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The vasculature is regulated by various chemical and mechanical factors. Reproducing these factors in vitro is crucial for the understanding of the mechanisms underlying vascular diseases and the development of new therapeutics and delivery techniques. Microfluidic technology offers opportunities to precisely control the level, duration and extent of various cues, providing unprecedented capabilities to recapitulate the vascular microenvironment. In the first part of this article, we review existing microfluidic technology that is capable of controlling both chemical and mechanical factors regulating the vascular microenvironment. In particular, we focus on micro-systems developed for controlling key parameters such as oxygen tension, co-culture, shear stress, cyclic stretch and flow patterns. In the second part of this article, we highlight recent advances that resulted from the use of these microfluidic devices for vascular research.

While microalgae oil was perceived as the preferred feedstock to supply the inelastic global demand for biofuel, industry and academia attempts to create viable microalgae-oil production processes has not reach the desired goal yet. UniVerve Ltd. has developed an innovative technological process that provides a scalable, cost effective and sustainable solution for the production of microalgae-biomass. The oil, which can be extracted with off-the-shelf wet-extraction technologies and used as an excellent feedstock for all kinds of biofuel, is expected to be produced at up to US$50 per barrel. As the biomass also contains omega-3, proteins and other valuable biomaterials that can be commercialized in the food and feed markets, a microalgae farm can serve the biofuel, food and feed industries, which currently face an increasing lack of quality feedstock at an affordable price.

Ultra-thin body Double Gate MOS structures with strained silicon are investigated by solving the 1-D Schrödinger and Poisson equations, with open boundaries conditions on the wave functions in the gate electrodes. The electrostatics of this device architecture and its dependence on the amount of strain and on the thickness of the silicon layer is analyzed in terms of subband structure, subband population, carrier distribution within the strained-silicon layer, charge-voltage characteristics and gate tunneling current.