Flexible parylene actuator for micro adaptive flow control

This paper describes the first flexible parylene electrostatic actuator valves intended for micro adaptive flow control for the future use on the wings of micro-air-vehicle (MAV). The actuator diaphragm is made of two layers of parylene membranes with offset vent holes. Without electrostatic actuation, air can move freely from one side of the skin to the other side through the vent holes. With actuation, these vent holes are sealed and the airflow is controlled. The membrane behaves as a complete diaphragm. We have successfully demonstrated this function using a 2-mm x 2-mm parylene diaphragm electrostatic actuator valves. This work also includes the novel anti-stiction technology that is crucial to make such large-area parylene actuator diaphragm with the combined use of anti-stiction posts, self-assembled monolayers (SAM), surface roughening, and bromine trifluoride (BrFe) dry etching. With the help of SAM treatment, the operating voltage is lowered from 30 volts to 13 volts. The load deflection method is then used to measure the effective thickness of the composite diaphragm. The flexible parylene diaphragm can be deflected up to 100 μm when 150 Torr of pressure is applied. The result is fitted into a theoretical model and yields an effective thickness of 5.9 μm, which is agreeable with the actual thickness of 5.6 μm, thus proves the functionality of the device

Universal scale factors relating mesonic fields and quark operators

Scale factor matrices relating mesonic fields in chiral Lagrangians and quark-level operators of QCD sum-rules are shown to be constrained by chiral symmetry, resulting in universal scale factors for each chiral nonet. Built upon this interplay between chiral Lagrangians and QCD sum-rules, the scale factors relating the $a_0$ isotriplet scalar mesons to their underlying quark composite field were recently determined. It is shown that the same technique when applied to $K_0^*$ isodoublet scalars reproduces the same scale factors, confirming the universality property and further validating this connection between chiral Lagrangians and QCD sum-rules which can have nontrivial impacts on our understanding of the low-energy QCD, in general, and the physics of scalar mesons in particular.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1909.0724

Effects of l-dopa and tolcapone on COMT gene expression in human glial cells

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Mitochondrial Control and Guidance of Cellular Activities of T Cells.

Immune cells protect us against infection and cancer cells, as well as functioning during healing processes to support tissue repairing and regeneration. These behaviors require that upon stimulation from immune activation the appropriate subsets of immune cells are generated. In addition to activation-induced signaling cascades, metabolic reprogramming (profound changes in metabolic pathways) also provides a novel form of regulation to control the formation of desirable immune responses. Immune cells encounter various nutrient compositions by circulating in bloodstream and infiltrating into peripheral tissues; therefore, proper engagement of metabolic pathways is critical to fulfill the metabolic demands of immune cells. Metabolic pathways are tightly regulated mainly via mitochondrial dynamics and the activities of the tricarboxylic acid cycle and the electron transport chain. In this review, we will discuss how metabolic reprogramming influences activation, effector functions, and lineage polarization in T cells, with a particular focus on mitochondria-regulated metabolic checkpoints. Additionally, we will further explore how in various diseases deregulation and manipulation of mitochondrial regulation can occur and be exploited. Furthermore, we will discuss how this knowledge can facilitate the design of immunotherapies

Theory of spin-2 Bose-Einstein condensates: spin-correlations, magnetic response, and excitation spectra

The ground states of Bose-Einstein condensates of spin-2 bosons are classified into three distinct (ferromagnetic, ^^ ^^ antiferromagnetic", and cyclic) phases depending on the s-wave scattering lengths of binary collisions for total-spin 0, 2, and 4 channels. Many-body spin correlations and magnetic response of the condensate in each of these phases are studied in a mesoscopic regime, while low-lying excitation spectra are investigated in the hermodynamic regime. In the mesoscopic regime, where the system is so tightly confined that the spatial degrees of freedom are frozen, the exact, many-body ground state for each phase is found to be expressed in terms of the creation operators of pair or trio bosons having spin correlations. These pairwise and trio-wise units are shown to bring about some unique features of spin-2 BECs such as a huge jump in magnetization from minimum to maximum possible values and the robustness of the minimum-magnetization state against an applied agnetic field. In the thermodynamic regime, where the system is spatially uniform, low-lying excitation spectra in the presence of magnetic field are obtained analytically using the Bogoliubov approximation. In the ferromagnetic phase, the excitation spectrum consists of one Goldstone mode and four single-particle modes. In the antiferromagnetic phase, where spin-singlet ^^ ^^ pairs" undergo Bose-Einstein condensation, the spectrum consists of two Goldstone modes and three massive ones, all of which become massless when magnetic field vanishes. In the cyclic phase, where boson ^^ ^^ trios" condense into a spin-singlet state, the spectrum is characterized by two Goldstone modes, one single-particle mode having a magnetic-field-independent energy gap, and a gapless single-particle mode that becomes massless in the absence of magnetic field.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figure

An energy-driven motion planning method for two distant postures

In this paper, we present a local motion planning algorithm for character animation. We focus on motion planning between two distant postures where linear interpolation leads to penetrations. Our framework has two stages. The motion planning problem is first solved as a Boundary Value Problem (BVP) on an energy graph which encodes penetrations, motion smoothness and user control. Having established a mapping from the configuration space to the energy graph, a fast and robust local motion planning algorithm is introduced to solve the BVP to generate motions that could only previously be computed by global planning methods. In the second stage, a projection of the solution motion onto a constraint manifold is proposed for more user control. Our method can be integrated into current keyframing techniques. It also has potential applications in motion planning problems in robotics