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When a soft glassy colloidal suspension is displaced by a Newtonian fluid in a radial Hele-Shaw geometry, the pattern morphology that develops at the interface is determined by the complex rheology of the former. We had reported in an earlier work [Palak, V. R. S. Parmar, D. Saha and R. Bandyopadhyay, JCIS Open, 6 (2022) 100047] that a range of pattern morphologies characterised by distinctive structural features can be formed by controlling the elasticity of the displaced suspension, the flow rate of the displacing fluid and the interfacial tension of the fluid pair. Interestingly, all the different morphological features can be distinguished in terms of their areal ratios, defined as the ratio of the areas occupied by the fully-developed pattern and the smallest circle enclosing it. In a significant advance to this earlier work, we show here that a systematic study of spatio-temporal pattern growth can reveal important information about pattern selection mechanisms. We analyse the time-evolution of the patterns to reveal interesting correlations between their growth mechanisms and fully-developed morphologies. We believe that such systematic identification of the unique temporal features characterising pattern growth at the interface between an aging viscoelastic clay suspension and a Newtonian fluid can be useful in pre-empting and suppressing the onset and evolution of interfacial instabilities in the displacement of mud and cement slurries.

Pesticides are widely used around the home and in agriculture to control unwanted populations; however, they may also be toxic to non-targeted organisms. Because traditional methods of assessing pesticide toxicity are expensive, lengthy, and ethically questionable, we evaluated pesticide toxicities using stimuli-responses in liposomes. Pesticide ecotoxicity was evaluated using 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) and 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) liposomes. Changes in membrane permeability were measured using calcein leakage assays as stimuli-responses in the presence of six pesticides (Chlorpyrifos-methyl, fluometuron, imidacloprid, pirimicarb, pyrethrin, and quizalofop-ethyl), for which the calcein release rate was analyzed using a first-order kinetics equation. The calcein release rate constants of the DPPC liposomes were used to classify the pesticides into lower and higher toxicity groups. In each group, the initial calcein release rate from the DPPC/DOPC liposomes mixed with 33 ​mol% DOPC correlated well with previously reported pesticide toxicities. The DOPC liposomes underwent lateral phase separation in a different manner between the two toxicity groups. Pesticides with lower toxicities were partitioned in the DPPC-enriched phase, disrupting the gel phase order through their hydrophobicity, whereas pesticides with higher toxicity were partitioned in the DOPC-enriched phase and stabilizing the liquid disordered phase owing to their hydrophobicity and molecular shape. The toxicity of each pesticide was well represented by an equation that combined the calcein release rate constant of the DPPC liposomes and the initial calcein release rate of the 33 ​mol% DOPC mixed liposomes. The findings indicate that stimuli-response assays using liposomes can be used to complement traditional ecotoxicity assessments.

Hypothesis

Selected vape additives, vitamin E acetate and CBD, are suspected agents in pathology of vape related lung illnesses. The lipophilic nature of these molecules allow them to partition into lung surfactant and disrupt proper function. Such dysfunction can lead to respiratory distress and hypoxemia, two common symptoms of this new class of lung injury.

Experiments

Lung surfactant models were formed by depositing lipids at the air-water interface on a Langmuir-Blodgett trough. Surface pressure-area isotherms were conducted for lipid-additive systems to determine changes in lipid packing, film elasticity, and film stability, while Brewster angle microscopy was used to visualize lateral film organization.

Findings

Vape additives were found to interfere with proper lipid packing, inducing fluidization throughout the lipid films. Additionally, this hindered the formation of lipid condensed domains. Such structures are necessary for surfactant protein anchoring in order to facilitate the formation of multilayers. In complex model systems, this vital processes was significantly impaired, namely by vitamin e acetate. These data suggest a vape additive induced dysfunction of lipid films which may be involved in the pathology of vape-related lung injury.

A novel green pectin-driven sol-gel with an auto-combustion route was successfully applied for the synthesis of manganese oxide catalysts, which exhibited superior catalytic performance for low-temperature combustion of toluene compared to those cases using manganese oxide catalysts synthesized by traditional citric acid and glycine-driven sol-gel routes. The characterization results showed that the MnO_x-P catalyst synthesized by the present method exhibited a unique hierarchical mesoporous structure with lower crystallinity and smaller grain size, leading to abundant active species and defect structures. Comparing with the catalysts synthesized by those traditional sol-gel methods, the MnO_x-P catalyst had excellent low-temperature reducible performance and better oxygen mobility, which is considered to be resulted from the specific interaction of chelation and calcination processes. In addition, the MnO_x-P catalyst exhibited satisfactory long-term stability and water tolerance during catalytic toluene combustion process.

Metal nanoparticles (NPs), such as gold NPs (AuNPs), are particularly sensitive to X-rays, and thus specific accumulation of AuNPs in a tumor would allow radiotherapy with low energy X-rays and reduced side effects. AuNPs can be generated using HAuCl₄ and the natural polyphenol epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) in the presence of citrate. Here, we generated EGCG-AuNPs in the presence of several additives and examined the accumulation of these NPs in mouse tumors following intravenous administration. EGCG-AuNPs 15 ​nm in diameter in the presence of sodium alginate accumulated more in tumors compared to 40-nm-diameter EGCG-AuNPs. Furthermore, the results of in vitro cellular uptake and serum protein absorption studies suggest that adsorption of 15–16 ​kDa serum proteins to EGCG-AuNPs suppresses accumulation in tumors. Thus, tendency to adsorb specific proteins on EGCG-AuNPs surface should be tailored for enhancing their accumulation in tumors.

The design of electrodes with highly exposed electroactive sites and improved charge transport that overcomes the current limitations of pseudocapacitors may result in electrodes with high capacity at high rates. These energy storage electrodes are interesting and may have applications as micro-supercapacitors for wearable and implantable devices. Herein, hybrid heterostructured thin film electrodes based on triruthenium clusters and graphene were constructed using the Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique. The hybrid thin film performance as supercapacitor electrode was demonstrated in a three-electrode set-up and in asymmetric supercapacitors using graphene as negative electrode and B-PVA-KCl as electrolyte. The hybrid heterostructured LB films exhibited high efficiency as active material and excellent performance at high rates. It led to a better device performance as compared with devices using just triruthenium cluster LB films, achieving a capacitance of 0.710 ​mF ​cm⁻² for an 8-monolayer hybrid heterostructured thin film, which is comparable to other graphene metal oxide hybrid electrodes. This performance was attributed to improved charge transport due to the organized heterostructured LB structure and contributions of both faradaic fast redox reaction from ruthenium(II/III) centers and high double-layer capacitance of the graphene sheets.

Nanocrystal suspensions have been introduced to overcome the low bioavailability of poorly water-soluble drug compounds by increasing the dissolution rates. For both injection- and inhalation-based administrations it is important that the suspensions are sterile to eliminate any adverse events from potential microbial infections, but it has proven very challenging to sterilize nanocrystal suspensions without aggregation or degradation. Here we describe bead milling methodology to generate ultrafine nanocrystal suspensions of several poorly water-soluble drug compounds that can be passed through 0.22 ​μm sterilization filters. The most important factors for successful milling to ultrafine nanocrystal suspensions are the stabilizer excipients combined with fine milling-beads. The sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) or docusate sodium/aerosol OT (AOT) combined with Polyvinylpyrrolidone K30 (PVP) stabilizer systems and 1,2-Dipalmitoryl-sn-Glycero-3-Phosphoethanolamine conjugated methoxy Polyethylene Glycol (DPPE) and 1,2-Distearoyl-sn-Glycero-3-Phosphoethanolamine conjugated methoxy Polyethylene Glycol (DSPE) surfactants were among the best stabilizer excipients studied.

Xerogels (X-G) are biopolymeric and zero chemical materials, applied in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering because of inherently elevated biocompatibility, nil-immunogenicity, as well as zero-cytotoxicity. X-G are porous, functional and advanced materials composed of dried, cross-linked and ambient polymeric structures possessing very elevated porosity, broad surface area, as we as inexpensive fabrication pathway capable of being garnered from varying organic and inorganic initiators for multifunctional applications. Due to their inherently desirous properties, X-G are appropriate for numerous medical as well as biomedical uses. Relative to their elevated drug delivery capacity, X-G ability of maintaining sustainable drug releasing present them highly suitable for drug conveying applications. Biopolymeric materials exhibit capability of interacting, cross-linking, and/or trapping severally inclined active entities, like antibiotics or naturally occurring antimicrobial substrates, which are critically essential for wound dressing as well as other mending applications. Hence, X-G are capable of being utilized in antibodies trapping, enzymes, as well as cells for biosensor and monitoring gadgets. Therefore, this paper presents recently emerging trends in X-G polymeric bionanoarchitectures encompassing biopolymeric X-G introduction, strategies of construction, as well as their properties. Herein, biological attributes sustaining their suitability for versatile biomedical uses especially biosensing, tissue scaffolding, drug conveying, wound mending and dressing are comprehensively elucidated.

The effect of salinity (NaCl concentration) was determined at 25 ​°C for systems composed of sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate (AOT) and equal volumes of squalane and brine. At all the NaCl concentrations the samples are triphasic with an upper phase made of pure squalane while brine is present in two other phases. At NaCl concentration (in brine) below 1.6 %w/v there is the coexistence of lamellar and sponge (L₃) phases. Loading with NaCl above 1.6 %w/v one observes the coexistence of L₃ and pure brine. The amount of AOT dissolved in the AOT bilayer has been quantified by thermogravimetric analysis. At salinity above 2 %w/v of NaCl in brine, the AOT sponge phase shrinks expelling brine and the squalane whose presence in the bilayer becomes negligible. The L₃ phases have been further characterized by SAXS and diffusion-NMR. The measured self-diffusion coefficients of water and AOT are essentially coincident with those measured at the same salinity in the absence of squalane. The SAXS curves of sponge phases have been fitted to a single equation accounting for the contributions of the bilayer structure and of the large-scale interactions allowing the determination of the average interpore separation D∗ and the bilayer correlation length ξ. The correlation length has been interpreted as reflecting static randomness of connected bilayer instead of the dynamic thermal undulations. Considering the correlation length as the displacement along the bilayer surface subtending a critical angular change (θ∗) below which the surface appears as flat, permits to define the curvature (H) as |H| $=\frac{{\theta }^{\ast }}{\xi }$. The correlation length scales linearly with the square of the bilayer volume fraction as proposed by a previous theoretical model assuming the sponge phases are thermodynamically constrained to a curvature that equals the spontaneous curvature.

Anti-cocaine vaccines are a promising therapeutic strategy for treating cocaine use disorders. Here we hypothesize that nanoemulsions (NE) or suspensions (SS) loaded with the calix [4]arene-based immunogen UFMG-V4N2 can induce the production of anti-cocaine antibodies and decrease the passage of radiolabeled cocaine analog [^99mTc]Trodat-1 through of the brain barrier. UFMG-V4N2 was characterized (solubility, morphology, DSC, XRD) and loaded into NEs and SSs using excipients approved for human use. Immunogenic efficacy was assessed by quantifying the titers and determining the specificity of anti-cocaine IgG antibodies, and by assessing the inhibition of [^99mTc]Trodat-1 trafficking across the mice brain-barrier. UFMG-V4N2 is an amorphous, thermally stable molecule with very low hydrophilicity. The immunogenicity of NE or SS was similar, but aluminum phosphate and the lower dose of UFMG-V4N2 induced higher anti-cocaine IgG antibody titers, minimizing [^99mTc]Trodat-1 uptake in the brain. Therefore, the UFMG-V4N2 may represent an alternative for the treatment of cocaine use disorder.