Selective Addressing of Versatile Nanodiamonds Physically-Enabled Classifier in Complex Biosystems.

Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers show great potential for nanoscale biosensing and bioimaging. Nevertheless, their envisioned bioapplications suffer from intrinsic background noise due to unavoidable light scattering and autofluorescence in cells and tissues. Herein, we develop a unique all-optical modulated imaging method via a physically enabled classifier, for on-demand and direct access to NV fluorescence at pixel resolution while effectively filtering out background noise.

Modularity-based mathematical modeling of ligand inter-nanocluster connectivity for unraveling reversible stem cell regulation.

The native extracellular matrix is continuously remodeled to form complex interconnected network structures that reversibly regulate stem cell behaviors. Both regulation and understanding of its intricate dynamicity can help to modulate numerous cell behaviors. However, neither of these has yet been achieved due to the lack of designing and modeling such complex structures with dynamic controllability.

Scalable Reshaping of Diamond Particles via Programmable Nanosculpting.

Diamond particles have many interesting properties and possible applications. However, producing diamond particles with well-defined shapes on a large scale is challenging because diamonds are chemically inert and extremely hard. Here, we show that air oxidation, a routine method for purifying diamonds, can be used to precisely shape diamond particles at scale.

Scalable production of ultraflat and ultraflexible diamond membrane.

Diamond is an exceptional material with great potential across various fields owing to its interesting properties. However, despite extensive efforts over the past decades, producing large quantities of desired ultrathin diamond membranes for widespread use remains challenging. Here we demonstrate that edge-exposed exfoliation using sticky tape is a simple, scalable and reliable method for producing ultrathin and transferable polycrystalline diamond membranes.

High-dimensional anticounterfeiting nanodiamonds authenticated with deep metric learning.

Physical unclonable function labels have emerged as a promising candidate for achieving unbreakable anticounterfeiting. Despite their significant progress, two challenges for developing practical physical unclonable function systems remain, namely 1) fairly few high-dimensional encoded labels with excellent material properties, and 2) existing authentication methods with poor noise tolerance or inapplicability to unseen labels. Herein, we employ the linear polarization modulation of randomly distributed fluorescent nanodiamonds to demonstrate, for the first time, three-dimensional encoding for diamond-based labels.

Photo-tunable hydrogels reveal cellular sensing of rapid rigidity changes through the accumulation of mechanical signaling molecules.

Cells use traction forces to sense mechanical cues in their environment. While the molecular clutch model effectively explains how cells exert more forces on stiffer substrates, it falls short in addressing their adaptation to dynamic mechanical fluctuations prevalent in tissues and organs. Here, using hydrogel with photo-responsive rigidity, we show that cells' response to rigidity changes is frequency dependent.

Dynamic Regulation of Cell Mechanotransduction through Sequentially Controlled Mobile Surfaces.

The physical properties of nanoscale cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) ligands profoundly impact biological processes, such as adhesion, motility, and differentiation. While the mechanoresponse of cells to static ligands is well-studied, the effect of dynamic ligand presentation with "adaptive" properties on cell mechanotransduction remains less understood. Utilizing a controllable diffusible ligand interface, we demonstrated that cells on surfaces with rapid ligand mobility could recruit ligands through activating integrin α5β1, leading to faster focal adhesion growth and spreading at the early adhesion stage.

Photonic control of ligand nanospacing in self-assembly regulates stem cell fate.

Extracellular matrix (ECM) undergoes dynamic inflation that dynamically changes ligand nanospacing but has not been explored. Here we utilize ECM-mimicking photocontrolled supramolecular ligand-tunable Azo self-assembly composed of azobenzene derivatives (Azo) stacked via cation-π interactions and stabilized with RGD ligand-bearing poly(acrylic acid). Near-infrared-upconverted-ultraviolet light induces -Azo-mediated inflation that suppresses cation-π interactions, thereby inflating liganded self-assembly.

Quantum-enhanced diamond molecular tension microscopy for quantifying cellular forces.

The constant interplay and information exchange between cells and the microenvironment are essential to their survival and ability to execute biological functions. To date, a few leading technologies such as traction force microscopy, optical/magnetic tweezers, and molecular tension-based fluorescence microscopy are broadly used in measuring cellular forces. However, the considerable limitations, regarding the sensitivity and ambiguities in data interpretation, are hindering our thorough understanding of mechanobiology.

Widefield Diamond Quantum Sensing with Neuromorphic Vision Sensors.

Despite increasing interest in developing ultrasensitive widefield diamond magnetometry for various applications, achieving high temporal resolution and sensitivity simultaneously remains a key challenge. This is largely due to the transfer and processing of massive amounts of data from the frame-based sensor to capture the widefield fluorescence intensity of spin defects in diamonds. In this study, a neuromorphic vision sensor to encode the changes of fluorescence intensity into spikes in the optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) measurements is adopted, closely resembling the operation of the human vision system, which leads to highly compressed data volume and reduced latency.

Super-resolution multicolor fluorescence microscopy enabled by an apochromatic super-oscillatory lens with extended depth-of-focus.

Planar super-oscillatory lens (SOL), a far-field subwavelength-focusing diffractive device, holds great potential for achieving sub-diffraction-limit imaging at multiple wavelengths. However, conventional SOL devices suffer from a numerical-aperture-related intrinsic tradeoff among the depth of focus (DoF), chromatic dispersion and focusing spot size. Here, we apply a multi-objective genetic algorithm (GA) optimization approach to design an apochromatic binary-phase SOL having a prolonged DoF, customized working distance (WD), minimized main-lobe size, and suppressed side-lobe intensity.

Margin-Maximized Norm-Mixed Representation Learning for Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis With Multi-Level Flux Features.

Early diagnosis and timely intervention are significantly beneficial to patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) has become an essential tool to facilitate the diagnosis of ASD, these sMRI-based approaches still have the following issues. The heterogeneity and subtle anatomical changes place higher demands for effective feature descriptors.

Reversible conversion between skyrmions and skyrmioniums.

Skyrmions and skyrmioniums are topologically non-trivial spin textures found in chiral magnetic systems. Understanding the dynamics of these particle-like excitations is crucial for leveraging their diverse functionalities in spintronic devices. This study investigates the dynamics and evolution of chiral spin textures in [Pt/Co]/Ru/[Co/Pt] multilayers with ferromagnetic interlayer exchange coupling.

Multimodal dynamic and unclonable anti-counterfeiting using robust diamond microparticles on heterogeneous substrate.

The growing prevalence of counterfeit products worldwide poses serious threats to economic security and human health. Developing advanced anti-counterfeiting materials with physical unclonable functions offers an attractive defense strategy. Here, we report multimodal, dynamic and unclonable anti-counterfeiting labels based on diamond microparticles containing silicon-vacancy centers.

Size-dependent response of cells in epithelial tissue modulated by contractile stress fibers.

Although cells with distinct apical areas have been widely observed in epithelial tissues, how the size of cells affects their behavior during tissue deformation and morphogenesis as well as key physical factors modulating such influence remains elusive. Here, we showed that the elongation of cells within the monolayer under anisotropic biaxial stretching increases with their size because the strain released by local cell rearrangement (i.e.

Static and Dynamic: Evolving Biomaterial Mechanical Properties to Control Cellular Mechanotransduction.

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a highly dynamic system that constantly offers physical, biological, and chemical signals to embraced cells. Increasing evidence suggests that mechanical signals derived from the dynamic cellular microenvironment are essential controllers of cell behaviors. Conventional cell culture biomaterials, with static mechanical properties such as chemistry, topography, and stiffness, have offered a fundamental understanding of various vital biochemical and biophysical processes, such as cell adhesion, spreading, migration, growth, and differentiation.

A multi-perspective information aggregation network for automated-staging detection of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

Accurate-staging is important when planning personalized radiotherapy. However,-staging via manual slice-by-slice inspection is time-consuming while tumor sizes and shapes are heterogeneous, and junior physicians find such inspection challenging. With inspiration from oncological diagnostics, we developed a multi-perspective aggregation network that incorporated various diagnosis-oriented knowledge which allowed automated nasopharyngeal carcinoma-staging detection (TSD Net).

Emerging Diamond Quantum Sensing in Bio-Membranes.

Bio-membranes exhibit complex but unique mechanical properties as communicative regulators in various physiological and pathological processes. Exposed to a dynamic micro-environment, bio-membranes can be seen as an intricate and delicate system. The systematical modeling and detection of their local physical properties are often difficult to achieve, both quantitatively and precisely.

All-Optical Modulation of Single Defects in Nanodiamonds: Revealing Rotational and Translational Motions in Cell Traction Force Fields.

Measuring the mechanical interplay between cells and their surrounding microenvironment is vital in cell biology and disease diagnosis. Most current methods can only capture the translational motion of fiduciary markers in the deformed matrix, but their rotational motions are normally ignored. Here, by utilizing single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in nanodiamonds (NDs) as fluorescent markers, we propose a linear polarization modulation (LPM) method to monitor in-plane rotational and translational motions of the substrate caused by cell traction forces.

An AIEgen/graphene oxide nanocomposite (AIEgen@GO)-based two-stage "turn-on" nucleic acid biosensor for rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 viral sequence.

The ongoing outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has posed significant challenges in early viral diagnosis. Hence, it is urgently desirable to develop a rapid, inexpensive, and sensitive method to aid point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 detection. In this work, we report a highly sequence-specific biosensor based on nanocomposites with aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgen)-labeled oligonucleotide probes on graphene oxide nanosheets (AIEgen@GO) for one step-detection of SARS-CoV-2-specific nucleic acid sequences ( or genes).

Ligand Mobility-Mediated Cell Adhesion and Spreading.

Cells live in a highly dynamic environment where their physical connection and communication with the outside are achieved through receptor-ligands binding. Therefore, a precise knowledge of the interaction between receptors and ligands is critical for our understanding of how cells execute different biological duties. Interestingly, recent evidence has shown that the mobility of ligands at the cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interface significantly affects the adhesion and spreading of cells, while the underlying mechanism remains unclear.

Chip-Scale In Situ Salinity Sensing Based on a Monolithic Optoelectronic Chip.

Salinity is an indispensable parameter for various applications such as biomedical diagnostics, environmental chemical analysis, marine monitoring, etc. Miniaturized salinity sensors have significant potential in portable applications in various scenarios and designs with highly desirable features of convenience, reliability, economy, and high sensitivity and also the capability of real-time measurements. Herein, we demonstrate a highly refractive index-sensitive sensor based on a microscale III-nitride chip that consists of a light emitter and a photodetector.

Compact GaN-based optical inclinometer.

In this Letter, a compact optical inclinometer in sub-centimeter size is proposed and demonstrated. A 1×1 mm GaN-on-sapphire chip composed of a light-emitting diode and photodetector is fabricated through wafer-scale processes and integrated with a spherical glass cavity with a diameter of 5 mm, which contains ethanol as a liquid pendulum. When applying inclinations relative to the horizon, the extent to which the chip is immersed in ethanol changes, thereby altering the amount of light received by the on-chip detector.