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A wild type virion, bacteriophage T4, was used as an organic template for the controlled synthesis and organization of Pt nanoparticles and nanoshells on its capsid. A long incubation of T4 virions with the metalchloride solution is necessary to the specific binding of the external surface of T4 capsid with PtIV by means of interactions between PtIV and the chemical functionality found inherently on the surface of the proteinaceous viral capsid. After chemical reduction with dimethylaminoborane (DMAB), the highly dispersive Pt nanoparticles with a uniform size of 3–4 nm were synthesized and covered the whole viral capsid. The packing density of Pt nanoparticles was enhanced by increasing the incubation cycles of the virions in metal salt solution. Moreover, Pt@T4 shell/core structures could be achieved by increasing the amount of metal ions around virons. UV/vis spectroscopy was used to follow the course of the reaction, and the formation mechanism was discussed. Both the small Pt nanoparticles and Pt@T4 shell/core structures show high electrocatalytic activity in electrochemical measurement, and therefore are expected to have potential applications in electrocatalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Functional magnetic resonance imaging, real-life scientific innovation problem materials and experimental paradigm were used. [•] The left DLPFC might be responsible for the automatic retrieval of technical problems. [•] The left AG might be involved in forming novel associations between technical problems and related prototypes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Heuristics through the application of heuristic knowledge to the creation of imitation devices may be one of the most common processes in scientific innovation. In particular, heuristics suggests that innovation includes the automatic activation of heuristic knowledge and formation of novel associations between heuristic knowledge and problem situations. In this study, 76 scientific innovation problem situations were selected as materials. Among these, 36 contain related heuristic knowledge and 40 have no such information. Through functional magnetic resonance imaging, the learning-testing paradigm was used to explore the brain mechanisms of scientific problem finding inspired by heuristic knowledge. Participants were asked to find a problem on the basis of a given innovation problem situation. Two scenarios were presented: finding scientific problems with related heuristic knowledge and finding conventional problems without related heuristic knowledge. The authors assumed that the regions in the brain significantly activated by the finding scientific problems with related heuristic knowledge condition compared with the finding normal problems without related heuristic knowledge condition are relevant to the brain mechanisms of scientific problem finding inspired by heuristic knowledge. The first scenario more significantly activated the left precuneus and left angular gyrus than did the second scenario. These findings suggest that the precuneus is relevant to the successful storage and retrieval of heuristic knowledge and that the left angular gyrus is involved in the formation of novel associations between heuristic knowledge and problem situations for finding scientific problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]