A polymer-stabilized blue-phase liquid crystal (BPLC) with microsecond response time is demonstrated using a vertical field switching cell. The measured decay time is 39 μs at room temperature (21 °C) and then decreases to 9.6 μs at 44.3 °C. Such a response time is 1-2 orders of magnitude faster than that of a typical BPLC device. The responsible physical mechanisms are the collective effects of short pitch length, strong polymer network, and low viscosity through temperature effect. The on-state voltage of our BPLC device is 44.2 V, hysteresis is below 0.7%, and contrast ratio is over 1300:1.

In bath smelting, the FeO activity of the slag must be known to predict the equilibrium of slag-metal reactions and for effective control of the rate of reduction in the system. Also, knowledge of the solubility of MgO in these slags is useful for reducing refractory consumption. A series of measurements of the FeO activity in simulated bath smelting slags (CaO-SiO 2 -Al 2 O 3 -MgO sat -FeO) were conducted by the electromotive force (EMF) technique. The influence of the slag composition on the relationship between the FeO activity coefficient and FeO content was studied. It has been found that the measured FeO activity coefficient decreases with increasing FeO content in the slag and increases slightly with increasing slag basicity, which is defined as (CaO ϩ MgO)/(SiO 2 ϩ Al 2 O 3 ) on a mole fraction basis.The measured values of the FeO activity coefficient are in reasonable agreement with previously published data. The solubility of MgO was also measured and found to range from 16 to 30 pct and decrease with increasing basicity.

We present a supercomputer-driven pipeline for <i>in-silico</i> drug discovery using enhanced sampling molecular dynamics (MD) and ensemble docking. We also describe preliminary results obtained for 23 systems involving eight protein targets of the proteome of SARS CoV-2. THe MD performed is temperature replica-exchange enhanced sampling, making use of the massively parallel supercomputing on the SUMMIT supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with which more than 1ms of enhanced sampling MD can be generated per day. We have ensemble docked repurposing databases to ten configurations of each of the 23 SARS CoV-2 systems using AutoDock Vina. We also demonstrate that using Autodock-GPU on SUMMIT, it is possible to perform exhaustive docking of one billion compounds in under 24 hours. Finally, we discuss preliminary results and planned improvements to the pipeline, including the use of quantum mechanical (QM), machine learning, and AI methods to cluster MD trajectories and rescore docking poses.

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A particularly promising approach to deconstructing and fractionating lignocellulosic biomass to produce green renewable fuels and high-value chemicals pretreats the biomass with organic solvents in aqueous solution. Here, neutron scattering and molecular-dynamics simulations reveal the temperature-dependent morphological changes in poplar wood biomass during tetrahydrofuran (THF):water pretreatment and provide a mechanism by which the solvent components drive efficient biomass breakdown. Whereas lignin dissociates over a wide temperature range (>25 °C) cellulose disruption occurs only above 150 °C. Neutron scattering with contrast variation provides direct evidence for the formation of THF-rich nanoclusters (Rg ∼ 0.5 nm) on the nonpolar cellulose surfaces and on hydrophobic lignin, and equivalent water-rich nanoclusters on polar cellulose surfaces. The disassembly of the amphiphilic biomass is thus enabled through the local demixing of highly functional cosolvents, THF and water, which preferentially solvate specific biomass surfaces so as to match the local solute polarity. A multiscale description of the efficiency of THF:water pretreatment is provided: matching polarity at the atomic scale prevents lignin aggregation and disrupts cellulose, leading to improvements in deconstruction at the macroscopic scale.