Accurate and precise nucleic-acid quantification is crucial for clinical and diagnostic decisions, as overestimation or underestimation can lead to misguided treatment of a disease or incorrect labelling of the products. Digital PCR is one of the best tools for absolute nucleic-acid copy-number determination. However, digital PCR needs to be well characterised in terms of accuracy and sources o...

Water droplet impact on surfaces is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature and industry, where the time of contact between droplet and surface influences the transfer of mass, momentum and energy. To manipulate and reduce the contact time of impacting droplets, previous publications report tailoring of surface microstructures that influence the droplet - surface interface. Here we show that surface ...

The transient response of a millimeter-sized sessile droplet under electrical actuation is experimentally investigated. Under DC actuation, the droplet spreading rate increases as the applied voltage is increased due to the higher electrical forces induced. At sufficiently high DC voltages, competition between the electrical actuation force, droplet inertia, the retarding surface tension force ...

Using appropriate clinostat rotation methods, it has been shown that increases in root growth and geotropic curvature of oat coleoptiles are related to and explained (within the limits of auxin economy) by increased rates of plant respiration imparted by nullification of the gravitational stimulus. Increased respiration with decreased gravitational stimulus, in turn, is explained by increased u...

The outer membrane (OM) of the mammalian pathogen Leptospira kirschneri was isolated in the form of membrane vesicles by alkaline plasmolysis and separated from the protoplasmic cylinder by sucrose density gradient ultracentrifugation. All four components of the alkaline plasmolysis buffer, including 1.0 M NaCl, 27% sucrose (wt/vol), 2 mM EDTA, and 10 mM Tris (pH 9), were required for efficient...

Deformation of a rotating two-lobed liquid droplet was simulated numerically by solving the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations using the level set method. The two-lobed droplet was formed by rotating a spherical droplet; the droplet changed its shape from the sphere to the rotating ellipsoid, and to the two-lobed shape. It was found that the time histories of the deformation of two-lobed...

Irregularities in the perimeter of a water droplet adhering to a vertical pane of glass cause perturbations in the curvature of the droplet surface. When laser light passes through such a droplet, the perturbations produce a far field refraction caustic, which is a section of the caustic known as the parabolic umbilic in the catastrophe theory classification. As the water evaporates and the dro...