Nano/Micro Science and Technology in Biorheology

Toshiaki Dobashi, PhD, Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Gunma University. Vice President of The Society of Rheology, Japan.. Associate Editor, Journal of Biorheology. Toshiaki Dobashi studied polymer physics at Hokkaido University, Japan and received his PhD in 1982 studying thermodynamic properties of multicomponent polymer solutions. From 1982 to 1988 he was Assistant Professor at Gunma University working on rheology of blood and blood vessels, and from 1988 to 2001 he was Associate Professor working on chemistry, physics and biological applications of microcapsules by means of light and ultrasonic scattering. Between 1994 and 1995 he joined the group of Prof. Benjamin Chu at State University of New York at Stony Brook as visiting associate professor for characterization of core-shell materials by synchrotron X-ray. Since 2001 he has been at the current position working on microrheology of soft matter such as gels, nanoparticles and cells. Rio Kita, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Tokai University. Rio Kita studied polymer physics at Gunma University, Japan and received his PhD in 1999 studying critical phenomena of polymer and surfactant solutions. From 1999 to 2002 he was a postdoctoral researcher at RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), Japan, working on characterizations of biopolymer solutions. In 2002 he joined the group of Prof. Wegner at MPI-P (Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research/Mainz), Germany where he was responsible to the service group of polymer analysis. Since 2005 he has joined the group of RGMS (Research Group of Molecular Complex Systems) at Tokai University, Japan. His current research interests include transport phenomena of polymers in a temperature gradient condition, dynamics of structure formation of polymers, and characterization of polymer solutions in dilute and semi-dilute regions.

1. Introduction and theoretical background.- 2. Rheological Aspects of Conformational Change and Molecular Aggregation of Macromolecules.- 3. Elongational Flow Birefringence Investigation of Dynamics of DNA Molecules.- 4. Nonequilibrium Structure Formation of Complex Bilayer Membrane Lamellar Phase Under Shear.- 5. Diffusion and thermal diffusion by means of dynamic light scattering and laser holography.- 6. Diffusion Measurements of Water and Polymers in Hydrogels by Pulsed Field Gradient NMR.- 7. Rheological Basis of Magnetic Resonance Elastography.- 8. Dynamics of Water, Biomaterials, and Skin Investigated by Means of Dielectric Relaxation Spectroscopy.- 9. Dynamics and Glass Transition of Aqueous Solutions of Molecular Liquid, Polymer, and Protein Studied by Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy.- 10. Biorheological aspect of microcapsules.- 11. Biomedical Application of Soft Nano/Micro-Particles.- 12. Control of the Multi-Scale Structure of Scaffolds and its Application in Tissue Engineering.- 13. Sensing of Biomolecules and Cells by Semiconductor Device.- 14. From Single-Molecule DNA Imaging to Development of a Gene Delivery System.- 15. Atomic Force Microscopy: Imaging and Rheology of Living Cells.- 16. Supplement.