An in-depth knowledge of the interaction of water with amorphous silica is critical to fundamental studies of interfacial hydration water, as well as to industrial processes such as catalysis, nanofabrication, and chromatography. Silica has a tunable surface comprising hydrophilic silanol groups and moderately hydrophobic siloxane groups that can be interchanged through thermal and chemical treatments. Despite extensive studies of silica surfaces, the influence of surface hydrophilicity and chemical topology on the molecular properties of interfacial water is not well understood. In this work, we controllably altered the surface silanol density, and measured surface water diffusivity using Overhauser dynamic nuclear polarization (ODNP) and complementary silica-silica interaction forces across water using a surface forces apparatus (SFA). The results show that increased silanol density generally leads to slower water diffusivity and stronger silica-silica repulsion at short aqueous separations (less than ∼4 nm). Both techniques show sharp changes in hydration properties at intermediate silanol densities (2.0-2.9 nm). Molecular dynamics simulations of model silica-water interfaces corroborate the increase in water diffusivity with silanol density, and furthermore show that even on a smooth and crystalline surface at a fixed silanol density, adjusting the spatial distribution of silanols results in a range of surface water diffusivities spanning ∼10%. We speculate that a critical silanol cluster size or connectivity parameter could explain the sharp transition in our results, and can modulate wettability, colloidal interactions, and surface reactions, and thus is a phenomenon worth further investigation on silica and chemically heterogeneous surfaces.

Decoupling bulk mechanics and ion conduction in conventional ion conducting polymers is challenging due to their mutual dependence on segmental chain dynamics. Polymers based on dynamic metal−ligand coordination are promising materials toward this aim. This work examines the effect of the nature and concentration of metal bis-(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (MTFSI) salts on the mechanical properties and ionic conductivity of poly[(ethylene oxide)stat-(allyl glycidyl ether)] functionalized with tethered imidazole ligands (PIGE). Varying the cation identity of metal salts mixed in PIGE enables dramatic tunability of the zero-frequency viscosity from 0.3 to 100 kPa s. The ionic conductivity remains comparable at approximately 16 μS cm −1 among mono-, di-, and trivalent salts at constant metal-to-ligand molar ratios due to negligible changes in glass transition temperatures at low ion concentrations. Thus, polymers based on metal−ligand coordination enable decoupling of polymer zero-frequency viscosity from ion conduction. Pulsed-field-gradient NMR on PIGE containing Li + or Zn 2+ salts complement electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to demonstrate that both the anion and cation contribute to ionic conductivity.

We present a new and highly efficient approach for heteronuclear coherence transfer in solid-state NMR spectroscopy under high-speed spinning conditions. The so-called (RESPIRATION)CP experiment exploits phase-alternated recoupling on only one of the two rf channels intertwined in a synchronized train of short rf pulses on both channels. The method provides significantly higher efficiencies than state-of-the art techniques including ramped and adiabatic cross-polarization experiments with long durations of intense rf irradiation. At the same time, it is easier to setup experimentally and significantly more robust toward imperfections such as rf inhomogeneity, misadjustments, and sample-induced variations in the rf tuning. The method is described analytically, numerically, and experimentally for biological solids. We demonstrate sensitivity gains of factors of 1.3 and 1.8 for typical (1)H→(15)N and (15)N→(13)C transfers and a combined gain of a factor of 2-4 for a typical NCA experiment for biological solid-state NMR.

Continuous-wave (CW) dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) is now established as a method of choice to enhance the sensitivity in a variety of NMR experiments. Nevertheless, there remains a need for the development of more efficient methods to transfer polarization from electrons to nuclei. Of particular interest are pulsed DNP methods because they enable a rapid and efficient polarization transfer that, in contrast with CW DNP methods, is not attenuated at high magnetic fields. Here we report nuclear spin orientation via electron spin-locking (NOVEL) experiments using the polarizing agent trityl OX063 in glycerol/water at a temperature of 80 K and a magnetic field of 0.34 T. 1H NMR signal enhancements up to 430 are observed, and the buildup of the local polarization occurs in a few hundred nanoseconds. Thus, NOVEL can efficiently dynamically polarize 1H atoms in a system that is of general interest to the solid-state DNP NMR community. This is a first, important step toward the general application of pulsed DNP at higher fields.

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) is theoretically able to enhance the signal in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments by a factor γ/γ, where γ's are the gyromagnetic ratios of an electron and a nuclear spin. However, DNP enhancements currently achieved in high-field, high-resolution biomolecular magic-angle spinning NMR are well below this limit because the continuous-wave DNP mechanisms employed in these experiments scale as ω where n ∼ 1-2. In pulsed DNP methods, such as nuclear orientation via electron spin-locking (NOVEL), the DNP efficiency is independent of the strength of the main magnetic field. Hence, these methods represent a viable alternative approach for enhancing nuclear signals. At 0.35 T, the NOVEL scheme was demonstrated to be efficient in samples doped with stable radicals, generating H NMR enhancements of ∼430. However, an impediment in the implementation of NOVEL at high fields is the requirement of sufficient microwave power to fulfill the on-resonance matching condition, ω = ω, where ω and ω are the nuclear Larmor and electron Rabi frequencies, respectively. Here, we exploit a generalized matching condition, which states that the effective Rabi frequency, ω, matches ω. By using this generalized off-resonance matching condition, we generate H NMR signal enhancement factors of 266 (∼70% of the on-resonance NOVEL enhancement) with ω/2π = 5 MHz. We investigate experimentally the conditions for optimal transfer of polarization from electrons to H both for the NOVEL mechanism and the solid-effect mechanism and provide a unified theoretical description for these two historically distinct forms of DNP.

The PaTH (University of Pittsburgh/UPMC, Penn State College of Medicine, Temple University Hospital, and Johns Hopkins University) clinical data research network initiative is a collaborative effort among four academic health centers in the Mid-Atlantic region. PaTH will provide robust infrastructure to conduct research, explore clinical outcomes, link with biospecimens, and improve methods for sharing and analyzing data across our diverse populations. Our disease foci are idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, atrial fibrillation, and obesity. The four network sites have extensive experience in using data from electronic health records and have devised robust methods for patient outreach and recruitment. The network will adopt best practices by using the open-source data-sharing tool, Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2), at each site to enhance data sharing using centrally defined common data elements, and will use the Shared Health Research Information Network (SHRINE) for distributed queries across the network.

Proton-assisted recoupling (PAR) is examined by exploring optimal experimental conditions and magnetization transfer rates in a variety of biologically relevant nuclear spin-systems, including simple amino acids, model peptides, and two proteins-nanocrystalline protein G (GB1), and importantly amyloid beta 1-42 (MAβ) fibrils. A selective PAR protocol, SUBPAR (setting up better proton assisted recoupling), is described to observe magnetization transfer in one-dimensional spectra, which minimizes experiment time (in comparison to two-dimensional experiments) and thereby enables an efficient assessment of optimal PAR conditions for a desired magnetization transfer. In the case of the peptide spin systems, experimental and simulated PAR data sets are compared on a semiquantitative level, thereby elucidating the interactions influencing PAR magnetization transfer and their manifestations in different spin transfer networks. Using the optimum Rabi frequencies determined by SUBPAR, PAR magnetization transfer trajectories (or buildup curves) were recorded and compared to simulated results for short peptides. PAR buildup curves were also recorded for MAβ and examined conjointly with a recent structural model. The majority of salient cross-peak intensities observed in the MAβ PAR spectra are well-modeled with a simple biexponential equation, although the fitting parameters do not show any strong correlation to internuclear distances. Nevertheless, these parameters provide a wealth of invaluable semiquantitative structural constraints for the MAβ. The results presented here offer a complete protocol for recording PAR C-C correlation spectra with high-efficiency and using the resulting information in protein structural studies.

A total of 14 phenotypically similar clinical isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae, resistant to multiple drugs including cefotaxime and ceftazidime, were isolated from blood of neonates admitted to neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) within a short span of 10 days. Alarmed at the possibility of occurrence of outbreak, a thorough investigation was done. Microbiological sampling of the NICU and labour room (LR) environment yielded 12 K. pneumoniae isolates. The presence of extended spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) in the clinical and environmental strains was detected by double-disk synergy test (DDST), CLSI phenotypic confirmatory disk diffusion test (PCDDT) and E-test ESBL strips. Amp-C screen (disk) test was done to determine Amp-C β-lactamase production. 100% clinical strains, 57% NICU strains and 80% LR strains were ESBL positive. 57% clinical, 43% NICU and 20% LR strains were Amp-C screen positive. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of representative ESBL positive (10 clinical and 5 environmental) strains showed CTX gene and TEM and/or SHV gene in all. K. pneumoniae showing multiple mechanisms of drug resistance was responsible for the outbreak.