Thermogravimetric analysis for rapid assessment of moisture diffusivity in polydisperse powder and thin film matrices

Accurate description of moisture diffusivity is key to precisely understand and predict moisture transfer behaviour in a matrix. Unfortunately, measuring moisture diffusivity is not trivial, especially at low moisture values and/or elevated temperatures. This paper presents a novel experimental procedure to accurately measure moisture diffusivity based on thermogravimetric approach. The procedure is capable to measure diffusivity even at elevated temperatures (>70°C) and low moisture values (>1%). Diffusivity was extracted from experimental data based on "regular regime approach". The approach was tailored to determine diffusivity from thin film and from poly-dispersed powdered samples. Subsequently, measured diffusivity was validated by comparing to available literature data, showing good agreement. Ability of this approach to accurately measure diffusivity at a wider range of temperatures provides better insight on temperature dependency of diffusivity. Thus, this approach can be crucial to ensure good accuracy of moisture transfer description/prediction especially when involving elevated temperatures.

The physics of tissue formation with mesenchymal stem cells

Cells react to various forms of physical phenomena that promote and maintain the formation of tissues. The best example of this are cells of musculoskeletal origin, such as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which consistently proliferate or differentiate under cues from hydrostatic pressure, diffusive mass transport, shear stress, surface chemistry, mechanotransduction, and molecular kinetics. To date, no other cell type shows greater receptiveness to macroscopic and microscopic cues, highlighting the acute sensitivity of MSCs and the importance of physical principles in tissue homeostasis. In this review, we describe the literature that has shown how physical phenomena govern MSCs biology and provide insight into the mechanisms and strategies that can spur new biotechnological applications with tissue biology.