The COVID-19 pandemic is one of those global challenges that transcends territorial, political, ideological, religious, cultural, and certainly academic boundaries. Public health and healthcare workers are at the frontline, working to contain and to mitigate the spread of this disease. Although intervening biological and immunological responses against viral infection may seem far from the physical sciences and engineering that typically work with inanimate objects, there actually is much that canand shouldbe done to help in this global crisis. In this Perspective, we convert the basics of infectious respiratory diseases and viruses into physical sciences and engineering intuitions, and through this exercise, we present examples of questions, hypotheses, and research needs identified based on clinicians' experiences. We hope researchers in the physical sciences and engineering will proactively study these challenges, develop new hypotheses, define new research areas, and work with biological researchers, healthcare, and public health professionals to create user-centered solutions and to inform the general public, so that we can better address the many challenges associated with the transmission and spread of infectious respiratory diseases.

Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) assembly is a classical molecular thin-film processing technique, in which the material is spread onto water surface from a volatile, water-immiscible solvent to create floating monolayers that can be later transferred to solid substrates. LB has also been applied to prepare colloidal thin films with an unparalleled level of microstructural control and thickness, which has enabled the discovery of many exciting collective properties of nanoparticles and the construction of bulk nanostructured materials. To maximize the benefits of LB assembly, the nanoparticles should be well dispersed in both the spreading solvent and on water. This is quite challenging since colloids usually need contrasting surface properties in order to be stable in the water-hating organic solvents and on water surface. In addition, many organic and polymeric nanostructures dissolve in those organic solvents and cannot be processed directly. Using water-liking spreading solvents can avoid this dilemma. However, spreading of water-miscible solvents on water surface is fundamentally challenging due to extensive mixing, which results in significant material loss. Here we report a conceptually simple strategy and a general technique that allows nearly exclusive spreading of such solvents on water surface using electrospray. Since the volume of these aerosolized droplets is reduced by many orders of magnitude, they are readily depleted during the initial spreading step before any significant mixing could occur. The new strategy drastically reduces the burden of material processing prior to assembly and broadens the scope of LB assembly to previously hard-to-process materials. It also avoids the use of toxic volatile organic spreading solvents, improves the reproducibility, and can be readily automated, making LB assembly a more robust tool for colloidal assembly and thin-film fabrication.

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Uniformly sized microspheres of poly(d, l-lactic-co-glycolic) (PLGA) encapsulating tamoxifen(TAM) were successfully prepared by solvent evaporation. In this study three different polylactide-co-glycolides were used with differing lactide-glycolide ratios (50:50, 75:25, and 85:15, respectively). The sphere size distribution and morphology was analyzed using Laser Particle Size Analyzer and SEM. The drug loading and release in vitro of the microspheres were also investigated. The result showed that the microspheres have good spherical and better sustained release.