Due to the undesired impact of gravity, experimental studies of energy-dissipative gaseous systems are difficult to carry out on ground. In the past several years, we developed a series of experimental devices suitable for various kinds of microgravity platforms. The central idea adopted in our devices is to use long-range magnetic forces to excite all the particles within the system. Through the development of our devices, different component configurations, excitation protocols, and image-capturing methods have been tried and optimized to achieve best excitation and the maximum capability for data analysis.

Allopurinol (ALP), a xanthine oxidase inhibitor, is an FDA-approved urate-lowering medication used to treat Gout, prevent tumor lysis syndrome, and prevent recurrent calcium nephrolithiasis in hyperuricosuria patients. However, it has been known as a common cause of severe cutaneous adverse drug reactions (SCAR) including Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN), hypersensitivity syndrome/drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms (HSS/DRESS), especially in patients carrying the Human Leukocyte Antigens allele HLA-B*58:01, which is more prevalent in Asian population. However, although patients do not carry the HLA-B*58:01 allele, they still exhibit allopurinol-induced SCAR. Surprisingly, a large number of these patients have the HLA-A*33:03 allele. In this research, we investigated the binding of ALP to the HLA-A*33:03 structure using Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation. Our results showed that the complex of HLA-A*33:03 and ALP was stable after 100000 ps simulation time. ALP had strong interactions with three important residues locating in the active site of HLA-A*33:03, which include the seven amino acid residues Val 76, Asp 77, Leu 81, Ile 95, Gln 96, Asp 116, and Tyr 123. This data suggests that ALP has strong binding affinity for this allele. Thus, in addition to HLA-B*58:01, HLA-A*33:03 may be a potential screening marker before prescribing Allopurinol for Gout treatment.

The temperature and magnetic field dependence of the critical current density (J c) and pinning force density (F p) in Bi 1.6 Pb 0.4 Sr 2 Ca 2Àx Na x Cu 3 O 10+d (x = 0, 0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.08, and 0.10) high-temperature superconductors is reported. Polycrystalline samples were prepared by a conventional solid-state reaction route. The influence of Na substitution on J c and F p at temperatures ranging between 65 K and 25 K was investigated. The collective pinning model is successfully applied to describe the magnetic field dependence of J c for all the samples investigated. Magnetic field-temperature phase diagrams were also constructed to illustrate the effects of Na substitution in different field regions. The power-law dependence of the maximum F p (F p,max) versus the irreversibility field (B irr) at different temperatures shows nearly unchanged exponent values, suggesting temperature independence of the flux pinning mechanism in the Na-substituted samples. The dominant pinning mechanism is confirmed to be dl pinning, induced by fluctuations in the mean free path of charge carriers.