Flow-induced shear stress and deformation of a core–shell-structured microcapsule in a microchannel

A numerical model was developed and validated to investigate the fluid–structure interactions between fully developed pipe flow and core–shell-structured microcapsule in a microchannel. Different flow rates and microcapsule shell thicknesses were considered. A sixth-order rotational symmetric distribution of von Mises stress over the microcapsule shell can be observed on the microcapsule with a thinner shell configuration, especially at higher flow rate conditions. It is also observed that when being carried along in a fully developed pipe flow, the microcapsule with a thinner shell tends to accumulate stress at a higher rate compared to that with a thicker shell. In general, for the same microcapsule configuration, higher flow velocity would induce a higher stress level over the microcapsule shell. The deformation gradient was used to capture the microcapsule's deformation in the present study. The effect of Young's modulus on the microcapsule shell on the microcapsule deformation was investigated as well. Our findings will shed light on the understanding of the stability of core–shell-structured microcapsule when subjected to flow-induced shear stress in a microfluidic system, enabling a more exquisite control over the breakup dynamics of drug-loaded microcapsule for biomedical applications.     

Pure annihilation decay of strange beauty meson into two charm heavy mesons

In this study, the heavy to heavy decay of \begin{document}$ B^0_s\rightarrow D^{*+}D^- $\end{document} is evaluated through the factorization approach by using the final state interaction as an effective correction. Under the factorization approach, this decay mode occurs only through the annihilation process, so a small amount is produced. Feynman's rules state that six meson pairs can be assumed for the intermediate states before the final meson pairs are produced. By taking into account the effects of twelve final state interaction diagrams in the calculations, a significant correction is obtained. These effects correct the value of the branching ratio obtained by the pure factorization approach from \begin{document}$ (2.41\pm1.37)\times10^{-5} $\end{document} to \begin{document}$ (8.27\pm2.23)\times10^{-5} $\end{document}. The value obtained for the branching ratio of the \begin{document}$ B^0_s\rightarrow D^{*+}D^- $\end{document} decay is consistent with the experimental results.     

The Role of Radical Bridges in Polynuclear Single-Molecule Magnets

Employing radical bridges between anisotropic metal ions has been a viable route to achieve high-performance single-molecule magnets (SMMs). While the bridges have been mainly considered for their ability to promote exchange interactions, the crystal-field effect arising from them has not been taken into account explicitly. This lack of consideration may distort the understanding and limit the development of the entire family. To shed light on this aspect, herein we report a theoretical investigation of a series of N -radical-bridged diterbium complexes. It is found that while promoting strong exchange coupling between the terbium ions, the N -radical induces a crystal field that interferes destructively with that of the outer ligands, and thus reduces the overall SMM behavior. Based on the theoretical results, we conclude that the SMM behavior in this series could be further maximized if the crystal field of the outer ligands is designed to be collinear with that of the radical bridge. This conclusion can be generalized to all exchange-coupled SMMs.     

Shedding vortex simulation method based on viscous compensation technology research

Owing to the influence of the viscosity of the flow field, the strength of the shedding vortex decreases gradually in the process of backward propagation. Large-scale vortexes constantly break up, forming smaller vortexes. In engineering, when numerical simulation of vortex evolution process is carried out, a large grid is needed to be arranged in the area of outflow field far from the boundary layer in order to ensure the calculation efficiency. As a result, small scale vortexes at the far end of the flow field cannot be captured by the sparse grid in this region, resulting in the dissipation or even disappearance of vortexes. In this paper, the effect of grid scale is quantified and compared with the viscous effect through theoretical derivation. The theoretical relationship between the mesh viscosity and the original viscosity of the flow field is established, and the viscosity term in the turbulence model is modified. This method proves to be able to effectively improve the intensity of small-scale shedding vortexes at the far end of the flow field under the condition of sparse grid. The error between the simulation results and the results obtained by using fine mesh is greatly reduced, the calculation time is shortened, and the high-precision and efficient simulation of the flow field is realized.     

Design,synthesis and evaluation of novel dehydroabietic acid-dithiocarbamate hybrids as potential multi-targeted compounds for tumor cytotoxicity

In the present study, novel representatives of the important group of biologically-active, dehydroabietic acid-bearing dithiocarbamate moiety, were synthesized and characterized by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, HR-MS. The in vitro antiproliferative activity evaluation (MTT) indicated that these compounds exhibited potent inhibitory activities in various cancer cell lines (HepG-2, MCF-7, HeLa, T-24, MGC-803). Particularly, compound III-b possessed extraordinary cytotoxicity with low micromolar IC₅₀ values ranging from 4.07 to 38.84 µM against tested cancer cell lines, while displayed weak cytotoxicity on two normal cell lines (LO-2 and HEK 293 T). Subsequently, the potential mechanisms of representative compound III-b were elementarily investigated by Transwell experiment, which showed III-b can inhibit cancer cells migration. Annexin-V/PI dual staining showed that the compound can induce HepG-2 cells apoptosis in a dose-dependent manner. Meanwhile this apoptosis may be related to the upregulated protein expression of cleaved-caspase 3, cleaved-caspase 9, Bax and downregulated of Bcl-2 indicated by Western Blot. Later study further confirmed that ROS levels in HepG-2 cells increased significantly with the rise of concentrations. In addition, through the network pharmacology data analyzing, the core targets and signaling pathways of compound III-b for treatment of liver neoplasms were forecasted. Molecular docking model showed that compound III-b had high affinity with hub targets (CASP3, EGFR, HSP90AA1, MAPK1, ERBB2, MDM2), suggesting that compound III-b might target the hub protein to modulate signaling activity. Taken together, these data indicated that dehydroabietic acid structural modification following the “Molecular hybridization” principle is a feasible way to discover the potential multi-targeted antitumor compounds.     

Prediction of drug-target interaction by integrating diverse heterogeneous information source with multiple kernel learning and clustering methods

BackgroundIdentification of potential drug-target interaction pairs is very important for pharmaceutical innovation and drug discovery. Numerous machine learning-based and network-based algorithms have been developed for predicting drug-target interactions. However, large-scale pharmacological, genomic and chemical datum emerged recently provide new opportunity for further heightening the accuracy of drug-target interactions prediction.ResultsIn this work, based on the assumption that similar drugs tend to interact with similar proteins and vice versa, we developed a novel computational method (namely MKLC-BiRW) to predict new drug-target interactions. MKLC-BiRW integrates diverse drug-related and target-related heterogeneous information source by using the multiple kernel learning and clustering methods to generate the drug and target similarity matrices, in which the low similarity elements are set to zero to build the drug and target similarity correction networks. By incorporating these drug and target similarity correction networks with known drug-target interaction bipartite graph, MKLC-BiRW constructs the heterogeneous network on which Bi-random walk algorithm is adopted to infer the potential drug-target interactions.ConclusionsCompared with other existing state-of-the-art methods, MKLC-BiRW achieves the best performance in terms of AUC and AUPR. MKLC-BiRW can effectively predict the potential drug-target interactions.     

On the inflation and deflation dynamics of liquid-filled,hyperelastic balloons

We derive a reduced-order model describing the inflation and deflation dynamics of a liquid-filled hyperelastic balloon, focusing on inviscid laminar flow and the extensional motion of the balloon. We initially study the flow and pressure fields for dictated motion of the solid, which throughout deflation are obtained by solving the potential problem. However, during inflation, flow separation creates a jet within the balloon, requiring a different approach. The analyses of both flow regimes lead to a simple piecewise model, describing the fluidic pressure during inflation and deflation, which is verified by finite element computations. We then use a variational approach to derive the equation describing the interaction between the extensional mode of the balloon and the entrapped fluid, yielding a nonlinear hybrid oscillator equation. Analytical and graphical investigations of the suggested model are presented, shedding light on its static and dynamic behaviour under different operating conditions. Our simplified model and its underlying assumptions are verified utilizing a fully coupled finite element scheme, showing excellent agreement.     

Comparison of the stability of thymine tautomers and the interaction of its tautomers with Na+, K+, Mg2+ and Ca2+ in gas and solvent phases

The present study compared the interactions among Na ⁺, K ⁺, Mg²⁺ and Ca²⁺, thymine and its tautomers in the gas and solvent phase, an interaction dependent upon the electronic construction of the tautomers. Three types of cation interaction with thymine and its tautomers were observed. In the first one, the metal cations interacted with a lone pair of nitrogen or oxygen of the tautomers. In the second type, there was an interaction among the cations, nitrogen and oxygen at the same time; the last one was that of cations with the electron density of thymine π-system, where the cations were perpendicular to the ring of thymine. The interaction of metals cation with tautomers was studied in the gas and solvent phases; a comparison was then made between interactions in two phases. The interaction energy for all complexes indicated the stability of complexes, an energy which was higher in Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ compared with Na⁺ and K⁺. Concerning K⁺ and Na⁺, the stability of all complexes of tautomers was greater than that of thymine complexes; however, the stability of certain Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ complexes was lower than the complexes of thymine.