Biochemical functionalization of surfaces is an increasingly utilized mechanism to promote or inhibit adhesion of cells. To promote mammalian cell adhesion, one common functionalization approach is surface conjugation of adhesion peptide sequences such as Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD), a ligand of transmembrane integrin molecules. It is generally assumed that such functionalization does not alter the local...

Single oligo(phenylene-vinylene) molecules constitute model systems of chromophores in disordered conjugated polymers and can elucidate how the actual conformation of an individual chromophore, rather than that of an overall polymer chain, controls its photophysics. Single oligomers and polymer chains display the same range of spectral properties. Even heptamers support pi-electron conjugation ...

Efficient energy migration in conjugated polymers is critical to their performance in photovoltaic, display, and sensor devices. The ability to precisely control the polymer conformation is a key issue for the experimental investigations and deeper understanding of the nature of this process. We make use of specially designed iptycene-containing poly(p-phenylene ethynylene)s that display chain-...

The ability of conjugated polymers to function as electronic materials is dependent on the efficient transport of excitons along the polymer chain. Generally, the photophysics of the chromophore monomer dictate the excited state behavior of the corresponding conjugated polymers. Different molecular structures are examined to study the role of excited state lifetimes and molecular conformations ...

The current study emphasizes the synthesis of iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) and impact of hydrophilic polymer polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) coating concentration as well as anticancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) loading on saturation magnetization for target drug delivery applications. Iron oxide nanoparticles particles were synthesized by a reformed version of the co-precipitation method. The coating ...

We discuss the recent finding by Mizishima's group regarding the role of the autophagy-related conjugation system in mediating the closure of autophagosomes and its implication in the study of autophagy in mammalian cells. The study not only shows a novel function of the autophagy-related conjugation system but also indicates that mammalian cells are capable of generating autophagosomes even wi...

where α and β are nonzero complex numbers. If α, β lie in some subfield F of C, then the representations are defined over F (in fact, over Z[α±1, β±1]). The starting point for ρn(α) is the reduced Burau representation βn : Bn → GLn−1(Z[t, t −1]). For each i ≥ 1, set K(α) = {A ∈ SLn−1(C[t, t ]) : A ≡ I mod (t− α)}. The sequence {K(α)}i≥1 is a central series inK(α) = K 1(α) (i.e., Ki+j(α) ⊇ [K(α)...

Nonlinear optical properties of a series of newly-synthesized ladder-type chromophores containing oligo-p-phenylene moiety with different π-conjugated lengths were theoretically studied by numerically solving the rate equations and the field intensity equation with an iterative predictor-corrector finite-difference time-domain technique. Ab initio calculation results show that the compounds can...