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In order to rationally design new smart materials, it is pivotal to understand their phase behaviour. This means being able to predict under which conditions (e.g. temperature, pressure, concentration) such a material is a fluid, a disordered solid, or a crystal. Colloidal dispersions are suitable model systems to reproduce the behaviour of atomic systems and […]

We all have heard about the good and bad cholesterol and how these are affected by diet. Good cholesterol or high density lipoprotein (HDL) removes lipids from the vessels to get excreted in the liver. Bad cholesterol or low density lipoprotein (LDL) deliver lipids to the body. The truth is that both good and bad […]

While society strives towards more sustainable lifestyles, technological applications and products that use green solvents are coming up slowly. Deep eutectic solvents (DES) are the epitome of green neoteric solvents. They can be synthesised using simple and cheap organic precursors (e.g. polyols, carboxylic acids, amino acids…), where the mixture of two solid compounds at the […]

Bone has remarkable mechanical properties resulting in a unique ability to withstand mechanical loading. It is a hierarchically structured composite material made up primarily of type-I collagen and hydroxyapatite (HAp) mineral. The combination of these constituents and their complex structural organisation, from the molecular level to the whole organ, result in a tissue with an […]

Polymers show very interesting viscoelastic properties. They can be elastic, bridle or rigid as solids or show flow properties very similar to those of liquids, which allows Taylor design of materials with unique mechanical properties. This fact is related to the wide range of relaxation times relevant for the local dynamics of the polymer chains. […]

Hydrogen and compounds containing hydrogen are among the most frequently studied objects in neutron scattering. It is therefore important that the n-p scattering process is understood in detail for a correct interpretation of experimental data. The very high value for the bound proton cross section (σ = 81.9 barns) is caused by a specific feature […]

Liposomes are vesicles comprising a lipid membrane and aqueous core, and have found myriad applications in the biomedical field as therapeutics and in diagnostic assays. Liposome design requires careful choice of lipid composition and formulation method in order to produce populations with a defined unilamellar membrane structure. This is crucial in the development of liposome […]

As a result of decades of misuse of antibiotics, the number of bacteria resistant to commercially available antibiotics is increasing worldwide and is one of the major challenges facing global health. A unique drug-delivery system has been tested in vitro to understand its effect on bacteria. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are host defense peptides present as […]

Histatin 5 is an intrinsically disordered, multifunctional, cationic, saliva protein known to act as the first line of defense against oral candidiasis caused by Candida albicans and belongs to the family of antimicrobial peptides. The mechanism at the base of its antifungal activity is still partially unknown. For this reason, understanding the interaction between Histatin […]

Understanding the surface rheological behavior of adsorbed films at the aqueous/air interface composed of sugars, surfactants, or complexes between them, is of great interest due to their relevance in different application areas ranging from food, medical diagnostics and oil recovery. Recently, we have found that α-cyclodextrin (α-CD)/anionic surfactant mixtures form films at the solution/air interface […]

Materials databases, high throughput computing, and data mining has emerged as powerful tools for screening and rapid prototyping of functional materials. Quantum magnetic systems, with often competing ground states and phases, are a challenge for ab initio modelling. In recent work at Nordita and KTH an important step forward was taken for predictive modeling of […]

Diffraction from protein crystals remains the central pathway to high-quality protein structure determination, but a universal approach to crystallization has not been presented. This lack is linked to the underlying fundamental complexity of protein crystallization: proteins are nonspherical, flexible macromolecules with highly anisotropic interactions. Anisotropic sticky attraction can induce amorphous aggregation, and a better understanding […]

Proton-conducting oxides are materials of huge interest for a variety of applications, such as electrolytes in membrane reactors or in proton-conducting fuel cells (PCFC) operating in the intermediate temperature range, T = 200 – 500°C. A limiting factor pertaining to the performance of present-day PCFC devices is a too low proton conductivity of the electrolyte […]

The great advantage of using neutron scattering within the Life Sciences is not only the greater sensitivity towards hydrogen as compared to using X-rays as probe instead, but more importantly the ability to distinguish hydrogen from its heavier isotope deuterium.  This property enables highlighting different parts within a molecule or a molecular complex, and has […]

Nonlamellar lipid liquid crystalline phases have many potential applications, such as for drug delivery, protein encapsulation or crystallization. Lipid liquid crystalline sponge phase (L3) has so far not been very much considered in these applications, in spite of apparent advantages in terms of its flexibility and capacity of forming large aqueous pores able to encapsulate […]

Cellulose nanomaterials extracted from plants are very attractive due to their intrinsic optical and mechanical properties (e.g., high transparency, large elastic modulus, etc) and the potential novel applications that exploit these features. However, despite the extraordinary intrinsic properties of nanocelluloses at the nanoscopic level, the translation of the properties to the macroscopic level is not […]

Surface science has advanced enormously in recent decades, but many scientific questions are not resolved. Examples are spin wave dispersions with experiments contrasting theory or a difference in the potential defining the zero point energy of H adsorbed at Pt and Si surfaces. The surface dynamics of glass formers is under discussion as well as […]

Nanostructured porous thin films made from biocompatible cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) are widely used due to their attractive properties such as made from renewable resources, low density, lightweight, thermal stability, and excellent mechanical properties. These prerequisites make CNF a promising precursor for the design of bio composites and bio-inspired sensors. One crucial question is the relation […]

The Polaris instrument at ISIS began operation as a high intensity, medium resolution powder diffractometer in the late 1980s. It quickly established a large and scientifically diverse research community, encompassing engineering, materials science, condensed matter physics, solid state chemistry and earth science. However, by the late 2000s many of the key components of the Polaris […]

Lately the effect of global warming has been generally accepted and the interest of renewable resources is constantly increasing. Hydrogen would serve this purpose as an alternative fuel; however, storage is a challenging task and there is a need for new materials, with higher hydrogen capacity and lower cost. The concept of high-entropy alloys (HEAs) […]

Proton conducting oxides, and in particular acceptor doped BaZrO3, are materials of great interest because of their huge potential as electrolyte in several energy related technologies, such as hydrogen sensors, membrane reactors, steam electrolyzers, and intermediate-temperature (200 – 500 °C) solid oxide fuel cells. A key requirement for the electrolyte is a high proton conductivity […]

Many low molecular weight drugs, like classical surfactants, contain both hydrophobic and hydrophilic groups. However, due to their lower molecular weight and less distinct separation into hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions, the self-assembly of such drugs in aqueous solutions is less easy to describe in general terms. To gain more understanding of the interaction between such […]

In recent year, new therapeutic modalities involving delivery of biological molecules such as RNA, peptides and oligonucleotides have shown promising results to treat diseases that are currently hard to tackle with standard small molecules approaches. As an example, last year Alnylam announced the first therapy using small interference RNA (siRNA) approved by the Federal Drug […]

The transition from the current two-dimensional data storage and logic schemes to three-dimensional data structures could significantly improve the performance and capacity of electronic devices. Instead of simply storing and manipulating data in a two-dimensional array of elements, one can envisage stacking data bits on top of each other, thus greatly enhancing the data density. […]

Multilayered Graphene Oxide (GO) materials such as membranes and thin films are known for their potential for selective ion permeation, nano-filtration, water desalination and gas barrier properties. Many recent studies have aimed at demonstration of selective permeation of certain ions and molecules through GO membranes. Membrane tests were demonstrated to be successful for relatively thin […]