In this paper, single cells adhesion force was measured using a nanofork. The nanofork was used to pick up a single cell on a line array substrate inside an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM). The line array substrate was used to provide small gaps between the single cells and the substrate. Therefore, the nanofork could be inserted through these gaps in order to successfully pick up a single cell. Adhesion force was measured during the cell pick-up process from the deflection of the cantilever beam. The nanofork was fabricated using focused ion beam (FIB) etching process while the line array substrate was fabricated using nanoimprinting technology. As to investigate the effect of contact area on the strength of the adhesion force, two sizes of gap distance of line array substrate were used, i.e., 1 μm and 2 μm. Results showed that cells attached on the 1 μm gap line array substrate required more force to be released as compared to the cells attached on the 1 μm gap line array substrate.
A novel design of nanoscopic volume transmitter and receiver for drug delivery system using a PANDA ring resonator is proposed. By controlling some suitable parameters, the optical vortices (gradient optical fields/wells) can be generated and used to form the trapping tools in the same way as the optical tweezers. By using the intense optical vortices generated within the PANDA ring resonator, the nanoscopic volumes (drug) can be trapped and moved (transport) dynamically within the wavelength router or network. In principle, the trapping force is formed by the combination between the gradient field and scattering photons, which is reviewed. The advantage of the proposed system is that a transmitter and receiver can be formed within the same system (device), which is called a transceiver, which is available for nanoscopic volume (drug volume) trapping and transportation (delivery).
Previously, direct-proportional length-based DNA computing (DPLB-DNAC) for solving weighted graph problems has been reported. The proposed DPLB-DNAC has been successfully applied to solve the shortest path problem, which is an instance of weighted graph problems. The design and development of DPLB-DNAC is important in order to extend the capability of DNA computing for solving numerical optimization problem. According to DPLB-DNAC, after the initial pool generation, the initial solution is subjected to amplification by polymerase chain reaction and, finally, the output of the computation is visualized by gel electrophoresis. In this paper, however, we give more attention to the initial pool generation of DPLB-DNAC. For this purpose, two kinds of initial pool generation methods, which are generally used for solving weighted graph problems, are evaluated. Those methods are hybridization-ligation and parallel overlap assembly (POA). It is found that for DPLB-DNAC, POA is better than that of the hybridization-ligation method, in terms of population size, generation time, material usage, and efficiency, as supported by the results of actual experiments.
Nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) composed of solid and liquid lipids, and surfactants are potentially good colloidal drug carriers. Before NLC can be used as drug carriers, the cytotoxicity of their components must be ascertained. The cytotoxicity of solid lipids (trilaurin, palmitin, docosanoid acid, and hydrogenated palm oil [HPO]) and surfactants (Polysorbate 20, 80, and 85) were determined on BALB/c 3T3 cells. The HPO and Polysorbate 80 were least cytotoxic and used with olive oil in the formulation of NLC. The particle size, polydispersity index, zeta potential, specific surface area, and crystallinity index of the NLC were 61.14 nm, 0.461, -25.4 mV, and 49.07 m(2) and 27.12% respectively, while the melting point was 4.3 °C lower than of HPO. Unlike in serum-free, NLC incubated in fetal bovine serum-supplemented medium did not show particle growth, suggesting that serum proteins in medium inhibit nanoparticles aggregation. The study also showed that NLC was less toxic to BALB/c 3T3 cells than Polysorbate 80. Thus, NLC with olive oil, HPO, and Polysorbate 80 as components are potentially good drug carriers with minimal cytotoxicity on normal cells.