Optimized light-matter interaction and defect hole placement in photonic crystal cavity sensors

Photonic crystal slab cavities were investigated for increased light-matter interaction based on selective placement of sublattice hole sized defect holes inside L3 cavities. A multiple-hole defect (MHD) consisting of three defect holes placed in the regions of highest cavity mode field intensity were demonstrated through finite-difference time-domain simulations and experiments to exhibit the strongest light-matter interaction without introducing significant scattering losses. Compared to an L3 cavity without defect holes, these strategically designed three-hole MHD cavities presented higher quality factor and more than double the resonance wavelength shift upon exposure to a thin oxide and two small chemical molecules.     

Striatal Isolated from Cyathus striatus Extracts Induces Apoptosis in Human Pancreatic Cancer Cells

The aim of the present study was to identify the structure of active compounds in Cyathus stratus that previously demonstrated anti-pancreatic cancer activity. The active compounds were purified from a crude extract by a series of RP-18 preparative chromatography using homemade octadecyl silica gel column. HPLC injection of the crude extract revealed a chromatogram with three main peaks with retention times (RT) 15.6, 18.2, and 22.5 min. Each fraction that exhibited promising activity in vitro was further separated using various available chromatographic techniques. The purified compound with the ultimate anti-cancer activity appeared at RT of 15.8 in the HPLC chromatogram with more than 90% purity. The main peak at the mass spectra appeared at m/z = 446.2304 with the calculated molecular formula of C₂₅H₃₄O₇. One- and two-dimensional NMR analyses indicated that the structure of the active molecule (peak 15.8 min in HPLC) was identified as striatal C. Exposure of human pancreatic cancer cells to purified striatal C resulted in induction of apoptosis. Further studies are needed in order to develop a method for the synthesis of striatal in order to use it in clinical studies for treatment of cancer.     

An inertial method for a solution of split equality of monotone inclusion and the f$$ f $$-fixed point problems in Banach spaces

In this paper, we propose an inertial algorithm for solving split equality of monotone inclusion and $f$-fixed point of Bregman relatively $f$-nonexpansive mapping problems in reflexive real Banach spaces. Using the Bregman distance function, we prove a strong convergence theorem for the algorithm produced by the method in real reflexive Banach spaces. In addition, we provide some applications of our method and give numerical results to demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed method.     

Studies on microgels, 3. Synthesis using living free radical polymerization

Microgels which are soluble crosslinked polymer networks have been prepared using the nitroxide living free radical polymerization methodology. When heated in the presence of tert-butylstyrene and 1,4-divinylbenzene, the alkoxyamine 1 derived from 2,2′-azoisobutyronitrile (AIBN) afforded a high molecular weight soluble polymer which was shown by size exclusion chromatography in conjunction with an on-line multi angle laser light scattering (MALLS) detector to have microgel properties.