SUMMARY. The high variation often observed in the ex vivo fibroblastic-colony forming unit (CFU-f) assay is likely to be due to both biological and experimental variation. To determine whether we could improve experimental methods we developed an alternative method of bone marrow cell (BMC) isolation employing a centrifugation step. The osteogenic capacity of centrifugally isolated BMC was compared to that of BMC that were isolated using the standard "flushing" technique using the CFU-f assay. The centrifugation method was found to be both quick and simple to perform and allowed simultaneous preparation of all samples. Centrifugally isolated BMC gave rise to approximately 100% more cfu-ap and cfu-f in cultures from both tibiae and femurae. The proportion of alkaline phosphatase positive colonies remained the same and colony morphologies were similar for both isolation methods. Histological comparison of the flushed and spun bones showed that after the flushing procedure many cells remained in the marrow cavity especially in the trabecular area. In contrast, centrifugation completely emptied the marrow space of all cells except bone lining cells and osteoblasts. Thus the osteogenic capacity of the bone marrow can be expressed as the number of CFU-f per bone instead of the frequency as is the norm. Using these methods to isolate BMC for ex vivo investigations should lead to a reduction in CFU-f number variation due to the isolation method. http://link.springer-ny. com/link/service/journals/00223/bibs/65n5p411.html

Widespread use of affective sensing in healthcare applications has been limited due to several practical factors, such as lack of comfortable wearable sensors, lack of wireless standards, and lack of low-power affordable hardware. In this paper, we present a new low-cost, low-power wireless sensor platform implemented using the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standard, and describe the design of compact wearable sensors for long-term measurement of electrodermal activity, temperature, motor activity, and photoplethysmography. We also illustrate the use of this new technology for continuous long-term monitoring of autonomic nervous system and motion data from active infants, children, and adults. We describe several new applications enabled by this system, discuss two specific wearable designs for the wrist and foot, and present sample data.

A great deal of the work characterizing stromal cell precursors in the bone marrow has been performed using the fibroblastic colony-forming unit (CFU-f) assay. However, the assay is limited in its usefulness by the necessity for manual colony counting which means that assay quantitation is highly subjective, time consuming, and much information regarding the colony size is lost. To rectify this, we have developed a computer-automated method for the analysis of CFU-f. Bone marrow cells were cultured at low density and treated with either prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), or dexamethasone, and colony formation was assessed by staining with methylene blue. After staining, the dishes were photographed over a light box using a digital camera and the image was then analyzed using Bioimage "Intelligent Quantifier" image analysis software which automatically locates and quantifies each individual colony. The data can then be imported to a spreadsheet program and processed. We have shown that this system can accurately identify, assign coordinates, and quantitate each individual colony. Colony numbers obtained with this method and manually counting showed a linear relationship with a correlation coefficient of 0.99. In addition, using the colony intensity and surface area data, the colony size can be calculated. With this methodology, we have shown that dexamethasone, PGE(2), and bFGF can all modulate total cell numbers in bone marrow stromal cells (BMSC) cultures but modulating both colony number and colony size.

We introduce vibration and temperature as visceral modes to aid intuitive social perception in networked interaction. We describe two implementations of these ideas for mediated systems -VibroBod for interpersonal communication and What's Shaking for newsgroup navigation.