The Application of Nanosensors in Illicit Drugs Determination: A Review

The utilization of nanomaterials (NMs) to produce nanosensors for detecting drugs in a wide range of materials has attracted global attention. Various categories of NMs have been synthesized and applied for the qualitative determination of some additives, contaminants, and illicit materials owing to their unique physicochemical properties at the nanoscale to impact desired effects. Rapid and facile detection techniques employed for on-site analysis of illicit drugs using NMs are reviewed. It is noted that NMs are good candidates in the fabrication of nanosensors for the sensitive detections and determinations of illicit drugs. Thus, this review is focused on the application of these sensors for illicit drug detection. Hence, the application of plasmonic/optical properties of NMs to enhance illicit drug detection in biological samples has been discussed. The fabricated sensors have been shown to possess enhanced selectivity, sensitivity, cost-effectiveness as well as improved automation. As highlighted in the in-depth review, the sensors are designed to utilize biological receptors with a transducer component to detect the analyte-biorecognition element interaction which resulted in producing an optimum signal.

EXPRESS: The Role of Attention and Aging in the Retrieval Dynamics of Value-Directed Remembering

For memory to be efficient, people need to remember important information. This involves selective encoding and retrieval operations to maximize the recall of valuable information at the expense of less important information. While past research has examined this in terms of strategic encoding operations, we investigated differences in the dynamics of retrieval in value-directed remembering tasks with younger adults under full and divided attention during encoding as well as in older adults. Participants typically initiated recall with the first presented, last presented, or highest-valued words and also strategically organized retrieval according to information value such that high-value words tended to be recalled before low-value words. However, the average value of older adults’ first recalled word was greater than that of younger adults, likely contributing to their enhanced selectivity. Additionally, there were no differences in lag-conditional-response probabilities in younger adults under full or divided attention but older adults showed impairments in the retrieval of items sharing contextual features with nearby items while younger adults relied more on temporal-contextual cues to recall words. Together, the present study suggests that both strategic encoding and strategic retrieval operations contribute to selectivity for valuable information and older adults may be able to maximize retrieval operations despite displaying impairments in temporal binding during encoding and an overall recall deficit.