We also quantitatively predict the increase of the gas permeances and the decrease of the selectivities between the gases as functions of the etching time of graphene. Furthermore, by fitting the theoretically predicted selectivities to the experimental ones reported in the literature, we show that nanopores in graphene effectively expand as the temperature of permeation measurement increases. We propose that this nanopore "expansion" is due to the desorption of contaminants that partially clog the graphene nanopores. In general, our study highlights the effects of the pore size and shape distributions of a graphene nanopore ensemble on its gas separation properties and calls into attention the potential effect of pore-clogging contamination in experiments.Leishmaniasis, a vector-borne disease, is caused by intracellular parasite Leishmania donovani. Unlike most intracellular pathogens, Leishmania donovani are lodged in parasitophorous vacuoles and replicate within the phagolysosomes in macrophages. Effective vaccines against this disease are still under development, while the efficacy of the available drugs is being questioned owing to the toxicity for nonspecific distribution in human physiology and the reported drug-resistance developed by Leishmania donovani. Thus, a stimuli-responsive nanocarrier that allows specific localization and release of the drug in the lysosome has been highly sought after for addressing two crucial issues, lower drug toxicity and a higher drug efficacy. read more We report here a unique lysosome targeting polymeric nanocapsules, formed via inverse mini-emulsion technique, for stimuli-responsive release of the drug miltefosine in the lysosome of macrophage RAW 264.7 cell line. A benign polymeric backbone, with a disulfide bonding susceptible to an oxidative cleavage, is utilized for the organelle-specific release of miltefosine. Oxidative rupture of the disulfide bond is induced by intracellular glutathione (GSH) as an endogenous stimulus. Such a stimuli-responsive release of the drug miltefosine in the lysosome of macrophage RAW 264.7 cell line over a few hours helped in achieving an improved drug efficacy by 200 times as compared to pure miltefosine. Such a drug formulation could contribute to a new line of treatment for leishmaniasis.Abnormal accumulation of amyloid-β (Aβ) has been determined to be a critical factor for the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), which has motivated the development of new chemical approaches for early sensing and imaging of these Aβ aggregates. Herein, we report a new near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probe for the selective monitoring of Aβ aggregates in vivo. This novel fluorophore, named CAQ, was based on the curcumin scaffold and was designed by introducing an intramolecular rotation donor and a quinoline functional group. CAQ was an environment-sensitive fluorescent probe that can be used as a reliable chemical tool for NIR imaging of amyloid plaques in a live Caenorhabditis elegans model of AD and in 5× FAD transgenic mice of early amyloid deposition. Our observations indicate that CAQ is promising for providing comprehensive information on neurodegenerative research, thereby promoting a deeper understanding of Alzheimer's pathological processes.Low lattice thermal conductivity (κL) is desirable for advancing thermoelectric (TE) materials and devices. However, κL depends on many factors such as phonon scattering sources, electron-phonon interactions, etc. It remains not fully understood how κL is influenced by excited electron-hole (e-h) pairs ubiquitously present in thermoelectrics. To address this issue, the constrained density functional theory (CDFT) simulations are performed to investigate the phonon transport properties of two typical TE materials, Mg2Si and PbTe. Surprisingly, at high e-h concentrations of ∼1021 cm-3, the κL of Mg2Si is reduced significantly by ∼30% due to the softening phonon modes. In contrast, the κL of PbTe first decreases by ∼18% at a relatively low e-h concentration of 2.34 × 1020 cm-3, but it is enhanced by ∼3.4% as the carrier concentration increases to 7.02 × 1020 cm-3. The different behaviors of these two materials arise from the different distributions of excess electrons and holes under e-h excitation. The simulation results suggest that controlling e-h pairs may offer a promising approach to design high-performance TE devices.Mixed-valence metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have exhibited unique potential in fields such as catalysis and gas separation. However, it is still an open challenge to prepare mixed-valence MOFs with isolated Ce(IV, III) arrays due to the easy formation of CeIII under the synthetic conditions for MOFs. Meanwhile, the performance of Li-S batteries is greatly limited by the fatal shuttle effect and the slow transmission rate of Li+ caused by the inherent characteristics of sulfur species. Here, we report a mixed-valence cerium MOF, named CSUST-1 (CSUST stands for Changsha University of Science and Technology), with isolated Ce(IV, III) arrays and abundant oxygen vacancies (OVs), synthesized as guided by the facile and elaborate kinetic stability study of UiO-66(Ce), to work as an efficient separator coating for circumventing both issues at the same time. Benefiting from the synergistic function of the Ce(IV, III) arrays (redox couples), the abundant OVs, and the open Ce sites within CSUST-1, the CSUST-1/CNT composite, as a separator coating material in the Li-S battery, can remarkably accelerate the redox kinetics of the polysulfides and the Li+ transportation. Consequently, the Li-S cell with the CSUST-1/CNT-coated separator exhibited a high initial specific capacity of 1468 mA h/g at 0.1 C and maintained long-term stability for a capacity of 538 mA h/g after 1200 cycles at 2 C with a decay rate of only 0.037% per cycle. Even at a high sulfur loading of 8 mg/cm2, the cell with the CSUST/CNT-coated separator still demonstrated excellent performance with an initial areal capacity of 8.7 mA h/cm2 at 0.1 C and retained the areal capacity of 6.1 mA h/cm2 after 60 cycles.Meropenem (MER) is an effective broad-spectrum antibiotic currently only available in the parenteral form requiring frequent drug preparation and administration due to its extremely poor stability. The unavailability of oral Meropenem is primarily due to its ultrapoor handling and processing stability, hydrophilic nature that inhibits the passive diffusion across the gastrointestinal (GI) epithelium, degradation in the harsh gastric environment, and GI expulsion through enterocyte efflux glycoproteins. In this regard, we have developed an oral drug delivery system that confines MER into mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs i.e, MCM-41 ∼141 nm) using a novel liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) method. MER was efficiently encapsulated within pristine, phosphonate (negatively charged MSN), and amine (positively charged MSN) modified MSNs with loading capacity ranging between 25 wt % and 31 wt %. Next, the MER-MCM-NH2 particles were electrostatically coated with Eudragit S100 enteric polymer that protected MER against gastric pH (pH 1.