Glass transitions and mixed phases in block SBS

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) does not allow for easy determination of the glass‐transition temperature (T_g) of the polystyrene (PS) block in styrene–butadiene–styrene (SBS) block copolymers. Modulated DSC (MDSC), which deconvolutes the standard DSC signal into reversing and nonreversing signals, was used to determine the (T_g) of both the polybutadiene (PB) and PS blocks in SBS. The T_g of the PB block was sharp, at ?92 °C, but that for the PS blocks was extremely broad, from ?60 to 125 °C with a maximum at 68 °C because of blending with PB. PS blocks were found only to exist in a mixed PS–PB phase. This concurred with the results from dynamic mechanical analysis. Annealing did not allow for a segregation of the PS blocks into a pure phase, but allowed for the segregation of the mixed phase into two mixed phases, one that was PB‐rich and the other that was PS‐rich. It is concluded that three phases coexist in SBS: PB, PB‐rich, and PS‐rich phases. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 43: 276–279, 2005     

Local dissipation and coupling properties of cellular oscillators: a case study on calcium oscillations

Synchronised signal transduction between cells is crucial, since it assures fast and immutable information processing, which is vital for flawless functioning of living organisms. The question arises how to recognise the ability of a cell to be easily coupled with other cells. In the present paper, we investigate the system properties that determine best coupling abilities and assure the most efficient signal transduction between cells. A case study is done for intercellular calcium oscillations. For a particular diffusion-like coupled system of cellular oscillators, we determined the minimal gap-junctional permeability that is necessary for synchronisation of initially asynchronous oscillators. Our results show that dissipation is a crucial system property that determines the coupling ability of cellular oscillators. We found that low dissipation assures synchronisation of coupled cells already at very low gap-junctional permeability, whereas highly dissipative oscillators require much higher gap-junctional permeability in order to synchronise. The results are discussed in the sense of their biological importance for systems where the synchronous responses of cells were recognised to be indispensable for appropriate physiological functioning of the tissue.     

Green pH- and magnetic-responsive hybrid hydrogels based on poly(methacrylic acid) and Eucalyptus wood nanocellulose for controlled release of ibuprofen

Cellulose - pH- and magnetic-sensitive hybrid hydrogels based on poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA), nanocellulose (NC), carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and magnetite particles (MN) were prepared as...     

Hole interactions with molecular vibrations on DNA

We report on a study of the interactions between holes and molecular vibrations on dry DNA using photoinduced infrared absorption spectroscopy. Laser photoexcited holes are found to have a room-temperature lifetime in excess of tau > 1 ms, clearly indicating the presence of localization. However, from a quantitative model analysis of the frequency shifts of vibrational modes caused by the holes, we find the hole-vibrational coupling constant to be relatively small, lambda approximately 0.2. This interaction leads to a change in the conformational energy of DeltaE0 approximately 0.015 eV, which is too small to cause self-trapping at room temperature. We conclude that, at least in the dry (A) form, DNA is best understood in terms of a double chain of coupled quantum dots arising from the pseudorandom chain sequence of base pairs, in which Anderson localization prevents the formation of a metallic state.     

Burst synchronization transitions in a neuronal network of subnetworks

In this paper, the transitions of burst synchronization are explored in a neuronal network consisting of subnetworks. The studied network is composed of electrically coupled bursting Hindmarsh-Rose neurons. Numerical results show that two types of burst synchronization transitions can be induced not only by the variations of intra- and intercoupling strengths but also by changing the probability of random links between different subnetworks and the number of subnetworks. Furthermore, we find that the underlying mechanisms for these two bursting synchronization transitions are different: one is due to the change of spike numbers per burst, while the other is caused by the change of the bursting type. Considering that changes in the coupling strengths and neuronal connections are closely interlaced with brain plasticity, the presented results could have important implications for the role of the brain plasticity in some functional behavior that are associated with synchronization.     

Effects of channel noise on firing coherence of small-world Hodgkin-Huxley neuronal networks

We investigate the effects of channel noise on firing coherence of Watts-Strogatz small-world networks consisting of biophysically realistic HH neurons having a fraction of blocked voltage-gated sodium and potassium ion channels embedded in their neuronal membranes. The intensity of channel noise is determined by the number of non-blocked ion channels, which depends on the fraction of working ion channels and the membrane patch size with the assumption of homogeneous ion channel density. We find that firing coherence of the neuronal network can be either enhanced or reduced depending on the source of channel noise. As shown in this paper, sodium channel noise reduces firing coherence of neuronal networks; in contrast, potassium channel noise enhances it. Furthermore, compared with potassium channel noise, sodium channel noise plays a dominant role in affecting firing coherence of the neuronal network. Moreover, we declare that the observed phenomena are independent of the rewiring probability.     

Effects of correlated Gaussian noise on the mean firing rate and correlations of an electrically coupled neuronal network

In this paper, we examine the effects of correlated Gaussian noise on a two-dimensional neuronal network that is locally modeled by the Rulkov map. More precisely, we study the effects of the noise correlation on the variations of the mean firing rate and the correlations among neurons versus the noise intensity. Via numerical simulations, we show that the mean firing rate can always be optimized at an intermediate noise intensity, irrespective of the noise correlation. On the other hand, variations of the population coherence with respect to the noise intensity are strongly influenced by the ratio between local and global Gaussian noisy inputs. Biological implications of our findings are also discussed.     

Impact of delays and rewiring on the dynamics of small-world neuronal networks with two types of coupling

We study synchronization transitions and pattern formation on small-world networks consisting of Morris-Lecar excitable neurons in dependence on the information transmission delay and the rewiring probability. In addition, networks formed via gap junctional connections and coupling via chemical synapses are considered separately. For gap-junctionally coupled networks we show that short delays can induce zigzag fronts of excitations, whereas long delays can further detriment synchronization due to a dynamic clustering anti-phase synchronization transition. For the synaptically coupled networks, on the other hand, we find that the clustering anti-phase synchronization can appear as a direct consequence of the prolongation of information transmission delay, without being accompanied by zigzag excitatory fronts. Irrespective of the coupling type, however, we show that an appropriate small-world topology can always restore synchronized activity if only the information transmission delays are short or moderate at most. Long information transmission delays always evoke anti-phase synchronization and clustering, in which case the fine-tuning of the network topology fails to restore the synchronization of neuronal activity.     

Synaptic plasticity induced transition of spike propagation in neuronal networks

We investigate the impact of short-term plasticity on spike propagation in neuronal networks. We shown that for different combinations of the synaptic rise and decay time, neurons in the network exhibit a variety of different spike propagation transitions as the parameter related to the short-term plasticity increases. We establish the criteria for the existence and stability of simple and composite traveling waves, and we verify the analytical results by means of numerical simulations. Interestingly, we discover that the coexistence of simple and composite traveling waves, as well as the coexistence of stable and unstable waves is possible, provided only the short-term plasticity is properly set.     

Spatial coherence resonance on diffusive and small-world networks of Hodgkin-Huxley neurons

Spatial coherence resonance in a spatially extended system that is locally modeled by Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) neurons is studied in this paper. We focus on the ability of additive temporally and spatially uncorrelated Gaussian noise to extract a particular spatial frequency of excitatory waves in the medium, whereby examining the impact of diffusive and small-world network topology that determines the interactions amongst coupled HH neurons. We show that there exists an intermediate noise intensity that is able to extract a characteristic spatial frequency of the system in a resonant manner provided the latter is diffusively coupled, thus indicating the existence of spatial coherence resonance. However, as the diffusive topology of the medium is relaxed via the introduction of shortcut links introducing small-world properties amongst coupled HH neurons, the ability of additive Gaussian noise to evoke ordered excitatory waves deteriorates rather spectacularly, leading to the decoherence of the spatial dynamics and with it related absence of spatial coherence resonance. In particular, already a minute fraction of shortcut links suffices to substantially disrupt coherent pattern formation in the examined system.