Characterization of Nanodiamond-based anti-HIV drug Delivery to the Brain.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Present combination antiretroviral therapy has substantially improved HIV-1 related pathology. However, delivery of therapeutic agents to the HIV reservoir organ like Central nervous system (CNS) remains a major challenge primarily due to the ineffective transmigration of drugs through Blood Brain Barrier (BBB). The recent advent of nanomedicine-based drug delivery has stimulated the development of innovative systems for drug delivery. In this regard, particular focus has been given to nanodiamond due to its natural biocompatibility and non-toxic nature-making it a more efficient drug carrier than other carbon-based materials. Considering its potential and importance, we have characterized unmodified and surface-modified (-COOH and -NH2) nanodiamond for its capacity to load the anti-HIV-1 drug efavirenz and cytotoxicity, in vitro. Overall, our study has established that unmodified nanodiamond conjugated drug formulation has significantly higher drug loading capacity than surface-modified nanodiamond with minimum toxicity. Further, this nanodrug formulation was characterized by its drug dissolution profile, transmigration through the BBB, and its therapeutic efficacy. The present biological characterizations provide a foundation for further study of in-vivo pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of nanodiamond-based anti-HIV drugs.

Mapping Chemical Selection Pathways for Designing Multicomponent Alloys: an informatics framework for materials design.

A data driven methodology is developed for tracking the collective influence of the multiple attributes of alloying elements on both thermodynamic and mechanical properties of metal alloys. Cobalt-based superalloys are used as a template to demonstrate the approach. By mapping the high dimensional nature of the systematics of elemental data embedded in the periodic table into the form of a network graph, one can guide targeted first principles calculations that identify the influence of specific elements on phase stability, crystal structure and elastic properties. This provides a fundamentally new means to rapidly identify new stable alloy chemistries with enhanced high temperature properties. The resulting visualization scheme exhibits the grouping and proximity of elements based on their impact on the properties of intermetallic alloys. Unlike the periodic table however, the distance between neighboring elements uncovers relationships in a complex high dimensional information space that would not have been easily seen otherwise. The predictions of the methodology are found to be consistent with reported experimental and theoretical studies. The informatics based methodology presented in this study can be generalized to a framework for data analysis and knowledge discovery that can be applied to many material systems and recreated for different design objectives.

Four-body interaction energy for compressed solid krypton from quantum theory.

The importance of the four-body contribution in compressed solid krypton was first evaluated using the many-body expansion method and the coupled cluster theory with full single and double excitations plus perturbative treatment of triples. All different four-atom clusters existing in the first- and second-nearest neighbor shells of face-centered cubic krypton were considered, and both self-consistent-field Hartree-Fock and correlation parts of the four-body interaction were accurately determined from the ambient conditions up to eightfold volume compression. We find that the four-body interaction energy is negative at compression ratio lower than 2, where the dispersive forces play a dominant role. With increasing the compression, the four-body contribution becomes repulsive and significantly cancels the over-softening effects of the three-body potential. The obtained equation of state (EOS) was compared with the experiments and the density-functional theory calculations. It shows that combination of the four-body effects with two- and three-body interactions leads to an excellent agreement with EOS measurements throughout the whole experimental range 0-130 GPa, and extends the prediction to 300 GPa.

An extended high pressure-temperature phase diagram of NaBH4.

We have studied the structural stability of NaBH(4) under pressures up to 17 GPa and temperatures up to 673 K in a diamond anvil cell and formed an extended high P-T phase diagram using combined synchrotron x-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. Even though few reports on phase diagram of NaBH(4) are found in current literature, up to our knowledge this is the first experimental work using diamond anvil cell in a wide pressure/temperature range. Bulk modulus, its temperature dependence, and thermal expansion coefficient for the ambient cubic phase of NaBH(4) are found to be 18.76(1) GPa, -0.0131 GPa K(-1), and 12.5x10(-5)+23.2x10(-8) T/K, respectively. We have also carried out Raman spectroscopic studies at room temperature up to 30 GPa to reinvestigate the phase transitions observed for NaBH(4). A comparative symmetry analysis also has been carried out for different phases of NaBH(4).

Pressure-induced splitting and buckling of Cu-O chains in the low-dimensional structure of SrCuO2.

A pressure-induced splitting of the Cu-O chains was found in SrCuO2 at pressures >7 GPa and room temperature. The high-pressure phase is a superstructure of the infinite-layered tetragonal superconducting phase of SrCuO2 and is not stable under ambient conditions. The Cu-O chains buckle with further increasing pressure, and a new high-density polymorph of SrCuO2 is formed at 34.2 GPa.

On the compression behaviour of (Ti(0.5),V(0.5))(2)AlC and (Ti(0.5),Nb(0.5))(2)AlC to quasi-hydrostatic pressures above 50 GPa.

Using a synchrotron x-ray radiation source and a diamond anvil cell we measured the functional dependences of the lattice parameters of (Ti(0.5),V(0.5))(2)AlC and (Ti(0.5),Nb(0.5))(2)AlC to quasi-hydrostatic pressure of the order of 50 GPa. Like for other solids in this family of layered ternary carbides and nitrides, the bulk moduli (≈183 GPa) are high and no phase transformations were observed. The bulk moduli of the solid solution compositions were lower than those of the end members. The effect was much more dramatic when Ti replaced Nb in Nb(2)AlC than when it replaced V in V(2)AlC. In the former case the modulus drops by 13% from 209 GPa, with the softening coming almost exclusively from the c-axis. This somewhat surprising result is ascribed to the corrugation of the Ti-Nb planes in (Ti(0.5),Nb(0.5))(2)AlC. When Ti replaced V in V(2)AlC the drop in modulus was 8%.

Lattice dynamics of MgO at high pressure: theory and experiment.

The longitudinal acoustic and optical phonon branches along the Gamma-X direction of MgO at 35 GPa have been determined by inelastic x-ray scattering using synchrotron radiation and a diamond-anvil cell. The experimentally observed phonon branches are in remarkable agreement with ab initio lattice dynamics results. The derived thermodynamic properties, such as the specific heat CV and the entropy S are in very good accord with values obtained from a thermodynamically assessed data set involving measured data on molar volume, heat capacity at constant pressure, bulk modulus and thermal expansion.