Incorporation and release behavior of amitriptylene in core-shell-corona type triblock copolymer micelles

A cationic antidepressant drug, amitriptylene (AMT), was successfully incorporated into core-shell-corona micelles of poly[styrene-b-sodium 2-(acrylamido)-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonate-b-ethylene oxide] (PS-b-PAMPS-b-PEO). Zeta-potential measurements revealed that both electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions contributed to the binding of the drug to the polymer. The AMT/PS-b-PAMPS-b-PEO nanocomplexes were characterized by dynamic light scattering, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The hydrodynamic diameter of the AMT loaded nanocomplexes decreased from 80 to 40nm depending on the amount of the drug loaded on the polymer. This is attributed to the cancellation of the negative charge of the PAMPS group by the cationic drug. The AMT/PS-b-PAMPS-b-PEO nanocomplexes were stable in aqueous solution exhibiting no aggregation or no precipitation for several months. Release of the AMT from the nanocomplexes was investigated in vitro in salt-free and 0.1M NaCl solutions. The drug was released faster in the 0.1M NaCl solution than in the salt-free solution. This is due to the shielding effect of the salt on the electrostatic interaction. However, in both cases, the drug release mainly occurs by the Fickian diffusion mechanism.     

The uniqueness of the integrated density of states for the Schrödinger operators with magnetic fields

The integrated density of states (IDS) for the Schr?dinger operators is defined in two ways: by using the counting function of eigenvalues of the operator restricted to bounded regions with appropriate boundary conditions or by using the spectral projection of the whole space operator. A sufficient condition for the coincidence of the two definitions above is given. Moreover, a sufficient condition for the coincidence of the IDS for the Dirichlet boundary conditions and the IDS for the Neumann boundary conditions is given. The proof is based only on the fundamental items in functional analysis, such as the min-max principle, etc. Received August 26, 1999; in final form February 21, 2000 / Published online February 5, 2001     

Polynomial combinatorial algorithms for skew-bisubmodular function minimization

Mathematical Programming - Huber et al. (SIAM J Comput 43:1064–1084, 2014) introduced a concept of skew bisubmodularity, as a generalization of bisubmodularity, in their complexity dichotomy...     

Characterizing the universal rigidity of generic tensegrities

Mathematical Programming - A tensegrity is a structure made from cables, struts, and stiff bars. A d-dimensional tensegrity is universally rigid if it is rigid in any dimension $$d'$$ with...