Particle-Induced Electrostatic Repulsion within an Electric Curtain Operating below the Paschen Limit.

The electric curtain is a platform developed to lift and transport charged particles in air. Its premise is the manipulation of charged particles; however, fewer investigations isolate dielectric forces that are observed at lower voltages (i.e.

Nanotube liquid crystal elastomers: photomechanical response and flexible energy conversion of layered polymer composites.

Elastomeric composites based on nanotube liquid crystals (LCs) that preserve the internal orientation of nanotubes could lead to anisotropic physical properties and flexible energy conversion. Using a simple vacuum filtration technique of fabricating nanotube LC films and utilizing a transfer process to poly (dimethyl) siloxane wherein the LC arrangement is preserved, here we demonstrate unique and reversible photomechanical response of this layered composite to excitation by near infra-red (NIR) light at ultra-low nanotube mass fractions. On excitation by NIR photons, with application of small or large pre-strains, significant expansion or contraction of the sample occurs, respectively, that is continuously reversible and three orders of magnitude larger than in pristine polymer.

Electrical detection of specific versus non-specific binding events in breast cancer cells.

Detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from patient blood samples offers a desirable alternative to invasive tissue biopsies for screening of malignant carcinomas. A rigorous CTC detection method must identify CTCs from millions of other formed elements in blood and distinguish them from healthy tissue cells also present in the blood. CTCs are known to overexpress certain surface receptors, many of which aid them in invading other tissue, and these provide an avenue for their detection.

Fas-ligand is stored in secretory lysosomes of ocular barrier epithelia and released with microvesicles.

Previously we described the release of hr44 from the ciliary epithelium to coincide with the loss of the late endosomal/lysosomal marker protein CD63 in mildly inflamed rat eyes. We showed that both proteins are released with microvesicles into the supernatant of cultured retinal pigmented epithelial cells (ARPE-19). Here we wish to determine whether there is a concomitant loss of fas-ligand (FasL) in vivo and whether ocular epithelial cells have secretory lysosomes similar to T cells, from where FasL and hr44 could derive.