Comparison between two or more distinct groups, such as healthy vs. disease, is necessary to determine cellular status. Mitochondria are at the nexus of cell heath due to their role in both cell metabolism and energy production as well as control of apoptosis. Therefore, direct evaluation of isolated mitochondria and mitochondrial perturbation offers the ability to determine if organelle-specific (dys)function is occurring. The methods described in this protocol include isolation of intact, functional mitochondria from HEK cultured cells and mouse liver and spinal cord, but can be easily adapted for use with other cultured cells or animal tissues. Mitochondrial function assessed by TMRE and the use of common mitochondrial uncouplers and inhibitors in conjunction with a fluorescent plate reader allow this protocol not only to be versatile and accessible to most research laboratories, but also offers high throughput.

The functional enhancement of Flight Control Systems (FCS) show potential benefits for commercial transport aircraft. Furthermore, the consideration of new technologies and more-electric concepts lead to a significant increase of the design space for FCS architectures. The objective of this contribution is to enable the preliminary design of advanced FCS architectures for a given FCS configuration. Based on a comprehensive literature research, the main subsystems are identified and simplified models of the architecture are developed. Additionally, technological constraints as well as design rules for actuator distribution, and power redundancy are defined. The design rules for advanced FCS architectures are derived from the basic design rules of existing FCS architectures of commercial transport aircraft. Finally, the presented method is implemented into a design tool. The resulting tool enables the preliminary design of multifunctional FCS architectures.

Smoking is a known risk factor for developing various pain-related disorders. However, acute pain often triggers the craving for cigarette consumption, resulting in a positive feedback mechanism. In addition, there is evidence of decreased pain tolerance during the early stages of abstinence. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to investigate whether a period of decreased pain tolerance and increased pain intensity occurs during smoking cessation. A systematic literature search was conducted through PubMed and Web of Science databases for controlled studies investigating the influence of smoking cessation on acute (defined as pain presentation of \ 3 months) and postoperative pain. The outcomes of interest included pain perception threshold, pain tolerance, pain intensity, and postoperative opioid requirements. The search strategy yielded 1478 studies, of which 13 clinical studies met our inclusion criteria. The included studies collectively represented data from 1721 participants from four countries. Of these, 43.3% of the included individuals were females. The mean age of the included subjects was 44.2 ± 8.2 years. The duration of smoking cessation varied considerably. The shortest duration was 2 h; others investigated the effect after more than 1 month of smoking cessation. Smokers had a history of 14.6 ± 9.9 years of nicotine abuse. The mean number of daily smoked cigarettes was 17.5 ± 10.3. Most studies examined in this systematic review show a negative influence of smoking cessation on acute pain. However, the affected pain modalities, the duration of the altered pain perception, and whether male and female smokers are equally affected could not be ascertained due to high heterogeneity and few available studies.

Flight Control Systems (FCS) of today's commercial transport aircraft consist of highly optimized and mainly mono-functional flight control surfaces. The knowledge-based configurations and architectures are often limited to small and local improvements under high effort. Various research studies show the potential of functional enhancement of the FCS to increase the aircraft efficiency or performance. Consequently, the transition from a knowledge-based to a functional-driven design is recommended. The objective of this contribution is to enable an integrated design of advanced FCS with multifunctional flight control devices. This integrated design approach considers new technologies and concepts for innovative and advanced FCS in early aircraft design phases. Finally, a brief case study of a concept aircraft with advanced FCS is conducted and the preliminary results are presented.

No abstract