Monodisperse microcapsules with ultra-thin membranes are microfluidically designed to be highly sensitive to osmotic pressure, thereby providing a tool for the direct measurement of the osmotic strength. To make such osmocapsules, water-in-oil-in-water double-emulsion drops with ultra-thin shells are prepared as templates through emulsification of core-sheath biphasic flow in a capillary microf...

The nuclear envelope mediates nucleocytoplasmic communication. Nuclear pores transport proteins and RNA into and out of the nucleus. The pore is believed to allow free ion diffusion. Using an electrophysiological approach, we show the possible semipermeable properties of the envelope. To accomplish these functions we hypothesize a mechanism in which the pore complex acts as a molecular diaphragm.

We designed a flexible probe to record both neuroelectrical and neurochemical activities (Figure 1). This probe has four microelectrodes for neural recording and a fluidic channel covered with a semipermeable membrane; the membrane is used for microdialysis in the brain. We measured impedance of the electrodes, and examined the leakage of dialysate from the fluidic channel in vitro.

By implementing the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann theory in a cell model, we theoretically investigate the influence of polyelectrolye gel permeability on ion densities and pH deviations inside the cavities of ionic microcapsules. Our calculations show that variations in permeability of a charged capsule shell cause a redistribution of ion densities within the capsule, which ultimately affects th...

In this paper, we obtain an explicit representation of the transition density of the one-dimensional skew Brownian motion with (a constant drift and) two semipermeable barriers. Moreover we propose a rejection method to simulate this density in an exact way.