Real‐Time Liquid Crystal pH Sensor for Monitoring Enzymatic Activities of Penicillinase

A liquid crystal (LC)‐based pH sensor for real‐time monitoring of changes in localized pH values near a solid surface is reported, along with its application for the detection of enzymatic activities. It is found that 4‐cyano‐4′‐pentylbiphenyl (5CB), when doped with 4′‐pentyl‐biphenyl‐4‐carboxylic acid (PBA), shows a bright‐to‐dark optical response to a very small change in pH (from 6.9 to 7.0). The pH‐driven optical response can be explained by using orientational transitions of 5CB induced by the protonation and deprotonation of PBA at the aqueous/LC interface. Because of its high pH sensitivity, the LC‐based sensor is further exploited for monitoring local pH changes resulting from enzymatic reactions. As a proof of concept, the hydrolysis of penicillin G by surface‐immobilized penicillinase is monitored using the system, even when the concentration of penicillin G is as low as 1 nM . This type of LC‐based sensor may find potential utilities in high‐throughput screening of enzyme substrates and enzyme inhibitors.     

A Novel Conductive Core–Shell Particle Based on Liquid Metal for Fabricating Real‐Time Self‐Repairing Flexible Circuits

As a critical part of flexible electronics, flexible circuits inevitably work in a dynamic state, which causes electrical deterioration of brittle conductive materials (i.e., Cu, Ag, ITO). Recently, gallium‐based liquid metal particles (LMPs) with electrical stability and self‐repairing have been studied to replace brittle materials owing to their low modulus and excellent conductivity. However, LMP‐coated Ga₂O₃ needs to activate by external sintering, which makes it more complicated to fabricate and gives it a larger short‐circuit risk. Core–shell structural particles (Ag@LMPs) that exhibit excellent initial conductivity(8.0 Ω sq^?1) without extra sintering are successfully prepared by coating nanosilver on the surface of LMPs through in situ chemical reduction. The critical stress at which rigid Ag shells rupture can be controlled by adjusting the Ag shell thickness so that LM cores with low moduli can release, achieving real‐time self‐repairing (within 200 ms) under external destruction. Furthermore, a flexible circuit utilizing Ag@LMPs is fabricated by screen printing, and exhibits outstanding stability and durability (R/R₀ < 1.65 after 10 000 bending cycles in a radius of 0.5 mm) because of the functional core–shell structure. The self‐repairable Ag@LMPs prepared in this study are a candidate filler for flexible circuit design through multiple processing methods.     

Towards an Understanding of Nanoparticle–Chiral Nematic Liquid Crystal Co‐Assembly

The fabrication of a one‐dimensional photonic crystal without time‐reversal and space‐inversion symmetries was pursued. Theoretical studies predict that such a system would exhibit unusual optical properties, including indirect photonic bandgaps and backward wave propagating eigenmodes. Such a system can be created experimentally by combing magnetooptical nanoparticles with a chiral nematic liquid crystal. The manner in which nanoparticles co‐assemble with a chiral nematic liquid crystal was investigated. It was determined that the addition of nanoparticles to a 5CB‐COC system disrupts the system's helical structure. This disruption lowers the system's phase transition temperatures and inhibits the system's ability to form reflectivity peaks.     

Thermo‐Mechanical Responses of Liquid‐Crystal Networks with a Splayed Molecular Organization

Films of liquid‐crystal networks with a splayed molecular alignment over their cross‐section display a well‐controlled deformation as a function of temperature. The deformation can be explained in terms of differences in thermal expansion depending on the average molecular orientation of the mesogenic centers of the monomeric units. The thermal expansion of the anisotropic polymers has been characterized as a function of their molecular structure and the polymerization conditions. As a reference, films with an in‐plane 90° twist have also been studied and compared with the splayed, out‐of‐plane molecular rotation. The twisted films show a complex macroscopic deformation owing to the formation of saddle‐like geometries, whereas the deformation of the splayed structured is smooth and well controlled. The deformation behavior is anticipated to be of relevance for polymer‐based microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology.     

Kernel Thread Scheduling in Real‐Time Linux for Wearable Computers

In Linux, real‐time tasks are supported by separating real‐time task priorities from non‐real‐time task priorities. However, this separation of priority ranges may not be effective when real‐time tasks make the system calls that are taken care of by the kernel threads. Thus, Linux is considered a soft real‐time system. Moreover, kernel threads are configured to have static priorities for throughputs. The static assignment of priorities to kernel threads causes trouble for real‐time tasks when real‐time tasks require kernel threads to be invoked to handle the system calls because kernel threads do not discriminate between real‐time and non‐real‐time tasks. We present a dynamic kernel thread scheduling mechanism with weighted average priority inheritance protocol (PIP), a variation of the PIP. The scheduling algorithm assigns proper priorities to kernel threads at runtime by monitoring the activities of user‐level real‐time tasks. Experimental results show that the algorithms can greatly improve the unexpected execution latency of real‐time tasks.     

UbiFOS: A Small Real‐Time Operating System for Embedded Systems

The ubiquitous flexible operating system (UbiFOS) is a real‐time operating system designed for cost‐conscious, low‐power, small to medium‐sized embedded systems such as cellular phones, MP3 players, and wearable computers. It offers efficient real‐time operating system services like multi‐task scheduling, memory management, inter‐task communication and synchronization, and timers while keeping the kernel size to just a few to tens of kilobytes. For flexibility, UbiFOS uses various task scheduling policies such as cyclic time‐slice (round‐robin), priority‐based preemption with round‐robin, priority‐based preemptive, and bitmap. When there are less than 64 tasks, bitmap scheduling is the best policy. The scheduling overhead is under 9 µs on the ARM926EJ processor. UbiFOS also provides the flexibility for user to select from several inter‐task communication techniques according to their applications. We ported UbiFOS on the ARM9‐based DVD player (20 kB), the Calm16‐based MP3 player (under 7 kB), and the ATmega128‐based ubiquitous sensor node (under 6 kB). Also, we adopted the dynamic power management (DPM) scheme. Comparative experimental results show that UbiFOS could save energy up to 30% using DPM.     

Securing RTP Packets Using Per‐Packet Key Exchange for Real‐Time Multimedia

For secure multimedia communications, existing encryption techniques use an online session key for the key exchange, for which key size is limited to less than 10 digits to accommodate the latency condition caused by user devices only being able to handle low computational loads. This condition results in poor security of recorded encrypted data. In this letter, we propose a packet key scheme that encrypts real‐time packets using a different key per packet for multimedia applications. Therefore, a key of a relatively small size can provide after‐transmission confidentiality to data of a real‐time session.     

Guaranteed Dynamic Priority Assignment Schemes for Real‐Time Tasks with (m,k)‐Firm Deadlines

We present guaranteed dynamic priority assignment schemes for multiple real‐time tasks subject to (m, k)‐firm deadlines. The proposed schemes have two scheduling objectives: providing a bounded probability of missing (m, k)‐firm constraints and maximizing the probability of deadline satisfactions. The second scheduling objective is especially necessary in order to provide the best quality of service as well as to satisfy the minimum requirements expressed by (m, k)‐firm deadlines. We analytically establish that the proposed schemes provide a guarantee on the bounded probability of missing (m, k)‐firm constraints. Experimental studies validate our analytical results and confirm the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed schemes with regard to their scheduling objectives.     

An Air‐Supported Liquid Crystal System for Real‐Time and Label‐Free Characterization of Phospholipases and Their Inhibitors

A new air‐supported liquid crystal (LC) system for analyzing interfacial phenomena that occur based on the molecular interaction between LCs and adsorbed molecules of interest at the aqueous/LC interface is reported. Compared with existing LC‐based detection systems, the miniature system reported here requires less sample and involves simpler preparation. Using this system, the enzymatic hydrolysis of various phospholipases such as phospholipase A₂ (PLA₂), phospholipase C (PLC) and phospholipase D (PLD) are characterized. The hydrolysis of phospholipid monolayers self‐assembled at aqueous/LC interface induces an orientational response from the LCs. As a result, an optical signal that reflects the spatial and temporal distribution of phospholipids during the enzymatic reaction can be generated in a real‐time manner. When well‐known phospholipase inhibitors are introduced together with respective phospholipases, no orientational response of LCs is observed. In the case of inhibitors MJ33 and compound 48/80, cross‐inhibitions among phospholipases are also observed. This work demonstrates that the air‐supported LC system provides a facile label‐free assay for characterizing phospholipase activities and for screening enzyme inhibitors. It could potentially be useful for different high throughput and cost‐effective enzyme screening assays.     

Robust Multi‐person Tracking for Real‐Time Intelligent Video Surveillance

We propose a novel multiple‐object tracking algorithm for real‐time intelligent video surveillance. We adopt particle filtering as our tracking framework. Background modeling and subtraction are used to generate a region of interest. A two‐step pedestrian detection is employed to reduce the computation time of the algorithm, and an iterative particle repropagation method is proposed to enhance its tracking accuracy. A matching score for greedy data association is proposed to assign the detection results of the two‐step pedestrian detector to trackers. Various experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm tracks multiple objects accurately and precisely in real time.     

Real‐Time Apartment Building Detection and Tracking with AdaBoost Procedure and Motion‐Adjusted Tracker

In this letter, we propose a novel approach to detecting and tracking apartment buildings for the development of a video‐based navigation system that provides augmented reality representation of guidance information on live video sequences. For this, we propose a building detector and tracker. The detector is based on the AdaBoost classifier followed by hierarchical clustering. The classifier uses modified Haar‐like features as the primitives. The tracker is a motion‐adjusted tracker based on pyramid implementation of the Lukas‐Kanade tracker, which periodically confirms and consistently adjusts the tracking region. Experiments show that the proposed approach yields robust and reliable results and is far superior to conventional approaches.     

Metal–Organic Frameworks with Boronic Acid Suspended and Their Implication for cis‐Diol Moieties Binding

Introduction of accessible boronic acid functionality into metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) might to endow them with desired properties for potential applications in recognition and isolation of cis‐diol containing biomolecules (CDBs). However, no investigation is found to address this topic until now. Herein, Cr‐based MOFs of MIL‐100 (MIL stands for Materials from Institut Lavoisier) integrated with different pendent boronic acid group (MIL‐100‐B) are reported. This new functional material is successfully prepared using a simple metal–ligand–fragment coassembly (MLFC) strategy with isostructure to the parent MIL‐100 as verified by X‐ray diffraction characterization. The integration and content tunability of the boronic acid group in the framework are confirmed by X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and ¹¹B NMR. Transmission electron microscopy reveals that MIL‐100‐B can evolve into well‐defined morphology and nanoscale size at optimized boronic acid incorporating level. The obtained MOFs exhibit comparable surface areas and pore volumes with parent MIL‐100 and present exceptional chemical stability in a wide pH range. The inherent boronic acid components in MIL‐100‐B can effectively serve as the recognition units for the cis‐diol moieties and consequently enhance the capture capabilities for CDBs. The exceptional chemical stability, high porosity, and good reusability as well as the intrinsic cis‐diol moieties recognition function prefigure great potential of the current MIL‐100‐B in CDBs purification, sensing, and separation applications.     

Bifunctional MOF‐Derived Carbon Photonic Crystal Architectures for Advanced Zn–Air and Li–S Batteries: Highly Exposed Graphitic Nitrogen Matters

Nitrogen‐rich porous carbons (NPCs) are the leading cathode materials for next‐generation Zn–air and Li–S batteries. However, most existing NPC suffers from insufficient exposure and harnessing of nitrogen‐dopants (NDs), constraining the electrochemical performance. Herein, by combining silica templating with in situ texturing of metal–organic frameworks, a new bifunctional 3D nitrogen‐rich carbon photonic crystal architecture of simultaneously record‐high total pore volume (13.42 cm³ g^?1), ultralarge surface area (2546 m² g^?1), and permeable hierarchical macro‐meso‐microporosity is designed, enabling sufficient exposure and accessibility of NDs. Thus, when used as cathode catalysts, the Zn–air battery delivers a fantastic capacity of 770 mAh g_Zn^?1 at an unprecedentedly high rate of 120 mA cm^?2, with an ultrahigh power density of 197 mW cm^?2. When hosting 78 wt% sulfur, the Li–S battery affords a high‐rate capacity of 967 mAh g^?1 at 2 C, with superb stability over 1000 cycles at 0.5 C (0.054% decay rate per cycle), comparable to the best literature value. The results prove the dominant role of highly exposed graphitic‐N in boosting both cathode performances.     

Chemiresistors for the Real‐Time Wireless Detection of Anions

Reported is an electrical transduction platform for real‐time wireless anion sensing using single‐walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) noncovalently functionalized with squaramide‐based anion binding selectors. Systematically studied are anion‐binding properties and efficiency of the electrical transduction of the functionalized SWCNT composites using the squaramide‐based selectors with two similar electron‐withdrawing groups, 3,5‐bis(trifluoromethyl)benzyl ( 1 ) and 3,5‐bis(trifluoromethyl)phenyl ( 2 ), which induce hydrogen‐bonding interaction with anions and deprotonation of a squaramide N–H proton upon addition of acetate (AcO^?), respectively. Charge transduction occurs with AcO^? as a result of charge transfer from the deprotonated selector 2 , whereas less sensitive transduction is observed with selector 1 via hydrogen‐bonding interaction. These results provide guidelines to efficiently transduce the chemical interaction between selectors and anions to create resistive transduction with functionalized SWCNTs. Electron‐withdrawing groups adjacent to the squaramide as well as proximate cationic pyridyl groups, enhance the anion binding affinity and also lower the selector's pK_a. The chemiresistive sensor arrays are readily integrated with a wireless sensing module and demonstrated real‐time sensing of multiple anions with a smartphone readout.     

Electrospun Fibers as a Solid‐State Real‐Time Zinc Ion Sensor with High Sensitivity and Cell Medium Compatibility

meso‐2,6‐Dichlorophenyltripyrrinone (TPN‐Cl₂), a probe molecule for zinc II ions, is dispersed in a polymer host. The red fluorescence peak at 620 nm appears when the molecule forms a complex with zinc at its center. TPN‐Cl₂ has a high selectivity for zinc II and tolerates many common metal ions present in the human body. The probe molecules are blended with a hydrogel polymer, poly(2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (poly HEMA), with 30 wt% dimethylformamide (DMF). The fiber structure with 1 μm diameter is made by electrospinning in DMF solution of the probe and poly HEMA mixture. The fibrous film detects zinc ions with concentrations as low as 10^?6 M in real‐time both in water and in the commonly used cell culture liquid media Dulbecco's modified Eagle medium (DMEM) and fetal bovine serum (FBS), which contain many metal ions and proteins. The time‐resolution is 5 min for 10^?6 M and 1 min for 10^?5 M. This sensitivity and response speed satisfy the requirements for non‐invasive biomedical studies.     

Control of the Homeotropic Order of Discotic Hexa‐peri‐hexabenzocoronenes

The thermal properties and self‐organization of hexa‐peri‐hexabenzocoronene (HBC) derivatives with dove‐tailed alkyl chains of various lengths have been investigated using polarized optical microscopy and wide‐angle X‐ray scattering. It is shown that the size‐related increase of steric interactions among the peripheral side chains substituted to the aromatic core leads to a dramatically lowered isotropization temperature, allowing thermal processing at practical temperatures. Additionally, the introduction of ether linkages within the side chains enhances the affinity of the discotic molecules towards polar surfaces, resulting in homeotropic self‐assembly when the compounds are processed from the isotropic state between two surfaces and, for the first time, as a thin film on a single surface. It is established that the degree of homeotropic order is influenced by the phase behavior, the supramolecular order in the bulk, and the surface affinity of the corresponding derivatives. These results are important for the design of photovoltaic cells based on HBC derivatives.     

Macroscopic Nanotemplating of Semiconductor Films with Hydrogen‐Bonded Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

Aqueous gel‐like lyotropic liquid crystals with extensive hydrogen bonding and nanoscale hydrophilic compartments have been used to define the growth of macroscopic nanotemplated CdS and CdTe thin films. These mesoporous semiconductor films contain a hexagonal array of 2.5 nm pores, 7 nm center‐to‐center, that extend in an aligned fashion perpendicular to the substrate. The CdS is deposited on a polypropylene substrate by a reaction between Cd(NO₃)₂ dissolved in the liquid crystal and H₂S transported via diffusion through the substrate. The CdTe is electrodeposited on indium‐tin‐oxide‐coated glass from TeO₂ and Cd(NO₃)₂, both of which are dissolved in the liquid‐crystal template. The porous nature of the CdTe films enables chemical transformations of the entire bulk of the film. As electrodeposited, the CdTe films are Te rich and, in contrast to a non‐templated film, the excess Te could be removed via a chemical treatment, proving the continuity of the pores in the nanotemplated films. These results suggest that liquid‐crystal lithography with hydrogen‐bonding amphiphiles may be a useful approach to create materials with nanoscale features over macroscopic dimensions.     

Self‐Propelled Tags for Protein Detection

Protein detection is of tremendous significance for biological and biomedical sciences. Because there is no equivalent of polymerase chain reaction available as a tool for protein detection, researchers must rely on tags to enhance the limits of detection. One of the crucial steps is the actual labeling of proteins, which relies on diffusion of the label, which is very slow, or external mixing of the label and protein is needed. Here, a conceptually new approach is demonstrated: self‐propelled tags that autonomously move in the solution and enhance protein detection. The tags used here are based on IrO₂/Pt bilayer microtubules, which can self‐propel and act as moving tags for enhanced protein electrochemical detection. This completely new label‐based protein detection concept using self‐propelled tag will find a wide spectrum of applications.     

Recent Advances in the Design of Polymerizable Lyotropic Liquid‐Crystal Assemblies for Heterogeneous Catalysis and Selective Separations

Organic lyotropic liquid‐crystal (LLC) assemblies mimic molecular sieves in their nanoporous structures and their ability to incorporate catalytic functional groups. This article focuses on recent advances made by our research group in incorporating new catalytic properties into polymerizable LLC assemblies and studying the molecular‐transport properties of the crosslinked networks.