PoroFluidics: deterministic fluid control in porous microfluidics.

Microfluidic devices with open lattice structures, equivalent to a type of porous media, allow for the manipulation of fluid transport processes while having distinct structural, mechanical, and thermal properties. However, a fundamental understanding of the design principles for the solid structure in order to achieve consistent and desired flow patterns remains a challenge, preventing its further development and wider applications. Here, through quantitative and mechanistic analyses of the behavior of multi-phase phenomena that involve gas-liquid-solid interfaces, we present a design framework for microfluidic devices containing porous architectures (referred to as poroFluidics) for deterministic control of multi-phase fluid transport processes.

Change of indocyanine green clearance ability and liver function after transcatheter intra-arterial therapies and its impact on outcomes of resectable hepatocellular carcinoma: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Indocyanine green (ICG) clearance test is a classical measurement of hepatic reserve, which involves surgical safety and patient recovery of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The authors aim to compare effects of hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy (HAIC) and transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) on liver function and outcomes of subsequent hepatectomy.

Material And Methods: HCC patients receiving HAIC/TACE in SYSUCC with repeated ICG clearance tests were retrospectively enrolled.

Microwave Regenerable Nickel, Zinc Co-doped Nitrogen-Coordinated Porous Carbon Catalyst for Nitrogen Fixation.

More than 90% of the global NH synthesis is dominated by the Haber-Bosch process, which consumes 2% of the worldwide energy and generates 1.44% of the global carbon emission. The electrochemical N reduction reaction (NRR) is regarded as an attractive alternative route to produce NH under mild reaction conditions, but the electrocatalysts suffer from the difficulty of N≡N cleavage.

Combining Organoid Models with Next-Generation Sequencing to Reveal Tumor Heterogeneity and Predict Therapeutic Response in Breast Cancer.

Estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer (BC) is a common subtype of BC with a relatively good prognosis. However, recurrence and death from ER+ BC occur because of tumor heterogeneity. This study aimed to explore tumor heterogeneity using next-generation sequencing (NGS) and tumor-organoid models to promote BC precise therapy.

Efficacy of a virtual reality-based basic and clinical fused curriculum for clinical education on the lumbar intervertebral disc.

Objective: Today, minimally invasive procedures have become mainstream surgical procedures. Percutaneous endoscopic transforaminal discectomy for lumbar disc herniation (LDH) requires profound knowledge of the laparoscopic lumbar anatomy. Immersive virtual reality (VR) provides three-dimensional patient-specific models to help in the process of preclinical surgical preparation.

Rupture of Liquid Bridges on Porous Tips: Competing Mechanisms of Spontaneous Imbibition and Stretching.

Liquid bridges are commonly encountered in nature and the liquid transfer induced by their rupture is widely used in various industrial applications. In this work, with the focus on the porous tip, we studied the impacts of capillary effects on the liquid transfer induced by the rupture through numerical simulations. To depict the capillary effects of a porous tip, a time scale ratio, , is proposed to compare the competing mechanisms of spontaneous imbibition and external drag.

Cracking to curling transition in drying colloidal films.

Drying-induced cracking is widely encountered in nature and is of fundamental interest in industrial applications. During desiccation, the evolution of water content is nonlinear. Considering the inhomogeneous procedure of desiccation, it is worth considering whether water content will affect the crack pattern formation.

Effect of Wetting Transition during Multiphase Displacement in Porous Media.

The effects of wettability on multiphase displacement in porous media have been studied extensively in the past, and the contact angle is identified as an important factor influencing the displacement patterns. At the same time, it has been found that the effective contact angle can vary drastically in a time-dependent manner on rough surfaces due to the Cassie-Wenzel wetting transition. In this study, we develop a theoretical model at the pore scale describing the apparent contact angle on a rough interface as a function of time.

Morphodynamics of a dense particulate medium under radial explosion.

In this paper, we investigate the initiation and growth of instability patterns arising from the shock loaded internal surfaces of granular rings confined in a Hele-Shaw cell using both experimental and numerical approaches. A variety of patterns are formed in granular media consisting of grains with varying morphologies. When the particle shape becomes increasingly irregular, and/or the gap in the Hele-Shaw cell becomes narrower, it is increasingly hard for confined particles to fluidize.

Particle-shape-, temperature-, and concentration-dependent thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids.

In this study, using the Green-Kubo-method-based molecular dynamics simulations, correlations for predicting the thermophysical properties of nanofluids are developed based on particle shape, fluid temperature, and volume concentration. Silver nanofluids with various nanoparticle shapes including spheres, cubes, cylinders, and rectangular prisms are investigated. The numerical study is conducted within the concentration range 0.

Atomistic Study of Dynamic Contact Angles in CO-Water-Silica System.

The dynamic wetting for the CO-water-silica system occurring in deep reservoirs is complex because of the interactions among multiple phases. This work aims to quantify the contact angle of CO-water flow in the silica channel at six different flow velocities using molecular dynamics. The dynamic contact angle values at different contact line velocities are obtained for the CO-water-silica system.

Tailoring porous media for controllable capillary flow.

Hypothesis: Control of capillary flow through porous media has broad practical implications. However, achieving accurate and reliable control of such processes by tuning the pore size or by modification of interface wettability remains challenging. Here we propose that the liquid flow by capillary penetration can be accurately adjusted by tuning the geometry of porous media.

Coarse-grained modeling of multiphase interactions at microscale.

The objective of this study is to develop and test a coarse-grained molecular dynamics framework to model microscale multiphase systems with different inter-particle interactions and recover emerging thermodynamic and mechanical properties at the microscale. A water-vapor model and a fused silica model are developed to demonstrate the capability of our framework. The former can reproduce the water density and surface tension over a wide range of temperatures; the latter can reproduce experimental density, tensile strength, and Young's modulus of fused silica.

Dual hierarchical particle jetting of a particle ring undergoing radial explosion.

We study experimentally the formation of a dual hierarchical jetting pattern in dry dense particle media subjected to the radially divergent shock loadings in a radial Hele-Shaw cell. The distinct internal and external jetting patterns were formed on the internal and external surfaces of a ring at different times, respectively. The former features dozens of radially aligned fine filaments.

Universality of the emergent scaling in finite random binary percolation networks.

In this paper we apply lattice models of finite binary percolation networks to examine the effects of network configuration on macroscopic network responses. We consider both square and rectangular lattice structures in which bonds between nodes are randomly assigned to be either resistors or capacitors. Results show that for given network geometries, the overall normalised frequency-dependent electrical conductivities for different capacitor proportions are found to converge at a characteristic frequency.

Evaporation Limited Radial Capillary Penetration in Porous Media.

The capillary penetration of fluids in thin porous layers is of fundamental interest in nature and various industrial applications. When capillary flows occur in porous media, the extent of penetration is known to increase with the square root of time following the Lucas-Washburn law. In practice, volatile liquid evaporates at the surface of porous media, which restricts penetration to a limited region.

Static friction between rigid fractal surfaces.

Using spheropolygon-based simulations and contact slope analysis, we investigate the effects of surface topography and atomic scale friction on the macroscopically observed friction between rigid blocks with fractal surface structures. From our mathematical derivation, the angle of macroscopic friction is the result of the sum of the angle of atomic friction and the slope angle between the contact surfaces. The latter is obtained from the determination of all possible contact slopes between the two surface profiles through an alternative signature function.

Scalable surface area characterization by electrokinetic analysis of complex anion adsorption.

By means of the in situ electrokinetic assessment of aqueous particles in conjunction with the addition of anionic adsorbates, we develop and examine a new approach to the scalable characterization of the specific accessible surface area of particles in water. For alumina powders of differing morphology in mildly acidic aqueous suspensions, the effective surface charge was modified by carboxylate anion adsorption through the incremental addition of oxalic and citric acids. The observed zeta potential variation as a function of the proportional reagent additive was found to exhibit inverse hyperbolic sine-type behavior predicted to arise from monolayer adsorption following the Grahame-Langmuir model.