Injectable Polypeptide Hydrogel Depot System for Assessment of the Immune Response–Inducing Efficacy of Sustained Antigen Release Alone

Vaccines typically contain an antigen, delivery system (vehicle), and adjuvant, all of which contribute to inducing a potent immune response. Consequently, design of new vaccines is difficult, because the contributions and interactions of these components are difficult to distinguish. Here, it is aimed to develop an easy‐to‐use, non‐immunogenic, injectable depot system for sustained antigen release that will be suitable for assessing the efficacy of prolonged antigen exposure per se for inducing an immune response. This should mimic real‐life infections. Recombinant elastin‐like polypeptides with periodic cysteine residues (cELPs) are selected, which reportedly show little or no immunogenicity, as carriers and tetanus toxoid (Ttd) as an antigen. After subcutaneous injection of the mixture, cELP rapidly forms a disulfide cross‐linked hydrogel in situ, within which Ttd is physically incorporated, affording a biodegradable antigen depot. A series of Ttd‐containing hydrogels is examined. A single injection induces high levels of tetanus antibody with high avidity for at least 20 weeks in mice. The chain length of cELP proves critical, whereas differences in hydrophobicity has little effect, although hydrophilic cELPs are more rapidly biodegraded. This system's ability to distinguish the contribution of sustained antigen release to antibody induction should be helpful for rational design of next‐generation vaccines.     

Flexible and Epitaxial Metal Oxide Thin Film Growth by Photoreaction Processing for Electrical and Optical Applications

This review summarizes the use of photoreactions that replace conventional heating processes for growing oxide thin films from chemical solutions. In particular, this review outlines key variables in photoreactions that affect epitaxial and polycrystalline thin film growth, including precursor materials, laser wavelength, laser fluence, and carbon. In addition, the features of the photoreaction process that can be controlled at a low temperature by oxygen non-stoichiometry are examined. Likewise, functions that are neither achieved by developing a gradient structure nor controlled by a thermal equilibrium reaction are detailed. Two new concepts are presented, known as photoreaction of nanoparticles (PRNP) and photoreaction of a hybrid solutions (PRHS), in which crystal nuclei are pre-dispersed in a metal–organic compound film. This method has successfully produced flexible phosphor films used as resistor or thermistor electronic components. Finally, thin film growth using different light sources such as flash lamps and femtosecond lasers (fs) is explored.     

Circular autocorrelation of stationary circular Markov processes

The stationary Markov process is considered and its circular autocorrelation function is investigated. More specifically, the transition density of the stationary Markov circular process is defined by two circular distributions, and we elucidate the structure of the circular autocorrelation when one of these distributions is uniform and the other is arbitrary. The asymptotic properties of the natural estimator of the circular autocorrelation function are derived. Furthermore, we consider the bivariate process of trigonometric functions and provide the explicit form of its spectral density matrix. The validity of the model was assessed by applying it to a series of wind direction data.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">C</Emphasis><Superscript>1</Superscript>-Classification of Gapped Parent Hamiltonians of Quantum Spin Chains

We consider the C ¹-classification of gapped Hamiltonians introduced in Fannes et al. (Commun Math Phys 144:443–490, 1992) and Nachtergaele (Commun Math Phys 175:565–606, 1996) as parent Hamiltonians of translation invariant finitely correlated states. Within this family, we show that the number of edge modes, which is equal at the left and right edge, is the complete invariant. The construction proves that translation invariance of the ‘bulk’ ground state does not need to be broken to establish C ¹-equivalence, namely that the spin chain does not need to be blocked.     

Separation and purification of 99mTc from 99Mo produced by electron linear accelerator

The medical radionuclide ⁹⁹Mo was produced by the ¹⁰⁰Mo(γ,n) reaction using bremsstrahlung photons generated by an electron linear accelerator. The amount of ⁹⁹Mo produced was compared to that predicted by calculation using the particles and heavy ion transport code system. From the ⁹⁹Mo produced, highly pure ^99mTc was separated using the so-called technetium master milker, and the chemical yield of ^99mTc was 83–99 %. The installation of a new complex using this method and the electron linear accelerator with the preferable specification was suggested, and a possibility to supply the demand of ^99mTc was discussed and shown.