Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Conventional therapies, including surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy have achieved increased survival rates for many types of cancer over the past decades. However, cancer recurrence and/or metastasis to distant organs remain major challenges, resulting in a large, unmet clinical need. Oligonucleotide therapeutics, which include antisense oligonucleotides, small interfering RNAs, and aptamers, show promising clinical outcomes for disease indications such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, familial amyloid neuropathies, and macular degeneration. While no approved oligonucleotide drug currently exists for any type of cancer, results obtained in preclinical studies and clinical trials are encouraging. Here, we provide an overview of recent developments in the field of oligonucleotide therapeutics in oncology, review current clinical trials, and discuss associated challenges.

We study vortex formation in a Bose-Einstein condensate in a rotating double-well potential. Besides the ordinary quantized vortices and elusive ghost vortices, "hidden" vortices are found distributing along the central barrier. These hidden vortices are invisible like ghost vortex but carry angular momentum. Moreover, their core size is not given by the healing length, but is strongly influenced by the external potential. We find that the Feynman's rule can be well satisfied only after including the hidden vortices. There is no critical rotating frequency for the formation of hidden vortex while there is one for the formation of ordinary visible vortices. Hidden vortices can be revealed in the free expansion of the Bose-Einstein condensates. In addition, the hidden vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate can appear in other external potentials, such as a rotating anisotropic toroidal trap.

The mean ground state occupation number and condensate fluctuations of interacting and non-interacting Bose gases confined in a harmonic trap are considered by using a canonical ensemble approach. To obtain the mean ground state occupation number and the condensate fluctuations, an analytical description for the probability distribution function of the condensate is provided directly starting from the analysis of the partition function of the system. For the ideal Bose gas, the probability distribution function is found to be a Gaussian one for the case of the harmonic trap. For the interacting Bose gas, using a unified approach the condensate fluctuations are calculated based on the lowest-order perturbation method and on Bogoliubov theory. It is found that the condensate fluctuations based on the lowest-order perturbation theory follow the law δ 2 N0 ∼ N , while the fluctuations based on Bogoliubov theory behave as N 4/3 .

Recent investigation shows that the big bang is replaced by a big bounce by evolving the semiclassical states backwards. And the effective dynamics predicted by the effective Hamiltonian is shown to match very well with the evolution of the semiclassical state [9,10]. In the * Electronic address: jimhard@163.com †

In this paper, we study the possibility of building a model of the oscillating universe with quintom matter in the framework of 4-dimensional FriedmannRobertson-Walker background. Taking the two-scalar-field quintom model as an example, we find in the model parameter space there are five different types of solutions which correspond to: (I) a cyclic universe with the minimal and maximal values of the scale factor remaining the same in every cycle, (II) an oscillating universe with its minimal and maximal values of the scale factor increasing cycle by cycle, (III) an oscillating universe with its scale factor always increasing, (IV) an oscillating universe with its minimal and maximal values of the scale factor decreasing cycle by cycle, and (V) an oscillating universe with its scale factor always decreasing.

After removing the double-well potential trapping two initially independent Bose condensates, the density expectation value is calculated when both the exchange symmetry of identical bosons and interatomic interaction are considered. The density expectation value and evolution equations are obtained based on both the first-quantization and second-quantization methods. When the interatomic interaction is considered carefully, after the overlapping of two initially independent condensates, it is shown that there is a nonzero interference term in the density expectation value. It is found that the calculated density expectation value with this model agrees with the interference pattern observed in the experiment by Andrews et al (Science 275, 637 (1997)). The nonzero interference term in the density expectation value physically arises from the exchange symmetry of identical bosons and interatomic interaction which make two initially independent condensates become coherent after the overlapping. For two initially independent condensates, our researches show that there is an interaction-induced coherence process.

By generalizing the recently developed path integral molecular dynamics for identical bosons and fermions, we consider the finite-temperature <p>thermodynamic properties of fictitious identical particles with a real parameter ξ interpolating continuously between bosons (ξ=1) and fermions (ξ=-1). Through general analysis and numerical experiments we find that the average energy may have good analytical property as a function of this real parameter ξ, which provides the chance to calculate the thermodynamical properties of identical fermions by an extrapolation with a simple polynomial function after accurately calculating the thermodynamic properties of the fictitious particles for ξ{greater than or equal to}0. Using several examples, it is shown that our method can efficiently give accurate energy values for finite-temperature fermionic systems. Our work provides a chance to circumvent the fermion sign problem for some quantum systems.

We investigate the fluctuations of the condensate in the ideal and weakly interacting Bose gases confined in a box of volume V within canonical ensemble. Canonical ensemble is developed to describe the behavior of the fluctuations when different methods of approximation to the weakly interacting Bose gases are used. Research shows that the fluctuations of the condensate exhibit anomalous behavior for the interacting Bose gas confined in a box. 03.75.Fi, 05.30.Jp