Most multicellular organisms can only survive under atmospheric pressure. The reduced pressure of a high vacuum usually leads to rapid dehydration and death. Here we show that a simple surface modification can render multicellular organisms strongly tolerant to high vacuum. Animals that collapsed under high vacuum continued to move following exposure of their natural extracellular surface layer (or that of an artificial coat-like polysorbitan monolaurate) to an electron beam or plasma ionization (i.e., conditions known to enhance polymer formation). Transmission electron microscopic observations revealed the existence of a thin polymerized extra layer on the surface of the animal. The layer acts as a flexible "nano-suit" barrier to the passage of gases and liquids and thus protects the organism. Furthermore, the biocompatible molecule, the component of the nano-suit, was fabricated into a "biomimetic" free-standing membrane. This concept will allow biology-related fields especially to use these membranes for several applications.animal behavior | biophysics | microscopy | nanotechnology | plasma physics

No abstract

No abstract

Some small animals only use water transport mechanisms passively driven by surface energies. However, little is known about passive water transport mechanisms because it is difficult to measure the wettability of microstructures in small areas and determine the chemistry of biological surfaces. Herein, we developed to directly analyse the structural effects of wettability of chemically modified biological surfaces by using a nanoliter volume water droplet and a hi-speed video system. The wharf roach Ligia exotica transports water only by using open capillaries in its legs containing hair- and paddle-like microstructures. The structural effects of legs chemically modified with a self-assembled monolayer were analysed, so that the wharf roach has a smart water transport system passively driven by differences of wettability between the microstructures. We anticipate that this passive water transport mechanism may inspire novel biomimetic fluid manipulations with or without a gravitational field.

Abstract. This paper presents a bounded model checking (BMC) tool called hydlogic for hybrid systems. It translates a reachability problem of a nonlinear hybrid system into a predicate logic formula involving arithmetic constraints, and checks the satisfiability of the formula based on a satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) method. We tightly integrate (i) an incremental SAT solver to enumerate the possible sets of constraints and (ii) an interval-based solver for hybrid constraint systems (HCSs) to solve the constraints described in the formulas. The HCS solver verifies the occurrence of a discrete change by enclosing continuous states that may cause the discrete change by a set of boxes. We adopt the existence property of a unique solution in the boxes computed by the HCS solver as (i) a proof of the reachability of a model, and (ii) a guide in the over-approximation refinement procedure. Our hydlogic implementation successfully handled several examples including those with nonlinear constraints.

The acid dissociation constants of the hydroxyl groups in tetrasodium 25,26,27,28-tetrahydroxycalix[4]arene-5,11,17,23-tetrasulfonate (CALX-S4) were determined at 25 °C by potentiometric and spectrophotometric titration methods. The first acid dissociation constant(pKa1) was found to be 3.26 ± 0.02 (μ = 0.1 with KNO3), which demonstrated a remarkable pKa shift due to intramolecular hydrogen-bonding interactions among the hydroxyl groups in CALX-S4. On the other hand, considerably weak acidities were observed on the residual three hydroxyl groups of CALX-S4 (pKa2 = 11.8 ± 0.3 (μ = 0.1 with KNO3), 11.3 ± 0.3 (μ = 2.0 with KCl), pKa3 = 12.8 ± 0.3 (μ = 2.0 with KCl), and pKa4= ca. 14 (μ = 2.0 with KCl)).

No abstract

No abstract