Micropipette Resonator Enabling Targeted Aspiration and Mass Measurement of Single Particles and Cells.

This paper reports micropipette resonators, mechanical resonator-integrated micropipettes, which enable selective aspiration and mass measurement of particles or cells suspended in liquids with two orthogonal vibration modes. A custom pipette pulling system is built to provide power-modulated linear heating on a rotating glass capillary to make an asymmetric cross section with extended uniformity.A glass capillary is stretched with the custom puller, cut within the pulled region, polished, mounted on a machined metallic jig, and then coated with a metal. As a result, a doubly clamped tube resonator-integrated micropipette is made. For simultaneous frequency readouts of two orthogonal modes, an optical pickup, originally developed for optical data storage, is configured closely above and properly aligned to the micropipette resonator and two digital phase-locked loops are employed. For mass responsivity calibration, frequency shifts of the micropipette resonator are measured with various liquids and glass microparticles. Buoyant masses of unicellular organisms, Paramecium aurelia, freely swimming in a culture dish are successfully measured with two orthogonal modes.

A study of direct moxibustion using mathematical methods.

Direct moxibustion is an important and widely used treatment method in traditional medical science. The use of a mathematical method to analyse direct moxibustion treatment is necessary and helpful in exploring the new direct moxibustion instruments and their standardisation. Thus, this paper aims to use a mathematical method to study direct moxibustion in skin to demonstrate a direct relationship between direct moxibustion and skin stimuli. In this paper, the transient thermal response of skin layers is analysed to study direct moxibustion using the data got from standardised method to measure the temperature of a burning moxa cone. Numerical simulations based on an appropriate finite element model are developed to predict the heat transfer, thermal damage and thermal stress distribution of barley moxa cones and jujube moxa cones in the skin tissue. The results are verified by the ancient literatures of traditional Chinese medicine and clinical application, and showed that mathematical method can be a good interface between moxa cone and skin tissue providing the numerical value basis for moxibustion.