New insights into acquired temozolomide resistance in glioblastoma?

This scientific commentary refers to ‘c-Myc-miR-29c-REV3L signalling pathway drives the acquisition of temozolomide resistance in glioblastoma' by Luo et al. (doi:10.1093/brain/awv287

The dynamics of bistable liquid crystal wells

A planar bistable liquid crystal device, reported in Tsakonas et al. [27], is modelled within the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals. This planar device consists of an array of square micron-sized wells. We obtain six different classes of equilibrium profiles and these profiles are classified as diagonal or rotated solutions. In the strong anchoring case, we propose a Dirichlet boundary condition that mimics the experimentally imposed tangent boundary conditions. In the weak anchoring case, we present a suitable surface energy and study the multiplicity of solutions as a function of the anchoring strength. We find that diagonal solutions exist for all values of the anchoring strength W ≥ 0 while rotated solutions only exist for W ≥ Wc > 0, where Wc is a critical anchoring strength that has been computed numerically. We propose a dynamic model for the switching mechanisms based on only dielectric effects. For sufficiently strong external electric fields, we numerically demonstrate diagonal to rotated and rotated to diagonal switching by allowing for variable anchoring strength across the domain boundary

The millimeter-wave properties of superconducting microstrip lines

We have developed a novel technique for making high quality measurements of the millimeter-wave properties of superconducting thin-film microstrip transmission lines. Our experimental technique currently covers the 75-100 GHz band. The method is based on standing wave resonances in an open ended transmission line. We obtain information on the phase velocity and loss of the microstrip. Our data for Nb/SiO/Nb lines, taken at 4.2 K and 1.6 K, can be explained by a single set of physical parameters. Our preliminary conclusion is that the loss is dominated by the SiO dielectric, with a temperature-independent loss tangent of 5.3 ± 0.5 x 10^(-3) for our samples