Localized Nanoscale Heating Leads to Ultrafast Hydrogel Volume-Phase Transition

Ultrafast cooling and heating scenarios for the laser-induced phase transition in CuO

Photonic crystal protein hydrogel sensor materials enabled by conformationally induced volume phase transition

Hydrogels that change volume in response to specific molecular stimuli can serve as platforms for sensors, actuators and drug delivery devices. There is great interest in designing intelligent hydrogels for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and microfluidics that utilize protein binding specificities and conformational changes. Protein conformational change induced by ligand binding can cause ...

Structural investigation of thermo-responsive poly(2-isopropyl-2-oxazoline) hydrogel across the volume phase transition.

The deswelling and swelling behaviors of poly(2-isopropyl-2-oxazoline)-based hydrogel synthesized by a one-pot microwave-assisted solvent-free reaction were investigated. A distinct hydrophobic collapse of the hydrogel compared with the corresponding aqueous solution was observed by FT-IR spectroscopy combined with two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2DCOS) and perturbation-correlation mo...

Mid-Infrared Volume Phase Gratings Manufactured using Ultrafast Laser Inscription

We report on the ultrafast laser inscription (ULI) of volume phase gratings inside gallium lanthanum sulphide (GLS) chalcogenide glass substrates. The effect of laser pulse energy and grating thickness on the dispersive properties of the gratings is investigated, with the aim of improving the performance of the gratings in the mid-infrared. The grating with the optimum performance in the mid-in...

Localized deer absence leads to tick amplification.

Deer support high tick intensities, perpetuating tick populations, but they do not support tick-borne pathogen transmission, so are dilution hosts. We test the hypothesis that absence of deer (loss of a dilution host) will result in either an increase or a reduction in tick density, and that the outcome is scale dependent. We use a complementary methodological approach starting with meta-analys...