Optical-Cavity-Incorporated Colorful All-Solid-State Electrochromic Devices for Dual Anti-Counterfeiting.

The fusion of electrochromic technology with optical resonant cavities presents an intriguing innovation in the electrochromic field. However, this fusion is mainly achieved in liquid electrolyte-based or sol-gel electrolyte-based electrochromic devices, but not in all-solid-state electrochromic devices, which have broader industrial applications. Here, a new all-solid-state electrochromic device is demonstrated with a metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) resonant cavity, which can achieve strong thin-film interference effects through resonance, enabling the device to achieve unique structural colors that have rarely appeared in reported all-solid-state electrochromic devices, such as yellow green, purple, and light red. The color gamut of the device can be further expanded due to the adjustable optical constants of the electrochromic layer. What is more, this device exhibits remarkable cycling stability (maintaining 84% modulation capability after 7200 cycles), rapid switching time (coloration in 2.6 s and bleaching in 2.8 s), and excellent optical memory effect (only increasing by 13.8% after almost 36 000 s). In addition, this exquisite structural design has dual-responsive anti-counterfeiting effects based on voltage and angle, further demonstrating the powerful color modulation capability of this device.

Saving the overlooked mangrove horseshoe crabs-A perspective from enhancing mangrove ecosystem conservation.

Despite being widely distributed in Asia, Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda is often overlooked and, its population status remains unclear. Moreover, it is threatened by illegal harvesting and degradation of mangrove ecosystems. Protecting its habitat is essential for population and biodiversity conservation, as mangroves provide nursery grounds and food supply for C. rotundicauda. This review discusses the biological characteristics of C. rotundicauda, including ecology, nutrition, life history, toxicology, and immunology. It also presents information about its distribution and population status. The review emphasizes the challenges faced by C. rotundicauda and proposes a conservation framework that involves the participation of local residents to facilitate conservation efforts. Collaboration between local residents and communities is proposed to protect and monitor the mangrove ecosystem. Additionally, this framework can support field research, protect C. rotundicauda juveniles and other species, and ensure the livelihood of local residents through participation in carbon trading markets and eco-industries such as eco-farming and eco-tourism.

Rainbow-Colored Carbon Nanotubes via Rational Surface Engineering for Smart Visualized Sensors.

Surface engineering is effective for developing materials with novel properties, multifunctionality, and smart features that can enable their use in emerging applications. However, surface engineering of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to add color properties and functionalities has not been well established. Herein, a new surface engineering strategy is developed to achieve rainbow-colored CNTs with high chroma, high brightness, and strong color travel for visual hydrogen sensing. This approach involved constructing a bilayer structure of W and WO3 on CNTs (CNT/W/WO3 ) and a trilayer structure of W, WO3 , and Pd on CNTs (CNT/W/WO3 /Pd) with tunable thicknesses. The resulting CNT/W/WO3 composite film exhibits a wide range of visible colors, including yellow, orange, magenta, violet, blue, cyan, and green, owing to strong thin-film interference. This coloring method outperforms other structural coloring methods in both brightness and chroma. The smart CNT/W/WO3 /Pd films with porous characteristics quickly and precisely detect the hydrogen leakage site. Furthermore, the smart CNT/W/WO3 /Pd films allow a concentration as low as 0.6% H2 /air to be detected by the naked eye in 58 s, offering a very practical and safe approach for the detection and localization of leaks in onboard hydrogen tanks.

Colorful Electrochromic Displays with High Visual Quality Based on Porous Metamaterials.

The introduction of metamaterials into electrochromic (EC) displays has recently inspired a great breakthrough in the EC field, as this can offer a variety of new attractive features, from a very wide gamut of colors to very fast switching times. However, such metamaterial-based EC displays still face significant constraints when developing from single electrodes to full devices, because other supportive components in devices, such as counter electrodes and electrolytes, significantly affect light propagation and the subsequent perceived color quality in metamaterial-based EC devices. Herein, a new, cost-effective device design structured around a new type of porous metamaterial is reported to circumvent the critical problem in metamaterial-based EC displays. Owing to its unique design, the metamaterial-based EC device achieves good color quality with no drop in brightness or shift in color chromaticity when compared with a single electrode. Moreover, the porous-metamaterial-based EC device can exhibit non-iridescence and be viewed from a wide range of angles (5°-85°) and has fast switching response (2.4 and 2.5 s for coloration and bleaching, respectively), excellent cycling performance (at least 2000 cycles), and extremely low power consumption (4.0 mW cm-2 ).

Co-pyrolysis behavior of microalgae biomass and low-rank coal: Kinetic analysis of the main volatile products.

This work studied the kinetic characteristics of volatile products from co-pyrolysis of microalgae and low-rank coal. Iso-conversional method was applied to calculate the reaction order, activation energy and pre-exponential factor of gaseous products (H2, CO, CH4, and CO2) and benzene. The results indicated the activation energy of H2 generating from both individual and mixing samples was the highest, meaning H2 was the hardest to generate during the pyrolysis process. The values of activation energy from the formation of CO and benzene from low-rank coal and green algae were 31.11, 32.44, 18.21 and 24.31 kJ·mol-1, respectively. The formation of benzene and CO were easier than other volatile products due to the lower activation energy. Synergistic effects were observed from the formation of CO2, the addition of green algae decreased the activation energy. The order of the activation energy was in agreement with that of the releasing sequence of main volatile products.

On-line analysis on the interaction between organic compounds from co-pyrolysis of microalgae and low-rank coal: Thermal behavior and kinetic characteristics.

The interaction between organic compounds from microalgae and low-rank coal during the co-pyrolysis process was explored via thermogravimetric analyzer combined with an online mass spectrometer. The influence of Glycine (GLE) on thermal behavior and kinetic characteristics from gaseous products generation of mixtures of acid washed low-rank coal (ALC) were investigated. Positive and negative synergistic effects from the pyrolysis parameters and products distribution were observed due to the interaction between GLE and ALC. The addition of GLE promoted the char formation under 75 wt% mixing ratio, with about 24 wt% deviation between the calculated value and experimental value. Negative synergistic effects from yield of CO2 and CH4 were found. Kinetic results showed that the order for activation energy was E(H2) > E(CH4) > E(CO) > E(CO2), which was consistent with the releasing sequence.

Co-pyrolysis behavior of microalgae biomass and low-quality coal: Products distributions, char-surface morphology, and synergistic effects.

In this work, the distributions and releasing properties of the primary volatile products during co-pyrolysis of low-rank coal and green algae (GA) has been studied using fixed-bed reactor with online mass spectrometry. Surface morphology of the char was described quantitatively by SEM combined with fractal theory. Different forms of synergistic effects existed from both the yields of products and composition of the main gaseous products. Positive synergistic effects from tar yield were observed under 25% of GA from 600 to 850 °C, indicating GA promoted the formation of tar. Opposite synergistic effects on the content of H2 and CO were gained when the mass ratio of GA was 50%. The fractal dimensions of co-pyrolysis char were less than the calculated values except under 650 °C, which meant the GA promoted the homogeneity of char surface. This work could provide essential data for proper operation parameters selecting for co-pyrolysis.

Imidazolone-amide bridges and their effects on tubulin polymerization in cis-locked vinylogous combretastatin-A4 analogues: synthesis and biological evaluation.

A series of novel combretastatin-A4 analogues in which the cis-olefinic bridge is replaced by an imidazolone-amide were synthesized, and their cytotoxicity and tubulin-polymerization inhibitory activities were evaluated. These compounds appear to be potential tubulin-polymerization inhibitors. Compounds 10, 9b and 9c, bearing 3'-NH2-4'-OCH3, 4'-CH3 and 3'-CH3-substituted 1-phenyl B-ring, confer optimal bioactivity. The binding modes of these compounds to tubulin were obtained by molecular docking, which can explain the compounds' structure-activity relationship. The studies presented here provide a new structural type for the development of novel antitumor agents.

Synthesis and antifungal activities of novel 2-aminotetralin derivatives.

Novel 2-aminotetralin derivatives were synthesized as antifungal agents. The 2-aminotetralin scaffold was chemically designed to mimic the tetrahydroisoquinoline ring of the lead molecule described before. Their antifungal activities were evaluated in vitro by measuring the minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs). Compounds 10a, 12a, 12c, 13b, and 13d are more potent than fluconazole against seven testing human fungal pathogens. Compound 10b exhibits much higher antifungal activities against all of the four fluconazole-resistant clinic Candida albicans strains than the control drugs including amphotericin B, terbinafine, ketoconazole, and itraconazole. The mode of action of some compounds to the potential receptor lanosterol 14alpha-demethylase (CYP51) was investigated by molecular docking. The studies presented here provide a new structural type for the development of novel antifungal compounds. Furthermore, 10b was evaluated in vivo by a rat vaginal candidiasis model, and it was found that 10b significantly decreases the number of fungal colony counts.

Construction of a three-dimensional pharmacophore for Bcl-2 inhibitors by flexible docking and the multiple copy simultaneous search method.

B-Cell lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2) protein is a new promising target for anticancer drugs. A number of anticancer Bcl-2 inhibitors with diverse chemical structures have been discovered in recent years. In this paper, the flexible docking was performed to determine the binding modes of the representative inhibitors from different structural types. Subsequently, the binding modes of inhibitor were used to construct a primary three- dimensional (3D) pharmacophore model. It proved that this model can effectively disrupt the binding of the BH3 domain of proapoptotic Bcl-2 family members to Bcl-2, and match the structural requirement of a new type of Bcl-2 inhibitors. However, these distances between pharmacophoric points are not optimal due to the fact that not all of individual functional groups are located in the ideal position when inhibitors bind to its receptor. In this paper, we proposed a new idea to improve the quality of the pharmacophore model: the multiple copy simultaneous search (MCSS) method was performed to determine the energetically favorable distribution of functional groups with similar features to these pharmacophoric points in the active site of Bcl-2 first. Then their most energetically favorable minima in the positions near the pharmacophoric points were used to optimize the distances between pharmacophoric points. By examining the binding modes of several inhibitors from the same structural type, it was found that the more potent the inhibitor was, the closer it was to the optimized distances between pharmacophoric points. The optimized 3D pharmacophore model obtained in this paper may provide a good starting point for further rational design of Bcl-2 inhibitors.

Design, synthesis, and antifungal activities of novel 1H-triazole derivatives based on the structure of the active site of fungal lanosterol 14 alpha-demethylase (CYP51).

A series of fluconazole (1) analogues, compounds 3a-k, were prepared as potential antifungal agents. They were designed by computational docking experiments to the active site of the cytochrome P450 14alpha-sterol demethylase (CYP51), whose crystal structure is known. Preliminary biological tests showed that most of the target compounds exhibit significant activities against the eight most-common pathogenic fungi. Thereby, the most potent congener, 1-[(4-tert-butylbenzyl)(cyclopropyl)amino]-2-(2,4-difluorophenyl)-3-(1H-1,2,4-triazol-1-yl)propan-2-ol (3j), was found to exhibit a broad antifungal spectrum, being more active against Candida albicans, Candida tropicalis, Cryptococcus neoformans, Microsporum canis, and Trichophyton rubrum (MIC80 < 0.125 microg/ml) than the standard clinical drug itraconazole (2). The observed affinities of the lead molecules towards CYP51 indicate that a cyclopropyl residue enhances binding to the target enzyme. Our results may provide some guidance for the development of novel triazole-based antifungal lead structures.

Design, synthesis, and antifungal activities in vitro of novel tetrahydroisoquinoline compounds based on the structure of lanosterol 14alpha-demethylase (CYP51) of fungi.

Novel tetrahydroisoquinoline compounds were designed by coupling structure-based de novo design based on the structure of lanosterol 14alpha-demethylase (CYP51). The chemical synthesis and the antifungal activities in vitro of them were reported. The results exhibited that all of the lead compounds showed potent antifungal activities, in which compounds 6 and 7 had equal or stronger antifungal activities against five test fungi than that of fluconazole. The studies presented here provided the antifungal lead compounds. The affinity of the lead molecules for CYP51 was mainly attributed to their non-bonding interaction with the apoprotein, which was different from the azole antifungal agents.