background noise produced inside university facilities on changes in the cerebral waves related to attention processes (beta 13-30 Hz and theta 4-7 Hz). Volunteers were asked to perform a specific task in which attention was involved. This task was performed in both silent and noisy conditions. To evaluate the cerebral activity of volunteers during the development of the test, measurement of spontaneous activity (electroencephalogram) was developed. The results show significant decreases in both beta and theta frequency bands under background noise exposure. Since attentional improvement is related to an increment on amplitude of both beta and theta bands, it is suggested that decreases on amplitude of these frequency bands could directly be related to a lack of attention caused by the exposure to background noise.

Resistance-based biosensor of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes.

Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWNTs) are a good choice for resistive biosensors due to their great resistance changes when immunoreactions take place, they are also low-cost, more biocompatible than single-walled carbon nanotubes, and resistive measurement equipment is usually not expensive and readily available. In this work a novel resistive biosensor based on the immobilization of an antigen through a silanization process over the surface of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWNTs) is reported. Results show that the biosensor increases its conductivity when adding the antigen and decreases when adding the antibody making them good candidates for disease diagnosis.