Studying Arterial Stiffness Using High-Frequency Ultrasound in Mice with Alzheimer Disease.

Alzheimer disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that causes slow loss of memory and thinking skills, normally leading to death in 3-9 y. The etiology of AD is not fully understood but is widely believed to be induced by the production and deposition of amyloid-ß peptide in the brain. Recently, a correlation was discovered between amyloid-ß deposition and atherosclerosis in the cerebral arteries of postmortem brains, indicating that amyloid-ß promotes atherogenesis and that in turn atherosclerosis promotes brain amyloid-ß accumulation. However, a direct measurement of arterial stiffness for AD is lacking. In the present study, the pulse wave velocity (PWV) of the carotid artery was measured non-invasively in young (3-mo-old) and middle-aged (9-mo-old) wild-type (WT) and modeled AD mice to obtain quantitative data of arterial stiffness by using a 35-MHz high-frequency dual-element transducer. Experimental results show that the PWVs were 1.6 ± 0.5 m/s for young and 2.4 ± 0.4 m/s for middle-aged WT mice and 1.7 ± 0.4 m/s for young and 3.2 ± 0.6 m/s for middle-aged AD mice. Middle-aged groups had higher PWVs (p < 0.0001), which were more pronounced in the AD mice (p < 0.001). The differences in PWVs were not caused by arterial lumen diameter, wall thickness or contents of elastin or collagen. These results imply that AD increases the stiffness of the carotid artery and introduce ultrasound as a potential tool for AD research and diagnosis.

Structure and electrical properties of (111)-oriented Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbZrO3-PbTiO3 thin film for ultra-high-frequency transducer applications.

Ternary lead magnesium niobate-lead zirconate titanate system 0.4Pb(Mg(1/3)Nb(2/3))O(3)-0.25PbZrO(3)-0.35PbTiO(3) (40PMN-25PZ-35PT) thin film with a thickness of 1.5 µm was grown on Pt(111)/Ti/SiO(2)/Si substrate via chemical solution deposition. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy results suggested the film obtained was highly (111)-oriented. The remanent polarization and coercive electric field of the film were found to be 25.5 µC/cm(2) and 51 kV/cm, respectively. In addition, at 1 kHz, the dielectric constant was measured to be 1960 and the dielectric loss 0.036. The film was observed to undergo a diffuse ferroelectric-to-paraelectric phase transition at around 209°C. The leakage current appeared to depend on the voltage polarity. If the Au electrode was biased positively, the leakage current was dominated by the Schottky emission mechanism. When the Pt electrode was biased positively, the conduction current curve showed an ohmic behavior at a low electric field and space-charge-limited current characteristics at a high electric field.