We demonstrated for the first time that Agnanoparticle-decorated SiO 2 nanospheres (NSs) may display noticeable photocatalytic activities upon surface plasmon resonance (SPR) excitation. The samples were prepared by reacting SiO 2 NSs with AgNO 3 in the seed-mediated growth process, from which the Ag particle size and decoration density can be readily controlled. The dependence of the SPR-mediated photocatalytic performance of Ag-decorated SiO 2 NSs on the Ag morphology was investigated and presented. The as-prepared Agdecorated SiO 2 NSs showed a significantly red shifted and relatively broad SPR absorption when compared with the individually dispersed Ag nanoparticles. Owing to the considerably broad SPR absorption that spanned from the visible to the near-infrared region, Ag-decorated SiO 2 NSs surpassed N-doped P-25 TiO 2 powder and individually dispersed Ag nanoparticles in photocatalytic activity, demonstrating their potential as an active photocatalyst in nearly all the current photocatalysis applications. Furthermore, the result of performance evaluation under natural sunlight shows that the present Ag-decorated SiO 2 NSs can be used as highly efficient photocatalysts that may practically harvest energy from sunlight. The current study provides a new paradigm for designing plasmonic metal nanostructures that can effectively absorb the entire solar spectrum and beyond for solar fuel generation.

Abstract-The basic idea behind cloud computing is that resource providers offer elastic resources to end users. In this paper, we intend to answer one key question to the success of cloud computing: in cloud, can small-to-medium scale scientific communities benefit from the economies of scale? Our research contributions are three-fold: first, we propose an innovative public cloud usage model for small-to-medium scale scientific communities to utilize elastic resources on a public cloud site while maintaining their flexible system controls, i.e., create, activate, suspend, resume, deactivate, and destroy their high-level management entities-service management layers without knowing the details of management. Second, we design and implement an innovative system-DawningCloud, at the core of which are lightweight service management layers running on top of a common management service framework. The common management service framework of DawningCloud not only facilitates building lightweight service management layers for heterogeneous workloads, but also makes their management tasks simple. Third, we evaluate the systems comprehensively using both emulation and real experiments. We found that for four traces of two typical scientific workloads: high throughput computing (HTC) and many task computing (MTC), DawningCloud saves the resource consumption maximally by 59.5% and 72.6% for HTC and MTC service providers, respectively, and saves the total resource consumption maximally by 54% for the resource provider with respect to the previous two public cloud solutions. To this end, we conclude that small-to-medium scale scientific communities indeed can benefit from the economies of scale of public clouds with the support of the enabling system.

Aim To evaluate the efficacy of electrically conductive, biocompatible composite scaffolds in modulating the cardiomyogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). Materials & methods Electrospun scaffolds of poly(ε-caprolactone) with or without carbon nanotubes were developed to promote the in vitro cardiac differentiation of hMSCs. Results Results indicate that hMSC differentiation can be enhanced by either culturing in electrically conductive, carbon nanotube-containing composite scaffolds without electrical stimulation in the presence of 5-azacytidine, or extrinsic electrical stimulation in nonconductive poly(ε-caprolactone) scaffolds without carbon nanotube and azacytidine. Conclusion This study suggests a first step towards improving hMSC cardiomyogenic differentiation for local delivery into the infarcted myocardium.

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