Strobilurin fungicides play a crucial role in protecting plants against different pathogens and securing food supplies. A series of 1,2,3-thiadiazole and thiazole-based strobilurins were rationally designed, synthesized, characterized, and tested against various fungi. Introduction of 1,2,3-thiadiazole greatly improved the fungicidal activity of the target molecules. Compounds 8a, 8c, 8d, and 10i exhibited a relatively broad spectrum of fungicidal activity. Compound 8a showed excellent activities against Gibberella zeae, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, and Rhizoctonia cerealis with median effective concentrations (EC) of 2.68, 0.44, and 0.01 μg/mL, respectively; it was much more active than positive controls enestroburin, kresoxim-methyl, and azoxystrobin with EC between 0.06 and 15.12 μg/mL. Comparable or better fungicidal efficacy of compound 8a compared with azoxystrobin and trifloxystrobin against Sphaerotheca fuliginea and Pseudoperonspera cubensis was validated in cucumber fields at the same application dosages. Therefore, compound 8a is a promising fungicidal candidate worthy of further development.

A series of 3,4-dichloroisothiazole based novel strobilurin analogs were synthesized, the compound8dwas discovered as a new fungicidal candidate with better efficacy than commercial standards.

Supramolecular capsules are nanoscale containers useful for the study of molecular behavior in confined spaces.

The great pain and stress from finger-prick glucose measurements have resulted in great motivation to find noninvasive glucose monitoring technologies where salivary glucose measurement is desirable. However, the relative low concentration of glucose and coexisting chemicals in saliva challenges the sensitive and selective salivary glucose detection. In this article, we have rationally designed and constructed a salivary glucose sensor by modifying the inner wall of the Au-decorated glass nanopore with stimuli-responsive copolymer poly­(3-(acryloylthioureido) phenylboronic acid-co-N-isopropylacrylamide) (denoted as PATPBA-co-PNIPAAm) via Au–S interaction. Notably, upon recognition of glucose, the copolymer could undergo a wettability switch and pKa shifts in the boronic acid functional groups, which significantly regulated the ion transport through nanopores, thus showing improved sensitivity with the detection limit of 1 nM. Moreover, benefiting from the multivalent boronic acid–glucose interaction and the cooperation of thiourea units, the copolymer exhibited good selectivity for glucose detection against the coexisting saccharides and other biological molecules in saliva. The nanopores with well-demonstrated analytical performance were finally applied for monitoring glucose in saliva. Together, this work unveiled a new platform for glucose detection in saliva, and promised to provide a new strategy for detecting other biomolecules in accessible biofluid involved in physiological and pathological events.

The cation−π interaction and the hydrophobic effect are important intermolecular forces in chemistry and play major roles in controlling recognition in biological systems. We compared their relative contributions to the binding of molecular “dumbbell” guests in synthetic container hosts in water. The guests offered direct, intramolecular competition between trimethylammonium groups, −N+(CH3)3, and tert-butyl groups, −C­(CH3)3, for the internal surfaces (aromatic panels) of the containers. In contrast with previous studies, the container molecules consistently preferred binding to the uncharged tert-butyl groups, regardless of the presence of anionic, cationic, or zwitterionic groups on the container peripheries. This preference is determined by solvation of the polar trimethylammonium group in water, which outcompetes the attraction between the positive charge and the π-surfaces in the container. The synthetic container complexes provide a direct measure of the relative strengths of cation−π interactions and desolvation in water. Interactions with the uncharged tert-butyl group are more than 12 kJ mol–1 more favorable than the cation−π interactions with the trimethylammonium group in these cavitand complexes.

The self-assembled, hydrogen-bonded hexameric resorcin[4]arene capsule represents one of the most readily accessible host systems for the study of container catalysis.

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Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a multidisciplinary activity aimed at recognizing, evaluating and controlling hazards arising in or from the workplace that could impair the health and well‐being of workers. In dealing with an OHS risk analysis problem, it is a crucial step and also a big challenge to assess the risk of occupational hazards. Normally, domain experts tend to use qualitative words to express the risk of occupational hazards due to the fuzziness of human cognition, and multiple risk criteria are often involved in the OHS risk analysis. In this study, we develop a new OHS risk assessment framework by integrating the TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive and multicriteria decision‐making) and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) methods to assess and rank the risk of occupational hazards under linguistic spherical fuzzy environment. The linguistic spherical fuzzy sets are utilized to deal with the vague and uncertain risk assessments of occupational hazards provided by experts. An integrated TODIM‐PROMETHEE algorithm is introduced to determine the risk priority of the identified occupational hazards. Moreover, we extend the indifference threshold‐based attribute ratio analysis method to derive the relative weights of risk criteria based on linguistic spherical fuzzy information. Finally, the OHS risk analysis of medical staff in a hospital is presented to illustrate the effectiveness and availability of our proposed model. Results show that the TODIM‐PROMETHEE framework being developed in this study provides a useful, effective, and practical way for the risk assessment of occupational hazards in OHS.