Investigating the fluorescence in C-dots immobilised on alginate hydrogels-a study on diffusion kinetics and adsorption mechanisms.

Immobilisation of fluorescent carbon dots (C-dots) in a hydrogel matrix, such as alginates, prevents fluorescence quenching in bioimaging and biosensing applications. However, critical parameters influencing the fluorescence, including the diffusion kinetics of C-dots and their distribution within the hydrogel matrix, remain unexplored. Herein, we investigated two distinct methods for immobilising C-dots within alginate hydrogel beads: (i) adsorption and (ii) premixing the C-dots prior to hydrogel cross-linking.

Microwave-Fluidic Continuous Manufacturing of Ultrasmall Silver Nanoparticles in a Polycaprolactone Matrix as Antibacterial Coatings.

Fast, energy-efficient, and continuous manufacturing of nanoparticles (NPs) with controlled size and distribution in polymer matrices is challenging. Herein, a microwave-powered dual-injection continuous flow reactor is presented to prepare silver NP (AgNP)/polycaprolactone (PCL) nanocomposites (AgNP/PCL NCs). Ultrasmall spherical AgNPs (US-AgNPs, 1.

Nanomaterial-based scaffolds for bone regeneration with piezoelectric properties.

For proper cellular growth, to prepare tissue scaffold mimicking the tissue properties is a significant challenge. Bone is a vital organ supporting the whole human body for its function. The efficiencies in its structure for a variety of reasons should properly be remedied.

The effects of geopolitical and political risks on corporate ESG practices.

This study examines how companies modify their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices in reaction to geopolitical and political risks, presenting a unique empirical methodology that simultaneously addresses internal (political) and external (geopolitical) macroeconomic vulnerabilities. We use a comprehensive firm-level sample of 37 countries from 2002 to 2022 (42,587 firm years). Utilizing risk management and financial resilience theory, we define ESG as a dynamic, responsive mechanism by which corporations alleviate undiversifiable shocks.

Higher social class is associated with higher contextualized emotion recognition accuracy across cultures.

We tested links between social status and emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) with participants from a diverse array of cultures and a new model and method of ERA, the Assessment of Contextualized Emotion (ACE), which incorporates social context and is linked to different types of social interaction across cultures. Participants from the Czech Republic (Study 1) and from 12 cultural groups in Europe, North America, and Asia (Study 2) completed a short version of the ACE, a self-construal scale, and the MacArthur Subjective Social Status (SSS) scale. In both studies, higher SSS was associated with more accuracy.

Visual search efficiency is modulated by symmetry type and texture regularity.

More than a century of vision research has identified symmetry as a fundamental cue, which aids the visual system in making inferences about objects and surfaces in natural scenes. Most studies have focused on one type of symmetry, reflection, presented at a single image location. However, the visual system responds strongly to other types of symmetries and to symmetries that are repeated across the image plane to form textures.

Durable ZrB-ZrC Composite Materials as Advanced Electrodes for High-Performance Supercapacitors.

Boride and carbide-based materials attract increasing attention as promising options for energy storage applications. This research focuses on synthesizing pure boride and carbide compounds of zirconium (ZrB and ZrC) and their composite powders using mechanical activation-assisted route and subsequent heating processes. The chemical and microstructural characterization results indicate that the synthesized composite powders are of high purity, possess submicron-scale particle sizes (below 400 nm), and exhibit a high surface area of up to 9.

Optimizing Curing Profiles of One-Component Epoxy Resins with Small Molecule Thermal Latent Curing Agents Containing Reversible Urea Bonds.

This study focused on the synthesis of small-molecule thermal latent curing agents (TLCs) containing reversible urea bonds and their utilization in one-component epoxy resins (OCERs). The TLCs were synthesized by reacting aromatic monoisocyanates with linear aliphatic amines with primary and secondary amino groups and characterized by NMR, FTIR, TGA, and DSC. The TLCs were then incorporated into diglycidyl ether bisphenol A (DGEBA) resin at 60 °C to formulate OCERs and assess their effectiveness.

Wearable armband with a floating mobile exploratory electrode at fingertip for on-demand touch-and-measure multilead electrocardiography.

Spurred by the global pandemic, research in health monitoring has pivoted towards the development of smart garments, enabling long-term tracking of individuals' cardiovascular health by continuously monitoring the electrocardiogram (ECG) and detecting any abnormality in the signal morphology. Many types of dry electrodes have been proposed as alternatives to gold standard Ag/AgCl wet electrodes, and they have been integrated into clothes capable of acquiring only a limited number of the different ECG traces. This limitation severely diminishes the diagnostic utility of the collected ECG data and obstructs the garment's potential for clinical-level evaluation.

Assessment of aqueous graphene as a cancer therapeutics delivery system.

Graphene is a nanomaterial used in health and oncology settings. However, several reports have raised the alarm about potential toxicity. This study addressed this concern and determined the in vitro cytotoxicity of few-layer graphene (FLG) flakes produced in bespoke ultrasonic reactors using benign methods.

Noncoding elements in wheat defence response to fusarium head blight.

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is a major source of global food security while various stressors, including biotic and abiotic factors, directly affect its production. Among these stressors, Fusarium infection poses a significant risk, leading to severe yield losses, and compromising the overall quality of the crop.

A Thermodynamic Cycle to Predict the Competitive Inhibition Outcomes of an Evolving Enzyme.

Understanding competitive inhibition at the molecular level is essential for unraveling the dynamics of enzyme-inhibitor interactions and predicting the evolutionary outcomes of resistance mutations. In this study, we present a framework linking competitive inhibition to alchemical free energy perturbation (FEP) calculations, focusing on dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) and its inhibition by trimethoprim (TMP). Using thermodynamic cycles, we relate experimentally measured binding constants ( and ) to free energy differences associated with wild-type and mutant forms of DHFR with a mean error of 0.

Brain Functional Connectivity During First- and Third-Person Visual Imagery.

The ability to adopt different perspectives, or vantage points, is fundamental to human cognition, affecting reasoning, memory, and imagery. While the first-person perspective allows individuals to experience a scene through their own eyes, the third-person perspective involves an external viewpoint, which is thought to demand greater cognitive effort and different neural processing. Despite the frequent use of perspective switching across various contexts, including modern media and in therapeutic settings, the neural mechanisms differentiating these two perspectives in visual imagery remain largely underexplored.

OXPHOS inhibition overcomes chemoresistance in triple negative breast cancer.

The hypothesis of a significant shift from oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) to glycolysis in a number of solid tumors has been dominant for many years. Recently, however, evidence has begun to accumulate that OXPHOS is the major mode of energy production in many neoplasias, especially those that have undergone chemo- or radiotherapy, and especially in chemoresistant malignancies. In the present work, we demonstrated that chemoresistant triple-negative breast cancer cells prefer to obtain energy via OXPHOS to a greater extent than cells sensitive to chemotherapeutic agents, and therefore the former can be affected by some OXPHOS inhibitors.

Phase-dependent optical, photocatalytic and capacitive properties of tungsten oxide nanowires.

Transition metal oxides hold great promise across a wide range of applications due to favorable properties such as high abundance, low toxicity, and excellent stability. Nanoengineering approaches are essential for controlling the structural, optical, and electronic properties of these materials, enabling the achievement of desired characteristics in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. In this study, we synthesize stoichiometric (WO) and sub-stoichiometric (WO) tungsten oxide nanowires by controlling their phases and morphologies through the hydrothermal method.

Quantum sensing to monitor changes in free radical generation by intracellular vesicles of polarized macrophages.

Macrophages are immune cells crucial in clearing our tissues from bacteria, viruses, dying cells, cell debris and other waste products. They also regulate inflammation by differentiating from non-activated (M0) cells into macrophages that initiate inflammation (pro-inflammatory macrophages, M1), or resolve inflammation (anti-inflammatory macrophages, M2). One of their key functions is to ingest pathogens within vesicles where they are degraded.

Nutrient limitations on photosynthesis: from individual to combinational stresses.

Liebig's law of the minimum states that increasing photosynthetic productivity on nutrient-impoverished soils depends on addressing the most limiting nutrient. Research has identified the roles of different mineral nutrients in photosynthetic processes. However, diffusional and biochemical regulation of photosynthesis both feature patterns of cumulative effects that jointly determine photosynthetic capacity.

The versatile role of YidC in membrane protein biosynthesis and quality control.

Membrane proteins are essential for bacterial survival, facilitating vital processes such as energy production, nutrient transport, and cell wall synthesis. YidC is a key player in membrane protein biogenesis, acting as both an insertase and a chaperone to ensure proper protein folding and integration into the lipid bilayer. Its conserved structure and adaptability enable it to mediate co-translational and post-translational protein insertion into the membrane through both Sec-dependent and Sec-independent pathways.

Dyadic daily examination of repetitive thought and well-being in bereaved parents.

We aimed to investigate the bidirectional associations of repetitive thought (i.e., rumination, yearning) with individual (grief levels, depressive symptoms) and relational well-being in bereaved parents who lost their child during pregnancy, labor, or afterward.

Uncovering parental ethnotheories in Türkiye: Parental beliefs and practices linkage.

Parental ethnotheories delineate culturally shared beliefs about the nature of children and normative parenting in a particular cultural niche. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, we assessed parental ethnotheories in a non-White, educated, industrialized, rich, and developed cultural context of Türkiye and developed a parental beliefs scale (PBS) with a culturally informed emic approach in two studies. Study 1 relied on semistructured interviews with 125 Turkish parents (79 mothers, 46 fathers) to better understand parents' beliefs on the child's nature and proper parenting with particular attention to the key demographic characteristics reflecting intracultural diversity.

The interactive role of odor associations in friendship preferences.

Who we choose to befriend is highly personal, driven by idiosyncratic preferences about other individuals, including sensory cues. How does a person's unique sensory evaluation of others' body odor affect friendship formation? Female participants took part in a speed-friending event where they made judgments of friendship potential (FP) following a 4-minute live interaction. Prior to and following the speed-friending event, participants judged the FP of these women based solely on diplomatic odor (including daily perfume/hygiene products) presented on worn t-shirts.

Rapid and sensitive biosensing of uropathogenic E. coli using plasmonic nanohole arrays on MIM: Bridging the gap between lab and clinical diagnostics.

This study introduces a novel biosensing platform, Plasmonic Array Nanohole Technology on Metal-Insulator-Metal (PANTOMIM), designed to overcome limitations of traditional plasmonic nanohole array biosensors. PANTOMIM utilizes a metal-insulator-metal structure as a lossy waveguide to dampen metal/substrate peaks, ensuring high extinction coefficients and spectral purity for biosensing. The architecture is optimized for the 800-850 nm wavelength range, with potential for future integration into nanophotonic devices.

Graphene-based materials: an innovative approach for neural regeneration and spinal cord injury repair.

Spinal cord injury (SCI), the most serious disease affecting the central nervous system (CNS), is one of contemporary medicine's most difficult challenges, causing patients to suffer physically, emotionally, and socially. However, due to recent advances in medical science and biomaterials, graphene-based materials (GBMs) have tremendous potential in SCI therapy due to their wonderful and valuable properties, such as physicochemical properties, extraordinary electrical conductivity, distinct morphology, and high mechanical strength. This review discusses SCI pathology and GBM characteristics, as well as recent and findings on graphenic scaffolds, electrodes, and injectable achievements for SCI improvement using neuroprotective and neuroregenerative techniques to improve neural structural and functional repair.

Quantum Models of Consciousness from a Quantum Information Science Perspective.

This perspective explores various quantum models of consciousness from the viewpoint of quantum information science, offering potential ideas and insights. The models under consideration can be categorized into three distinct groups based on the level at which quantum mechanics might operate within the brain: those suggesting that consciousness arises from electron delocalization within microtubules inside neurons, those proposing it emerges from the electromagnetic field surrounding the entire neural network, and those positing it originates from the interactions between individual neurons governed by neurotransmitter molecules. Our focus is particularly on the Posner model of cognition, for which we provide preliminary calculations on the preservation of entanglement of phosphate molecules within the geometric structure of Posner clusters.