kappa-Carrageenan is a polysaccharide from red seaweed which gets precipitated by K+ ions and dissolves again in water. This smart, K(+)-responsive polymer was found to selectively bind pullulanase activity from Bacillus acidopullulyticus. Gel filtration on Sephadex G-200 showed the formation of the polymer-pullulanase complex at the pre-precipitation stage. On the other hand, phospholipase D, ...

The study of adhesion has a long and rich history, with theory, experiments, and applications bridging numerous disciplines, including physics, chemistry, engineering, and medicine. This diverse interest has led to the development of a large number of methods for both enhancing and inhibiting adhesion at specific interfaces of interest. We report herein "smart" adhesion at a polymer/metal (oxid...

The use of shape memory polymer composites is growing rapidly in smart structure applications. In this work, an active asymmetric composite called "controlled behavior composite material (CBCM)" is used as shape memory polymer composite. The programming and the corresponding initial fixity of the composite structure is obtained during a bending test, by heating CBCM above thermal glass transiti...

BACKGROUND Cytochrome c is an essential mediator of apoptosis when it is released from the mitochondria to the cytoplasm. This process normally takes place in response to DNA damage, but in many cancer cells (i.e., cancer stem cells) it is disabled due to various mechanisms. However, it has been demonstrated that the targeted delivery of Cytochrome c directly to the cytoplasm of cancer cells se...

Magnetorheological elastomers (MRE) are smart materials made by aligning magnetic microparticles inside a liquid polymer. Once the polymer is cured, this anisotropic structure is kept, giving to the composite new properties such as a large change of electrical resistivity with applied pressure. In order to understand the conduction mechanism in such composite, the influence of pressure on the e...

Thermoresponsive polymer architectures have become integral building blocks of 'smart' functional materials in modern applications. For a large range of developments, e.g. for drug delivery or nanocatalytic carrier systems, the selective adsorption and partitioning of molecules (ligands or reactants) inside the polymeric matrix are key processes that have to be controlled and tuned for the desi...