Guest—Host Cross-linked Polyimides for Integrated Optics

We report on the optical and electrical characterization of aromatic, fluorinated, fully imidized, organic soluble, thermally and photochemically, crosslinkable, guest-host polyimides for integrated optics. Refractive indices and optical losses were measured to evaluate the performance of these materials for passive applications. Materials were doped with two high temperature nonlinear optical chromophores, and poled during crosslinking to produce nonlinear optical materials. Measurements of electro-optic coefficient, macroscopic second order susceptibility, and conductivity were performed to assess these materials as potential candidates for active devices

Growth Based Morphogenesis of Vertebrate Limb Bud

Many genes and their regulatory relationships are involved in developmental phenomena. However, by chemical information alone, we cannot fully understand changing organ morphologies through tissue growth because deformation and growth of the organ are essentially mechanical processes. Here, we develop a mathematical model to describe the change of organ morphologies through cell proliferation. Our basic idea is that the proper specification of localized volume source (e.g., cell proliferation) is able to guide organ morphogenesis, and that the specification is given by chemical gradients. We call this idea “growth-based morphogenesis.” We find that this morphogenetic mechanism works if the tissue is elastic for small deformation and plastic for large deformation. To illustrate our concept, we study the development of vertebrate limb buds, in which a limb bud protrudes from a flat lateral plate and extends distally in a self-organized manner. We show how the proportion of limb bud shape depends on different parameters and also show the conditions needed for normal morphogenesis, which can explain abnormal morphology of some mutants. We believe that the ideas shown in the present paper are useful for the morphogenesis of other organs