Exploring Charged Polymeric Cyclodextrins for Biomedical Applications

Over the years, cyclodextrin uses have been widely reviewed and their proprieties provide a very attractive approach in different biomedical applications. Cyclodextrins, due to their characteristics, are used to transport drugs and have also been studied as molecular chaperones with potential application in protein misfolding diseases. In this study, we designed cyclodextrin polymers containing different contents of β- or γ-cyclodextrin, and a different number of guanidinium positive charges. This allowed exploration of the influence of the charge in delivering a drug and the effect in the protein anti-aggregant ability. The polymers inhibit Amiloid β peptide aggregation; such an ability is modulated by both the type of CyD cavity and the number of charges. We also explored the effect of the new polymers as drug carriers. We tested the Doxorubicin toxicity in different cell lines, A2780, A549, MDA-MB-231 in the presence of the polymers. Data show that the polymers based on γ-cyclodextrin modified the cytotoxicity of doxorubicin in the A2780 cell line.     

Optical probe visualization of air–water flow structure through a sudden area contraction

 Single-fiber optical probes were used to investigate the time-averaged structure of gas–liquid horizontal flow through a sharp-edged sudden area contraction. The probes allowed to measure the local void fraction distribution over several cross sections of a pipe having an inner diameter of 0.08 m upstream and 0.06 m downstream of the sudden contraction. The water mass flow rate was 3 kg/s, while the gas fraction of the volume flow ranged from 0.2 to 0.8. The local void fraction was plotted as a function of its two spatial coordinates, so that a representation of the time-averaged gas distribution over the cross section could be obtained. The contraction was shown to considerably alter the distribution of the phases, so that the correlations for straight pipes appear no longer suitable. Received: 27 August 2001 / Accepted: 19 November 2001     

SPH simulation of oblique shocks in compressible flows

The Lagrangian smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method is used to simulate shock waves in inviscid, supersonic (compressible) flow. It is shown for the first time that the fully Lagrangian SPH particle method, without auxiliary grid, can be used to simulate shock waves in compressible flow. The wall boundary condition is treated with ghost particles combined with a suitable repulsive potential function, whilst corners are treated by a novel ‘angle sweep’ technique. The method gives accurate predictions of the flow field and of the shock angle as compared with the analytical solution. The study shows that SPH is a good potential candidate to solve complex aerodynamic problems, including those involving rarefied flows, such as atmospheric re‐entry. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strong Asymptotics of the Orthogonal Polynomials with Respect to a Measure Supported on the Plane

We consider the orthogonal polynomials with respect to the measure over the whole complex plane. We obtain the strong asymptotic of the orthogonal polynomials in the complex plane and the location of their zeros in a scaling limit where n grows to infinity with N . The asymptotics are described in terms of three (probability) measures associated with the problem. The first measure is the limit of the counting measure of zeros of the polynomials, which is captured by the g‐function much in the spirit of ordinary orthogonal polynomials on the real line. The second measure is the equilibrium measure that minimizes a certain logarithmic potential energy, supported on a region K of the complex plane. The third measure is the harmonic measure of K ^c with a pole at ∞ . This appears as the limit of the probability measure given (up to the normalization constant) by the squared modulus of the n^th orthogonal polynomial times the orthogonality measure, i.e., The compact region K that is the support of the second measure undergoes a topological transition under the variation of the parameter in a double scaling limit near the critical point given by we observe the Hastings‐McLeod solution to Painlevé II in the asymptotics of the orthogonal polynomials. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

First Colonization of a Spectral Outpost in Random Matrix Theory

We describe the distribution of the first finite number of eigenvalues in a newly-forming band of the spectrum of the random Hermitian matrix model. The method is rigorously based on the Riemann–Hilbert analysis of the corresponding orthogonal polynomials. We provide an analysis with an error term of order N ^−2γ where 1/γ=2ν+2 is the exponent of non-regularity of the effective potential, thus improving even in the usual case the analysis of the pertinent literature. The behavior of the first finite number of zeroes (eigenvalues) appearing in the new band is analyzed and connected with the location of the zeroes of certain Freud polynomials. In general, all these newborn zeroes approach the point of nonregularity at the rate N ^−γ , whereas one (a stray zero) lags behind at a slower rate of approach. The kernels for the correlator functions in the scaling coordinate near the emerging band are provided together with the subleading term. In particular, the transition between K and K+1 eigenvalues is analyzed in detail.      

Cauchy–Laguerre Two-Matrix Model and the Meijer-G Random Point Field

We apply the general theory of Cauchy biorthogonal polynomials developed in Bertola et al. (Commun Math Phys 287(3):983–1014, 2009) and Bertola et al. (J Approx Th 162(4):832–867, 2010) to the case associated with Laguerre measures. In particular, we obtain explicit formulae in terms of Meijer-G functions for all key objects relevant to the study of the corresponding biorthogonal polynomials and the Cauchy two-matrix model associated with them. The central theorem we prove is that a scaling limit of the correlation functions for eigenvalues near the origin exists, and is given by a new determinantal two-level random point field, the Meijer-G random field. We conjecture that this random point field leads to a novel universality class of random fields parametrized by exponents of Laguerre weights. We express the joint distributions of the smallest eigenvalues in terms of suitable Fredholm determinants and evaluate them numerically. We also show that in a suitable limit, the Meijer-G random field converges to the Bessel random field and hence the behavior of the eigenvalues of one of the two matrices converges to the one of the Laguerre ensemble.     

Semiclassical Orthogonal Polynomials, Matrix Models and Isomonodromic Tau Functions

The differential systems satisfied by orthogonal polynomials with arbitrary semiclassical measures supported on contours in the complex plane are derived, as well as the compatible systems of deformation equations obtained from varying such measures. These are shown to preserve the generalized monodromy of the associated rank-2 rational covariant derivative operators. The corresponding matrix models, consisting of unitarily diagonalizable matrices with spectra supported on these contours are analyzed, and it is shown that all coefficients of the associated spectral curves are given by logarithmic derivatives of the partition function or, more generally, the gap probabilities. The associated isomonodromic tau functions are shown to coincide, within an explicitly computed factor, with these partition functions. Research supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Fonds FCAR du Québec and EC ITH Network HPRN-CT-1999-000161.     

Universality for the Focusing Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation at the Gradient Catastrophe Point: Rational Breathers and Poles of the Tritronquée Solution to Painlevé I

The semiclassical (zero‐dispersion) limit of solutions $q=q(x,t,\epsilon)$ to the one‐dimensional focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) is studied in a scaling neighborhood D of a point of gradient catastrophe ($x_0,t_0$) . We consider a class of solutions, specified in the text, that decay as $|x| \rightarrow \infty$ . The neighborhood D contains the region of modulated plane wave (with rapid phase oscillations), as well as the region of fast‐amplitude oscillations (spikes). In this paper we establish the following universal behaviors of the NLS solutions q near the point of gradient catastrophe: (i) each spike has height $3|q{_0}(x_0,t_0)|$ and uniform shape of the rational breather solution to the NLS, scaled to the size ${\cal O}(\epsilon)$ ; (ii) the location of the spikes is determined by the poles of the tritronquée solution of the Painlevé I (P1) equation through an explicit map between D and a region of the Painlevé independent variable; (iii) if $(x,t)\in D$ but lies away from the spikes, the asymptotics of the NLS solution $q(x,t, \epsilon)$ is given by the plane wave approximation $q_0(x,t, \epsilon)$ , with the correction term being expressed in terms of the tritronquée solution of P1. The relation with the conjecture of Dubrovin, Grava, and Klein about the behavior of solutions to the focusing NLS near a point of gradient catastrophe is discussed. We conjecture that the P1 hierarchy occurs at higher degenerate catastrophe points and that the amplitudes of the spikes are odd multiples of the amplitude at the corresponding catastrophe point. Our technique is based on the nonlinear steepest‐descent method for matrix Riemann‐Hilbert problems and discrete Schlesinger isomonodromic transformations. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.