Supplemental Material - Effects of Gamification on Motivations of Elementary School Students: An Action Research Field Experiment

Supplemental Material for Effects of Gamification on Motivations of Elementary School Students: An Action Research Field Experiment by Mohammed Mohammed, Amal Fatemah, and Lobna Hassan in Simulation & Gaming</p

Self-Running Liquid Metal Drops that Delaminate Metal Films at Record Velocities

This paper describes a new method to spontaneously accelerate droplets of liquid metal (eutectic gallium indium, EGaIn) to extremely fast velocities through a liquid medium and along predefined metallic paths. The droplet wets a thin metal trace (a film ∼100 nm thick, ∼ 1 mm wide) and generates a force that simultaneously delaminates the trace from the substrate (enhanced by spontaneous electrochemical reactions) while accelerating the droplet along the trace. The formation of a surface oxide on EGaIn prevents it from moving, but the use of an acidic medium or application of a reducing bias to the trace continuously removes the oxide skin to enable motion. The trace ultimately provides a sacrificial pathway for the metal and provides a mm-scale mimic to the templates used to guide molecular motors found in biology (e.g., actin filaments). The liquid metal can accelerate along linear, curved and U-shaped traces as well as uphill on surfaces inclined by 30 degrees. The droplets can accelerate through a viscous medium up to 180 mm/sec which is almost double the highest reported speed for self-running liquid metal droplets. The actuation of microscale objects found in nature (e.g., cells, microorganisms) inspires new mechanisms, such as these, to manipulate small objects. Droplets that are metallic may find additional applications in reconfigurable circuits, optics, heat transfer elements, and transient electronic circuits; the paper demonstrates the latter

Nanoparticle Formulation Derived from Carboxymethyl Cellulose, Polyethylene Glycol, and Cabazitaxel for Chemotherapy Delivery to the Brain

Nanoparticles provide a unique opportunity to explore the benefits of selective distribution and release of cancer therapeutics at sites of disease through varying particle sizes and compositions that exploit the enhanced permeability of tumor-associated blood vessels. Though delivery of larger as opposed to smaller and/or actively transported molecules to the brain is <i>prima facie</i> a challenging endeavor, we wondered whether nanoparticles could improve the therapeutic index of existing drugs for use in treating brain tumors via these vascular effects. We therefore selected a family of nanoparticles composed of cabazitaxel–carboxymethyl cellulose amphiphilic polymers to investigate the potential for delivering a brain-penetrant taxane to intracranial brain tumors in mice. Among a small set of nanoparticle formulations, we found evidence for nanoparticle accumulation in the brain, and one such formulation demonstrated activity in an orthotopic model of glioma, suggesting that such nanoparticles could be useful for the treatment of glioma and brain metastases of other tumor types

Additional file 1: of Measurement of blood pressure for the diagnosis and management of hypertension in different ethnic groups: one size fits all

Diagnostic output of raw data at different BP thresholds. (DOCX 19 kb