The modulation of Turing patterns through Dirichlet boundary conditions has been studied through the isothermal and non-isothermal versions of a Brusselator-like model in a small-size domain reactor. We considered the Minkowski functional and the rate of entropy production to characterize the morphological aspects of the patterns and to indicate transitions of spatial states. We find that boundary conditions can induce the spatial symmetry breaking of Turing patterns when they are defined around the equilibrium points of a homogeneous dynamical system. As a result, two different Turing patterns can emerge in a reactor under an imposed gradient of chemicals that contains the equivalent concentration of the equilibrium points at some point in the boundary.Photocatalysis has been gathering much attention because of the unique applications of photoenergy for environmental cleaning and solar fuel production. Electron transfer (ET) at the solid-liquid interface, which initiates photocatalytic reactions, has been the subject of electrochemistry, and hence the reactions are often analyzed in terms of electrochemistry. However, how extensively the concept of electrochemistry can be incorporated has not been discussed so far. In this report, by comparing with electrochemistry, the intrinsic nature of photocatalysis is disclosed and the limitation of the use of the concept of electrochemistry was pointed out. The electric potential near the photocatalyst surface was calculated and visualized, showing a potential gradient similar to that at the electrode surface but localized near the positive hole. Since the frequency of the ET at the photocatalyst surface is limited by the photon absorption, the investigation of photocatalysis in terms of energy states and kinetics should be different from those for electrochemistry. Since semiconductor photocatalysts are not wired to the electric source, the estimation of energy band positions may be altered, which was actually discussed in terms of the band alignments of anatase and rutile TiO2 crystals.The temperature dependence of the far- and mid-infrared spectrum of two prototypical protic ionic liquids (PILs) sharing a common trialkylammonium cation, but having different anions, is investigated. The exploitation of both the FIR and MIR ranges provides complementary information about the microscopic configurations and the intermolecular interactions, which determine the structure and the properties of ILs. The analysis of the data collected for all the measured frequencies in a wide temperature range reveals several phase transitions and allows the evaluation of the conformer distribution in the different physical states. The difference in the average energy between the H-bonded configurations and the dispersion-governed ones was also determined for the two PILs. Moreover, a computational model for ionic couples based on the ωB97X-D functional and a polar solvent is here successfully exploited for the description of the hydrogen bonding between anion and cation. For the attribution of vibrational lines of the conformers of the cation, the picture based on single ion calculations at the B3LYP level is more valuable and provides better agreement with the experiments.Developing a biomaterial that can promote osteoblastic differentiation, thereby reducing the needs of exogenous osteogenic factors for large bone repair, has been a significant and long-term technical hurdle. In this study, we developed an innovative nanoclay (nanosilicate, NS)-functionalized 3D gelatin nanofibrous scaffold (GF/NS) through a thermally induced phase separation method together with the particle leaching technique (TIPS&P). In addition to the significantly higher mechanical strength, the composite scaffolds (GF/NS) demonstrated a significantly stronger ability to promote the osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) in vitro compared to the GF scaffold. Our data further revealed that this intriguing pro-osteoblastic functionality was largely because of the unique features of NS, particularly, the strong binding ability to pro-osteoblastic factors (e.g., BMP2) as well as the intrinsic osteoinductivity of its bioactive degradation products. Most importantly, our in vivo studies indicated that GF/NS scaffolds significantly improved low-dose BMP2-induced ectopic bone regeneration in mice.The reduction of carbon dioxide to oxalate has been studied by experimental Collisionally Induced Dissociation (CID) and vibrational characterization of the alkali metal oxalates, supplemented by theoretical electronic structure calculations. The critical step in the reductive process is the coordination of CO2 to an alkali metal anion, forming a metal carbonite MCO2- able to subsequently receive a second CO2 molecule. While the energetic demand for these reactions is generally low, we find that the degree of activation of CO2 in terms of charge transfer and transition state energies is the highest for lithium and systematically decreases down the group (M = Li-Cs). This is correlated to the strength of the binding interaction between the alkali metal and CO2, which can be related to the structure of the oxalate moiety within the product metal complexes evolving from a planar to a staggered conformer with increasing atomic number of the interacting metal. Similar structural changes are observed for crystalline alkali metal oxalates, although the C2O42- moiety is in general more planar in these, a fact that is attributed to the increased number of interacting alkali metal cations compared to the gas-phase ions.Correction for 'Can aromaticity be a kinetic trap? Example of mechanically interlocked aromatic [2-5]catenanes built from cyclo[18]carbon' by Nikita Fedik et al., Chem. Commun., 2020, 56, 2711-2714.The chiroptical properties of multi-chromophoric systems are governed by the intermolecular arrangement of the monomeric units.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/ga-017.html  We report on a computational and experimental study of the linear optical properties and supramolecular structure of a rhodamine heterodimer assembled on a DNA scaffold. The experimental absorption and circular dichroism (CD) profiles confirm the dimer formation. Computationally, starting from low-cost DFT/TDDFT simulations of the bare dimer we attribute the measured -/+ CD sign sequence of the S1/S2 bands to a specific chiral conformation of the heterodimer. In the monomers, as typical for rhodamine dyes, the electric transition dipole of the lowest π-π* transition is parallel to the long axis of the xanthene planes. We show that in the heterodimer the sign sequence of the two CD bands is related to the orientation of these long axes. To account explicitly for environment effects, we use molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for characterizing the supramolecular structure of the two optical isomers tethered on DNA.