Label-free cell separation and sorting in microfluidic systems

Cell separation and sorting are essential steps in cell biology research and in many diagnostic and therapeutic methods. Recently, there has been interest in methods which avoid the use of biochemical labels; numerous intrinsic biomarkers have been explored to identify cells including size, electrical polarizability, and hydrodynamic properties. This review highlights microfluidic techniques used for label-free discrimination and fractionation of cell populations. Microfluidic systems have been adopted to precisely handle single cells and interface with other tools for biochemical analysis. We analyzed many of these techniques, detailing their mode of separation, while concentrating on recent developments and evaluating their prospects for application. Furthermore, this was done from a perspective where inertial effects are considered important and general performance metrics were proposed which would ease comparison of reported technologies. Lastly, we assess the current state of these technologies and suggest directions which may make them more accessible.     

A high selective ion‐imprinted polymer grafted on a novel nanoporous material for efficient gold extraction

In this work, for the first time, an ion‐imprinted polymer was developed for selective extraction and determination of gold ions. To increase the sorbent efficiency, this polymer was coated on a novel nanoporous carbon‐based material, carbohydrate‐derived Max‐Planck Gesellschaft 1, which is also the first example of grafting imprinted polymer on nanoporous‐carbon material. These particles were applied successfully for preconcentration of ultratrace amount of gold ions, following determination by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. Some effective factors on the efficiency of gold ions extraction, such as concentration and volume of eluent, sample and eluent flow rates, and also effect of interfering ions especially palladium and platinum ions, were investigated. The LOD was determined to be 0.27 ng/mL. Furthermore, the precision of the method was calculated to be 2.14% under optimal conditions with recovery more than 97.3%. The technique was also used to determine the concentration of gold ions in mine stone samples with satisfactory results. The accuracy of this method was investigated by determination of gold ions concentrations in several reference materials with certified gold content.     

Systematic Modeling for Free Stators of Rotary Piezoelectric Ultrasonic Motors

This paper presents an equivalent circuit model with complex numbers that describes the free stator model of traveling-wave ultrasonic motors. The mechanical, dielectric, and piezoelectric losses associated with the vibrator are considered by introducing the imaginary part to the equivalent circuit elements. The determination of the complex circuit elements is performed by using a new, simple iterative method. The presented method uses information about five points of the stator admittance measurements. The accuracy of the model in fitting to the experimental data is verified by using the measurements of a recently developed piezoelectric motor and a well-known USR60     

Prime and primary submodules of certain modules

In this paper we characterize all prime and primary submodules of the free R-module R ⁿ for a principal ideal domain R and find the minimal primary decomposition of any submodule of R ⁿ . In the case n = 2, we also determine the height of prime submodules.     

Risk assessment,dynamic analysis and multi-objective optimization of a solar-driven hybrid gas/steam power plant

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - The paper focused on an analytical analysis of the main features of heat transfer in incompressible steady-state flow in a microconfusor with account...     

Heterocycle-bridged and Conformationally Constrained Retinoids: Synthesis of 4-(7,8,9,10-Tetrahydro-7,7,10,10-tetramethyl-4H-benzo[6,7]chromeno-[4,3-d]thiazole-2-yl)benzoic Acid

Retinoids are a class of synthetic and natural compounds structurally related to retinoic acid. In a search for discovery of a new class of heterocycle‐bridged and conformationally constrained retinoids, here we report the synthesis of 4‐(7,8,9,10‐tetrahydro‐7,7,10,10‐tetramethyl‐4H‐benzo[6,7]chromeno[4,3‐d]thiazole‐2‐yl)benzoic acid ( 10 ) starting from 5,6,7,8‐tetrahydro‐5,5,8,8‐tetramethylnaphthalen‐2‐ol ( 13 ). Several approaches was attempted to obtain target compound 10 . Structure elucidation of synthesized compounds has been made on the basis of elemental analysis and spectral data (¹H NMR, IR and MS).     

Module amenability of the second dual and module topological center of semigroup algebras

In this paper we define the module topological center of the second dual $\mathcal{A}^{**}$ of a Banach algebra $\mathcal{A}$ which is a Banach $\mathfrak{A}$ -module with compatible actions on another Banach algebra $\mathfrak{A}$ . We calculate the module topological center of ? ¹(S)^**, as an ? ¹(E)-module, for an inverse semigroup S with an upward directed set of idempotents E. We also prove that ? ¹(S)^** is ? ¹(E)-module amenable if and only if an appropriate group homomorphic image of S is finite.     

Ecowood Composites Made using Citric-Acidmodified Corn and Oil Palm Starches as the Binder

Mechanics of Composite Materials - The conventional wood-based composites contain an unreacted free formaldehyde, which causes a cancerous effect on humans. To overcome this problem,...