Visualization of Au Nanoparticles Buried in a Polymer Matrix by Scanning Thermal Noise Microscopy

We demonstrated visualization of Au nanoparticles buried 300 nm into a polymer matrix by measurement of the thermal noise spectrum of a microcantilever with a tip in contact to the polymer surface. The subsurface Au nanoparticles were detected as the variation in the contact stiffness and damping reflecting the viscoelastic properties of the polymer surface. The variation in the contact stiffness well agreed with the effective stiffness of a simple one-dimensional model, which is consistent with the fact that the maximum depth range of the technique is far beyond the extent of the contact stress field.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures in main text; 7 pages, 5 figures in supplementary informatio

High-Frequency Heating Extraction Method for Sensitive Drug Analysis in Human Nails

ArticleMolecules. 23(12): 3231(2018)journal articl

Information Processing and Integration with Intracellular Dynamics Near Critical Point

Recent experimental observations suggest that cells can show relatively precise and reliable responses to external signals even though substantial noise is inevitably involved in the signals. An intriguing question is the way how cells can manage to do it. One possible way to realize such response for a cell is to evolutionary develop and optimize its intracellular signaling pathways so as to extract relevant information from the noisy signal. We recently demonstrated that certain intracellular signaling reactions could actually conduct statistically optimal information processing. In this paper, we clarify that such optimal reaction operates near bifurcation point. This result suggests that critical-like phenomena in the single-cell level may be linked to efficient information processing inside a cell. In addition, improving the performance of response in the single-cell level is not the only way for cells to realize reliable response. Another possible strategy is to integrate information of individual cells by cell-to-cell interaction such as quorum sensing. Since cell-to-cell interaction is a common phenomenon, it is equally important to investigate how cells can integrate their information by cell-to-cell interaction to realize efficient information processing in the population level. In this paper, we consider roles and benefits of cell-to-cell interaction by considering integrations of obtained information of individuals with the other cells from the viewpoint of information processing. We also demonstrate that, by introducing cell movement, spatial organizations can spontaneously emerge as a result of efficient responses of the population to external signals