Biocatalytic Feedback‐Controlled Non‐Newtonian Fluids

Non‐Newtonian fluids are ubiquitous in daily life and industrial applications. Herein, we report an intelligent fluidic system integrating two distinct non‐Newtonian rheological properties mediated by an autocatalytic enzyme reaction. Associative polyelectrolytes bearing a small amount of ionic and alkyl groups are engineered: by carefully balancing the charge density and the hydrophobic effect, the polymer solutions demonstrate a unique shear thickening property at low pH while shear thinning at high pH. The urea‐urease clock reaction is utilized to program a feedback‐induced pH change, leading to a strong upturn of the nonlinear viscoelastic properties. As long as the chemical fuel is supplied, two distinct non‐Newtonian states can be achieved with a tunable lifetime span. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate how the physical energy‐driven nonequilibrium properties can be manipulated by a chemical‐fueled process.     

Organocatalytic Enantioselective Synthesis of Atropisomeric Aryl‐p‐Quinones: Platform Molecules for Diversity‐Oriented Synthesis of Biaryldiols

Presented here is a class of novel axially chiral aryl‐p‐quinones as platform molecules for the preparation of non‐C₂ symmetric biaryldiols. Two sets of aryl‐p‐quinone frameworks were synthesized with remarkable enantiocontrol by means of chiral phosphoric acid catalyzed enantioselective arylation of p‐quinones by central‐to‐axial chirality conversion. These aryl‐p‐quinones were then used to access a wide spectrum of highly functionalized non‐C₂ symmetric biaryldiols with excellent retention of the enantiopurity.     

Cascaded DNA circuits-programmed self-assembly of spherical nucleic acids for high signal amplification

Signal amplification is an important issue in DNA nanotechnology and molecular diagnostics. In this work, we report a strategy for the catalytic self-assembly of spherical nucleic acids(SNAs) programmed by two-layer cascaded DNA circuits through integrating an entropy-driven catalytic network, a catalytic hairpin assembly circuit, and a facile SNA assembly-based reporter system. This integrated system could implement ～100,000-fold signal amplification in the presence of 1 p M of input target.Possessing powerful amplification ability of nucleic acid signal, our strategy should be of great potential in fabricating more robust dynamic networks to be applied for signal transduction, DNA computing, and nucleic acid-based diagnostics.     

Take precautions against potential threats that carbon nanotubes may bring to you

Long-term pulmonary exposure to multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) may promote breast cancer metastasis and rapid colonization in the lungs and other organs according to recent research conducted by Prof.Chunying Chen,Prof.Tao Zhu and their colleagues,published in Nature Nanotechnology [1].     

Fluid‐structure coupling of linear elastic model with compressible flow models

Cavitation erosion is caused in solids exposed to strong pressure waves developing in an adjacent fluid field. The knowledge of the transient distribution of stresses in the solid is important to understand the cause of damaging by comparisons with breaking points of the material. The modeling of this problem requires the coupling of the models for the fluid and the solid. For this purpose, we use a strategy based on the solution of coupled Riemann problems that has been originally developed for the coupling of 2 fluids. This concept is exemplified for the coupling of a linear elastic structure with an ideal gas. The coupling procedure relies on the solution of a nonlinear equation. Existence and uniqueness of the solution is proven. The coupling conditions are validated by means of quasi‐1D problems for which an explicit solution can be determined. For a more realistic scenario, a 2D application is considered where in a compressible single fluid, a hot gas bubble at low pressure collapses in a cold gas at high pressure near an adjacent structure.     

Piezoelectric Actuator Placement Optimization and Active Vibration Control of a Membrane Structure

The placement optimization of piezoelectric actuators and active vibration control of a membrane structure are studied in this paper. The classical linear quadratic regulator controllers are designed to suppress the unwanted vibration. Simulation results indicate that the optimal locations of piezoelectric actuators are affected deeply by the additional mass and stiffness of actuators, the computational efficiency of particle swarm optimizer is higher than that of genetic algorithm for this particular problem, and the control performance of optimally placed actuators is better than that of non-optimally placed actuators.     

A facile method to fabricate tough hydrogel with ultra-wide adjustable stiffness,stress, and fast recoverability

In this article, we report a synergistic strategy to develop dual physically cross-linked tough hydrogels via one-pot bulk copolymerization of N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone, acrylic acid, and stearyl methylacrylate (SMA) without any adscititious surfactant. Due to synergic effects of hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic association, the resulted dual physically cross-linked hydrogels (DP Gel) with ultra-wide range adjustable Young's modulus (0.08–45.6 MPa), tensile stress (0.7–6.9 MPa), and toughness (3.3–23.1 MJ m⁻³). Stretching to 300%, DP Gel exhibited fast recoverability that remained ~95% of initial dissipated energy after resting in 60 °C for 3 min. Finally, scanning electron microscopy revealed that the microstructure of hydrogel changed from phase separation structure to micro phase separation as SMA added, which accounted for excellent performance of DP Gel. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2018 , 56, 1469–1474     

ZnO一维纳米结构的形貌调控与亲疏水性研究

分别使用金属、半导体等类型的基片作沉积衬底,采用气相沉积的方法合成了多种ZnO一维纳米结构,如塔状结构、锥状结构、蘑菇状结构、环状结构等等.用扫描电镜,透射电镜等对合成产物的形貌和结构进行了研究,结果发现沉积衬底对合成产物形貌和结构有着重要的影响.同时对合成塔状纳米结构的生长机理做了系统地分析,并研究了其相应的亲疏水性能. 关键词： 纳米结构 气相沉积 形貌调控 结构表征     

近红外光谱分析中建模校正集的选择

将极大线性无关组的概念及方法引入近红外光谱分析,探讨了在建立定量分析模型时代表性样品,即校正集样品的选择问题。以2 652个烟末样品为实验材料,随机选取1 001个样品构成预测集,其余1 651个样品为代表性样品备选集。用Matlab软件求出代表性样品备选集光谱矩阵的极大线性无关组,以此作为代表性样品,构成建模的校正集。用PLS回归法建立了烟末样品总糖含量定量分析的预测模型,并将模型用于预测集中1 001个烟末样品总糖含量的预测分析。实验结果表明,当选择的校正集包含的样品数量大于32时,所建各模型对预测集样品预测的平均相对误差均小于4%,平均相关系数大于0.96。其中选择32个代表性样品和146个代表性样品所建模型定量分析预测集中各样品的总糖含量,两个结果经统计检验没有显著性差异(α=0.05),说明求极大线性无关组的方法用于校正集样品的选择,可实现“少而精”选择样品的目的。此外,我们用求极大线性无关组选择校正集样品和随机方法选择校正集样品两种方法,选择了同样数目28,32,41,76,146,163个样品建模进行预测效果的对比实验,结果显示,求极大线性无关组法选择校正集建模的预测效果优于随机选择校正集建模的预测效果。