A series of nanoparticles is prepared via layer‐by‐layer assembly of oppositely charged, synthetic biocompatible polyamidoamine polymers as potential carriers. Particle size, surface charge and internal chain mobility are quantified as a function of the polymer type and number of layers. The effect of addition of surfactant is examined to simulate the effects of nanoparticle dissolution. The cyctotoxicity of these particles (in epithelia and murine cell lines) are orders of magnitude lower than polyethyleneimine controls. Stable nanoparticles may be prepared from mixtures of strongly, oppositely charged polymers, but less successfully from weakly charged polymers, and, given their acceptable toxicity characteristics, such modularly designed constructs show promise for drug and gene delivery.
Early detection of pathogenic microorganisms is pivotal to diagnosis and prevention of health and safety crises. Standard methods for pathogen detection often rely on lengthy culturing procedures, confirmed by biochemical assays, leading to >24 h for a diagnosis. The main challenge for pathogen detection is their low concentration within complex matrices. Detection of blood-borne pathogens via techniques such as PCR requires an initial positive blood culture and removal of inhibitory blood components, reducing its potential as a diagnostic tool. Among different label-free microfluidic techniques, inertial focusing on microscale channels holds great promise for automation, parallelization, and passive continuous separation of particles and cells. This work presents inertial microfluidic manipulation of small particles and cells (1–10 μm) in curved serpentine glass channels etched at different depths (deep and shallow designs) that can be exploited for (1) bacteria preconcentration from biological samples and (2) bacteria-blood cell separation. In our shallow device, the ability to focus Escherichia coli into the channel side streams with high recovery (89% at 2.2× preconcentration factor) could be applied for bacteria preconcentration in urine for diagnosis of urinary tract infections. Relying on differential equilibrium positions of red blood cells and E. coli inside the deep device, 97% red blood cells were depleted from 1:50 diluted blood with 54% E. coli recovered at a throughput of 0.7 mL/min. Parallelization of such devices could process relevant volumes of 7 mL whole blood in 10 min, allowing faster sample preparation for downstream molecular diagnostics of bacteria present in bloodstream. 相似文献
A stable visible‐light‐driven photocatalyst (λ≥450 nm) for water oxidation is reported. Rhodium substitution into the pyrochlore Y2Ti2O7 is demonstrated by monitoring Vegard′s law evolution of the unit‐cell parameters with changing rhodium content, to a maximum content of 3 % dopant. Substitution renders the solid solutions visible‐light active. The overall rate of oxygen evolution is comparable to WO3 but with superior light‐harvesting and surface‐area‐normalized turnover rates, making Y2Ti1.94Rh0.06O7 an excellent candidate for use in a Z‐scheme water‐splitting system. 相似文献
We analyse thegeneralised assignment problem under the assumption that all coefficients are drawn uniformly and independently from [0, 1]. We show that such problems can be solved exactly with high probability, in a well-defined sense. The results are closely related to earlier work of Lueker, Goldberg and Marchetti-Spaccamela and ourselves.Supported by NATO grant RG0088/89.Supported by NSF grant CCR-8900112 and NATO grant RG0088/89. 相似文献
Conditions for the embedding of a Banach space as a dense subspace of a continuous function space are studied. Necessary and
sufficient conditions for a Banach space to be isomorphic to aP1 space are found. 相似文献
The results of a 13C NMR spectral investigation involving 5,6-dihydro-1,4-oxathiins, 1,4-tetrahydro[9,10]benzoxathiin, trans-tetrahydro-1,4-benzoxathiin, and the corresponding sulfoxides and sulfones are reported. An interpretation involving a dipolar structure with (2p→2p)π conjugation as opposed to (2p→3d)π interactions with the vinyloxy sulfides seems consistent with trends in the 13C NMR shifts. For the sulfoxides and sulfones, the substitutent-induced chemical shift (SCS) effects at the β vinylic carbons (βSO and βSO2 effects) are considerably less than those at sp3 carbons. The γSO and γSO2 values at the sp2γ carbons indicate deshielding, in contrast to the shielding at the sp3 carbons. 相似文献
Intense, femtosecond irradiation of atomic and molecular clusters can initiate Coulomb explosions, generating particle energies sufficient to drive nuclear fusion. Last and Jortner have proposed, based on particle dynamics simulations, that heteronuclear clusters with a mixture of heavy and light ions will not explode by the simple, equilibrium Coulomb model but that dynamic effects can lead to a boosting of energy of the lighter ejected ions [Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 033401 (2001)]. We present experimental confirmation of this theoretically predicted ion energy enhancement in methane clusters. 相似文献
Research and development in excimer laser polymer ablation has been actively pursued for some twenty years, driven by interest
in the basic science as well as by numerous applications that have emerged for this high-resolution technique for material
removal. This paper reviews some of the basic mechanistic aspects of the UV laser–polymer interaction as a prelude to dealing
with practical matters related to polymer processing by ablation. Applications in micro-machining and potential areas for
future research are briefly covered.
Received: 7 October 2002 / Accepted: 8 February 2003 / Published online: 28 May 2003
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ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +44-1482/465-606, E-mail: p.e.dyer@hull.ac.uk 相似文献