Liver-targeting iron oxide nanoparticles and their complexes with plant extracts for biocompatibility.

Thanks to their simple synthesis, controlled physical properties, and minimal toxicity, iron oxide nanoparticles (FeO NPs) are widely used in many biomedical applications (e.g., bioimaging, drug delivery, biosensors, diagnostics, and theranostics).

Preparation, acid modification and catalytic activity of kaolinite nanotubes in α-pinene oxide isomerization.

In this work kaolinite nanotubes (KNT) were obtained from commercial kaolin AKF-78 (Uzbekistan) by starting material sequential intercalation by DMSO and methanol, followed by treatment with a cetyltrimethylammonium chloride solution. Acid functionalization of KNT for catalytic applications was successfully performed for the first time using a two-step treatment with piranha solution (HSO-HO), which resulted in the removal of organic impurities as synthetic artifacts and an increase in specific surface area by 3.9 times (up to 159 m g), pore volume by 1.

Computational Reconstruction of the Transcription Factor Regulatory Network Induced by Auxin in L.

In plant hormone signaling, transcription factor regulatory networks (TFRNs), which link the master transcription factors to the biological processes under their control, remain insufficiently characterized despite their crucial function. Here, we identify a TFRN involved in the response to the key plant hormone auxin and define its impact on auxin-driven biological processes. To reconstruct the TFRN, we developed a three-step procedure, which is based on the integrated analysis of differentially expressed gene lists and a representative collection of transcription factor binding profiles.

Dipolar Microenvironment Engineering Enabled by Electron Beam Irradiation for Boosting Catalytic Performance.

Creating a diverse dipolar microenvironment around the active site is of great significance for the targeted induction of intermediate behaviors to achieve complicated chemical transformations. Herein, an efficient and general strategy is reported to construct hypercross-linked polymers (HCPs) equipped with tunable dipolar microenvironments by knitting arene monomers together with dipolar functional groups into porous network skeletons. Benefiting from the electron beam irradiation modification technique, the catalytic sites are anchored in an efficient way in the vicinity of the microenvironment, which effectively facilitates the processing of the reactants delivered to the catalytic sites.

Measurements of dichroic bow-tie antenna arrays with integrated cold-electron bolometers using YBCO oscillators.

We consider properties of dichroic antenna arrays on a silicon substrate with integrated cold-electron bolometers to detect radiation at frequencies of 210 and 240 GHz. This frequency range is widely used in cosmic microwave background experiments in space, balloon, and ground-based missions such as BICEP Array, LSPE, LiteBIRD, QUBIC, Simons Observatory, and AliCPT. As a direct radiation detector, we use cold-electron bolometers, which have high sensitivity and a wide operating frequency range, as well as immunity to spurious cosmic rays.

Skin-Inspired, Highly Sensitive, Broad-Range-Response and Ultra-Strong Gradient Ionogels Prepared by Electron Beam Irradiation.

Skin, characterized by its distinctive gradient structure and interwoven fibers, possesses remarkable mechanical properties and highly sensitive attributes, enabling it to detect an extensive range of stimuli. Inspired by these inherent qualities, a pioneering approach involving the crosslinking of macromolecules through in situ electron beam irradiation (EBI) is proposed to fabricate gradient ionogels. Such a design offers remarkable mechanical properties, including excellent tensile properties (>1000%), exceptional toughness (100 MJ m), fatigue resistance, a broad temperature range (-65-200°C), and a distinctive gradient modulus change.

The MAS4AI framework for human-centered agile and smart manufacturing.

Volatility and uncertainty of today's value chains along with the market's demands for low-batch customized products mandate production systems to become smarter and more resilient, dynamically and even autonomously adapting to both external and internal disturbances. Such resilient behavior can be partially enabled by highly interconnected Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) incorporating advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Multi-agent solutions can provide better planning and control, improving flexibility and responsiveness in production systems.

Synthesis and Antibiotic Activity of Chitosan-Based Comb-like Co-Polypeptides.

Infections caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria have been named one of the most urgent global health threats due to antimicrobial resistance. Considerable efforts have been made to develop new antibiotic drugs and investigate the mechanism of resistance. Recently, Anti-Microbial Peptides (AMPs) have served as a paradigm in the design of novel drugs that are active against multidrug-resistant organisms.

The influence of structure and local structural defects on the magnetic properties of cobalt nanofilms.

The present paper considers a mathematical model describing the time evolution of spin states and magnetic properties of a nanomaterial. We present the results of two variants of nanosystem simulations. In the first variant, cobalt with a structure close to the hexagonal close-packed crystal lattice was considered.

Molecular mechanisms of vascular tissue patterning in Arabidopsis thaliana L. roots.

A vascular system in plants is a product of aromorphosis that enabled them to colonize land because it delivers water, mineral and organic compounds to plant organs and provides effective communications between organs and mechanical support. Vascular system development is a common object of fundamental research in plant development biology. In the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, early stages of vascular tissue formation in the root are a bright example of the self-organization of a bisymmetric (having two planes of symmetry) pattern of hormone distribution, which determines vascular cell fates.

Structure and biological activity of particles produced from highly activated carbon adsorbent.

Over the recent years, carbon particles have gained relevance in the field of biomedical application to diminish the level of endo-/exogenous intoxication and oxidative stress products, which occur at different pathological states. However, it is very important that such carbon particles, specially developed for parenteral administration or usage, possess a high adsorption potential and can remove hazard toxic substances of the hydrophilic, hydrophobic and amphiphilic nature usually accumulated in the blood due to the disease, and be absolutely safe for normal living cells and tissues of organism. In this work, the stable monodisperse suspension containing very small-sized (D = 1125.

Tunable superconducting neurons for networks based on radial basis functions.

The hardware implementation of signal microprocessors based on superconducting technologies seems relevant for a number of niche tasks where performance and energy efficiency are critically important. In this paper, we consider the basic elements for superconducting neural networks on radial basis functions. We examine the static and dynamic activation functions of the proposed neuron.

In situ transport characterization of magnetic states in Nb/Co superconductor/ferromagnet heterostructures.

Employment of the non-trivial proximity effect in superconductor/ferromagnet (S/F) heterostructures for the creation of novel superconducting devices requires accurate control of magnetic states in complex thin-film multilayers. In this work, we study experimentally in-plane transport properties of microstructured Nb/Co multilayers. We apply various transport characterization techniques, including magnetoresistance, Hall effect, and the first-order-reversal-curves (FORC) analysis.

Densely Packed Tethered Polymer Nanoislands: A Simulation Study.

COordinated Responsive Arrays of Surface-Linked polymer islands (CORALS) allow for the creation of molecular surfaces with novel and switchable properties. Critical components of CORALs are the uniformly distributed islands of densely grafted polymer chains (nanoislands) separated by regions of bare surface. The grafting footprint and separation distances of nanoislands are comparable to that of the constituent polymer chains themselves.

Superconductivity in an extreme strange metal.

Some of the highest-transition-temperature superconductors across various materials classes exhibit linear-in-temperature 'strange metal' or 'Planckian' electrical resistivities in their normal state. It is thus believed by many that this behavior holds the key to unlock the secrets of high-temperature superconductivity. However, these materials typically display complex phase diagrams governed by various competing energy scales, making an unambiguous identification of the physics at play difficult.

Pristine quantum criticality in a Kondo semimetal.

The observation of quantum criticality in diverse classes of strongly correlated electron systems has been instrumental in establishing ordering principles, discovering new phases, and identifying the relevant degrees of freedom and interactions. At focus so far have been insulators and metals. Semimetals, which are of great current interest as candidate phases with nontrivial topology, are much less explored in experiments.

Molecular dynamics modeling of the influence forming process parameters on the structure and morphology of a superconducting spin valve.

This work is a study of the formation processes and the effect of related process parameters of multilayer nanosystems and devices for spintronics. The model system is a superconducting spin valve, which is a multilayer structure consisting of ferromagnetic cobalt nanolayers separated by niobium superconductor nanolayers. The aim was to study the influence of the main technological parameters including temperature, concentration and spatial distribution of deposited atoms over the nanosystem surface on the atomic structure and morphology of the nanosystem.

Controlling the proximity effect in a Co/Nb multilayer: the properties of electronic transport.

We present both theoretical and experimental investigations of the proximity effect in a stack-like superconductor/ferromagnetic (S/F) superlattice, where ferromagnetic layers with different thicknesses and coercive fields are made of Co. Calculations based on the Usadel equations allow us to find the conditions at which switching from the parallel to the antiparallel alignment of the neighboring F-layers leads to a significant change of the superconducting order parameter in superconductive thin films. We experimentally study the transport properties of a lithographically patterned Nb/Co multilayer.

Proximity effect in [Nb(1.5 nm)/Fe()]/Nb(50 nm) superconductor/ferromagnet heterostructures.

We have investigated the structural, magnetic and superconduction properties of [Nb(1.5 nm)/Fe()] superlattices deposited on a thick Nb(50 nm) layer. Our investigation showed that the Nb(50 nm) layer grows epitaxially at 800 °C on the AlO(1-102) substrate.

Adaptive Hybrid Molecular Brushes Composed of Chitosan, Polylactide, and Poly(-vinyl pyrrolidone) for Support and Guiding Human Dermal Fibroblasts.

Hybrid molecular brushes (HMBs) are macromolecular constructs made up of a backbone polymer and side-chain polymers with distinct properties. They adapt to a changing microenvironment via the conformational mechanism and thus may affect mammalian cell proliferation. Two biobenign HMBs were synthesized in this work: (1) polylactide (PLA) grafted to the chitosan (CHI) backbone to form chitosan--polylactide (CHI--PLA), a two-component molecular brush, and (2) poly(-vinyl pyrrolidone) (PNVP) grafted to chitosan moieties of CHI-PLA to form a three-component HMB.

[Theory and practice of aging upon COVID-19 pandemic.].

Never before in history, aging was such a significant factor for epidemics as it is now for the current COVID-19 pandemic, which features a drastic shift of mortality towards older ages. Our analysis of data on COVID-19-related mortality in Spain, Italy, and Sweden has shown that, in the range of 30 to 90 years of age, each dependency of the logarithm of mortality upon age is linear, and all regression lines are strictly parallel to those related to the total mortality in accordance with the Gompertz law. In all cases, irrespective of the stage and place of epidemic, mortality doubling time in this age range is close to 7,5 years.