Development of a Multiplexed Sphingolipids Method for Diagnosis of Inborn Errors of Ceramide Metabolism.

Background: Sphingolipids play a crucial role in cellular functions and are essential components of cell membranes, signaling molecules, and lipid metabolism. In particular, ceramide is a key intermediate in sphingolipid metabolism and defects in ceramide metabolism can lead to various inborn errors of metabolism, making ceramides important targets for clinical screening and diagnosis. Detecting altered concentration patterns of sphingolipids is desirable for distinguishing related inborn errors of metabolism for diagnosis and treatment monitoring.

Aberrations in ion channels interacting with lipid metabolism and epithelial-mesenchymal transition in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the most prevalent malignant gastrointestinal tumor. Ion channels contribute to tumor growth and progression through interactions with their neighboring molecules including lipids. The dysregulation of membrane ion channels and lipid metabolism may contribute to the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), leading to metastatic progression.

Light Modulation in Silicon Photonics by PZT Actuated Acoustic Waves.

Tailoring the interaction between light and sound has opened new possibilities in photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that range from achieving quantum control of light to high-speed information processing. However, the actuation of sound waves in Si PICs usually requires integration of a piezoelectric thin film. Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) is a promising material due to its strong piezoelectric and electromechanical coupling coefficient.

Design, fabrication and characterization of a distributed Bragg reflector for reducing the étendue of a wavelength converting system.

In this work, the design, fabrication and characterization are reported for a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) filter with a specific wavelength and angular dependency, which aims to improve the light collection from a wavelength-converter-based light source into a smaller angle than the full angle Lambertian emission. The desired design is obtained by optimizing the transmission characteristics of a multi-layer structure. Titania (TiO) and silica (SiO) are used as high and low refractive index materials, respectively.

Improvement of liquid crystal tunable lenses with weakly conductive layers using multifrequency driving.

A common technique to realize the gradient electric field profile that is required in liquid crystal tunable lenses is the use of a weakly conductive layer. Thanks to this layer, an applied voltage with a certain frequency allows us to obtain a refractive index profile that is required for the lens operation. Due to the limited degrees of freedom, however, it is not possible to avoid aberrations in a weakly conductive layer-based tunable lens for a continuously tunable focal length.

Nanophotonic Pockels modulators on a silicon nitride platform.

Silicon nitride (SiN) is emerging as a competitive platform for CMOS-compatible integrated photonics. However, active devices such as modulators are scarce and still lack in performance. Ideally, such a modulator should have a high bandwidth, good modulation efficiency, low loss, and cover a wide wavelength range.

Multi-electrode tunable liquid crystal lenses with one lithography step.

Electrically tunable lenses offer the possibility to control the focal distance by applying an electric field. Different liquid crystal tunable lenses have been demonstrated. In order to minimize lens aberrations, multi-electrode designs allow us to fine-tune the applied voltages for every possible focal distance.

Ferroelectric thin films with liquid crystal for gradient index applications.

We report on the first ever combination of a thin film of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) with a liquid crystal (LC) layer. Many liquid crystal applications use a transparent conductive oxide to switch the liquid crystal. Our proposed processing does not, instead relying on the extremely high dielectric constant of the ferroelectric layer to extend the electric field from widely spaced electrodes over the liquid crystal.

Soft computing model for optimized siRNA design by identifying off target possibilities using artificial neural network model.

The ability of small interfering RNA (siRNA) to do posttranscriptional gene regulation by knocking down targeted genes is an important research topic in functional genomics, biomedical research and in cancer therapeutics. Many tools had been developed to design exogenous siRNA with high experimental inhibition. Even though considerable amount of work has been done in designing exogenous siRNA, design of effective siRNA sequences is still a challenging work because the target mRNAs must be selected such that their corresponding siRNAs are likely to be efficient against that target and unlikely to accidentally silence other transcripts due to sequence similarity.

Preferentially oriented BaTiO3 thin films deposited on silicon with thin intermediate buffer layers.

Barium titanate (BaTiO3) thin films are prepared by conventional 2-methoxy ethanol-based chemical solution deposition. We report highly c-axis-oriented BaTiO3 thin films grown on silicon substrates, coated with a lanthanum oxynitrate buffer layer of 8.9 nm.

Affinity prediction for substrates of the peptide transporter PepT1.

A quantitative method has been developed for determining the affinity of substrates for the peptide transporter PepT1, allowing oral availability of drugs via PepT1 to be estimated.