Low-Loss Organic Hyperbolic Materials in the Visible Spectral Range: A Joint Experimental and First-Principles Study

Hyperbolic media strengthen numerous attractive applications in optics such as super-resolution imaging, enhanced spontaneous emission, and nanoscale waveguiding. Natural hyperbolic materials exist at visible frequencies; however, implementations of these materials suffer substantial compromises resulting from the high loss in the currently available candidates. Here, the first experimental and theoretical investigation of regioregular poly(3-alkylthiophenes) (rr-P3ATs), a naturally low-loss organic hyperbolic material (OHM) in the visible frequency range, is shown. These hyperbolic properties arise from a highly ordered structure of layered electron-rich conjugated thiophene ring backbones separated by insulating alkyl side chains. The optical and electronic properties of the rr-P3AT can be tuned by controlling the degree of crystallinity and alkyl side chain length. First-principles calculations support the experimental observations, which result from the rr-P3AT's structural and optical anisotropy. Conveniently, rr-P3AT-based OHMs are facile to fabricate, flexible, and biocompatible, which may lead to tremendous new opportunities in a wide range of applications.     

Synthetic Peroxides Promote Apoptosis of Cancer Cells by Inhibiting P-Glycoprotein ABCB5

This article discloses a new horizon for the application of peroxides in medical chemistry. Stable cyclic peroxides are demonstrated to have cytotoxic activity against cancer cells; in addition a mechanism of cytotoxic action is proposed. Synthetic bridged 1,2,4,5-tetraoxanes and ozonides were effective against HepG2 cancer cells and some ozonides selectively targeted liver cancer cells (the selectivity indexes for compounds 11 b and 12 a are 8 and 5, respectively). In some cases, tetraoxanes and ozonides were more selective than paclitaxel, artemisinin, and artesunic acid. Annexin V flow-cytometry analysis revealed that the active ozonides 22 a and 23 a induced cell death of HepG2 by apoptosis. Further study showed that compounds 22 a and 23 a exhibited a strong inhibitory effect on P-glycoprotein (P-gp/ABCB5)-overexpressing HepG2 cancer cells. ABCB5 is a key player in the multidrug-resistant phenotype of liver cancer. Peroxides failed to demonstrate a direct correlation between oxidative potential and their biological activity. To our knowledge this is the first time that peroxide diastereoisomers have been found to show stereospecific antimalarial action against the chloroquine-sensitive 3D7 strain of Plasmodium falciparum. Stereoisomeric ozonide 12 b is 11 times more active than stereoisomeric ozonide 12 a (IC₅₀=5.81 vs 65.18 μm ). Current findings mean that ozonides merit further investigation as potential therapeutic agents for drug-resistant hepatocellular carcinoma.     

A methodology for estimating airborne virus exposures in indoor environments using the spatial distribution of expiratory aerosols and virus viability characteristics

This study investigated the feasibility of using the spatial distribution of expiratory aerosols and the viability functions of airborne viruses to estimate exposures to airborne viruses in an indoor environment under imperfectly mixed condition. A method adopting this approach was tested in an air-conditioned hospital ward. Artificial coughs were produced by aerosolizing a simulated respiratory fluid containing a known concentration of benign bacteriophage. The bacteriophage exposures estimated on the basis of the spatial aerosol distributions and its viability function were in reasonable agreement with those measured directly by biological air sampling and culturing. The ventilation flow and coughing orientation were found to play significant roles in aerosol transport, leading to different spatial distribution patterns in bacteriophage exposure. Bacteriophage exposures decreased with lateral distance from the infector when the infector coughed vertically upward. In contrast, exposures were constant or even increased with distance in the case of lateral coughing. The possibility of incorporating the proposed exposure estimation into a dose-response model for infection risk assessment was discussed. The study has also demonstrated the potential application of viability functions of airborne viral pathogens in exposure assessment and infection risk analysis, which are often unavailable in literature for some important communicable diseases. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The proposed method makes use of the viability function of the virus and the spatial distribution of the expiratory aerosols for virus exposure estimation. Spatial differences in aerosol distribution and its influences on virus exposure in an air space can be determined. Variations in infectious dose with carrier aerosol size could also be considered. The proposed method may serve as a tool for further investigation of ventilation design and infection control in clinical or other indoor environments.     

Sustainable Urban Development Issues in Chinese Transitional Cities: Hong Kong and Shenzhen

Post-colonial capitalist Hong Kong and rapidly developing Shenzhen in China's socialist market economy have both adopted a pro-growth strategy to cope with challenges imposed by a globalizing economy. This development philosophy has exerted tremendous pressure on both cities, pushing them further away from the path of sustainable urban development. Despite the policy rhetoric of pursuing sustainable development, both city governments have refrained from identifying and analysing sustainable urban development issues. While the top-down elite-dominated polities in Hong Kong and Shenzhen are working hard to attain world city status, both cities lack a sustainable development strategy. Without a critical rethink of the growth-first mentality, sustainability principles such as an ethical utilization of natural resources and aspirations for intra- and inter-generational equity are not put on the policy agenda. Despite recent efforts to clean up the environment, it is uncertain how these two growing cities will proceed as the global economy itself is starting to capitalize on sustainability efforts to further capital accumulation.     

Spatial practice,conceived space and lived space: Hong Kong’s ‘Piers saga’ through the Lefebvrian lens

By applying the Lefebvrian lens, this paper tries to understand why unlike previous similar cases, the latest removal of the Star Ferry and Queen’s Pier was so controversial. To Lefebvre, embedded in ‘spatial practices’ that ‘secrete’ a place are two contradicting spaces: ‘conceived spaces’ produced by planners to create exchange values and ‘lived spaces’ appropriated by citizens for use values. Applying Lefebvre’s framework to examine the ‘Piers saga’, it is found that the pre‐Second World War (WWII) piers were ‘conceived’ by spatial practices of a colonial and racially segregated trading enclave. The public space in the commercial heart that housed the previous generations of piers was not accessible to the Chinese community, thus denying them opportunities to appropriate them and turn them into ‘lived’ spaces. It was only after WWII when the Government carried out further reclamation to meet the needs of an industrializing economy that inclusive public spaces were conceived in the commercial heart, enabling the general public to ‘appropriate’ them as ‘lived’ space. When the Government planned to remove this very first ‘lived’ space in the political and economic heart of the city to conceive further reclamation for the restructuring economy, the more enlightened citizens were determined to defend it.     

Quality assurance of Chinese herbal medicines: Procedure for multiple‐herb extraction

A quality assurance (QA) procedure for multiple‐herb extraction, which takes into account the existence of common chemical markers and multiple‐herb‐extraction effects, has been developed for producing Chinese herbal medicines (CHMs) of consistent quality. The experimental method for determining related correlation function of the multiple‐herb‐extraction effect was designed. A systematic solution strategy was also developed to appropriately decompose the multiple‐herb extraction system into several subsystems for obtaining solution(s) and determining the overall behavior of the system. An example of QA of Danshen–Gegen (DG) decoction was used to demonstrate the QA procedure. An H9c2 cell assay was used to test the efficacy of consistent quality DG decoctions prepared by different herb combinations with different material costs of herbs. It was observed that a multiple‐herb‐extraction effect was present in the aqueous extraction of Danshensu and this effect was depended on the extraction solvent. The possible mechanism of this multiple‐herb‐extraction effect in the aqueous DG extraction was speculated to be the change of initial pH value of the aqueous extraction solvent by an unknown component from Gegen. The experimental chemical marker concentrations fell within ±10% of the specified chemical marker compositions by using the amount of herb from each herb class as predicted by the QA model. Furthermore, an H9c2 cell assay was used to test the efficacy of three consistent quality DG extracts, which were produced by different herb combinations with different material costs of herbs. The results showed that the three DG extracts provided consistent biological efficacy against menadione‐induced toxicity. This study extended a recently developed QA procedure of single‐herb extraction to multiple‐herb extraction. It provides a solution of QA in extraction, which is one of the most important unresolved problems in the modernization of traditional Chinese medicines. With this modified model and the companion experiments, the amount of herbs needed from different quality classes to produce a multiple‐herb formula CHM product decoction with consistent quality can be exactly determined. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J 60: 4014–4026, 2014     

Crystal Structure and Elastic Properties of Hypothesized MAX Phase‐Like Compound (Cr2Hf)2Al3C3

The term “MAX phase” refers to a very interesting and important class of layered ternary transition‐metal carbides and nitrides with a novel combination of both metal and ceramic‐like properties that have made these materials highly regarded candidates for numerous technological and engineering applications. Using (Cr₂Hf)₂Al₃C₃ as an example, we demonstrate the possibility of incorporating more types of elements into a MAX phase while maintaining the crystallinity, instead of creating solid solution phases. The crystal structure and elastic properties of MAX phase‐like (Cr₂Hf)₂Al₃C₃ are studied using the Vienna ab initio Simulation Package. Unlike MAX phases with a hexagonal symmetry (P6₃/mmc, #194), (Cr₂Hf)₂Al₃C₃ crystallizes in the monoclinic space group of P2₁/m (#11) with lattice parameters of a = 5.1739 Å, b = 5.1974 Å, c = 12.8019 Å; α = β = 90°, γ = 119.8509°. Its structure is found to be energetically much more favorable with an energy (per formula unit) of ?102.11 eV, significantly lower than those of the allotropic segregation (?100.05 eV) and solid solution (?100.13 eV) phases. Calculations using a stress versus strain approach and the VRH approximation for polycrystals also show that (Cr₂Hf)₂Al₃C₃ has outstanding elastic moduli.     

Overview of emerging nonvolatile memory technologies

Nonvolatile memory technologies in Si-based electronics date back to the 1990s. Ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET) was one of the most promising devices replacing the conventional Flash memory facing physical scaling limitations at those times. A variant of charge storage memory referred to as Flash memory is widely used in consumer electronic products such as cell phones and music players while NAND Flash-based solid-state disks (SSDs) are increasingly displacing hard disk drives as the primary storage device in laptops, desktops, and even data centers. The integration limit of Flash memories is approaching, and many new types of memory to replace conventional Flash memories have been proposed. Emerging memory technologies promise new memories to store more data at less cost than the expensive-to-build silicon chips used by popular consumer gadgets including digital cameras, cell phones and portable music players. They are being investigated and lead to the future as potential alternatives to existing memories in future computing systems. Emerging nonvolatile memory technologies such as magnetic random-access memory (MRAM), spin-transfer torque random-access memory (STT-RAM), ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM), phase-change memory (PCM), and resistive random-access memory (RRAM) combine the speed of static random-access memory (SRAM), the density of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), and the nonvolatility of Flash memory and so become very attractive as another possibility for future memory hierarchies. Many other new classes of emerging memory technologies such as transparent and plastic, three-dimensional (3-D), and quantum dot memory technologies have also gained tremendous popularity in recent years. Subsequently, not an exaggeration to say that computer memory could soon earn the ultimate commercial validation for commercial scale-up and production the cheap plastic knockoff. Therefore, this review is devoted to the rapidly developing new class of memory technologies and scaling of scientific procedures based on an investigation of recent progress in advanced Flash memory devices.     

Microwave dielectric properties of rubber and oil palm leaf samples: Measurement and modelling

This paper contains the results of measured dielectric constants of leaves of two tropical crops, rubber ( Heavea brasiliensis ) and oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis ) at microwave frequency region. Using a microcomputer-based automated system consisting of a Wiltron 360B vector network analyser,measurements are conducted based on the waveguide thin sheet technique. Leaf samples are inserted within waveguide sections, and the dielectric constants are calculated from the complex reflection coefficients. The measurements cover a frequency range of 4-18GHz. In general, the dielectric constant of a leaf sample is a function of water content and frequency. Theoretical calculations from three dielectric mixing models, i.e., the Debye-Cole Dual-Dispersion dielectric model by Ulaby and Rayes, Matzler's Model and Carlson's Model are compared with the measurements. From the comparisons, the dual-dispersion model is found to show more promise in prediction of the dielectric constants, if proper physical parameters of the model, such as bound and free-water volume fractions, are used.