The Importance of Quantifying the Composition of the Amorphous Intermixed Phase in Organic Solar Cells.

The relation of phase morphology and solid-state microstructure with organic photovoltaic (OPV) device performance has intensely been investigated over the last twenty years. While it has been established that a combination of donor:acceptor intermixing and presence of relatively phase-pure donor and acceptor domains is needed to get an optimum compromise between charge generation and charge transport/charge extraction, a quantitative picture of how much intermixing is needed is still lacking. This is mainly due to the difficulty in quantitatively analyzing the intermixed phase, which generally is amorphous.

Autoreactivity in naïve human fetal B cells is associated with commensal bacteria recognition.

Restricted V(D)J recombination during fetal development was postulated to limit antibody repertoire breadth and prevent autoimmunity. However, newborn serum contains abundant autoantibodies, suggesting that B cell tolerance during gestation is not yet fully established. To investigate this apparent paradox, we evaluated the reactivities of more than 450 antibodies cloned from single B cells from human fetal liver, bone marrow, and spleen.

Accumulation of Antigen-Driven Lymphoproliferations in Complement Receptor 2/CD21 B Cells From Patients With Sjögren's Syndrome.

Objective: Patients with Sjögren's syndrome (SS) are prone to develop malignant lymphomas, and a correlation has been established between the lymphoproliferations occurring in these disorders and the presence in patients' blood of an unusual B cell population that down-regulates complement receptor 2/CD21. This study was undertaken to identify the B cell compartment from which these lymphoproliferations emerge and determine the mechanisms that promote clonal B cell expansion in patients with SS.

Methods: The reactivity of antibodies expressed by CD19+CD10-CD27-IgM+CD21 cells isolated from the blood of patients with SS was tested using a polymerase chain reaction-based approach that allows us to clone and express, in vitro, recombinant antibodies produced by single B cells.

Defective Early B Cell Tolerance Checkpoints in Sjögren's Syndrome Patients.

Objective: Central and peripheral B cell tolerance checkpoints are defective in many patients with autoimmune diseases, but the functionality of each discrete checkpoint has not been assessed in patients with Sjögren's syndrome (SS). We undertook this study to assess this functionality in SS patients.

Methods: Using a polymerase chain reaction-based approach that allows us to clone and express, in vitro, recombinant antibodies produced by single B cells, we tested the reactivity of recombinant antibodies cloned from single CD19+CD21 CD10+IgM CD27- newly emigrant/transitional B cells and CD19+CD21+CD10-IgM+CD27- mature naive B cells from 5 SS patients.

Bright conjugated polymer nanoparticles containing a biodegradable shell produced at high yields and with tuneable optical properties by a scalable microfluidic device.

This study compares the performance of a microfluidic technique and a conventional bulk method to manufacture conjugated polymer nanoparticles (CPNs) embedded within a biodegradable poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether-block-poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PEG-PLGA) matrix. The influence of PEG-PLGA and conjugated polymers cyano-substituted poly(p-phenylene vinylene) (CN-PPV) and poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole) (F8BT) on the physicochemical properties of the CPNs was also evaluated. Both techniques enabled CPN production with high end product yields (∼70-95%).