Separation of compounds out of complex mixtures is a key issue that has been solved for small molecules by chromatography. However, general methods for the separation of large bio-particles, such as cells, are still challenging. We demonstrate integration of imprinted polymeric films (IPF) into a microfluidic chip, which preferentially capture cells matching an imprint template, and separate strains of cyanobacteria with 80-90% efficiency, despite a minimal difference in morphology and fluorescence, demonstrating its general nature. It is currently thought that the imprinting process, conducted while the polymer cures, transfers chemical information of the cell's external structure to the substrate. Capture specificity and separation can be further enhanced by orienting the imprints parallel to the flow vector and tuning the pH to a lower range.

Configurations of supercooled liquids residing in their local potential minimum (i.e. in their inherent structure, IS) were found to support a non-zero shear stress. This IS stress was attributed to the constraint to the energy minimization imposed by boundary conditions, which keep size and shape of the simulation cell fixed. In this paper we further investigate the influence of these boundary conditions on the IS stress. We investigate its importance for the computation of the low frequency shear modulus of a glass obtaining a consistent picture for the low-and high frequency shear moduli over the full temperature range. Hence, we find that the IS stress corresponds to a non-thermal contribution to the fluctuation term in the Born-Green expression. This leads to an unphysical divergence of the moduli in the low temperature limit if no proper correction for this term is applied. Furthermore, we clarify the IS stress dependence on the system size and put its origin on a more formal basis.

Hematopoietic stem cells are larger in size than other cells present in bone marrow, with the exception of monocytes. This distinguishing characteristic can be used to separate them from a whole-marrow sample. A microfluidic device was fabricated using an integrated membrane that is porous at defined areas. This allows for simultaneous valving and filtering functionality, which is crucial for preventing irreversible clogging. This device, as well as a separation procedure, was optimized in this work to enrich hematopoietic progenitor cells from diluted bone marrow of leukemia patients without any additional sample preparation. An enrichment of up to 98% was achieved with this method and the process was scaled up to 17.2 μL min(-1) of processed sample. Additionally, stem cells were stained with specific antibodies for further analysis. Using a custom-made computer program, the filter was scanned to characterize and quantify cells based on fluorescence. The results were evaluated by comparing them against the results obtained from flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and Coulter counting.

The Soft Glassy Rheology (SGR) model is a mesoscopic framework which proved to be very successful in describing flow and deformation of various amorphous materials phenomenologically (e.g. pastes, slurries, foams etc). In this paper, we cast SGR in a general, model independent framework for nonequilibrium thermodynamics called General Equation for the Nonequilibrium Reversible-Irreversible Coupling (GENERIC). This leads to a new formulation of SGR which clarifies how it can properly be coupled to hydrodynamic fields, resulting in a thermodynamically consistent, local, continuum version of SGR. Additionally, we find that compliance with thermodynamics imposes the existence of a modification to the stress tensor as predicted by SGR.

By use of an intramolecular criterion, i.e., the direct proportionality between mean square dimension and chain length, theta conditions for linear chains and ring shaped polymers are evaluated for several types of cubic lattice chains (simple cubic, body centered cubic, and face centered cubic). The properties of the rings are evaluated for the same thermodynamic conditions under which they are prepared thus allowing for a natural amount of knots which have been identified by use of Alexander polynomials. For the limit of infinite chain lengths the same theta parameter is found for linear chains and rings. On the contrary, a significant theta point depression occurs due to an additional excluded volume effect if unknots are exclusively regarded. Parameters characteristic of the shape of rings and chains under theta conditions extrapolated to infinite chain length fairly well coincide with respective data for random walks. Mean square dimensions (characteristic of the size) of theta systems are slightly in excess as compared to nonreversal random walks due to the necessity of avoiding overlaps on a local scale. Furthermore athermal systems are studied as well for comparison; mean square dimensions are described by use of scaling relations with proper short chain corrections, shape parameters are given in the limit of infinite chain length.