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A phase diagram of water in single-walled carbon nanotubes at atmospheric pressure is proposed, which summarizes ice structures and their melting points as a function of the tube diameter up to 1.7 nm. The investigation is based on extensive molecular dynamics simulations over numerous thermodynamic states on the temperature-diameter plane. Spontaneous freezing of water in the simulations and the analysis of ice structures at 0 K suggest that there exist at least nine ice phases in the cylindrical space, including those reported by x-ray diffraction studies and those unreported by simulation or experiment. Each ice has a structure that maximizes the number of hydrogen bonds under the cylindrical confinement. The results show that the melting curve has many local maxima, each corresponding to the highest melting point for each ice form. The global maximum in the melting curve is located at Ϸ11 Å, where water freezes in a square ice nanotube.ice ͉ nanopore ͉ melting point W ater in well characterized pores is a system of general interest because it serves as model systems for ''nonbulk'' or inhomogeneous water ubiquitous in biological (1) and geological (2, 3) systems as well as in nanostructured materials (4). Studies of such nonbulk water are of fundamental importance because it is believed that confined or interfacial water is highly relevant to properties and functions of the entire systems, e.g., those of ion channels (1) and clay minerals (2). X-ray diffraction studies (5, 6) show that water can fill inner space of open-ended single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) at ambient conditions and freezes into crystalline solids often referred to as ''ice nanotubes.'' The ice structures are characterized as stacked n-membered rings or equivalently as a rolled square-net sheet (7). The formation of the ice nanotubes in carbon nanotubes has also been observed by NMR (8), neutron diffraction (9), and vibrational spectroscopy (10) studies. A prediction of the spontaneous ice formation in carbon nanotubes was made in a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation study (11). It was shown that the confined water freezes into square, pentagonal, hexagonal, and heptagonal ice nanotubes, and unexpectedly it does so either continuously (unlike any bulk substances, including bulk water) or discontinuously (despite of the fact that it is essentially in one dimension), depending on the diameter of carbon nanotubes or the applied pressure. Recent simulation studies predicted spontaneous formations of octagonal ice nanotubes (10, 12), ice nanotubes with hydrophobic guest molecules (13), single-layer helical ice sheets (14), and multiwalled ice helices and ice nanotubes (15)(16)(17). The versatility of ice we know for bulk water seems to survive in the nano confinement.Of the properties of water in the well defined nanopores, a fundamental yet little known aspect is a global picture of the phase behavior: we do not know pore-size dependence of the melting point in the nanometer scale or conditions for gradual and abrupt freezing. Previous re...

Supercooled water and amorphous ice have a rich metastable phase behaviour. In addition to transitions between high- and low-density amorphous solids, and between high- and low-density liquids, a fragile-to-strong liquid transition has recently been proposed, and supported by evidence from the behaviour of deeply supercooled bilayer water confined in hydrophilic slit pores. Here we report evidence from molecular dynamics simulations for another type of first-order phase transition--a liquid-to-bilayer amorphous transition--above the freezing temperature of bulk water at atmospheric pressure. This transition occurs only when water is confined in a hydrophobic slit pore with a width of less than one nanometre. On cooling, the confined water, which has an imperfect random hydrogen-bonded network, transforms into a bilayer amorphous phase with a perfect network (owing to the formation of various hydrogen-bonded polygons) but no long-range order. The transition shares some characteristics with those observed in tetrahedrally coordinated substances such as liquid silicon, liquid carbon and liquid phosphorus.

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The natural reproductive ecology of freshwater eels remained a mystery even after some of their offshore spawning areas were discovered approximately 100 years ago. In this study, we investigate the spawning ecology of freshwater eels for the first time using collections of eggs, larvae and spawning-condition adults of two species in their shared spawning area in the Pacific. Ovaries of female Japanese eel and giant mottled eel adults were polycyclic, suggesting that freshwater eels can spawn more than once during a spawning season. The first collection of Japanese eel eggs near the West Mariana Ridge where adults and newly hatched larvae were also caught shows that spawning occurs during new moon periods throughout the spawning season. The depths where adults and newly hatched larvae were captured indicate that spawning occurs in shallower layers of 150–200 m and not at great depths. This type of spawning may reduce predation and facilitate reproductive success.

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Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed for hydrogel models of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), poly(vinyl methyl ether) (PVME), and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNiPAM). The spatial distributions and stability of hydrogen bonds in the vicinity of polymer segments are analyzed to investigate the properties of water which is highly cooperative with the surrounding polymer chains. Water-water hydrogen bonds are enhanced around hydrophobic groups especially for PVME and PNiPAM by the hydrophobic hydration. Hydrogen bonds are also stabilized around hydrophilic groups for PVME and PNiPAM. The stabilization is accounted for by a severe constraint of the mutual orientation between water and polar group.