Composite Microgels Created by Complexation between Polyvinyl Alcohol and Graphene Oxide in Compressed Double-Emulsion Drops.

Microgels, microparticles made of hydrogels, show fast diffusion kinetics and high reconfigurability while maintaining the advantages of hydrogels, being useful for various applications. Here, presented is a new microfluidic strategy for producing polymer-graphene oxide (GO) composite microgels without chemical cues or a temperature swing for gelation. As a main component of microgels, polymers that are able to form hydrogen bonds, such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), are used. In the mixture of PVA and GO, GO is tethered by PVA through hydrogen bonding. When the mixture is rapidly concentrated in the core of double-emulsion drops by osmotic-pressure-driven water pumping, PVA-tethered GO sheets form a nematic phase with a planar alignment. In addition, the GO sheets are linked by additional hydrogen bonds, leading to a sol-gel transition. Therefore, the PVA-GO composite remains undissolved when it is directly exposed to water by oil-shell rupture. These composite microgels can be also produced using poly(ethylene oxide) or poly(acrylic acid), instead of PVA. In addition, the microgels can be functionalized by incorporating other polymers in the presence of the hydrogel-forming polymers. It is shown that the multicomponent microgels made from a mixture of polyacrylamide, PVA, and GO show an excellent adsorption capacity for impurities.

Significantly Increased Solubility of Carbon Nanotubes in Superacid by Oxidation and Their Assembly into High-Performance Fibers.

This study demonstrates that small amount of oxygen incorporated into carbon nanotubes (CNTs) during the purification process greatly increases their solubility in chlorosulfonic acid (CSA). Using as-purchased and unpurified CNT powders, the optimal purification process is established to significantly increase the solubility of CNTs in CSA, and spin CNT fibers with high mechanical strength (0.84 N tex-1 ) and electrical conductivity (1.4 MS m-1 ) from the CNT liquid crystal dope with high concentration of CNTs in CSA. The knowledge obtained here may guide development of a way to dissolve extremely long CNTs at high concentration and thereby to enable production of CNT fibers with ultimate properties.

Analysis of Dispersion of Carbon Nanotubes in m-Cresol.

We analyzed the dispersion state of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in m-cresol using dispersion stability analysis, optical microscopy, and UV-vis spectroscopy. The high dispersion stability of CNT/m-cresol dispersion was observed when it was sufficiently treated with ultrasonication. Despite the high dispersion stability, optical microscopy and UV-vis spectroscopy analysis of various CNT/m-cresol dispersions revealed that CNT bundles in m-cresol were not dispersed into individual CNTs. We also propose that the blue-shift of the G peak of CNTs in m-cresol in the Raman spectrum, which had been reported as evidence of the formation of the charge-transfer complex between m-cresol and CNTs, is rather attributed to the interference of m-cresol's inherent peak at around 1600 cm-1.

Atomic-Scale Homogeneous RuCu Alloy Nanoparticles for Highly Efficient Electrocatalytic Nitrogen Reduction.

Ruthenium (Ru) is the most widely used metal as an electrocatalyst for nitrogen (N2 ) reduction reaction (NRR) because of the relatively high N2 adsorption strength for successive reaction. Recently, it has been well reported that the homogeneous Ru-based metal alloys such as RuRh, RuPt, and RuCo significantly enhance the selectivity and formation rate of ammonia (NH3 ). However, the metal combinations for NRR have been limited to several miscible combinations of metals with Ru, although various immiscible combinations have immense potential to show high NRR performance. In this study, an immiscible combination of Ru and copper (Cu) is first utilized, and homogeneous alloy nanoparticles (RuCu NPs) are fabricated by the carbothermal shock method. The RuCu homogeneous NP alloys on cellulose/carbon nanotube sponge exhibit the highest selectivity and NH3 formation rate of ≈31% and -73 µmol h-1 cm-2 , respectively. These are the highest values of the selectivity and NH3 formation rates among existing Ru-based alloy metal combinations.

Direct spinning and densification method for high-performance carbon nanotube fibers.

Developing methods to assemble nanomaterials into macroscopic scaffolds is of critical significance at the current stage of nanotechnology. However, the complications of the fabrication methods impede the widespread usages of newly developed materials even with the superior properties in many cases. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of a highly-efficient and potentially-continuous fiber-spinning method to produce high-performance carbon nanotube (CNT) fiber (CNTF). The processing time is <1 min from synthesis of CNTs to fabrication of highly densified and aligned CNTFs. CNTFs that are fabricated by the developed spinning method are ultra-lightweight, strong (specific tensile strength = 4.08 ± 0.25 Ntex-1), stiff (specific tensile modulus = 187.5 ± 7.4 Ntex-1), electrically conductive (2,270 S m2kg-1), and highly flexible (knot efficiency = 48 ± 15%), so they are suitable for various high-value fabric-based applications.

Pulse-train Stimulation of Primary Somatosensory Cortex Blocks Pain Perception in Tail Clip Test.

Human studies of brain stimulation have demonstrated modulatory effects on the perception of pain. However, whether the primary somatosensory cortical activity is associated with antinociceptive responses remains unknown. Therefore, we examined the antinociceptive effects of neuronal activity evoked by optogenetic stimulation of primary somatosensory cortex. Optogenetic transgenic mice were subjected to continuous or pulse-train optogenetic stimulation of the primary somatosensory cortex at frequencies of 15, 30, and 40 Hz, during a tail clip test. Reaction time was measured using a digital high-speed video camera. Pulse-train optogenetic stimulation of primary somatosensory cortex showed a delayed pain response with respect to a tail clip, whereas no significant change in reaction time was observed with continuous stimulation. In response to the pulse-train stimulation, video monitoring and local field potential recording revealed associated paw movement and sensorimotor rhythms, respectively. Our results show that optogenetic stimulation of primary somatosensory cortex at beta and gamma frequencies blocks transmission of pain signals in tail clip test.

High-strength carbon nanotube/carbon composite fibers via chemical vapor infiltration.

In this study, we have developed an efficient and scalable method for improving the mechanical properties of carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers. The mechanical properties of as-synthesized CNT fibers are primarily limited by their porous structures and the weak bonding between adjacent CNTs. These result in inefficient load transfer, leading to low tensile strength and modulus. In order to overcome these limitations, we have adopted chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) to efficiently fill the internal voids of the CNT fibers with carbon species which are thermally decomposed from gas phase hydrocarbon. Through the optimization of the processing time, temperature, and gas flow velocity, we have confirmed that carbon species formed by the thermal decomposition of acetylene (C2H2) gas successfully infiltrated into porous CNT fibers and densified them at relatively low temperatures (650-750 °C). As a result, after CVI processing of the as-synthesized CNT fibers under optimum conditions, the tensile strength and modulus increased from 0.6 GPa to 1.7 GPa and from 25 GPa to 127 GPa, respectively. The CVI technique, combined with the direct spinning of CNT fibers, can open up a route to the fast and scalable fabrication of high performance CNT/C composite fibers. In addition, the CVI technique is a platform technology that can be easily adapted into other nano-carbon based yarn-like fibers such as graphene fibers.

Dendritic planarity of Purkinje cells is independent of Reelin signaling.

The dendritic planarity of Purkinje cells is critical for cerebellar circuit formation. In the absence of Crk and CrkL, the Reelin pathway does not function resulting in partial Purkinje cell migration and defective dendritogenesis. However, the relationships among Purkinje cell migration, dendritic development and Reelin signaling have not been clearly delineated. Here, we use synchrotron X-ray microscopy to obtain 3-D images of Golgi-stained Purkinje cell dendrites. Purkinje cells that failed to migrate completely exhibited conical dendrites with abnormal 3-D arborization and reduced dendritic complexity. Furthermore, their spines were fewer in number with a distorted morphology. In contrast, Purkinje cells that migrated successfully displayed planar dendritic and spine morphologies similar to normal cells, despite reduced dendritic complexity. These results indicate that, during cerebellar formation, Purkinje cells migrate into an environment that supports development of dendritic planarity and spine formation. While Reelin signaling is important for the migration process, it does not make a direct major contribution to dendrite formation.

Noise-induced organized slow fluctuations in networks of neural areas with interarea feed-forward excitation and inhibition.

Slow coherent spontaneous fluctuations (<0.1 Hz) in functional magnetic resonance imaging blood-oxygen-level-dependent signals have been observed for a resting state of the human brain. In this paper, considering feed-forward inhibition in addition to excitation between brain areas, which we assume to be in up (active) or down (quiescent) states, we propose a model for the generation and organization of the slow fluctuations. Connectivity with feed-forward excitation and inhibition between the areas makes the system have multiple stable states and organized slow fluctuations manifest as noise-induced slow transitions between the states. With various connectivities, we observe slow fluctuations and various organizations, including anticorrelated clusters, through numerical simulations.

Core-periphery disparity in fractal behavior of complex networks.

We show that there is a disparity in fractal scaling behavior of the core and peripheral parts of empirical small-world scale-free networks. We decompose the network into a core and a periphery and measure the fractal dimension of each part separately using the box-counting method. We find that the core of small-world scale-free networks has a nonfractal structure, whereas the periphery exhibits either fractal or nonfractal scaling. The fractal dimension of the periphery is found to coincide with one for the whole network.

Altered branching patterns of Purkinje cells in mouse model for cortical development disorder.

Disrupted cortical cytoarchitecture in cerebellum is a typical pathology in reeler. Particularly interesting are structural problems at the cellular level: dendritic morphology has important functional implication in signal processing. Here we describe a combinatorial imaging method of synchrotron X-ray microtomography with Golgi staining, which can deliver 3-dimensional(3-D) micro-architectures of Purkinje cell(PC) dendrites, and give access to quantitative information in 3-D geometry. In reeler, we visualized in 3-D geometry the shape alterations of planar PC dendrites (i.e., abnormal 3-D arborization). Despite these alterations, the 3-D quantitative analysis of the branching patterns showed no significant changes of the 77 ± 8° branch angle, whereas the branch segment length strongly increased with large fluctuations, comparing to control. The 3-D fractal dimension of the PCs decreased from 1.723 to 1.254, indicating a significant reduction of dendritic complexity. This study provides insights into etiologies and further potential treatment options for lissencephaly and various neurodevelopmental disorders.