The capillary instability of a liquid thread containing a periodic array of particles along the centerline is considered with reference to micro-encapsulation. The Navier–Stokes equation for axisymmetric flow inside and outside the thread is solved using an immersed boundary method implemented on a boundary-fitted orthogonal curvilinear grid that conforms with the particle shape. Numerical simu...

The carbohydrate derived nonionic gemini surfactants have been emerged as a result of our present day interest in environmentally compatible chemicals. Reverse micelles formed by surfactants can be used for selective solubilization and reactions which exploit their nanometer size, micro-environments and mimics the membranous biological system. Novel carbohydrate based non-ionic gemini surfactan...

Proteins and peptides are attractive chemical building blocks to encapsulate protect active substances thanks their biocompatibility, biodegradability, low immunogenicity, added functionality compared synthetic polymers. This review provides a comprehensive overview of micro- nanocapsules predominantly made proteins—both natural artificially produced—and peptides, detailing different fabricatio...

Polystyrene (PS) hollow beads with holes on the surfaces are employed as containers for quick loading and encapsulation of a variety of contrast enhancement agents: saline solutions for thermoacoustic tomography, iodinated organic compounds for micro-computed tomography, and perfluorooctane for magnetic resonance. Because of the hole on the surface of the PS hollow bead, the contrast agent to b...

The main challenge in hepatic tissue engineering is the fast dedifferentiation of primary hepatocytes in vitro. One successful approach to maintain hepatocyte phenotype on the longer term is the cultivation of cells as aggregates. This paper demonstrates the use of an agarose micro-well chip for the high throughput generation of hepatocyte aggregates, uniform in size. In our study we observed t...

Controlling the assembly of cells in three dimensions is very important for engineering functional tissues, drug screening, probing cell-cell/cell-matrix interactions, and studying the emergent behavior of cellular systems. Although the current methods of cell encapsulation in hydrogels can distribute them in three dimensions, these methods typically lack spatial control of multi-cellular organ...

BACKGROUND Filamentous bacteria of the genus Streptomyces produce a large arsenal of industrially relevant antibiotics and enzymes. The industrial production of these molecules occurs in large fermenters, where many streptomycetes form dense mycelial networks called pellets. Pellets are characterized by slow growth and inefficient nutrient transfer and therefore regarded as undesirable from the...