Tunable Microfluidic Optical Devices with Integrated Microlens Array

The interest in dynamically tuning light has attracted great attention to the fabrication of tunable microlens arrays. Here we discuss the fabrication and characterization of a simple, robust, yet tunable microfluidic optical device with integrated microlens array. The microfuidic device with desired channel structure was micromachined on a polycarbonate plate with a resolution up to 100 µm, followed by thermal bonding two plates above their glass transition temperature. The microlens arrays were replica molded on a glass slide, which was then attached to the polycarbonate plates. By simply actuating the liquids with variable refractive index into the fluidic channel to immerse the lens arrays without moving or deformation of microlenses, a large change of focal length of more than 10 times (ƒ=0.74 to 8.53) was achieved. When a dye-containing liquid was pumped into the microfluidic channel to cover the lenses, the light transmission through the lenses was reduced from about 95% to 55% when the dye concentration was increased to 10 w/v %. The knowledge we gain from these studies will provide important insights to contruct new, adaptive, micro-scale optical devices with multiple functionalities

A novel subnetwork alignment approach predicts new components of the cell cycle regulatory apparatus in Plasmodium falciparum

Background According to the World Health organization, half the world\u27s population is at risk of contracting malaria. They estimated that in 2010 there were 219 million cases of malaria, resulting in 660,000 deaths and an enormous economic burden on the countries where malaria is endemic. The adoption of various high-throughput genomics-based techniques by malaria researchers has meant that new avenues to the study of this disease are being explored and new targets for controlling the disease are being developed. Here, we apply a novel neighborhood subnetwork alignment approach to identify the interacting elements that help regulate the cell cycle of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Results Our novel subnetwork alignment approach was used to compare networks in Escherichia coli and P. falciparum. Some 574 P. falciparum proteins were revealed as functional orthologs of known cell cycle proteins in E. coli. Over one third of these predicted functional orthologs were annotated as conserved Plasmodium proteins or putative uncharacterized proteins of unknown function. The predicted functionalities included cyclins, kinases, surface antigens, transcriptional regulators and various functions related to DNA replication, repair and cell division. Conclusions The results of our analysis demonstrate the power of our subnetwork alignment approach to assign functionality to previously unannotated proteins. Here, the focus was on proteins involved in cell cycle regulation. These proteins are involved in the control of diverse aspects of the parasite lifecycle and of important aspects of pathogenesis

Self-Actuated, Thermo-Responsive Hydrogel Valves for Lab on a Chip

An easy to fabricate, thermally-actuated, self-regulated hydrogel valve for flow control in pneumatically driven, microfluidic systems is described. This microvalve takes advantage of the properties of the hydrogel, poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), as well as the aqueous fluid itself to realize flow control. The valve was designed for use in a diagnostic system fabricated with polycarbonate and aimed at the detection of pathogens in oral fluids at the location of the sample collection. The paper describes the construction and characterization of the hydrogel valves and their application for flow control, sample and reagent metering, sample distribution into multiple analysis paths, and the sealing of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) reactor to suppress bubble formation. The hydrogel-based flow control is electronically addressable, does not require any moving parts, introduces minimal dead volume, is leakage and contaminant free, and is biocompatible

Pattern-tunable synthetic gauge fields in topological photonic graphene

Abstract We propose a straightforward and effective approach to design, by pattern-tunable strain-engineering, photonic topological insulators supporting high quality factors edge states. Chiral strain-engineering creates opposite synthetic gauge fields in two domains resulting in Landau levels with the same energy spacing but different topological numbers. The boundary of the two topological domains hosts robust time-reversal and spin-momentum-locked edge states, exhibiting high quality factors due to continuous strain modulation. By shaping the synthetic gauge field, we obtain remarkable field confinement and tunability, with the strain strongly affecting the degree of localization of the edge states. Notably, the two-domain design stabilizes the strain-induced topological edge state. The large potential bandwidth of the strain-engineering and the opportunity to induce the mechanical stress at the fabrication stage enables large scalability for many potential applications in photonics, such as tunable microcavities, new lasers, and information processing devices, including the quantum regime

Yukawa Corrections to Top Quark Production at the LHC in Two- Higgs-Doublet Models

The O(alpha m_t^2/m_W^2) corrections to top quark pair production by gluon-gluon fusion at the LHC are calculated in two-Higgs-doublet models. We find that the correction to the cross-section can exceed about -10% for certain parameter values.Comment: 16-page text in LaTex. uuencoded file for Fig.1-6 will be sent separatel

Memory Impairment and Plasma BDNF Correlates of the BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism in Patients With Bipolar II Disorder

Studies suggest that a functional polymorphism of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), polymorphism BDNF Val66Met affects cognitive functions, however, the effect is unclear in bipolar II (BD-II) disorder. We used the Wechsler Memory Scale-third edition (WMS-III), the presence of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism, and plasma concentrations of BDNF to investigate the association between memory impairment and BDNF in BD-II disorder. We assessed the memory functions of 228 BD-II patients and 135 healthy controls (HCs). BD-II patients had significantly lower scores on five of the eight WMS-III subscales. In addition to education, the BDNF polymorphism were associated with the following subscales of WMS-III, auditory delayed memory, auditory delayed recognition memory and general memory scores in BD-II patients, but not in HC. Moreover, BD-II patients with the Val-homozygote scored significantly higher on the visual immediate memory subscale than did those with the Met/Met and Val/Met polymorphisms. The significantly positive effect of the Val-homozygote did not have a significantly positive effect on memory in the HC group, however. We found no significant association between BDNF polymorphisms and plasma concentrations of BDNF. The plasma BDNF was more likely to be associated with clinical characteristics than it was with memory indices in the BD-II group. The impaired memory function in BD-II patients might be dependent upon the association between the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and peripheral BDNF levels

Imatinib and Nilotinib Reverse Multidrug Resistance in Cancer Cells by Inhibiting the Efflux Activity of the MRP7 (ABCC10)

One of the major mechanisms that could produce resistance to antineoplastic drugs in cancer cells is the ATP binding cassette (ABC) transporters. The ABC transporters can significantly decrease the intracellular concentration of antineoplastic drugs by increasing their efflux, thereby lowering the cytotoxic activity of antineoplastic drugs. One of these transporters, the multiple resistant protein 7 (MRP7, ABCC10), has recently been shown to produce resistance to antineoplastic drugs by increasing the efflux of paclitaxel. In this study, we examined the effects of BCR-Abl tyrosine kinase inhibitors imatinib, nilotinib and dasatinib on the activity and expression of MRP7 in HEK293 cells transfected with MRP7, designated HEK-MRP7-2.We report for the first time that imatinib and nilotinib reversed MRP7-mediated multidrug resistance. Our MTT assay results indicated that MRP7 expression in HEK-MRP7-2 cells was not significantly altered by incubation with 5 microM of imatinib or nilotinib for up to 72 hours. In addition, imatinib and nilotinib (1-5 microM) produced a significant concentration-dependent reversal of MRP7-mediated multidrug resistance by enhancing the sensitivity of HEK-MRP7-2 cells to paclitaxel and vincristine. Imatinib and nilotinib, at 5 microM, significantly increased the accumulation of [(3)H]-paclitaxel in HEK-MRP7-2 cells. The incubation of the HEK-MRP7-2 cells with imatinib or nilotinib (5 microM) also significantly inhibited the efflux of paclitaxel.Imatinib and nilotinib reverse MRP7-mediated paclitaxel resistance, most likely due to their inhibition of the efflux of paclitaxel via MRP7. These findings suggest that imatinib or nilotinib, in combination with other antineoplastic drugs, may be useful in the treatment of certain resistant cancers

Diffractive \jpsi production through Color-Octet mechanism at hadron colliders

We propose the color-octet mechanism combined with the two gluon exchange model for the diffractive $J/\psi$ production in hadron collisions. In the leading logarithmic approximation (LLA) in QCD, we find that the diffractive $J/\psi$ production rate is related to the off-diagonal gluon density in the proton and to the nonperturbative color-octet matrix element of $J/\psi$. The rate is found to be very sensitive to the gluon density at very small values of $x$ (down to $x=O(10^{-6})$). As a result, this process may provide a wide window for testing the two-gluon exchange model, and may be particularly useful in studying the small $x$ physics. And it may also be a golden place to test the color-octet mechanism proposed by solving the $\psi'(J/\psi)$ surplus problem at the Tevatron.Comment: 9 pages, 3 Postscript figures, discussions and references added and main results unchange