We have examined the interaction between internal and external ions in the pore of potassium channels. We found that external tetraethylammonium was able to antagonize block of Shaker channels by internal TEA when the external and internal solutions contained K(+) ions. This antagonism was absent in solutions with Rb(+) as the only permeant ion. An externally applied trivalent TEA analogue, gal...

Much of life's essential molecular machinery consists of large protein assemblies that currently pose challenges for structure determination. A prominent example is the nuclear pore complex (NPC), for which the organization of its individual components remains unknown. By combining stochastic super-resolution microscopy, to directly resolve the ringlike structure of the NPC, with single particl...

Molecular dynamics simulations of thermal conduction in nanoporous thin films are performed. Thermal conductivity displays an inverse temperature dependence for films with small pores and a much less pronounced dependence for larger pores. Increasing porosity reduces thermal conductivity, while pore shape has little effect except in the most anisotropic cases. The pores separate the film into l...

The structural characteristics of membrane support directly affect the performance of carrier facilitated transport membrane. A highly porous PolyHIPE impregnated with Aliquat 336 is proposed for Cr(VI) separation. PolyHIPE consisting of poly(styrene-co-2-ethylhexyl acrylate) copolymer crosslinked with divinylbenzene has the pore structure characteristic of large pore spaces interconnected with...

Presented in this paper is a rigorous solution of the conventional Terzaghi one-dimensional consolidation under haversine cyclic loading with any rest period. The clay deposit is either permeable at both top and bottom or permeable at the top and impermeable at the bottom. This exact analytical solution was achieved using Fourier harmonic analysis for the periodic function representing the rate...

Multilayer diffusion and capillary condensation of propylene on supported y-alumina films greatly improved the permeability and selectivity. Multilayer diffusion, occurring at relative pressures of 0.4 to 0.8 strongly increased the permeability to 6 times the Knudsen permeability, yielding permeabilities of 3.2 x 10m5 mol/m’-see-Pa. The occurrence of a maximum in the permeability coincides with...

We propose a mechanism for the stabilization/destabilization of cell membranes by multivalent ions with an emphasis on its implications for the division and fusion of cells. We find that multivalent cations preferentially adsorbed onto a membrane dramatically changes the membrane stability. They not only reduce the surface charge density of the membrane but also induce a repulsive barrier to po...

The translocation time of a polymer through a pore under the influence of an external field depends on a number of parameters, the most important of which are the field strength, the interaction with the pore, and the confinement entropy. Experimentally, the translocation is dominated either by the driving force (electrophoretic regime) or by the entropy of confinement or pore interaction (barr...

A novel double-layer collagen membrane with unequal pore sizes in each layer was designed and tested in this study. The inner, loose layer has about 100-μm-diameter pores, while the outer, compact layer has about 10-μm-diameter pores. In a rat model of incomplete spinal cord injury, a large number of neural stem cells were seeded into the loose layer, which was then adhered to the injured side,...