Fluidic Infiltrative Assembly of 3D Hydrogel with Heterogeneous Composition and Function

3D hydrogels are powerful, multifunctional materials that are poised to become a building block in next-generation systems. Modern schemes to print complex 3D hydrogels are advancing rapidly; however, they possess several limitations including—but not limited to—polymer incompatibility or difficulty in imparting continuous heterogeneity in composition or function. Here, a simple strategy of synthesizing programmable hydrogel systems with tunable form and function in 3D is presented. This approach utilizes commercially available stereolithographic printer/resin to fabricate high-resolution molds followed by the programmed infiltration and gelation of hydrogel prepolymer. This mold is then sacrificed to yield 3D, multifunctional hydrogels exhibiting user-defined heterogeneity. The approach is compatible with numerous in-situ gelling polymers and modifiers ranging from interpenetrating networks of organic or synthetic polymers to functional materials possessing dense concentrations of nanomaterials or fluorescent markers. Accessible and versatile, this approach allows the fabrication of complex, multimaterial constructs with tunable 3D environmental responses inaccessible to well-established hydrogel 3D printing methods.     

High‐Temperature Large‐Scale Self‐Assembly of Highly Faceted Monocrystalline Au Metasurfaces

Localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) devices based on resonant metallic metasurfaces have shown disruptive potential for many applications including biosensing and photocatalysis. Despite significant progress, highly performing Au plasmonic nanotextures often suffer of suboptimal electric field enhancement, due to damping effects in multicrystalline domains. Fabricating well‐defined Au nanocrystals over large surfaces is very challenging, and usually requires time‐intensive multi‐step processes. Here, presented are first insights on the large‐scale self‐assembly of monocrystalline Au nano‐islands with tunable size and separation, and their application as efficient LSPR surfaces. Highly homogeneous centimeter‐sized Au metasurfaces are fabricated by one‐step deposition and in situ coalescence of hot nanoparticle aerosols into a discontinuous monolayer of highly faceted monocrystals. First insights on the mechanisms driving the high‐temperature synthesis of these highly faceted Au nanotextures are obtained by molecular dynamic and detailed experimental investigation of their growth kinetics. Notably, these metasurfaces demonstrat high‐quality and tunable LSPR, enabling the fabrication of highly performing optical gas molecule sensors detecting down to 3 × 10^?6 variations in refractive index at room temperature. It is believed that these findings provide a rapid, low‐cost nanofabrication tool for the engineering of highly homogenous Au metasurfaces for large‐scale LSPR devices with application ranging from ultrasensitive optical gas sensors to photocatalytic macroreactors.     

Monte Carlo simulation of photon densities inside the dermis in LLLT (low level laser therapy)

In this work, the photon distribution of He:Ne laser within dermis tissue is studied. The dermis as a highly scattering media was irradiated by a low power laser. The photon densities as well as the corresponding isothermal contours were obtained by two different numerical methods, i.e., Lambert-Beer and Welch. The results were compared to that of Monte Carlo subsequently.     

Using power level difference for near field dual-microphone speech enhancement

In this contribution, a novel dual-channel speech enhancement technique is introduced. The proposed approach uses the dissimilarity between the power of received signals in the two channels as a criterion for speech enhancement and noise reduction. We claim that in near field conditions, where the distances between microphones and sound source are short, the difference in the received power levels at the two microphones is an estimate of the clean speech signal power. Then, apply this theory to present an optimum method for speech enhancement. Fortunately, the method has the ability to cope with problems such as transient noise and nearby microphones which are two of the main problems of the proposed dual-microphone speech enhancement techniques. Using objective speech quality measures and spectrogram analysis, we show that the proposed method results in improved speech quality.     

Green synthesis of pyrimido‐isoquinolines and pyrimido‐quinoline using ZnO nanorods as an efficient catalyst: Study of antioxidant activity

In this paper, we report the synthesis of pyrimido[2,1‐a] isoquinoline and pyrimido[1,2‐a]quinoline derivatives in high yields from the reaction of isoquinoline or quinoline, activated acetylenic compounds, and amides in the presence of ZnO nanorods (ZnO‐NRs) as catalyst under solvent‐free conditions at room temperature. ZnO‐NRs show good improvement in the yield of the product and significant reusability. Also, the antioxidant activities of the some of the newly synthesized compounds were carried out by 1,1‐diphenyl‐2‐picrylhydrazyl (PDDH) radical trapping and ferric ion reducing potential tests and compared with those of the synthetic antioxidants 2‐tert‐butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). These compounds do not show good DPPH radical scavenging but display good ferric ion reducing power.     

Synthesis of La3+/Co3O4 Nanoflowers for Sensitive Detection of Chlorpromazine

Russian Journal of Electrochemistry - In this study, a sensitive electrochemical sensor for chlorpromazine was established based on La3+/Co3O4 nanoflower. The La3+/Co3O4 nanoflower exhibited...     

Effects of the evolution of two cross‐focused Gaussian laser beams on the terahertz generation in thermal collisional plasma

Generation of the terahertz (THz) radiation based on the beating of two cross‐focused high intensity Gaussian laser beams in a warm rippled density plasma is numerically investigated, taking into account the ponderomotive force, Ohmic heating, and collisional nonlinearities. The beat ponderomotive force as a result of cross‐focusing of beams induces a vertical velocity component that by coupling with the rippled density gives rise to a nonlinear current deriving THz radiation. The effect of laser beams spot size evolution and plasma parameters on the THz generation is studied. It was found that there exist special electron temperature and laser intensity ranges with “turning points” where the generation of THz radiation reaches its maximum value and outside of these ranges, it disappears. The results also indicated that increasing the background electron density as well as taking into account the collision frequency help THz generation. Moreover, the maximum yield of THz radiation occurs when the beat wave frequency approaches the plasma frequency.     

The study of the weibel electromagnetic instability growth rate in the presence of the body stress

Body stress flow can be expected in the fast ignition imploding of the inertial fusion process that strongly damps small‐scale velocity structures. The Weibel instability is one of the plasma instabilities that require anisotropy in the distribution function. The body stress effect was neglected in the calculation of the Weibel instability growth rate. In this article, the propagation condition of impinging waves and the growing modes of the Weibel instability on the plasma density gradient of the fuel fusion with the body stress flow are investigated. Calculations show that the minimum value of the body stress rate threshold in the linear polarization is about 2.96 times greater than that of the circular polarization. Increasing 10 times of the density gradient and decreasing 2 times of the wavelength in the linear polarization and the circular polarization, respectively, lead to about 1.78 × 10⁶ times increment and 0.019 times decrement in the maximum of the Weibel instability growth rate. Also, the Weibel instability growth rate maximum in the circular polarization is about 10⁷ times greater than that of the linear polarization. The body stress flow and the density gradient tend to stabilize the Weibel instability in the circular polarization and act as a destabilizing source in the linear polarization. Therefore, by increasing steps of the density gradient plasma near the relativistic electron beam‐emitting region, in the circular polarization, the Weibel instability occurs at a higher stress flow.     

Design,synthesis, and in silico studies of novel eugenyloxy propanol azole derivatives having potent antinociceptive activity and evaluation of their β-adrenoceptor blocking property

The design, synthesis, antinociceptive and β-adrenoceptor blocking activities of several eugenyloxy propanol azole derivatives have been described. In this synthesis, the reaction of eugenol with epichlorohydrin provided adducts 3 and 4 which were N-alkylated by diverse azoles to obtain the eugenyloxy propanol azole analogues in good yields. Adducts 3 and 4 were also reacted with azide ion to obtain the corresponding azide 6. The ‘Click’ Huisgen cycloaddition reaction of 6 with diverse alkynes afforded the title compounds in good yields. The synthesized eugenyloxy propanol azole derivatives were in vivo studied for the acute antinociception on male Spargue Dawley rats using tail-flick test. Compounds 5f, 5g, 7b and 11a exhibited potent analgesic properties in comparison with eugenol as a standard drug. In addition, all compounds were ex vivo tested for β-adrenoceptor blocking properties on isolated left atrium of male rats which exhibited partial antagonist or agonist behaviour compared to the standard drugs. The molecular docking study on the binding site of transient receptor potential vanilloid subtype 1 (TRPV1) has indicated that like capsaicin, eugenyloxy propanol azole analogues exhibited the strong affinity to bind at site of TPRV1 in a “tail-up, head-down” conformation and the presence of triazolyl moieties has played undeniable role in durable binding of these ligands to TRPV1. The in silico pharmacokinetic profile, drug likeness and toxicity predictions carried out for all compounds determined that 5g can be considered as potential antinociceptive drug candidate for future research.