1,938 research outputs found
Microfluidically fabricated pH-responsive anionic amphiphilic microgels for drug release
© 2016 The Royal Society of Chemistry. Amphiphilic microgels of different composition based on the hydrophilic, pH-responsive acrylic acid (AA) and the hydrophobic, non-ionic n-butyl acrylate (BuA) were synthesised using a lab-on-a-chip device. Hydrophobic droplets were generated via a microfluidic platform that contained a protected form of AA, BuA, the hydrophobic crosslinker, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA), and a free radical initiator in an organic solvent. These hydrophobic droplets were photopolymerised within the microfluidic channels and subsequently hydrolysed, enabling an integrated platform for the rapid, automated, and in situ production of anionic amphiphilic microgels. The amphiphilic microgels did not feature the conventional core-shell structure but were instead based on random amphiphilic copolymers of AA and BuA and hydrophobic crosslinks. Due to their amphiphilic nature they were able to encapsulate and deliver both hydrophobic and hydrophilic moieties. The model drug delivery and the swelling ability of the microgels were influenced by the pH of the surrounding aqueous solution and the hydrophobic content of the microgels
Tailoring pH-responsive acrylic acid microgels with hydrophobic crosslinks for drug release
Amphiphilic microgels based on the hydrophilic acrylic acid (AA) and hydrophobic crosslinks of different compositions were synthesised using a lab-on-a-chip device. The microgels were formed by polymerising hydrophobic droplets. The droplets were generated via a microfluidic platform and contained a protected form of AA, a hydrophobic crosslinker (ethylene glycol dimethacrylate, EGDMA) and a free radical initiator in an organic solvent. Following photopolymerisation and subsequent hydrolysis, AA based microgels of amphiphilic nature were produced and it was demonstrated that they can successfully deliver both hydrophilic as well as hydrophobic moieties. The model drug delivery and the swelling ability of the microgels were influenced by the pH of the aqueous solution as well as the crosslinking density and hydrophobic content of the microgels
Games on classes of spaces
Using the construction of Containing Spaces given in [1] we define some kind of games considered on topological classes of spaces
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A smartphone-based Teleradiology system
The development of a teleradiology application for remote monitoring and processing of patient image data using 2nd generation mobile devices with enhanced network services, is of extreme interest, especially when the final means of display is a smartphone, a very light and compact handheld device. In the following paper the development of applications, that are responsible for remote monitoring and processing of medical images, is investigated
Scalable syntheses of well-defined pentadecablock bipolymer and quintopolymer
The one-pot syntheses of two pentadeca-(15)-block methacrylate-based amphiphilic copolymers, specifically a bipolymer (AB)7A and a quintopolymer (ABCDE)3, are being reported using a fast and easy to scale up procedure that does not require any intermediate purification steps. Both syntheses were carried out using sequential group transfer polymerisation (GTP) and took under 3.5 h. Amino-containing (DMAEMA, DEAEMA), ether (THFMA, MEGMA) and alkyl (EtMA) methacrylates were used to produce the multiblock copolymers with a final Ä < 1.3
Six-Quark Amplitudes from Fermionic MHV Vertices
The fermionic extension of the CSW approach to perturbative gauge theory
coupled with fermions is used to compute the six-quark QCD amplitudes. We find
complete agreement with the results obtained by using the usual Feynman rules.Comment: Latex file, 16 pages, 4 figure
Midwivesâ emotion and body work in two hospital settings : personal strategies and professional projects
Much has been written in recent years of a âcrisisâ in the recruitment and retention of midwives in the NHS. The crisis has been attributed variously to burnout, a lack of professional autonomy, a bullying culture, and an ideological conflict between the way in which midwives wish to practise and the way they are required to practise within large bureaucratic institutions, such as NHS Trusts. Negotiating these experiences requires a significant amount of emotional labour by midwives, which they may find intolerable. This thesis explores the strategies NHS midwives deploy in order to continue working in NHS maternity services when many of their colleagues are leaving. It examines the extent to which working in a midwife-led service rather than a consultant-led service helps or hinders midwivesâ capacity to manage the emotional and ideological demands of their practice. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in a consultant unit and an Alongside Midwife-led Unit (AMU) in two NHS Trusts in England. The findings from negotiated interactive observation and in-depth unstructured interviews with eighteen midwives were analysed using inductive ethnographic principles. In order to ameliorate the emotional distress they experienced, the midwives used coping strategies to organise the people and spaces around them. These strategies of organisation and control were part of a personal and professional project which they found almost impossible to articulate because it ran contrary to the ideals of the midwifery discourse. Midwives explained these coping strategies as firstly, necessary in order to deal with institutional constraints and regulations; secondly, out of their control and thirdly, destructive and bad for midwifery. In practice it appeared that the midwives played a role in sustaining these strategies because they formed part of a wider professional project to promote their personal and professional autonomy. These coping strategies were very similar in the Consultant Unit and the Midwifery Unit. A midwife-led service provided the midwives with a space within which to nurture their philosophy of practice. This provided some significant benefits for their emotional wellbeing, but it also polarised them against the neighbouring Delivery Suite. The resulting poor relationships profoundly affected their capacity to provide a service congruent with their professional ideals. This suggests that whilst Alongside Midwife-led Units may attempt to promote a midwifery model of care and a good working environment for midwives, their proximity to consultant-led services compounds the ideological conflict the midwives experience. The strength of their philosophy may have the unintended consequence of silencing open discussion about the negative influence on women of the strategies the midwives use to compensate for ideological conflict and a lack of institutional and professional support.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEconomic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC) (PTAâ031â2006â00332)GBUnited Kingdo
Instanton test of non-supersymmetric deformations of the AdS_5 x S^5
We consider instanton effects in a non-supersymmetric gauge theory obtained
by marginal deformations of the N=4 SYM. This gauge theory is expected to be
dual to type IIB string theory on the AdS_5 times deformed-S^5 background. From
an instanton calculation in the deformed gauge theory we extract the prediction
for the dilaton-axion field \tau in dual string theory. In the limit of small
deformations where the supergravity regime is valid, our instanton result
reproduces the expression for \tau of the supergravity solution found by
Frolov.Comment: 15 page
Self-Organization in Multimode Microwave Phonon Laser (Phaser): Experimental Observation of Spin-Phonon Cooperative Motions
An unusual nonlinear resonance was experimentally observed in a ruby phonon
laser (phaser) operating at 9 GHz with an electromagnetic pumping at 23 GHz.
The resonance is manifested by very slow cooperative self-detunings in the
microwave spectra of stimulated phonon emission when pumping is modulated at a
superlow frequency (less than 10 Hz). During the self-detuning cycle new and
new narrow phonon modes are sequentially ``fired'' on one side of the spectrum
and approximately the same number of modes are ``extinguished'' on the other
side, up to a complete generation breakdown in a certain final portion of the
frequency axis. This is usually followed by a short-time refractority, after
which the generation is fired again in the opposite (starting) portion of the
frequency axis. The entire process of such cooperative spectral motions is
repeated with high degree of regularity. The self-detuning period strongly
depends on difference between the modulation frequency and the resonance
frequency. This period is incommensurable with period of modulation. It
increases to very large values (more than 100 s) when pointed difference is
less than 0.05 Hz. The revealed phenomenon is a kind of global spin-phonon
self- organization. All microwave modes of phonon laser oscillate with the same
period, but with different, strongly determined phase shifts - as in optical
lasers with antiphase motions.Comment: LaTeX2e file (REVTeX4), 5 pages, 5 Postscript figures. Extended and
revised version of journal publication. More convenient terminology is used.
Many new bibliographic references are added, including main early theoretical
and experimental papers on microwave phonon lasers (in English and in
Russian
Holographic three-point functions for short operators
We consider holographic three-point functions for operators dual to short
string states at strong coupling in N=4 super Yang-Mills. We treat the states
as point-like as they come in from the boundary but as strings in the
interaction region in the bulk. The interaction position is determined by
saddle point, which is equivalent to conservation of the canonical momentum for
the interacting particles, and leads to conservation of their conformal
charges. We further show that for large dimensions the rms size of the
interaction region is small compared to the radius of curvature of the AdS
space, but still large compared to the string Compton wave-length. Hence, one
can approximate the string vertex operators as flat-space vertex operators with
a definite momentum, which depends on the conformal and R-charges of the
operator. We then argue that the string vertex operator dual to a primary
operator is chosen by satisfying a twisted version of Q^L=Q^R, up to spurious
terms. This leads to a unique choice for a scalar vertex operator with the
appropriate charges at the first massive level. We then comment on some
features of the corresponding three-point functions, including the application
of these results to Konishi operators.Comment: 24 pages; v2: References added, typos fixed, minor change
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