We investigated bone regeneration in vitro and in vivo, using porous silicon (pSi) microparticles coupled with nacre proteins. We prepared a composite powder formed by pSi particles loaded with phosphate, and nacre proteins carrying calcium. For in vitro experiments, we used primary culture of human Dental Pulp Stem Cells. Results showed efficiency for both cell adhesion, cell differentiation and CaPO4 formation. But the most interesting results were that this composite was highly efficient to regenerate bone in vivo, even without any additional stem cells grafting.

We are interested in the early stage diagnosis of H2B, a clinically important autoantigen in various severe illnesses (can-cers, systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis). Accordingly, we have developed a porous-silicon (PSi) based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for sensitive detection of H2B antibodies, where H2B antigen were bound to a Si binding 12mer peptide [1] that act as an efficient linker to the surface. The proposed method is a simple, inexpensive sensing meth-od employing a PSi photonic substrate, a material affinity peptide, and a smart phone CCD detector to achieve a 100-fold (~ 10 fg/ml) increase in sensitivity compared to the standard ELISA (0.01 -0.1 ng/ml).

Mineralization of calcium phosphate crystals was examined on porous silicon (PSi) scaffolds with respect to the dependence of crystal formation on the average pore size of PSi. PSi multilayer wafers fabricated by electrochemical etching were moni- tored via their reflectivity spectra over time in a biologically relevant osteogenic solution. The evolution of the mean refractive index of the PSi scaffold is the signature of the in situ crystals nucleation within the pores. Crystals were then characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Raman micro-spectroscopy. The results in- dicate that the average pore size of PSi highly influences nucleation and crystal formation.

In this work, a combination of optical and electrochemical studies are performed in order to elaborate a suitable porous silicon (PSi) substrate for biosensing and biomaterial applications. We report on the electrochemical behavior of PSi multilayer stabilized by thermal oxidation, applying electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry measurements. The strength of the method is evidenced when adsorption of small (12-mer) peptides is monitored. Our aim is to combine the advantages offered by the large sensing area of the PSi multilayers and the high sensitivity of the electrochemical technique for improved biosensing.

Heat and photochemical reactions with human hemoglobin and photosensitizer were monitored by holography interference method in gelatin phantom. The method has successfully facilitated monitoring the reactions as a high- resolution refraction index mapping in real time video regime. Methylene Blue was exploited as a photosensitizer. Keywords: Holographic Interferometry, imaging, photodynamic therapy, photochemical reactions

The polynomial modal method (PMM) is one of the most powerful methods for modeling diffraction from lamellar gratings. In the present work, we show that applying it to the so-called matched coordinates leads to important improvement of convergence for crossed lamellar gratings with patterns that are not parallel to the coordinates’ axes. After giving the new formulation of the PMM under matched coordinates in the general framework of biperiodic structures, we provide numerical examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

We develop a power series method for the nonequilibrium steady state of the inhomogeneous one-dimensional totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) in contact with two particle reservoirs and with site-dependent hopping rates in the bulk. The power series is performed in the entrance or exit rates governing particle exchange with the reservoirs, and the corresponding particle current is computed analytically up to the cubic term in the entry or exit rate, respectively. We also show how to compute higher-order terms using combinatorial objects known as Young tableaux. Our results address the long outstanding problem of finding the exact nonequilibrium steady state of the inhomogeneous TASEP. The findings are particularly relevant to the modelling of mRNA translation in which the rate of translation initiation, corresponding to the entrance rate in the TASEP, is typically small.