Despite the great advances in synthesis and structural determination of atomically precise, thiolate-protected metal nanoclusters, our understanding of the driving forces for their colloidal stabilization is very limited. Currently there is a lack of models able to describe the thermodynamic stability of these 'magic-number' colloidal nanoclusters as a function of their atomic-level structural ...

The development of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes is outlined with a review of recent work and a discussion of the application of these concepts to physicochemical, biological and hydrodynamic phenomena. The extension of local thermodynamics to include a theory of stability and of fluctuations receives attention. The author concludes with remarks on the stability properties of che...

We present a theory which shows that, in a closed system of fixed volume capable of undergoing a phase transition, the transition state can be thermodynamically stable against the bulk phases if a certain material parameters criterion is fulfilled. In a small system below the critical size the transition state turns into a globally stable phase that can be observed experimentally. This effect i...

We examine the thermodynamic stability of large black holes in four-dimensional antide Sitter space, and we demonstrate numerically that black holes which lack local thermodynamic stability often also lack stability against small perturbations. This shows that no-hair theorems do not apply in anti-de Sitter space. A heuristic argument, based on thermodynamics only, suggests that if there are an...

Thermodynamic data for proteins are important for understanding the mechanism of protein stability. Pfeil [1] collected a set of thermodynamic data on protein folding and stability from experimental studies. Recently, we have developed an electronically accessible Thermodynamic Database for Proteins and Mutants (ProTherm) [2], which includes several thermodynamic data (unfolding Gibbs free ener...

Control input-output contact systems are the representation of open irreversible Thermodynamic systems whose geometric structure is defined by Gibbs’ relation. These systems are called conservative if furthermore they leave invariant a particular Legendre submanifold defining their thermodynamic properties. In this paper we address the stabilization of controlled input-output contact systems. F...

The apical domain of GroEL (residues 191 to 376) and its C-terminally truncated fragment GroEL(191-345) are expressed with high yield in Escherichia coli to give functional monomeric minichaperones. Owing to the reversible folding behaviour of the minichaperones we can analyse the folding of the polypeptide binding domain of the multidomain GroEL protein, the folding of which is known to be irr...

By balancing the average energy gap with its typical change due to mutations for protein-like heteropolymers with M residues, we show that native states are unstable to mutations on a scale M ∼ (λ/σμ) 1/ζs , where λ is the dispersion in the interaction free energies and σμ their typical change. Theoretical bounds and numerical estimates (based on complete enumeration on four lattices) of the in...

Formamide lowers melting temperatures (Tm) of DNAs linearly by 2.4-2.9 degrees C/mole of formamide (C(F)) depending on the (G+C) composition, helix conformation and state of hydration. The inherent cooperativity of melting is unaffected by the denaturant. dTm/dC(F)for 11 plasmid domains of 0.23 < (G+C)<0.71 generally fit to a linear dependence on (G+C)-content, which, however, is consistent wit...

Thermodynamic stability constants of the formation of complexes from the reactions of humic substances with various metals are usually used as parameters to judge the reactivities of both humic substances and metals. However, in calculating the thermodynamic stability constants, complicated processes for the acquisition of activities of components in reactions are absolutely inevitable. In this...