Microfluidics for Advanced Drug Delivery Systems.

Considerable efforts have been devoted towards developing effective drug delivery methods. Microfluidic systems, with their capability for precise handling and transport of small liquid quantities, have emerged as a promising platform for designing advanced drug delivery systems. Thus, microfluidic systems have been increasingly used for fabrication of drug carriers or direct drug delivery to a targeted tissue. In this review, the recent advances in these areas are critically reviewed and the shortcomings and opportunities are discussed. In addition, we highlight the efforts towards developing smart drug delivery platforms with integrated sensing and drug delivery components

Asymptotics of Transmit Antenna Selection: Impact of Multiple Receive Antennas

Consider a fading Gaussian MIMO channel with $N_\mathrm{t}$ transmit and $N_\mathrm{r}$ receive antennas. The transmitter selects $L_\mathrm{t}$ antennas corresponding to the strongest channels. For this setup, we study the distribution of the input-output mutual information when $N_\mathrm{t}$ grows large. We show that, for any $N_\mathrm{r}$ and $L_\mathrm{t}$, the distribution of the input-output mutual information is accurately approximated by a Gaussian distribution whose mean grows large and whose variance converges to zero. Our analysis depicts that, in the large limit, the gap between the expectation of the mutual information and its corresponding upper bound, derived by applying Jensen's inequality, converges to a constant which only depends on $N_\mathrm{r}$ and $L_\mathrm{t}$. The result extends the scope of channel hardening to the general case of antenna selection with multiple receive and selected transmit antennas. Although the analyses are given for the large-system limit, our numerical investigations indicate the robustness of the approximated distribution even when the number of antennas is not large.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, ICC 201

On Robustness of Massive MIMO Systems Against Passive Eavesdropping under Antenna Selection

In massive MIMO wiretap settings, the base station can significantly suppress eavesdroppers by narrow beamforming toward legitimate terminals. Numerical investigations show that by this approach, secrecy is obtained at no significant cost. We call this property of massive MIMO systems `secrecy for free' and show that it not only holds when all the transmit antennas at the base station are employed, but also when only a single antenna is set active. Using linear precoding, the information leakage to the eavesdroppers can be sufficiently diminished, when the total number of available transmit antennas at the base station grows large, even when only a fixed number of them are selected. This result indicates that passive eavesdropping has no significant impact on massive MIMO systems, regardless of the number of active transmit antennas.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; To be presented in IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom) 2018 in Abu Dhabi, UA

Optimal Number of Transmit Antennas for Secrecy Enhancement in Massive MIMOME Channels

This paper studies the impact of transmit antenna selection on the secrecy performance of massive MIMO wiretap channels. We consider a scenario in which a multi-antenna transmitter selects a subset of transmit antennas with the strongest channel gains. Confidential messages are then transmitted to a multi-antenna legitimate receiver while the channel is being overheard by a multi-antenna eavesdropper. For this setup, we approximate the distribution of the instantaneous secrecy rate in the large-system limit. The approximation enables us to investigate the optimal number of selected antennas which maximizes the asymptotic secrecy throughput of the system. We show that increasing the number of selected antennas enhances the secrecy performance of the system up to some optimal value, and that further growth in the number of selected antennas has a destructive effect. Using the large-system approximation, we obtain the optimal number of selected antennas analytically for various scenarios. Our numerical investigations show an accurate match between simulations and the analytic results even for not so large dimensions.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, IEEE GLOBECOM 201

Preparation and Quality Control of the [153Sm]-Samarium Maltolate Complex as a Lanthanide Mobilization Product in Rats

Development of lanthanide detoxification agents and protocols is of great importance in management of overdoses. Due to safety of maltol as a detoxifying agent in metal overloads, it can be used as a lanthanide detoxifying agent. In order to demonstrate the biodistribution of final complex, [153Sm]-samarium maltolate was prepared using Sm-153 chloride (radiochemical purity >99.9%; ITLC and specific activity). The stability of the labeled compound was determined in the final solution up to 24h as well as the partition coefficient. Biodistribution studies of Sm-153 chloride, [153Sm]-samarium maltolate were carried out in wild-type rats comparing the critical organ uptakes. Comparative study for Sm3+ cation and the labeled compound was conducted up to 48 h, demonstrating a more rapid wash out for the labeled compound. The effective and biological half lives of 2.3 h and 2.46h were calculated for the complex. The data suggest the detoxification property of maltol formulation for lanthanide overdoses

A Complete Characterization of the Gap between Convexity and SOS-Convexity

Our first contribution in this paper is to prove that three natural sum of squares (sos) based sufficient conditions for convexity of polynomials, via the definition of convexity, its first order characterization, and its second order characterization, are equivalent. These three equivalent algebraic conditions, henceforth referred to as sos-convexity, can be checked by semidefinite programming whereas deciding convexity is NP-hard. If we denote the set of convex and sos-convex polynomials in $n$ variables of degree $d$ with $\tilde{C}_{n,d}$ and $\tilde{\Sigma C}_{n,d}$ respectively, then our main contribution is to prove that $\tilde{C}_{n,d}=\tilde{\Sigma C}_{n,d}$ if and only if $n=1$ or $d=2$ or $(n,d)=(2,4)$. We also present a complete characterization for forms (homogeneous polynomials) except for the case $(n,d)=(3,4)$ which is joint work with G. Blekherman and is to be published elsewhere. Our result states that the set $C_{n,d}$ of convex forms in $n$ variables of degree $d$ equals the set $\Sigma C_{n,d}$ of sos-convex forms if and only if $n=2$ or $d=2$ or $(n,d)=(3,4)$. To prove these results, we present in particular explicit examples of polynomials in $\tilde{C}_{2,6}\setminus\tilde{\Sigma C}_{2,6}$ and $\tilde{C}_{3,4}\setminus\tilde{\Sigma C}_{3,4}$ and forms in $C_{3,6}\setminus\Sigma C_{3,6}$ and $C_{4,4}\setminus\Sigma C_{4,4}$, and a general procedure for constructing forms in $C_{n,d+2}\setminus\Sigma C_{n,d+2}$ from nonnegative but not sos forms in $n$ variables and degree $d$. Although for disparate reasons, the remarkable outcome is that convex polynomials (resp. forms) are sos-convex exactly in cases where nonnegative polynomials (resp. forms) are sums of squares, as characterized by Hilbert.Comment: 25 pages; minor editorial revisions made; formal certificates for computer assisted proofs of the paper added to arXi

The structure of gene-gene networks beyond pairwise interactions

Despite its high and direct impact on nearly all biological processes, the underlying structure of gene-gene interaction networks is investigated so far according to pair connections. To address this, we explore the gene interaction networks of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae beyond pairwise interaction using the structural balance theory (SBT). Specifically, we ask whether essential and nonessential gene interaction networks are structurally balanced. We study triadic interactions in the weighted signed undirected gene networks and observe that balanced and unbalanced triads are over and underrepresented in both networks, thus beautifully in line with the strong notion of balance. Moreover, we note that the energy distribution of triads is significantly different in both essential and nonessential networks compared with the shuffled networks. Yet, this difference is greater in the essential network regarding the frequency as well as the energy of triads. Additionally, results demonstrate that triads in the essential gene network are more interconnected through sharing common links, while in the nonessential network they tend to be isolated. Last but not least, we investigate the contribution of all-length signed walks and its impact on the degree of balance. Our findings reveal that interestingly when considering longer cycles the nonessential gene network is more balanced compared to the essential network.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 4 table