Phospholipid lung surfactant and nanoparticle surface toxicity: Lessons from diesel soots and silicate dusts

Because of their small size, the specific surface areas of nanoparticulate materials (NP), described as particles having at least one dimension smaller than 100 nm, can be large compared with micrometer-sized respirable particles. This high specific surface area or nanostructural surface properties may affect NP toxicity in comparison with micrometer-sized respirable particles of the same overall composition. Respirable particles depositing on the deep lung surfaces of the respiratory bronchioles or alveoli will contact pulmonary surfactants in the surface hypophase. Diesel exhaust ultrafine particles and respirable silicate micrometer-sized insoluble particles can adsorb components of that surfactant onto the particle surfaces, conditioning the particles surfaces and affecting their in vitro expression of cytotoxicity or genotoxicity. Those effects can be particle surface composition-specific. Effects of particle surface conditioning by a primary component of phospholipid pulmonary surfactant, diacyl phosphatidyl choline, are reviewed for in vitro expression of genotoxicity by diesel exhaust particles and of cytotoxicity by respirable quartz and aluminosilicate kaolin clay particles. Those effects suggest methods and cautions for assaying and interpreting NP properties and biological activities.     

Velocity Addition Theorem and Einstein-Dopfleh Effect

The Einstein velocity addition theorem can be derived from the Einstein-Doppler expression in contrast to Pauli's assertion that the one has nothing to do with the other.     

AC susceptibility measurements in some RTiFe11-xCox (R = Dy, Ho, Er) compounds: Spin-reorientation behavior

The DyTiFe_{11 - x}Co_x (x = 0, 1, 3), HoTiFe_{11 - x}Co_x (x = 0, 3) and ErTiFe₁₁ compounds, all exhibiting the T hMn₁₂-type structure, were studied for their ac susceptibility in the temperature range 20–300 K. The Dy- and Ho-containing compounds exhibited spin reorientation from axial to cone to planar, or from axial to cone in the temperature range 250-50 K, as expected. In this structure Dy and Ho with negative second-order Stevens' coefficients (_J < 0) favor planar rare earth sublattice anisotropy, while Fe and Co sublattices favor uniaxial and planar anisotropies, respectively and would be in competition as a function of temperature. A spin-reorientation type of behavior was also observed in the ErTiFe₁₁ compound near 50 K. This observation appears to imply that, in this compound, the higher-order crystal-field terms are important. The magnetization data revealed that in these systems the rare earth and transition metal sublattices coupled antiparallel, as is normally the case in the heavy rare-earth-transition-metal compounds.     

Uncertainty of measurement for summed masses: application to controlled substances

Because sentences for drug possession depend on the mass of the seized drug, testing laboratories must often determine the summed mass of numerous items submitted under a single case. One common practice for this purpose is to continue analyzing and weighing samples until a legal threshold is passed, at which point it is important to inform the court whether the summed mass is significantly above the threshold, or only marginally so. This paper develops a means for estimating the uncertainty of the summed mass for the common situation where the readability, d, of the balance dominates the uncertainty. It is seen that for all sample sizes the uncertainty, UM, is given by the remarkable simple expression UM = (d/2) × [N + SQRT(3N)] + N × CCE, where N is the number of items and CCE is the absolute value of the calibration check error. In most instances, this can be further simplified to UM = N × d.     

Ambipolar hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene-fullerene hybrid materials

A new class of self-assembling hexa-peri-hexbenzocoronene (HBC)-fullerene hybrid materials has been synthesized and characterized. Photoluminescence experiments indicate that energy transfer processes can be tuned in these donor-acceptor systems by varying the length and nature of the linker group. In preliminary device testing, ambipolar charge transport behavior is observed in organic field effect transistors, while single active component organic photovoltaic devices consisting of these materials achieved a maximum external quantum efficiency of 30%.     

Identification of epigenetic DNA modifications with a protein nanopore

Two DNA bases, 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (hmC), marks of epigenetic modification, are recognized in immobilized DNA strands and distinguished from G, A, T and C by nanopore current recording. Therefore, if further aspects of nanopore sequencing can be addressed, the approach will provide a means to locate epigenetic modifications in unamplified genomic DNA.     

Mechanism of Intramolecular Photostabilization in Self‐Healing Cyanine Fluorophores

Organic fluorophores, which are popular labels for microscopy applications, intrinsically suffer from transient and irreversible excursions to dark‐states. An alternative to adding photostabilizers at high concentrations to the imaging buffer relies on the direct linkage to the fluorophore. However, the working principles of this approach are not yet fully understood. In this contribution, we investigate the mechanism of intramolecular photostabilization in self‐healing cyanines, in which photodamage is automatically repaired. Experimental evidence is provided to demonstrate that a single photostabilizer, that is, the vitamin E derivative Trolox, efficiently heals the cyanine fluorophore Cy5 in the absence of any photostabilizers in solution. A plausible mechanism is that Trolox interacts with the fluorophore through intramolecular quenching of triplet‐related dark‐states, which is a mechanism that appears to be common for both triplet‐state quenchers (cyclooctatetraene) and redox‐active compounds (Trolox, ascorbic acid, methylviologen). Additionally, the influence of solution‐additives, such as cysteamine and procatechuic acid, on the self‐healing process are studied. The results suggest the potential applicability of self‐healing fluorophores in stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) with optical super‐resolution. The presented data contributes to an improved understanding of the mechanism involved in intramolecular photostabilization and has high relevance for the future development of self‐healing fluorophores, including their applications in various research fields.