Possible Seasonality of Clostridium difficile in Retail Meat, Canada

We previously reported Clostridium difficile in 20% of retail meat in Canada, which raised concerns about potential foodborne transmissibility. Here, we studied the genetic diversity of C. difficile in retail meats, using a broad Canadian sampling infrastructure and 3 culture methods. We found 6.1% prevalence and indications of possible seasonality (highest prevalence in winter)

Photo-induced collective charge-density-wave dynamics in bulk 1T-VSe2

We investigated temperature (T) and excitation density dependent ultrafast near-infrared (NIR) transient reflectivity dynamics in the charge density wave (CDW) phases of bulk layered 1T-VSe2 using NIR and visible excitations. The data reveal fingerprints of conventional non-adiabatic CDW collective dynamics with rather fast electronic order parameter dynamics showing sub-picosecond suppression and recovery. The slower T-dependent 100-ps dynamics indicates rather isotropic heat transport dominated by the lattice degrees of freedom

Exfoliation of Mo

We have demonstrated debundling of molydenym-sulphur-iodine nanowires simply by diluting nanowire dispersions in isopropanol. Using atomic-force-microscopy we observe the bundle diameter distribution to decrease dramatically with concentration. Detailed analysis of the data suggests the presence of an equilibrium bundle number density. The population of individual nanowires increases with decreasing concentration until almost half of all dispersed objects are individual nanowires at a concentration of 4 × 10−3 mg/ml. The partial concentration of individual nanowires peaks at a concentration of ~7 × 10−3 mg/ml. This debundling also occurs spontaneously without the input of sonic energy, suggesting thermodynamic solubility. The absorbance of the nanowire dispersions, measured in the visible region increases linearly with concentration indicating a concentration independent absorption coefficient. However, for the infra-red feature that has been associated with band edge transitions, the absorption coefficient increases with increasing concentration for both stoichiometries. This suggests that this transition may be quenched by the inter-nanowire interactions associated with bundling. Finally, nanowire re-aggregation can be induced by the addition of small quantities of non-solvents

Processing and characterisation of Mo6S2I8 nanowires.

One-dimensional nanostructures based on the Mo-S-I system have recently aroused a lot of interest as a viable alternative to the ubiquitous carbon nanotube due to their uniform structure and electronic properties for a given composition. Previous research on the Mo(6)S(3)I(6) and Mo(6)S(4.5)I(4.5) stoichiometries has also shown them to be soluble in common solvents like water, acetone or isopropyl alcohol, and to debundle on dilution. Here, the solubility, debundling and composition of Mo(6)S(2)I(8) nanowires are presented. They were found to be most soluble in dimethylformamide, which retained 47 wt% of a 0.08 gl(-1) nanowire (NW) material dispersion as thin NW bundles after one week. Dispersions of 0.8 gl(-1) and 5 gl(-1) even retained 54 wt% and 66 wt%, respectively. However the NW material was completely insoluble in water, and the surface energy of Mo(6)S(2)I(8) NWs was deduced as 67 mJ m(-2), higher than for other Mo-S-I NWs. UV-vis-NIR spectroscopy showed nanowire peaks familiar from Mo(6)S(3)I(6) and Mo(6)S(4.5)I(4.5) spectra around 1.8 and 2.8 eV, as well as unforeseen ultraviolet peaks at 3.5 and 4.4 eV. These chemical differences suggest an alternate, more strongly bonded structure to that seen for Mo(6)S(3)I(6) and Mo(6)S(4.5)I(4.5) NWs. Films deposited from a range of concentrations were investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM) to determine bundle diameter distributions. The average diameter and the spread in diameters were found to decrease somewhat with decreasing concentration. However extrapolation gave a finite bundle size at infinite dilution, and an extension of the existing debundling model is proposed to take this into account. To confirm the nominal stoichiometry of Mo(6)S(2)I(8), which does not follow the generic Mo(6)S(x)I(9-x) formula of previous stoichiometries, EDX was carried out. The composition of nanowire bundles was found to be Mo(6)S(2.3)I(8.6), supporting the nominal composition

Reusable Au/Pd-coated chestnut-like copper oxide SERS substrates with ultra-fast self-recovery

Reliable and reusable plasmonic substrates are crucial for the development of biosensing applications using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), as they can provide unique advantages for ultrafast and accurate single-molecule recognition of different species. These properties are unrevealed in this paper, where thermally annealed cupric CuO and cuprous oxide Cu2O heterostructures were used as templates for highly stable nanotextured surfaces and design of robust 3D plasmonic biochips. Differently tailored nano/micro-roughness provided outstanding light trapping abilities that lead to significant SERS performance improvement. It was found that Cu2O chestnut-like substrate activated with 80 nm Au/Pd alloy film reveals impressive 3.7-fold Raman signal increment in respect to grainy-like structure and about twice larger amplification than that of nanowires enriched platform decorated in the same manner. Large enhancement factor AEF ~5 × 105 of a chestnut-like Au/Pd@/Cu2O chip allows adding it up to the list of the most effective oxide-based plasmonic substrates. Moreover, the substrate shows unprecedented durability during repetitive plasma-cleaning, demonstrating a remarkable 100 self-recovery in less than 1 min, accompanied by virtually no thickness degradation of the plasmonic layer. © 2020 Elsevier B.V