2021 Colin Garfield Fink Postdoctoral Summer Fellowship – Summary Report Luciferase – Functionalized 3D Highly Porous Gold-based Electrochemical Biosensors

Recent advances in electrochemical biosensors have focused on new materials and strategies to improve specificity, sensitivity, stability, and response time. Herein, we aim to develop an electrochemical biosensor device by modification of a screen-printed electrode (SPE) with highly porous Au nanostructures and a bioluminescence (BL)-producing enzyme (luciferase). This approach leverages the enhanced electrochemically active surface area and the mass transport effect and offers an alternative configuration for optical output from the enzyme. The BL presents an instantaneous measurement of enzyme activity and can be exploited to show that the enzyme is being electrochemically controlled (an ON-OFF switchable sensor).

Relevance of the Ejaculate Fraction and Dilution Method on Boar Sperm Quality during Processing and Conservation of Seminal Doses

During boar semen processing and distribution, maximizing the work protocols in the laboratories becomes essential for the conservation of seminal doses. One of the recent implementations in the boar studs to improve efficiency has been semi-automatic semen collection systems, which do not allow to discard fractions of the ejaculate. The objective of this work was to evaluate the dilution method and vibrations (simulating delivery transport) effect on sperm quality (motility, viability, morphology, thermo-resistance test) according to the fraction of ejaculate collected. Two different fractions of the ejaculate were obtained [rich fraction (RF); total fractions (TF)] from six boars, and two dilution methods applied [pouring the extender over the semen (control; ES); pouring the semen over the extender (reverse; SE)]. The seminal doses (2000 × 106 sperm/50 mL) were preserved for 5 days. The results showed that the fraction collected affects sperm quality (better total and progressive motility, and faster sperm in TF; p < 0.05) regardless of the dilution method applied. However, these differences diminished after submitting the semen to the thermo-resistance test, with only differences in sperm viability being observed (p < 0.05). When seminal doses were subjected to vibrations, the sperm viability was more affected in the TF than in the RF group (p < 0.05). In conclusion, using the TF ejaculate leads to comparable results to the RF in sperm quality during storage regardless of the dilution method applied. However, the vibrations of seminal doses are more affected in doses prepared with TF than with RF, although more factors should be included to approach the real conditions during transport.

Chiral transport in curved spacetime via holography

We consider a holographic model of strongly interacting plasma with a gravitational anomaly. In this model, we compute parity-odd responses of the system at finite temperature and chemical potential to external electromagnetic and gravitational fields. Working within the linearized fluid/gravity duality, we performed the calculation up to the third order in gradient expansion. Besides reproducing the chiral magnetic (CME) and vortical (CVE) effects we also obtain gradient corrections to the CME and CVE due to the gravitational anomaly. Additionally, we find energy-momentum and current responses to the gravitational field similarly determined by the gravitational anomaly. The energy-momentum response is the first purely gravitational transport effect that has been related to quantum anomalies in a holographic theory.

Full electric-field tuning of the nonreciprocal transport effect in massive chiral fermions with trigonal warping

In a noncentrosymmetric system, an intrinsic electric polarization is allowed and may lead to unusual nonreciprocal charge transport phenomena. As a result, a current-dependent resistance, arising from the magnetoelectric anisotropy term of k · E × B, appears and acts as a current rectifier with the amount of rectification being linearly proportional to the magnitude of both current and applied magnetic field. In this work, a different type of nonreciprocal transport effect was demonstrated in a graphene-based device, which requires no external magnetic field. Owing to the unique pseudospin (valley) degree of freedom in chiral fermions with trigonal warping, a large nonreciprocal transport effect was uncovered in a gapped bilayer graphene, where electric-field tunabilities of the band gap and valley polarization play an important role. The exact cancellation of nonreciprocal effect between two different valleys is effectively removed by breaking the inversion symmetry via electric gatings. The magnitude of the current rectification appears to be at a maximum when the Fermi surface undergoes a Lifshitz transition near the band edges, which is proportional to the current and the displacement field strength. The full electric-field tuning of the nonreciprocal transport effect without a magnetic field opens up a new direction for valleytronics in two-dimensional based devices.

Comparisons of the Uncoupled Effects of CO2 on the CH4/O2 Counterflow Diffusion Flame under High Pressure

A comprehensive numerical investigation of the uncoupled chemical, thermal, and transport effects of CO2 on the temperature of CH4/O2 counterflow diffusion flame under high pressure up to 5 atm was conducted. Three pairs of artificial species were introduced to distinguish the chemical effect, thermal effect, and the transport effect of CO2 on the flame temperature. The numerical results showed that both the chemical effect and the thermal effect of the CO2 dilution in the oxidizer side can decrease the flame temperature significantly, while the transport effect of CO2 can only slightly increase the flame temperature and can even be ignored. The reduction value of the temperature caused by the chemical effect of CO2 grows linearly, while that caused by the thermal effect increases exponentially. The RPchem and RPthermal are defined to explain the temperature reduction percentage due to the chemical effect and the thermal effect of CO2 in the total temperature reduction caused by CO2 dilution, respectively. The RPchem decreases with the increase of the pressure, the strain rate, and the CO2 dilution ratio, while the RPthermal behaves in the opposite manner. In the above conditions, the chemical effect plays a dominant role on the flame temperature reduction.