Mesoporous sodium four-coordinate aluminosilicate nanoparticles modulate dendritic cell pyroptosis and activate innate and adaptive immunity

Pyroptosis is a programmed cell death widely studied in cancer cells for tumour inhibition, but rarely in dendritic cell (DC) activation for vaccine development. Here, we report the synthesis of sodium stabilized mesoporous aluminosilicate nanoparticles as DC pyroptosis modulators and antigen carriers. By surface modification of sodium-stabilized four-coordinate aluminium species on dendritic mesoporous silica nanoparticles, the resultant Na-^IVAl-DMSN significantly activated DC through caspase-1 dependent pyroptosis via pH responsive intracellular ion exchange. The released proinflammatory cellular contents further mediated DC hyperactivation with prolonged cytokine release. In vivo studies showed that Na-^IVAl-DMSN induced enhanced cellular immunity mediated by natural killer (NK) cells, cytotoxic T cells, and memory T cells as well as humoral immune response. Our results provide a new principle for the design of next-generation nanoadjuvants for vaccine applications.

Na-^IVAl-DMSN acts as both antigen carriers and modulators to “hyperactivate” dendritic cells (DCs) via potassium (K⁺) efflux dependent pyroptosis, eventually leading to enhanced adaptive and innate immunity.     

Pattern discrimination and firing behavior of cold receptor model aided with noise

A method for characterizing and identifying firing patterns of neural spike trains is presented. Three characteristic variables defined at sequential moments, including two formal derivatives and the integration of the counting process, are introduced to reflect the temporal patterns of a spike train. This paper also examines how noise interacts with encoding mechanisms of neuronal stimulus in a cold receptor. From ISI series and bifurcation diagrams it is shown that there are considerable differences in interval distributions and impulse patterns caused by purely deterministic simulations and noisy simulations. The ISI-distance can be used as an effective and powerful way to measure the noise effects on spike trains quantitatively. It is found that spike trains observed in cold receptors can be more strongly affected by noise for low temperatures than for high temperatures in some aspects; meanwhile, spike train has greater variability with the noise intensity increasing.     

有机层界面对双层有机发光二极管复合效率的影响

建立了双层有机发光二极管中载流子在有机层界面复合的无序跳跃理论模型.由于有机分子材料的空间及能带结构的无序性，采用刚体模型处理有机层界面问题是不恰当的，而采用无序跳跃模型比较合理.复合效率及复合电流由载流子跳跃距离、有机层界面的有效势垒高度及该界面处的电场强度分布所决定：在双层器件ITO/α-NPD/Alq₃/Al中，当所加电压小于19.5V时，复合效率随着载流子跳跃距离的增加而增加，而大于19.5V时，复合效率随着其距离的增加而减少；复合效率随着有机层界面有效势垒高度的增加而增加； 关键词： 有机层界面 双层有机发光二极管 复合效率 有效势垒高度 无序跳跃模型     

Stability of strongly continuous representations of abelian semigroups

Part of this work was carried out while the authors were visiting the University of Franche-Comté, Besan?on, and Hokkaido University, Sapporo, respectively     

Characteristics of an add-drop filter composed of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and double ring resonators

A planar lightwave circuit (PLC) add-drop filter is proposed and analyzed, which consists of a symmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) combined with double microring resonators. A critical coupling condition is derived for a better box-like drop spectrum. Comparisons of its characteristics with other schemes,such as a MZI with a single ring resonator, are presented, and some of the issues about device design and fabrication are also discussed.