Directing Intrinsic Chirality in Gold Nanoclusters: Preferential Formation of Stable Enantiopure Clusters in High Yield and Experimentally Unveiling the “Super” Chirality of Au144_{144}

Chiral gold nanoclusters offer significant potential for exploring chirality at a fundamental level and for exploiting their applications in sensing and catalysis. However, their widespread use is impeded by low yields in synthesis, tedious separation procedures of their enantiomeric forms, and limited thermal stability. In this study, we investigated the direct synthesis of enantiopure chiral nanoclusters using the chiral ligand 2-MeBuSH in the fabrication of Au$_{25}$, Au$_{38}$, and Au$_{144}$ nanoclusters. Notably, this approach leads to the unexpected formation of intrinsically chiral clusters with high yields for chiral Au$_{38}$ and Au$_{144}$ nanoclusters. Experimental evaluation of chiral activity by circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy corroborates previous theoretical calculations, highlighting the stronger CD signal exhibited by Au$_{144}$ compared to Au$_{38}$ or Au$_{25}$. Furthermore, the formation of a single enantiomeric form is experimentally confirmed by comparing it with intrinsically chiral Au$_{38}$(2-PET)$_{24}$ (2-PET: 2-phenylethanethiol) and is supported theoretically for both Au$_{38}$ and Au$_{144}$. Moreover, the prepared chiral clusters show stability against diastereoisomerization, up to temperatures of 80°C. Thus, our findings not only demonstrate the selective preparation of enantiopure, intrinsically chiral, and highly stable thiolate-protected Au nanoclusters through careful ligand design but also support the predicted “super” chirality in the Au$_{144}$ cluster, encompassing hierarchical chirality in ligands, staple configuration, and core structure

Peculiarities Regarding the Testing of Milk Physicochemical and Cytology at a PIC Sows Sample

Abstract. Testing the main physicochemical and cyto-morphological milk parameters during lactation debut represented the monitoring of breast health at a lot of PIC sows (n = 15) and its impact on health and growth indicators in suckling piglets. Investigations were carried out on samples of milk collected by manual milking, using stimulation of milk ejection by oxytocin injection (n = 10) and by breastfeeding 2-3 piglets (n = 5). Physicochemical tests were performed with semi-automatic EKOMILK analyzer, consisting in determining the main biochemical components (non-fat dry substance -NFS, fat, protein), density, freezing point and water added. Cyto-morphological investigations consisted in making the milk cytograms on the milk sediment smears, defatted with xylene or benzene and panoptic stained (MGG and Dia -Quick panoptic). The evolution of investigated compositional and cytological parameters revealed large variations of individual and average values, grouped in intervals comparable to those reported in consulted studies and with minor deviations and non-pathological connotation. Thus, the test results of milk samples outlined a physicochemical profile, characteristic on lactation debut in the sow, with the following individual oscillations around the average values: 5.37 -13.3% (7.97%) for protein, 10.8 -19.9% (13.67%) for non-fat dry substance, 1.71 to 14.5% (8.18%) for fat, 1.028 to 1.076 (1.043) for density, -0.954 to -0.744 °C (0.28 °C) for the freezing point. The cytomorfological configuration of this sample of sows milk was characterized by increasing the proportion of macrophages with advancing lactation (42.86%, 30-60%), usually associated with PMN leukocytes decreasing (15.8%, 8-43% ) and lymphocytes rarely (31.0%, 11-46%) or epithelial cells (10.4%, 3-20%). We have given a particular character for the onset of lactation in sows to the distribution and morphology of epithelial cells. Regarding the distribution, it was relevant the higher proportion of epitheliocytes (10.4%) in the milk of investigated sows to that found in milk of ruminant species. Most of the observed epitheliocytes had a glandular origin, and morphological were large cells, integral, uni-or binucleate, surrounded by a bulky cytoplasmic mass, low basophilic, with many fat microspheres, often gaining sparkling appearance and rarely ring

Directing Intrinsic Chirality in Gold Nanoclusters : Preferential Formation of Stable Enantiopure Clusters in High Yield and Experimentally Unveiling the “Super” Chirality of Au144

Chiral gold nanoclusters offer significant potential for exploring chirality at a fundamental level and for exploiting their applications in sensing and catalysis. However, their widespread use is impeded by low yields in synthesis, tedious separation procedures of their enantiomeric forms, and limited thermal stability. In this study, we investigated the direct synthesis of enantiopure chiral nanoclusters using the chiral ligand 2-MeBuSH in the fabrication of Au25, Au38, and Au144 nanoclusters. Notably, this approach leads to the unexpected formation of intrinsically chiral clusters with high yields for chiral Au38 and Au144 nanoclusters. Experimental evaluation of chiral activity by circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy corroborates previous theoretical calculations, highlighting the stronger CD signal exhibited by Au144 compared to Au38 or Au25. Furthermore, the formation of a single enantiomeric form is experimentally confirmed by comparing it with intrinsically chiral Au38(2-PET)24 (2-PET: 2-phenylethanethiol) and is supported theoretically for both Au38 and Au144. Moreover, the prepared chiral clusters show stability against diastereoisomerization, up to temperatures of 80 °C. Thus, our findings not only demonstrate the selective preparation of enantiopure, intrinsically chiral, and highly stable thiolate-protected Au nanoclusters through careful ligand design but also support the predicted “super” chirality in the Au144 cluster, encompassing hierarchical chirality in ligands, staple configuration, and core structure.peerReviewe

Missing Texture Reconstruction Method Based on Perceptually Optimized Algorithm

<p/> <p>This paper presents a simple and effective missing texture reconstruction method based on a perceptually optimized algorithm. The proposed method utilizes the structural similarity (SSIM) index as a new visual quality measure for reconstructing missing areas. Furthermore, in order to adaptively reconstruct target images containing several kinds of textures, the following two novel approaches are introduced into the SSIM-based reconstruction algorithm. First, the proposed method performs SSIM-based selection of the optimal known local textures to adaptively obtain subspaces for reconstructing missing textures. Secondly, missing texture reconstruction that maximizes the SSIM index in the known neighboring areas is performed. In this approach, the nonconvex maximization problem is reformulated as a quasi convex problem, and adaptive reconstruction of the missing textures based on the perceptually optimized algorithm becomes feasible. Experimental results show impressive improvements of the proposed method over previously reported reconstruction methods.</p

Report from the OECI Oncology days 2014

The 2014 OECI Oncology Days was held at the 'Prof. Dr. Ion Chiricuta' Oncology Institute in Cluj, Romania, from 12 to 13 June. The focus of this year's gathering was on developments in personalised medicine and other treatment advances which have made the cost of cancer care too high for many regions throughout Europe.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe