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Microbubbles shelled with soft materials are expected to find applications as ultrasound-sensitive drug delivery systems, including through sonoporation. Microbubbles with specific vibrational characteristics and long intravascular persistence are required for clinical uses. To achieve this aim, the kinetics of the microbubble shell components at the gas/liquid interface while being subjected to ultrasound need to be better understood. This paper investigates the vibration characteristics and lifetime of single microbubbles coated with a poloxamer surfactant, Pluronic F-68, and 1,2-dimyristoyl

The radio acoustic sounding system (RASS) with the equatorial atmosphere radar (EAR) at Koto Tabang, Indonesia was adapted to test the effects of the acoustic source location and acoustic frequency range on the continuous measurement of height profiles of temperature in the tropical troposphere. We installed the acoustic transmitting system by using six high-power horn speakers and four subwoofers. We developed a three-dimensional ray-tracing method of acoustic waves to predict the shape of acoustic wavefronts, accounting for the effects of the background winds on acoustic wave propagation. Then, we selected the appropriate antenna beam directions for EAR that satisfy the Bragg condition between the radar and acoustic wave propagation vectors. We carried out eight campaign observations in 2016, testing the performance of EAR–RASS. We found that the location and acoustic frequency range affected the RASS echoes. We also tested the compensation method of the background wind velocity with EAR to obtain the true sound speed. We intensively analyzed the RASS results from August 29 to September 3, 2016, when radiosondes were launched 12 times from the EAR site. We successfully retrieved the temperature profiles from RASS from 2 to 6–14 km with time and height resolutions of about 10 min and 150 m, respectively. Some temperature profiles were obtained up to about the tropopause at 17 km, although the observation period was short. During the RASS campaign, we detected a few interesting events regarding temperature variations as well as large perturbations in the three components of wind velocity.

Hollow microcapsules have been considered for potential application as drug or gene carriers. Targeted drug or gene release to tumor vascular can be achieved by destroying the capsules by high-intensity ultrasound. This report investigates fabrication of microcapsules having biocompatible polylactic acid (PLA) shell and the mechanical property for the destruction under ultrasound irradiation. The PLA hollow microcapsules with the diameter of 1 to 35 μm were fabricated by double emulsion method. Red fluorescent dye which is substitute for drug was enclosed into the capsules. The capsules have trilaminar structure. Inner air is surrounded by red fluorescent, and the PLA shell encloses them. Shell thickness of capsules was distributed from 100 nm to 3 μm. Destruction of the fabricated capsules was investigated by using ultrasound pulse with the center frequencies from 500 kHz to 2 MHz. The behavior of capsule was observed by using an optical microscope under ultrasound irradiation. The frequency dependence of the capsule destruction was investigated and 35% of the capsules with the resonance size was destroyed with 400 kPa at 700 kHz. The capsule shell was ruptured by the ultrasound, and then the inner dye was released; the dye was completely released for 120 seconds under ultrasound irradiation.