Nanoparticle enabled thermal control of ions in liquid crystals

Typically, ionic species in thermotropic liquid crystals are nearly fully ionised. Therefore, the concentration of mobile ions practically does not depend on the temperature. Interestingly, the same liquid crystals doped with nanoparticles exhibit totally different behaviour. The concentration of mobile ions become temperature dependent. This paper reports the effects of the temperature on the concentration of ions in liquid crystal nanocolloids. Liquid crystals doped with both 100% pure and contaminated nanoparticles are considered. Regardless the ionic purity of nanodopants, the concentration of mobile ions in liquid crystal nanocolloids increases towards the saturation as their temperature goes up. The magnitude of this saturation level equals the initial concentration of ions in liquid crystals doped with 100% pure nanoparticles. The temperature induced release of ions by contaminated nanoparticles in liquid crystals increases the above-mentioned saturation level. While the dispersion of 100% pure nanoparticles in liquid crystals leads to the temperature-dependent purification only, the use of contaminated nanoparticles results in the temperature-driven switching between the purification and contamination regimes enabling thermal control of ions.     

Immunocytochemical Localization of XRCC1 and γH2AX Foci Induced by Tightly Focused Femtosecond Laser Radiation in Cultured Human Cells

To assess the prospects for using intense femtosecond laser radiation in biomedicine, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms of its action on biological macromolecules, especially on the informational macromolecule—DNA. The aim of this work was to study the immunocytochemical localization of DNA repair protein foci (XRCC1 and γH2AX) induced by tightly focused femtosecond laser radiation in human cancer A549 cells. The results showed that no XRCC1 or γH2AX foci tracks were observed 30 min after cell irradiation with femtosecond pulses of 10¹¹ W∙cm⁻² peak power density. An increase in the pulse power density to 2 × 10¹¹ W∙cm⁻² led to the formation of linear tracks consisting both of XRCC1 and γH2AX protein foci localized in the places where the laser beam passed through the cell nuclei. A further increase in the pulse power density to 4 × 10¹¹ W∙cm⁻² led to the appearance of nuclei with total immunocytochemical staining for XRCC1 and γH2AX on the path of the laser beam. Thus, femtosecond laser radiation can be considered as a tool for local ionization of biological material, and this ionization will lead to similar effects obtained using ionizing radiation.     

Influence of the Degree of Deacetylation of Chitosan and BMP-2 Concentration on Biocompatibility and Osteogenic Properties of BMP-2/PLA Granule-Loaded Chitosan/β-Glycerophosphate Hydrogels

Compositions based on chitosan/β-glycerophosphate hydrogels with highly porous polylactide granules can be used to obtain moldable bone graft materials that have osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties. To eliminate the influence of such characteristics as chain length, degree of purification, and molecular weight on a designed material, the one-stock chitosan sample was reacetylated to degrees of deacetylation (DD%) of 19.5, 39, 49, 55, and 56. A study of the chitosan/β-glycerophosphate hydrogel with chitosan of a reduced DD% showed that a low degree of deacetylation increased the MSCs (multipotent stromal cells) viability rate in vitro and reduced the leukocyte infiltration in subcutaneous implantation to Wistar rats in vivo. The addition of 12 wt% polylactide granules resulted in optimal composite mechanical and moldable properties, and increased the modulus of elasticity of the hydrogel-based material by approximately 100 times. Excessive filling of the material with PLA (polylactide) granules (more than 20%) led to material destruction at a ~10% strain. Osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties of the chitosan hydrogel-based material with reacetylated chitosan (39 DD%) and highly porous polylactide granules impregnated with BMP-2 (bone morphogenetic protein-2) have been demonstrated in models of orthotopic and ectopic bone formation. When implanted into a critical-size calvarial defect in rats, the optimal concentration of BMP-2 was 10 μg/mL: bone tissue areas filled the entire material’s thickness. Implantation of the material with 50 μg/mL BMP-2 was accompanied with excessive growth of bone tissue and material displacement beyond the defect. Significant osteoinductive and osteoconductive properties of the material with 10 μg/mL of BMP-2 were also shown in subcutaneous implantation.     

On hyperbolicity cones associated with elementary symmetric polynomials

Elementary symmetric polynomials can be thought of as derivative polynomials of . Their associated hyperbolicity cones give a natural sequence of relaxations for . We establish a recursive structure for these cones, namely, that the coordinate projections of these cones are themselves hyperbolicity cones associated with elementary symmetric polynomials. As a consequence of this recursion, we give an alternative characterization of these cones, and give an algebraic characterization for one particular dual cone associated with together with its self-concordant barrier functional.     

A Formula for the Partition Function That “Counts”

We derive a combinatorial multisum expression for the number D(n, k) of partitions of n with Durfee square of order k. An immediate corollary is therefore a combinatorial formula for p(n), the number of partitions of n. We then study D(n, k) as a quasipolynomial. We consider the natural polynomial approximation \({\tilde{D}(n, k)}\) to the quasipolynomial representation of D(n, k). Numerically, the sum \({\sum_{1\leq k \leq \sqrt{n}} \tilde{D}(n, k)}\) appears to be extremely close to the initial term of the Hardy-Ramanujan-Rademacher convergent series for p(n).     

On Cohen-Macaulay modules over non-commutative surface singularities

We generalize the results of Kahn about a correspondence between Cohen-Macaulay modules and vector bundles to non-commutative surface singularities. As an application, we give examples of non-commutative surface singularities which are not Cohen-Macaulay finite, but are Cohen-Macaulay tame.     

Boundary-value problems for the Helmholtz equation and their discrete mathematical models

We consider boundary-value problems of mathematical diffraction theory and discuss the possibility of reducing them to boundary hypersingular integral equations and solving them numerically. The analytic technique of parametric representations of pseudodifferential and integral operators and the numerical method of discrete singularities are essentially used. We discuss the reasoning in applying this approach to constructing mathematical models of wave diffraction problems and solving them numerically.     

Asymptotic growth of trajectories of multifractional Brownian motion,with statistical applications to drift parameter estimation

We construct the least-square estimator for the unknown drift parameter in the multifractional Ornstein–Uhlenbeck model and establish its strong consistency in the non-ergodic case. The proofs are based on the asymptotic bounds with probability 1 for the rate of the growth of the trajectories of multifractional Brownian motion (mBm) and of some other functionals of mBm, including increments and fractional derivatives. As the auxiliary results having independent interest, we produce the asymptotic bounds with probability 1 for the rate of the growth of the trajectories of the general Gaussian process and some functionals of it, in terms of the covariance function of its increments.     

No Outliers in the Spectrum of the Product of Independent Non-Hermitian Random Matrices with Independent Entries

We consider products of independent square random non-Hermitian matrices. More precisely, let \(n\ge 2\) and let \(X_1,\ldots ,X_n\) be independent \(N\times N\) random matrices with independent centered entries (either real or complex with independent real and imaginary parts) with variance \(N^{-1}\). In Götze and Tikhomirov (On the asymptotic spectrum of products of independent random matrices, 2011. arXiv:1012.2710) and O’Rourke and Soshnikov (Electron J Probab 16(81):2219–2245, 2011) it was shown that the limit of the empirical spectral distribution of the product \(X_1\cdots X_n\) is supported in the unit disk. We prove that if the entries of the matrices \(X_1,\ldots ,X_n\) satisfy uniform subexponential decay condition, then the spectral radius of \(X_1\cdots X_n\) converges to 1 almost surely as \(N\rightarrow \infty \).     

Numerical solution of multiple nonlinear Volterra integral equations

We analyze a discretization method for solving nonlinear integral equations that contain multiple integrals. These equations include integral equations with a Volterra series, instead of a single integral term, on one side of the equation. We prove existence and uniqueness of solutions, and convergence and estimates of the order of convergence for the numerical methods of solution.