Spectroscopic Investigation of Hydrogels Formed from Phenylalanine.

Supramolecular hydrogels assembled from amino acids, particularly offer promising prospects as biomimetic three-dimensional extracellular matrices. Phenylalanine, an aromatic amino acid, can self-assemble via hydrophobic interactions, notably through 𝜋 - 𝜋 stacking between phenyl rings. Although the self-assembly processes have been studied, the gelation mechanism of phenylalanine as an individual amino acid has received limited attention in the literature.

Ekman revisited: Surface currents to the left of the winds in the Northern Hemisphere.

Ekman's theory of wind-driven ocean currents on a rotating planet is central to our understanding of why surface currents are deflected to the right of the winds in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left of the winds in the Southern Hemisphere. The theory admits solutions for currents deflected in the opposite direction at periods shorter than the local inertial period, but Ekman did not mention these currents, and they have only rarely been observed. Here, we describe a prominent example of surface flow in the Bay of Bengal directed to the left of clockwise-rotating land breeze wind forcing using multiple years of data from a long-term deepwater surface moored buoy.