Immuno‐Chemotherapeutic Platinum(IV) Prodrugs of Cisplatin as Multimodal Anticancer Agents

There is growing consensus that the clinical therapeutic efficacy of some chemotherapeutic agents depends on their off‐target immune‐modulating effects. Pt anticancer drugs have previously been identified to be potent immunomodulators of both the innate and the adaptive immune system. Nevertheless, there has been little development in the rational design of Pt‐based chemotherapeutic agents to exploit their immune‐activating capabilities. The FPR1/2 formyl peptide receptors are highly expressed in immune cells, as well as in many metastatic cancers. Herein, we report a rationally designed multimodal Pt^IV prodrug containing a FPR1/2‐targeting peptide that combines chemotherapy with immunotherapy to achieve therapeutic synergy and demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.     

The Impact of Foaming Effect on the Physical and Mechanical Properties of Foam Glasses with Molecular-Level Insights

Foaming effect strongly impacts the physical and mechanical properties of foam glass materials, but an understanding of its mechanism especially at the molecular level is still limited. In this study, the foaming effects of dextrin, a mixture of dextrin and carbon, and different carbon allotropes are investigated with respect to surface morphology as well as physical and mechanical properties, in which 1 wt.% carbon black is identified as an optimal choice for a well-balanced material property. More importantly, the different foaming effects are elucidated by all-atomistic molecular dynamics simulations with molecular-level insights into the structure–property relationships. The results show that smaller pores and more uniform pore structure benefit the mechanical properties of the foam glass samples. The foam glass samples show excellent chemical and thermal stability with 1 wt.% carbon as the foaming agent. Furthermore, the foaming effects of CaSO₄ and Na₂HPO₄ are investigated, which both create more uniform pore structures. This work may inspire more systematic approaches to control foaming effect for customized engineering needs by establishing molecular-level structure–property–process relationships, thereby, leading to efficient production of foam glass materials with desired foaming effects.     

Viscoelastic flow in a two-dimensional collapsible channel

We compute the flow of three viscoelastic fluids (Oldroyd-B, FENE-P, and Owens blood model) in a two-dimensional channel partly bounded by a tensioned membrane, a benchmark geometry for fluid–structure interactions. The predicted flow patterns are compared to those of a Newtonian liquid. We find that computations fail beyond a limiting Weissenberg number. Flow fields and membrane shape differ significantly because of the different degree of shear thinning and molecular extensibility underlying the three different microstructural models.     

Internal transitions of negatively charged magnetoexcitons and many body effects in a two-dimensional electron gas

Internal transitions of quasi-two-dimensional, negatively charged magnetoexcitons ( X-) and their evolution with excess electron density have been studied in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells. In the dilute electron limit, due to magnetic translational invariance, the optically detected resonance spectra are dominated by bound-to-continuum bands in contrast to the negatively charged donor system D-, which exhibits strictly bound-to-bound transitions. With increasing excess electron density Landau-level filling factors nu<2 the X--like transitions are blueshifted; they are absent for nu>2. The blueshifted transitions are explained in terms of a new type of collective excitation---magnetoplasmons bound to a mobile valence band hole.     

A new ac electrospray mechanism by Maxwell-Wagner polarization and capillary resonance

We report a new high-frequency (>10 kHz) ac electrospray that is capable of generating micron-sized electroneutral drops. Unlike its dc counterpart, the drops are not ejected continuously from a sharp Taylor cone but intermittently from a resonating meniscus at the orifice. We attribute the resonant frequency to the capillary-inertia vibration time of the meniscus and the drop ejection to the Maxwell-Wagner electric stress at the drop tip, which is observed to reverse its direction across a crossover frequency. Above this frequency, the oppositely directed Maxwell-Wagner force causes the liquid to recede up the microneedle as an apparent electrowetting effect.     

On matching and total domination in graphs

A set M of edges of a graph G is a matching if no two edges in M are incident to the same vertex. A set S of vertices in G is a total dominating set of G if every vertex of G is adjacent to some vertex in S. The matching number is the maximum cardinality of a matching of G, while the total domination number of G is the minimum cardinality of a total dominating set of G. In this paper, we investigate the relationships between the matching and total domination number of a graph. We observe that the total domination number of every claw-free graph with minimum degree at least three is bounded above by its matching number, and we show that every k-regular graph with k?3 has total domination number at most its matching number. In general, we show that no minimum degree is sufficient to guarantee that the matching number and total domination number are comparable.