Strain-Induced Orientation of Host Rings that Determines the Sliding of Guest Polymers and Plasticity of Glassy Polyrotaxane.

The unique motility of mechanically interlocked polymers enables their mechanical properties to profoundly transform. This property has been exploited less in glassy materials than in rubbery materials. This study demonstrated that in the glassy state the rings must orient before sliding and clarified the requisite structural changes by the synchrotron microbeam X-ray diffraction mapping of a ductile cyclodextrin (CD)-based glassy polyrotaxane.

Electrical Impedance Tomography-based Ventilation Patterns in Patients after Major Surgery.

General anesthesia and mechanical ventilation have negative impacts on the respiratory system, causing heterogeneous distribution of lung aeration, but little is known about the ventilation patterns of postoperative patients and their association with clinical outcomes. To clarify the phenotypes of ventilation patterns along a gravitational direction after surgery by using electrical impedance tomography (EIT) and to evaluate their association with postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) and other relevant clinical outcomes. Adult postoperative patients at high risk for PPCs, receiving mechanical ventilation on ICU admission ( = 128), were prospectively enrolled between November 18, 2021 and July 18, 2022.

Future directions of lung-protective ventilation strategies in acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is characterized by the heterogeneous distribution of lung aeration along a gravitational direction due to increased lung density. Therefore, the lung available for ventilation is usually limited to ventral, nondependent lung regions and has been called the "baby" lung. In ARDS, ventilator-induced lung injury is known to occur in nondependent "baby" lungs, as ventilation is shifted to ventral, nondependent lung regions, increasing stress and strain.

Experimental probing of dynamic self-organized columnar assemblies in colloidal liquid crystals.

Self-organized supramolecular assemblies are widespread in nature and technology in the form of liquid crystals, colloids, and gels. The reversible nature of non-covalent bonding leads to dynamic functions such as stimuli-responsive switching and self-healing, which are unachievable from an isolated molecule. However, multiple intermolecular interactions generate diverse conformational and configurational molecular motions over various time scales in their self-assembled states, and their specific dynamics remains unclear.

Factors Associated With Prolonged Ventilation in Patients Receiving Prone Positioning Protocol With Muscle Relaxants for Severe COVID-19 Pneumonia.

Background: Prone positioning and neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) are frequently used to treat severe respiratory failure from COVID-19 pneumonia. Prone positioning has shown to improve mortality, whereas NMBAs are used to prevent ventilator asynchrony and reduce patient self-inflicted lung injury. However, despite the use of lung-protective strategies, high death rates in this patient population have been reported.

Dynamic behaviours of epoxy resin thin films during the curing process.

Epoxy resin thin films are widely used in applications such as coating materials, insulator films, and adhesives; accordingly, investigations of their physical properties have garnered increasing importance. Although the physical properties of thermoset epoxy thin films are strongly affected by the curing conditions, such as the heating temperature and curing time, the dynamic properties during the curing process have not been studied thoroughly. In this study, we investigated the thermal fluctuations on the surface of epoxy resin thin films using grazing-incidence X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy, to elucidate the dynamic behaviours during the curing process.

Control of blood glucose levels by an artificial pancreas in patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 pneumonia.

Background: Many patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia experience hyperglycemia. It is often difficult to control blood glucose (BG) levels in such patients using standard intravenous insulin infusion therapy. Therefore, we used an artificial pancreas.

[Endobronchial Lipomatous Hamartoma Extended beyond a Bronchial Wall:Report of a Case].

Pulmonary hamartomas are common benign lung tumors. Most cases are parenchymal chondromatous hamartomas, whereas endobronchial lipomatous hamartomas are rarely encountered. A 78-year-old man was referred for left superior subsegmental atelectasis due to obstruction by an endobronchial tumor that was found incidentally on chest computed tomography for the postoperative follow-up of colon cancer.

[Excision of a Rapidly Enlarged Bronchogenic Cyst Infected after Endoscopic Ultrasound-guided Fine Needle Aspiration].

We report the case of a 75-year-old woman who developed acute mediastinitis from an infected bronchogenic cyst due to endoscopic ultrasound-guided transesophageal fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) for making diagnosis. The patient developed fever, chest pain, and discomfort after EUS-FNA. A repeat chest computed tomography( CT) demonstrated a rapidly increased size of the mediastinal mass.

Shrinking rates of polymer gels composed of star-shaped polymers of -isopropylacrylamide and dimethylacrylamide copolymers: the effect of dimethylacrylamide on the crosslinking network.

Thermoresponsive polymer gels can be applied as culture beds for cell sheets, drug release agents for drug delivery, and sensing materials. In general, the shrinkage behavior of thermoresponsive polymer gels is complex, and they may require much longer times than swelling to reach thermodynamically stable shrinkage states. This slow volume change during shrinkage is often a drawback in using reversible changes in polymer gel volumes with changing temperature for applications such as those described above, and attempts have been made to improve the shrinkage rates of polymer gels.

Heterogeneous dynamics in the curing process of epoxy resins.

Epoxy resin is indispensable for modern industry because of its excellent mechanical properties, chemical resistance, and excellent moldability. To date, various methods have been used to investigate the physical properties of the cured product and the kinetics of the curing process, but its microscopic dynamics have been insufficiently studied. In this study, the microscopic dynamics in the curing process of a catalytic epoxy resin were investigated under different temperature conditions utilizing X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy.

Anisotropic Amorphous X-ray Diffraction Attributed to the Orientation of Cyclodextrin.

The beauty of cyclic molecules is reflected in their host-guest complexation reactions, as well as their unique X-ray diffraction patterns. Cyclodextrins, the longest known host molecules with rigid ring structures, show anisotropic X-ray diffraction characteristic of their single-molecule structure, rather than their intermolecular relationships. Amorphous derivatives of α-cyclodextrin exhibit broad and strong halo diffractions in the solid, melted, and dilute solution states.

Dynamical Heterogeneity near Glass Transition Temperature under Shear Conditions.

We experimentally studied the shear effect on dynamical heterogeneity near glass transition temperature. X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy was utilized to study the dynamics of polyvinyl acetate with tracer particles near its glass transition temperature, to determine the local shear rate from the anisotropic behavior of the time autocorrelation function and to calculate the dynamical heterogeneity using higher-order correlation function. The obtained results show a decrease in the dynamical heterogeneity and faster dynamics with increasing shear rate.

Energy dissipation via the internal fracture of the silica particle network in inorganic/organic double network ion gels.

Inorganic/organic double network (DN) ion gels, which are composed of an inorganic silica particle network, an organic poly(N,N-dimethylacrylamide) (PDMAAm) network, and a large amount of ionic liquid, showed excellent mechanical strength of over 25 MPa compression fracture stress at an 80 wt% ionic liquid content. The excellent mechanical strength of these inorganic/organic DN ion gels was attributed to the energy dissipation of the inorganic/organic DN structure. It has been considered that the energy dissipation in inorganic/organic DN ion gels is caused by the internal fracture of the silica particle network, which is preferentially fractured by deformation.

Static structure and dynamical behavior of colloidal liquid crystals consisting of hydroxyapatite-based nanorod hybrids.

Biominerals such as bones and teeth have elaborate nanostructures composed of aligned anisotropic hydroxyapatite (HAp) nanocrystals, which results in excellent mechanical properties. Construction of such ordered structures of HAp nanocrystals in synthetic materials is challenging. Recently, we reported that HAp-nanorod-based colloidal liquid crystals could be obtained.

[Postoperatively Diagnosed Pulmonary Actinomycosis;Report of Three Cases].

Three cases of pulmonary actinomycosis have been postoperatively diagnosed in our hospital in the past 3 years. All the cases were preoperatively difficult to differentiate from lung cancer, and all were diagnosed in men. One of the patients was diagnosed on the basis of clinical symptoms, while the other 2 patients were diagnosed during the treatment and follow-up of other diseases.

Dynamical crossover between hyperdiffusion and subdiffusion of polymer-grafted nanoparticles in a polymer matrix.

The dynamical behavior of polystyrene-grafted silica nanoparticles dispersed in an atactic polystyrene matrix was studied using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy. The time-autocorrelation functions were subjected to fitting analyses based on continuous-time random walk models. The nanoparticles exhibited non-Brownian behavior, and as the temperature increased, the crossover from hyperdiffusion to subdiffusion occurred at 1.

Confinement-Induced Crystal Growth in One-Dimensional Isotactic Polystyrene Nanorod Arrays.

This work demonstrates the anomalous crystal growth of isotactic polystyrene (iPS) in nanorod arrays with different rod sizes. At the bottom of the nanorods, the crystals in bulk film grow into nanorods along either the [110] or [100] direction parallel to the rod axis. On the top side of the nanorods, the polymer exhibits different orientations corresponding to weak or strong confinement.

X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy using a fast pixel array detector with a grid mask resolution enhancer.

The performance of a fast pixel array detector with a grid mask resolution enhancer has been demonstrated for X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) measurements to investigate fast dynamics on a microscopic scale. A detecting system, in which each pixel of a single-photon-counting pixel array detector, PILATUS, is covered by grid mask apertures, was constructed for XPCS measurements of silica nanoparticles in polymer melts. The experimental results are confirmed to be consistent by comparison with other independent experiments.

A [2]rotaxane capped by a cyclodextrin and a guest: formation of supramolecular [2]rotaxane polymer.

A [2]rotaxane capped by a beta-cyclodextrin and a 2,4,6-trinitrophenyl group has been prepared by dissolving 6-aminocinnamoyl beta-cyclodextrin in water with 1-adamantane carboxylic acid and complexation with alpha-cyclodextrin followed by the reaction with 2,4,6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid sodium salt. The [2]rotaxane has been found to form supramolecular polymers by host-guest interactions.