Dendritic polyurethane-based prodrug as unimolecular micelles for precise ultrasound-activated localized drug delivery

Ultrasound has been recognized as an exciting tool to enhance the therapeutic efficacy in tumor chemotherapy owing to the triggered drug release, facilitated intracellular drug delivery, and improved spatial precision. Aiming for a precise localized drug delivery, novel dendritic polyurethane-based prodrug (DOX-DPU-PEG) was fabricated with a drug content of 18.9% here by conjugating DOX onto the end groups of the functionalized dendritic polyurethane via acid-labile imine bonds. It could easily form unimolecular micelles around 38 nm. Compared with the non-covalently drug-loaded unimolecular micelles (DOX@Ph-DPU-PEG), they showed excellent pH/ultrasound dual-triggered drug release performance, with drug leakage of only 4% at pH 7.4, but cumulative release of 14% and 88% at pH 5.0 without and with ultrasound, respectively. The ultrasound responsiveness was attributed to the unique strawberry-shaped topological structure of the DOX-DPU-PEG, in which DOX was embedded in the skin layer of the hydrophobic DPU cores. With ultrasound, the DOX-DPU-PEG unimolecular micelles possessed enhanced tumor growth inhibition than free DOX but showed no obvious cytotoxicity on the tumor cells without ultrasound. Such feature makes them promising potential for precise localized drug delivery.     

Ground states of two-component attractive Bose–Einstein condensates I: Existence and uniqueness

We study ground states of two-component Bose–Einstein condensates (BEC) with trapping potentials in ${\mathbb{R}}^2$, where the intraspecies interaction $(?a_1,?a_2)$ and the interspecies interaction ?β are both attractive, $i.e$, $a_1$, $a_2$ and β are all positive. The existence and non-existence of ground states are classified completely by investigating equivalently the associated $L^2$-critical constraint variational problem. The uniqueness and symmetry-breaking of ground states are also analyzed under different types of trapping potentials as $\beta \nearrow {\beta }^{?}=a^{?}+\sqrt{(a^{?}?a_1)(a^{?}?a_2)}$, where $0<a_i<a^{?}:={6w6}_2^2$ ($i=1,2$) is fixed and w is the unique positive solution of $\mathrm{\Delta }w?w+w^3=0$ in ${\mathbb{R}}^2$. The semi-trivial limit behavior of ground states is tackled in the companion paper [12].     

Local boundedness of weak solutions to the Diffusive Wave Approximation of the Shallow Water equations

In this paper we prove that weak solutions to the Diffusive Wave Approximation of the Shallow Water equations

${?}_{t}u?\mathrm{?}?({(u?z)}^{\alpha }|\mathrm{?}u{|}^{\gamma ?1}\mathrm{?}u)=f$

are locally bounded. Here, u describes the height of the water, z is a given function that represents the land elevation and f is a source term accounting for evaporation, infiltration or rainfall.     

Vertex-disjoint cycles in local tournaments

Let $r$ be a positive integer. The Bermond–Thomassen conjecture states that, a digraph of minimum out-degree at least $2r-1$ contains $r$ vertex-disjoint directed cycles. A digraph $D$ is called a local tournament if for every vertex $x$ of $D$, both the out-neighbours and the in-neighbours of $x$ induce tournaments. Note that tournaments form the subclass of local tournaments. In this paper, we verify that the Bermond–Thomassen conjecture holds for local tournaments. In particular, we prove that every local tournament $D$ with ${\delta }^{+}\left(D\right)\ge 2r-1$ contains $r$ disjoint cycles $C_1,C_2,\dots ,C_r$, satisfying that either $C_i$ has the length at most 4 or is a shortest cycle of the original digraph of $D-C_1-\dots -C_{i-1}$ for $1\le i\le r$.     

地方高校高分子材料与工程专业生产实习协同创新模式探讨

地方高校已成为我国高等教育的重要组成部分,由于办学目标、生源构成、服务地区不同于部属高校,其生产实习教学环节面临各种困境。寻求有效的途径突破生产实习的困境成为当前各地方高校亟待解决的问题。本文以广东工业大学为例,在分析该校的办学特点以及高分子材料与工程专业近年来生产实习状况的基础上,介绍该校以大学联盟为平台的生产实习新模式,并详细说明其实施方案。该模式基于该校的协同创新战略,已取得良好的教学效果。     

Interplay of local resonances and Bragg band gaps in acoustic waveguides with periodic detuned resonators

This letter is concerned with acoustic wave propagation and transmission in acoustic waveguides with periodically grafted detuned Helmholtz resonators. The interplay of local resonances and Bragg band gaps in such periodic systems is examined. It is shown that, when the resonant frequencies of the resonators are tuned close to a Bragg band gap, the behavior of the Bragg band gap can be affected dramatically. Particularly, by introducing appropriately tuned resonators, the bandwidth of a Bragg band gap can be reduced to zero, leading to a very narrow pass band with great wave attenuation performance near both band edges. The band formation mechanisms of such periodic waveguides are further examined, providing explicit formulae to locate the band edge frequencies of all the band gaps, as well as the conditions to achieve very narrow pass bands in such periodic waveguides.