Phthalates Impair Estrogenic Regulation of HIF2α and Extracellular Vesicle Secretion by Human Endometrial Stromal Cells.

Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), a known endocrine-disrupting chemical, is a plasticizer found in many common consumer products. High levels of DEHP exposure have been linked to adverse pregnancy outcomes, yet little is known about how it affects human uterine functions. We previously reported that the estrogen-regulated transcription factor hypoxia-inducible factor 2 alpha (HIF2α) promotes the expression of Rab27b, which controls the trafficking and secretion of extracellular vesicles (EVs).

Far-field mapping and efficient beaming of second harmonic by a plasmonic metagrating.

We study numerically and experimentally the second-harmonic generation (SHG) from rectangular metagratings of V-shaped gold nanoantennas. We show that by carefully engineering the array pitch to steer the diffraction orders toward the single antenna emission, the extracted signal is maximized. This enhancement is attributed to the angular overlap between the radiation pattern and array factor and is comparable to the improvement yielded by the coupling of surface lattice resonances (SLRs) with local modes.