An Amphiphilic Pillar[5]arene: Synthesis, Controllable Self-Assembly in Water, and Application in Calcein Release and TNT Adsorption

Yong Yao , Min Xue , Jianzhuang Chen , Mingming Zhang , and Feihe Huang *

MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, P. R. China

J. Am. Chem. Soc., Article ASAP

DOI: 10.1021/ja3076617

Publication Date (Web): September 11, 2012

Copyright © 2012 American Chemical Society

Dry Micromanipulation of Supramolecular Giant Vesicles on a Silicon Substrate: Highly Stable Hydrogen-Bond-Directed Nanosheet Membrane

Hirotoshi Sakaino, Jun Sawayama, Shin-ichiro Kabashima, Isao Yoshikawa, and Koji Araki

Publication Date (Web): September 14, 2012 (Communication)

DOI: 10.1021/ja307231u

Aptamer-Based Origami Paper Analytical Device for Electrochemical Detection of Adenosine†

1. Hong Liu¹, 
2. Dr. Yu Xiang², 
3. Prof. Yi Lu²,
4. Prof. Richard M. Crooks^1,*

Article first published online: 25 MAY 2012

DOI: 10.1002/anie.201202929

Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

Paper biosensors: An origami sensor is printed on a single piece of paper, folded into a three-dimensional fluidic device, and encapsulated by thermal lamination. Aptamer is trapped in the fluidic channel, where it binds to the target and releases an enzyme to generate a signal. The device is read out using a digital multimeter.

Robotic Tentacles with Three-Dimensional Mobility Based on Flexible Elastomers

1. Ramses V. Martinez¹, 
2. Jamie L. Branch¹,
3. Carina R. Fish¹, 
4. Lihua Jin⁴, 
5. Robert F. Shepherd¹, 
6. Rui M. D. Nunes¹, 
7. Zhigang Suo^2,4, 
8. George M. Whitesides^1,2,3,*

Article first published online: 7 SEP 2012

DOI: 10.1002/adma.201203002

Keywords:

• soft robotics;
• tentacles;
• pneumatic actuators;
• three-dimensional motion;
• composite materials

The remarkable flexibility and dexterity of the tongues of mammals and lizards, the trunks of elephants, and other biological muscular systems1 inspire new designs for actuators and robots.2 The octopus arm, for example, is a nonrigid structure that has a very large number of degrees of freedom (DOFs), the ability to bend in all directions, high dexterity, and astonishing capability for fine manipulation.3 In robotics, researchers have developed a variety of trunk-like manipulators using rigid structures and electric motors with cable tendons for actuation.4, 5 These hard robotic structures – structures based on multiple flexible joints connected by stiff links – are often heavy, and their control is complicated and expensive. Moreover, their underlying structures make it difficult to manipulate objects with parts of their arms other than their specialized end effectors.

Amphiphilic Egg-Derived Carbon Dots: Rapid Plasma Fabrication, Pyrolysis Process, and Multicolor Printing Patterns

Volume 51, Issue 37,pages 9297–9301,September 10, 2012

1. Jing Wang, 
2. Dr. Cai-Feng Wang, 
3. Prof. Su Chen^*

Article first published online: 21 AUG 2012

DOI: 10.1002/anie.201204381

How do you like your eggs? Amphiphilic carbon dots (CDs) with intense blue fluorescence have been produced from chicken eggs by treatment with plasma. They are used as effective “fluorescent carbon inks” for multicolor luminescent inkjet and silk-screen printing (see image).

Recovering three-dimensional shape around a corner using ultrafast time-of-flight imaging

Can you take a picture of someone sitting behind a wall? Well scientists at MIT can, they have developed a new camera that collects scattered light from a body that is hiding behind the wall. This camera is not an ordinary DSLR camera but its resolution is 2 picoseconds i.e. it can sense scattered light with sub-nano seconds sensitivity.

Abstract:
The recovery of objects obscured by scattering is an important goal in imaging and has been approached by exploiting, for example, coherence properties, ballistic photons or penetrating wavelengths. Common methods use scattered light transmitted through an occluding material, although these fail if the occluder is opaque. Light is scattered not only by transmission through objects, but also by multiple reflection from diffuse surfaces in a scene. This reflected light contains information about the scene that becomes mixed by the diffuse reflections before reaching the image sensor. This mixing is difficult to decode using traditional cameras. Here we report the combination of a time-of-flight technique and computational reconstruction algorithms to untangle image information mixed by diffuse reflection. We demonstrate a three-dimensional range camera able to look around a corner using diffusely reflected light that achieves sub-millimetre depth precision and centimetre lateral precision over 40 cm×40 cm×40 cm of hidden space.


Andreas Velten, Thomas Willwacher, Otkrist Gupta, Ashok Veeraraghavan, Moungi G. Bawendi & Ramesh Raskar

 Nature Communications 3, Article number: 745 doi:10.1038/ncomms1747 Received 12 September 2011 Accepted 13 February 2012 Published 20 March 2012

Hydrogel microrobots actuated by optically generated vapour bubbles

In a very interesting way, authors have carefully moved hydrogel bubbles using lazers. they were able to assemble polystyrene bead in certain directions using microrobots ...quite interesting!


Wenqi Hu, a Kelly S. Ishii,a Qihui Fanb and Aaron T. Ohta*a
Received 1st May 2012, Accepted 8th August 2012
DOI: 10.1039/c2lc40483d


A novel hydrogel microrobot made of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) is reported. This
disk-shaped microrobot is optothermally actuated by laser-induced bubbles. A pulsed laser is used to
smoothly actuate an 80-mm-diameter bubble microrobot at up to 320 mm s21

. A single microrobot or a pair of microrobots working in cooperation were used to assemble 20-mm-diameter polystyrene beads into different patterns. The microrobots were also used to assemble patterns made of single yeast cells and cell-laden agarose microgels. The patterned yeast cells and cell-laden microgels were cultured, and the cells successfully multiplied.

Bond-Order Discrimination by Atomic Force Microscopy

IBM has done it again. This is the first time in the history of science that bonds have been discover using Atomic Force Microscope.

Leo Gross,1* Fabian Mohn,1 Nikolaj Moll,1 Bruno Schuler,1 Alejandro Criado,2
Enrique Guitián,2 Diego Peña,2 André Gourdon,3 Gerhard Meyer1

We show that the different bond orders of individual carbon-carbon bonds in polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons and fullerenes can be distinguished by noncontact atomic force microscopy (AFM)
with a carbon monoxide (CO)–functionalized tip. We found two different contrast mechanisms,
which were corroborated by density functional theory calculations: The greater electron density in
bonds of higher bond order led to a stronger Pauli repulsion, which enhanced the brightness of
these bonds in high-resolution AFM images. The apparent bond length in the AFM images
decreased with increasing bond order because of tilting of the CO molecule at the tip apex.

E. coli bacteria binding to cell bilayer (liposome)

A picture of E.coli bacteria (blue) sticking to liposome (red)

This picture appeared on this week's cover of ACS journal "Langmuir". The cover is basically about E.coli bacteria (blue) that is chemically bonded to cell bilayer (liposome) (red). 

Background: Polydiacetylene (PDA) molecules might be the next big thing in the field of sensing. These molecules have an interesting property that they change colors (Blue to red) after chemical binding. Authors have used these molecules to prepare liposomes which can bind selectively to E. coli bacteria. 

Result and discussion: The authors synthesized glucose tagged liposomes, why glucose? because E.coli binds to glucose. The resulting liposomes can selectively bind to desired molecule i.e E. coli here. They observed that as the bacteria binds to PDA it changes color from blue to red and the more e. coli binds to cell bilayer it changes more and more reddish. Author also used a technique called "Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer" for checking the proximity of two molecules.

Liposome (red), E.coli bacteria (blue)

Conclusion:   Polydiacetylene molecules can be successfully used for biological sensing (famously called Biosensing).

Reference: "Investigating Ligand–Receptor Interactions at Bilayer Surface Using Electronic Absorption Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer" Langmuir, 2012, 28 (36), pp 12989–12998
Here is the Link to this paper  :  http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la300724z

Fwd: Beautiful Diatom Picture

> Diatoms
> Ref: National geographic
>