Design and Experimental Characterization of Low‐Volume PM10/2.5/1.0 Trichotomous Sampler Inlet

This paper presents the development and laboratory evaluation of a PM10/2.5/1.0 trichotomous sampling inlet that consists of two main parts: a previously designed PM10 size‐selective inlet part and a PM2.5/1.0 two‐stage virtual impactor, which was newly fabricated and attached serially to the PM10 size selective inlet part. Particles are collected in three locations through the trichotomous sampling inlet to provide for not only particle concentration measurements of PM10, PM2.5 and PM1.0, but also those of PM2.5–10 and PM1.0–2.5.     

Particle Tracking Based Method for Evaluation of Cylinder‐to‐Cylinder Distribution of EGR/Blowby

Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) method has already shown its benefits on controlling NO_x emissions in internal combustion engines. An important issue associated with this method is homogeneous cylinder‐to‐cylinder distribution of the recirculating gas. Any maldistribution leads to power reduction and increase of other pollutants, which are strictly limited by recent emission laws. In addition to EGR, these limitations force the engine manufacturers to recycle blowby gases into the cylinders as homogeneous as possible. Since geometrical parameters and injection locations of EGR/blowby have substantial effects on homogenous cylinder‐to‐cylinder distribution of EGR/blowby gases, any developments in identifying the injecting locations with the least EGR/blowby maldistribution are of great practical importance. The existing experimental and numerical methods for evaluating the EGR/blowby maldistribution are based on the injection of air with different temperature or of different gas (mostly CO₂) from the main air stream. However, these methods are time consuming due to the large number of possible injection locations. It has been shown that the most uniform distribution cannot be obtained by just a single injection point; therefore, the study of simultaneous injection points becomes inevitable. Clearly, such a study is practically impossible with the present methods. In this research a new method based on particle tracking is proposed, which greatly reduces the time and effort to find the injection locations with the least maldistribution, especially when multiple injections are considered.     

Rod‐Shaped Drug Particles for Cancer Therapy: The Importance of Particle Size and Participation of Caveolae Pathway

It is disclosed how the sizes of rod‐shaped paclitaxel‐nanosuspensions (PTX‐Ns) that are less than 500 nm affect their in vitro and in vivo performances. A size reduction from 500 to 160 nm enhances the cellular uptake and subsequent cytotoxicity, due to the participation of caveolae‐mediated endocytosis; moreover, the ability of the PTX‐Ns to penetrate tumors is well correlated with the extent to which the caveolae pathway participates in cellular uptake, as their ability to target caveolae is markedly promoted as their size decreased to 160 nm. Also, the size reduction markedly alters the in vivo performance and tumor targeting. It is disclosed that via enhanced tumor penetration and retention but not simply increased tumor accumulation, size reduction of PTX‐Ns results in significant improvement in antitumor activities. Overall, this study highlights the importance of the size of the PTX‐Ns and the participation of caveolae‐mediated endocytosis in controlling their biological functions and will assist in the design and optimization of new nanosuspension formulations for disease therapy.