Quick synthesis of lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticles with low polydispersity using a single-step sonication method

Lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticle, consisting of a hydrophobic polymeric core and a lipid monolayer shell, represents a new and promising drug delivery platform that has shown controllable particle size and surface functionality, high drug loading yield, sustained drug release profile, and excellent in vitro and in vivo stability. These lipid monolayer-coated polymeric nanoparticles are typically fabricated through a modified nanoprecipitation method, which involves sample heating, vortexing, and solvent evaporation. Herein we report a new and fast method to synthesize lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticles with controllable and nearly uniform particle size. Using a bath sonication approach, we demonstrate that the whole hybrid nanoparticle synthesis process can be completed in about 5 min compared with a few hours for previous synthesis approaches. The size and polydispersity of the resulting nanoparticles can be readily controlled by tuning the relative concentrations of individual building components. Colloidal stability tests of the synthesized hybrid nanoparticles in PBS buffer and serum show no signs of aggregation over a period of 5 days. The present method improves the production rate of the hybrid nanoparticles by near 20-fold while not compromising the physicochemical properties of the particles. This work may facilitate the bench-to-bedside translation of lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticles as a robust drug nanocarrier by allowing for fabricating a large amount of these nanoparticles at high production rate.     

Accumulation of Stark-decelerated NH molecules in a magnetic trap

Here we report on the accumulation of ground-state NH molecules in a static magnetic trap. A pulsed supersonic beam of NH (a¹Δ) radicals is produced and brought to a near standstill at the center of a quadrupole magnetic trap using a Stark decelerator. There, optical pumping of the metastable NH radicals to the X³Σ^? ground state is performed by driving the spin-forbidden A³Π ← a¹Δ transition, followed by spontaneous A → X emission. The resulting population in the various rotational levels of the ground state is monitored via laser induced fluorescence detection. A substantial fraction of the ground-state NH molecules stays confined in the several milliKelvin deep magnetic trap. The loading scheme allows one to increase the phase-space density of trapped molecules by accumulating packets from consecutive deceleration cycles in the trap. In the present experiment, accumulation of six packets is demonstrated to result in an overall increase of only slightly over a factor of two, limited by the trap-loss and reloading rates.     

Simple high-order Galerkin finite element scheme for the investigation of both guided and leaky modes in anisotropic planar waveguides

A simple high-order Galerkin finite element scheme is formulated to compute both the guided and leaky modes of anisotropic planar waveguides with a diagonal permittivity tensor. Transparent boundary conditions derived from the Sommerfield radiation conditions are used to model the fields at the computational boundaries that allow the radiation into the high index cladding/substrate and decay into the low index cladding/substrate, hence work for both guided and leaky modes. Richardson's extrapolation is employed to achieve high-order accuracy by only using simple first-order-polynomial basis functions. Schemes up to sixth-order of accuracy in the effective index are demonstrated. The resulted non-linear sparse matrix eigenvalue equation is solved using an iterative procedure. The ability of the scheme to compute leaky and guided modes of various structures with isotropic and anisotropic materials, step and graded index profiles is demonstrated; including its applications to investigate the properties of ARROW structures.     

On the maslov index

In this paper we give four definitions of Maslov index and show that they all satisfy the same system of axioms and hence are equivalent to each other. Moreover, relationships of several symplectic and differential geometric, analytic, and topological invariants (including triple Maslov indices, eta invariants, spectral flow and signatures of quadratic forms) to the Maslov index are developed and formulae relating them are given. The broad presentation is designed with a view to applications both in geometry and in analysis. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Representing homology classes by locally flat 2-spheres

We prove an existence result for topologically locally flat embeddings of 2-spheres in simply connected 4-manifolds. This topological result is deduced from a splitting theorem for pointed Hermitian modules over a cyclic group ring. A stability result for such modules is also proved. This applies to the isotopy classification of locally flat embeddings.Partially supported by the NSF.     

First state selective electron capture measurements with trapped highly charged ions

The first state selective electron capture cross section measurements at eV energies are reported for collisions between C⁴⁺ ions and H₂ molecules. The cross sections are measured in a crossed beam experiment by means of Photon Emission Spectroscopy. The ion beams are decelerated in an octopole ion trap where the trap is used to guide the ion beam through the collision region. The experimental results are in excellent agreement with previous measurements at higher energies. The 3-state atomic orbital calculations of Gargaud and McCarroll generally agree with our measurements although there are some discrepancies at lower energies. However, the results for C⁴⁺ are still on a relative scale. To put our measurements on an absolute scale the N⁴⁺+ H system is investigated at keV energies. These results are in good agreement with the data of previous experiments. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Formation of hollow atoms at metal- and insulator surfaces

Received: 27 March 1998/Accepted: 23 October 1998     

Improved convergence in orbital localization methods

A new method for choosing the rotation angle in the usual indirect localization procedure consisting of the iterative use of 2 × 2 rotation matrices is suggested. Calculations reported here obtaining the localized orbitals of the water molecule show this new method to converge much more quickly and to a significantly better numerical value of the localization criterion than previous methods.