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On July 26, 1895, Pierre Curie and Maria Sklodowska were married. On June 23, 1903, Maria presented her doctoral dissertation “Investigation of radioactive substances” at the Sorbonne, which described the results of hard work in previous years, including the isolation of new elements - polonium and radium. In the same 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics “in recognition of the exceptional services they rendered to science through the joint research of radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”. She became the first female - laureate and remained the only one until 1935, when her daughter Irene was awarded the Nobel Prize. In 1911, Marie Curie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for outstanding achievements in the development of chemistry: the discovery of the elements radium and polonium, the isolation of radium and the study of the nature and compounds of this remarkable element”. Marie Curie became the first and to date the only woman in the world -twice the Nobel Prize winner. After many years, the proposal of Marie and Pierre Curie on the use of radium in medicine has been implemented at the present time. Studied and proved its effectiveness in the treatment of bone metastases of prostate cancer. The merits of these scientists before the whole world can hardly be overestimated. Humanity gratefully keeps a good memory for great discoveries for the benefit of people.

Radiation science and radiation biology are fields where milestones have been set by numerous woman researchers, as represented by Marie Curie. This shows that it is a research field that is like a model of research diversity in modern society. In this review, I will describe what kind of research activities I have conducted as a Japanese woman researcher in the field of radiation science research. In addition, as a Japanese woman radiobiologist, I will describe the sense of mission I felt after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident and the research issues we must challenge in the future.As a Japanese woman researcher, I have felt a bias in gender balance in the field of science in Japan. Also, after the Fukushima nuclear Power Plant accident, I sometimes felt that woman researchers would be more suitable when sharing research results and specialized knowledge with the general public. In recent years, the importance of STEAM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Art-Mathematics) education has been highlighted all over the world, and I believe that the field of radiation science falls exactly into the STEAM education category. STEAM education is for people of all gender. I hope that radiation science research will lead to various younger generations, and that the gender balance of Japanese scientific researchers will increase.

I re-examine the raw data of the measurements of the half-life of 210Po from the Romanian physicist Stefania Maracineanu’s doctoral thesis, performed at the Institut du Radium, 1921–1923, under the supervision of Marie Curie. The half-life values reported in the thesis show relatively large divergences and a possible dependence on the (metallic) support on which the Po source was deposited. These findings influenced Maracineanu’s subsequent independent research, and later compelled her to claim priority for the discovery of artificial radioactivity. The present analysis of these data, performed with the least-squares method, certifies the outstanding accuracy of the experimental measurements by providing values with good agreement between the different series of measurements and an average value that is close to the currently adopted half-life value of this isotope. On the other hand, this analysis changes our perspective by showing that the rudimentary procedure Maracineanu used to processing the data introduced errors in her reported values, which favored a poor interpretation of the results.

Fuel anti-knock quality is a critical property with respect to the effective design of next-generation spark-ignition engines which aim to have increased efficiency, and lower emissions. Increasing evidence in the literature supports the fact that the current regulatory measures of fuel anti-knock quality, the research octane number (RON), and motor octane number (MON), are becoming decreasingly relevant to commercial engines. Extrapolation and interpolation of the RON/MON scales to the thermodynamic conditions of modern engines is potentially valuable for the synergistic design of fuels and engines with greater efficiency. The K-value approach, which linearly weights the RON/MON scales based on the thermodynamic history of an engine, offers a convenient experimental method to do so, although complementary theoretical interpretations of K-value measurements are lacking in the literature. This work uses a phenomenological engine model with a detailed chemical kinetic model to predict and interpret known trends in the K-value with respect to engine intake temperature, pressure, and engine speed. The modelling results support experimental trends which show that the K-value increases with increasing intake temperature and engine speed, and decreases with increasing intake pressure. A chemical kinetic interpretation of trends in the K-value based on fundamental ignition behaviour is presented. The results show that combined experimental/theoretical approaches, which employ a knowledge of fundamental fuel data (gas phase kinetics, ignition delay times), can provide a reliable means to assess trends in the real-world performance of commercial fuels under the operating conditions of modern engines. (C) 2018 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Funding from the European Commission Marie Curie Transfer of Knowledge Scheme (FP7) pursuant to Contract PIAP-GA-2013-610897 GENFUEL is greatly acknowledged. KPS would like to thank Dr. Ultan Burke and Dr. Colin Banyon for fruitful discussions on the topic. peer-reviewed 2020-06-29

On 21 February 1913, a few decades before the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) started to develop activities in the field of ionizing radiation, Marie Curie on behalf of the International Radium Commission deposited the first international radium standard at the BIPM in Sevres. From 1913 to 1935, the international standard was taken out for comparisons at the Curie Laboratory in Paris and returned to the safe at the BIPM. This article describes how the BIPM, established in 1875 by the Metre Convention, was given the role of custodian of the international radium standard at a time when the mission of the BIPM was to maintain the two fundamental units of the Metric System and was mainly directed toward the measurements needed for geodesy, the standardization of the metric system and the establishment of length and mass standards. Through the history of the first and second international radium standards, we can oversee how the mission and role of the BIPM have evolved.

References compiled in the USA (as distinct from Europe) for the years to 1903 are contained in this bibliography. The summaries provide an interesting insight into the opinions and knowledge on radium which were held in the USA during the first few years after its discovery in 1898. The compiler of these references was almost certainly a profesor of chemistry and mineralogist, Charles Baskerville (1872–1922) of New York. Some references are from academic scientific journals whereas others are from the popular scientific press. In these early years following the discovery of radium, publications and commentaries on them were far more in Europe than in the United States. This scientific fact gives some importance to this bibliography. I have retained the original spelling and punctuation used by Baskerville.

There is a dearth of experimental data which examine the fundamental low-temperature ignition (T < 900 K) behavior of toluene resulting in a lack of data for the construction, validation, and interpretation of chemical kinetic models for commercial fuels. In order to gain a better understanding of its combustion chemistry, dimethyl ether (DME) has been used as a radical initiator to induce ignition in this highly knock resistant aromatic, and its influence on the combustion of toluene ignition was studied in both shock tube and rapid compression machines as a function of temperature (624–1459 K), pressure (20–40 atm), equivalence ratio (0.5–2.0), and blending ratio (100% toluene, 76% toluene (76T/24D), 58% toluene (58T/42D), 26% toluene (26T/74D) and 100% DME). Several literature chemical kinetic models are used to interpret our experimental results. For mixtures containing high concentrations of toluene at low-temperatures none of these are capable of reproducing experiment. This implies an incomplete understanding of the low-temperature oxidation pathways which control its ignition in our experimental reactors, and by extension, in spark- (SI) and compression-ignition (CI) engines, and an updated detailed chemical kinetic model is presented for engineering applications. Model analyses indicate that although the initial fate of the fuel is dominated by single-step H-atom abstraction reactions from both the benzylic and phenylic sites, the subsequent fate of the allylic and vinylic radicals formed is much more complex. Further experimental and theoretical endeavors are required to gain a holistic qualitative and quantitative chemical kinetics based understanding of the combustion of pure toluene, toluene blends, and commercial fuels containing other aromatic components, at temperatures of relevance to SI and CI engines. The work at NUI Galway was supported by the European Commission Marie Curie Transfer of Knowledge Scheme (FP7) pursuant to Contract PIAP-GA-2013-610897 GENFUEL. The work at Xi’an Jiaotong University was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91541115). The work at LLNL was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office (program managers Gurpreet Singh and Leo Breton) and performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. peer-reviewed 2018-07-12

The aim of this work is to evaluate the influence of the n-heptane/toluene ratio on the reactivity of binary toluene reference fuels (TRFs), through a combined experimental and numerical work. Novel experimental ignition delay time (IDT) data of three binary TRFs of varying n-heptane/toluene ratios have been obtained in a high-pressure shock tube and in a rapid compression machine at conditions relevant to novel engine operation. Measurements have been performed at two pressures (10 and 30 bar), and at three fuel/air equivalence ratios (0.5, 1.0 and 2.0) for TRF mixtures of 50%, 75% and 90% by volume toluene concentration, over the temperature range of 650-1450 K. It was found that, increasing the n-heptane content, led to an increase in reactivity and shorter measured IDTs. Reduced sensitivity to the equivalence ratio was observed at high temperatures, especially for high toluene content mixtures. A well validated detailed kinetic mechanism for TRF oxidation was utilized to provide further insight into the experimental evidence. The mechanism, which has recently been updated, was also assessed in terms of its validity, contributing thus to its continuous development. Reaction path analysis was performed to delineate critical aspects of toluene oxidation under the considered conditions. Further, sensitivity analysis highlighted the interactions between the chemistry of the two TRF components, revealing toluene's character as a reactivity inhibitor mainly through the consumption of (O) over dotH radicals. (C) 2018 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. The authors are grateful to the EU Marie Curie ITN for the financial support through the ECCO-MATE project (Grant No 607214). The work by authors at LLNL was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and was conducted as part of the Co-Optimization of Fuels & Engines (Co-Optima) project sponsored by the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Bioenergy Technologies and Vehicle Technologies Offices. peer-reviewed 2021-11-02

Isolating the long-term fertilization effect of CO 2 from other climate- and site-related effects on tree growth has been proven a challenging task. To isolate long-term effects of [CO2] on water use efficiency at ecosystem level, we used the FORECAST Climate forest model, calibrated for Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) forests in the southwestern Pyrenees, growing at a Mediterranean montane site and at a continental subalpine site. Future climate scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) were generated using a battery of six climate models to estimate daily values of temperature and precipitation in a 90-year series. A factorial experiment was designed to disentangle the importance on C pools of three growing limiting factors (nitrogen limitation, climate (temperature + precipitation) limitation and atmospheric CO 2 concentration). The relative importance of each factor was quantified by comparing the scenario with the limitation of each individual factor turned on with the non-limitation scenario. Positive CO 2 fertilization due to improvement in water use efficiency was detected by the model, but its quantitative impact improving tree growth was minimum: its average increase in ecosystem C pools ranged from 0.3 to 0.9%. At the site with cooler climate conditions (continental), the main limitation for tree growth was climate. Such limitation will be reduced under climate change and the ecosystem will store more carbon. At the site with milder climate conditions (Mediterranean), N availability was the main limiting factor albeit modulated by water availability. Such limitation could be reduced under climate change as N cycling could accelerate (higher litterfall production and decomposition rates) but also increase if droughts become more frequent and severe. In addition, the magnitude of the uncertainty related to climate model selection was much more important than CO 2 fertilization, indicating that atmospheric processes are more important than tree physiological processes when defining how much carbon could be gained (or lost) in forests under climate change. In conclusion, due to the small changes in forest C pools caused by variation of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations compared to changes caused by other growth limiting factors (nutrients, climate), reducing uncertainty related to climate projections seems a more efficient way to reduce uncertainty in tree growth projections than increasing forest model complexity. Funding for this research has been provided by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (projects AGL2012‐33465, AGL2016-76463-P), a Ramón y Cajal contract (ref.RYC‐2011‐08082) and Marie Curie Actions (ref CIG‐2012‐326718‐ECOPYREN3,H2020-MSCA-IF-2014-DENDRONUTRIENT).

n loquat (Eriobotrya japonica Lindl cv. Algerie) fruit, despite the non-climacteric ripening behaviour, evidence suggest that ethylene may participate in the regulation of several ripening- and postharvest-related processes. Color changes and carotenoid profile were analyzed in fruit at three developmental stages (breaker, yellow and colored fruits). At early stages, the fruit peel contained phytoene, phytofluene and other typical chloroplastic carotenoids that decreased during ripening, to accumulate β-carotene, violaxanthin and β-cryptoxanthin in mature fruits. In the pulp, carotenoid concentration increased during ripening to become predominant phytoene, followed by β-carotene and β-cryptoxanthin. Expression of the carotenoid biosynthetic genes (PSY, PDS, ZDS, CYCB and BCH) was downregulated in the peel during maturation, but increased in the pulp with the exception of BCH. The involvement of ethylene in the regulation of pigmentation was further evaluated by treating fruits at the three ripening stages with ethylene or its action inhibitor 1-MCP. At breaker fruit, ethylene accelerated and 1-MCP delayed fruit coloration, but the effect was progressively lost as fruit matured. Ethylene and 1-MCP produced different changes in carotenoids content and gene expression in peel and pulp. Application of ethylene enhanced β-carotene content in both tissues whereas β-cryptoxanthin was only stimulated in the pulp. 1-MCP suppressed these changes in carotenoid composition in the pulp but had little effect in the peel. A differential transcriptional level the pulp was more responsive to downregulated gene expression than the peel. Collectively, results indicate that: 1) ethylene is involved in the regulation of pigmentation and carotenoid biosynthesis in loquat fruits, 2) a differential regulation of carotenoid biosynthesis and response to ethylene appear to operate in the peel and the pulp, and 3) β-carotene hydroxylase (BCH) is a key step in the regulation of carotenoid content and composition in both tissues of loquat fruit., Dr. E. Alos was recipient a post-doctoral contract JAE-Doc-CSIC (Fondo Social Europeo). The financial support of the research grants FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG-2011-303652 (Marie Curie Actions, European Union), AGL-2015-70218 (Ministerio Economía y Competitividad, Spain), GV/2012/036 (GeneralitatValenciana, Spain) and PROMETEO-II 2014/27 (Generalitat Valenciana) are gratefully acknowledged. MJR and LZ are members of Eurocaroten (COST_Action CA15136) and CaRed (Spanish Carotenoid Network, BIO2015-71703-REDT and BIO2017-90877-REDT).

Tracking charge transfer to residual metal clusters in conjugated polymers for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution (Journal of the American Chemical Society (2020) 142:34 (14574-14587) DOI: 10.1021/jacs.0c06104) Page 14585. Appreciation for Dr. Yan-Gu Lin was inadvertently left out of the Acknowledgments. The scientific part of the paper remains unchanged. The complete correct Acknowledgments paragraph is as follows: ¦ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS M.S. is grateful to Imperial College for a President’s Ph.D. Scholarship and to the EPSRC for a Doctoral Prize Fellowship. J.R.D. and I.M. acknowledge support from KAUST (project numbers OSR-2015-CRG4-2572 and OSR-2018-CRG7- 3749.2). C.M.A., A.I.C., and R.S.S. acknowledge the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, EP/ N004884/1). L.F. thanks the EU for a Marie Curie fellowship (658270). S.C. thanks Imperial College London for a Schro¨dinger Scholarship. R.G. is grateful to the FRQNT for a postdoctoral award and NSERC Discovery Grant funding. C.-L.C. appreciates his supervisor, Dr. Yan-Gu Lin, for his efforts on the beamtime support of XAS beamline and corresponding equipment/technical setup. All plotted data have been deposited on the open-access repository Zenodo and can be accessed via dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3932340.

BluePharmTrain is a Marie Curie Initial Training Network of 17 European academic and industrial partners collaborating to train young scientists in multidisciplinary aspects of blue biotechnology. Harvesting marine sponges for the extraction of bioactive compounds is often highly unsustainable, and the chemical synthesis of promising compounds is often either too complex or very expensive. To find sustainable and economically feasible production methods of sponge-derived compounds, individual BluePharmTrain research projects explore innovative techniques, focusing on selected sponge species shown to harbour interesting active metabolites. The different techniques include sponge cell cultivation, cultivation of microbial symbionts, next-generation sequencing approaches (i.e. metagenomics and metatranscriptomics), in situ and ex situ cultivation of sponges, life cycle characterisation, chemical structure elucidation of compounds and compound metabolic pathway description. Altogether, these consorted efforts and collaborations lead to new insights on sponge metabolism, sponge-microbe interactions and bioactive compound production.

The potential tunability of the spectroscopic properties of the BODIPY parent dye by suitable functionalization makes it attractive for a number of applications. Unfortunately, its strong fluorescence against minor intersystem crossing to the triplet states prevents its application in photodynamic therapy. With the perspective of designing BODIPY derivatives with enhanced intersystem crossing, the goal of this work is two-fold: (i) investigate the main deactivation channels of the parent BODIPY following irradiation, paying particular attention to the accessibility of the triplet state potential energy surfaces, as well as the non-radiative pathways involving the second brightest more stable singlet electronic state, S2, and (ii) evaluate the performance of the computationally efficient second order algebraic-diagrammatic construction scheme for the polarization propagator, (ADC(2)) against the complete active space second-order perturbation theory (CASPT2) method. Three singlet/triplet crossings were found, all of them with small spin-orbit couplings, being the S1/T2 crossing the most plausible for the observed intersystem crossing yield. Methodologically, it is found that the ADC(2) method qualitatively reproduces the landscape of the potential energy profiles for the photophysical processes investigated; however, it systematically underestimates the energies of the stationary points and crossings of the same and different multiplicity, with the largest discrepancies found at S1/S0 crossing points. Our CASPT2 results provide a comprehensive picture of the landscape of the excited state potential energy surfaces of the parent BODIPY that might serve as a basis for the rational design of photosensitizers with a particular photophysical profile, This work has been supported by the Project CTQ2015-63997- C2 of the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain. I.C. gratefully acknowledges the “Ramón y Cajal” program of the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain. M.D.V. thanks the Marie Curie Actions, within the Innovative Training Network-European Join Doctorate in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modelling TCCM-ITN-EJD-642294, for financial support

The authors are grateful for the financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MEC) (project number CTQ2011-24151), Fondos Europeos para el Desarrollo Regional (FEDER), the COST Action CM0905 “Organocatalysis”, the FP7 Marie Curie Action of the European Commission via the ITN ECHONET Network (FP7-MCITN-2012-316379), the University of Alicante and the University of the Basque Country.

obtained his undergraduate degree from Imperial College, London in 2006 before moving to the University of Cambridge where he completed his PhD studies with Prof. Matthew Gaunt in 2010. He spent two years working with Prof. F. Dean Toste at UC Berkeley on asymmetric fluorination as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2013, he returned to Cambridge where he commenced independent research from 2014 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow. He has been the recipient of the Reaxys PhD prize (2010) and more recently a Thieme Chemistry Journal Award (2016). The successful harnessing of non-covalent interactions to activate functional groups and control selectivity in chemical reactions is a relatively recent phenomenon in synthetic chemistry, but one that has delivered ground-breaking results, particularly over the last decade, and still bears enormous promise. This Cluster brings together seven manuscripts which represent cutting edge advances in both understanding and applications of non-covalent interactions for asymmetric catalysis.

Analytical solutions examining heat transport in micro-/nanoscale liquid flows were developed. Using the energy equation coupled with fully developed velocity, we solved developing temperature profiles with axial conduction and viscous dissipation terms. A comprehensive literature review provided the published range of velocity slip and temperature jump conditions. While molecular simulations and experiments present constant slip and jump values for a specific liquid/surface couple independent of confinement size, non-dimensional forms of these boundary conditions were found appropriate to calculate non-equilibrium as a function of flow height. Although slip and jump conditions are specific for each liquid/surface couple and hard to obtain, we proposed modeling of the slip and jump as a function of the surface wetting, in order to create a general, easy to measure methodology. We further developed possible correlations to calculate jump using the slip value of the corresponding surface and tested in the results. Fully developed Nu showed strong dependence on slip and jump. Heat transfer stopped when slip and jump coefficients became higher than a certain value. Strong variation of Nu in the thermal development length was observed for low slip and jump cases, while an almost constant Nu in the flow direction was found for high slip and jump coefficients. Variation of temperature profiles was found to dominate the heat transfer through the constant temperature surface while surface and liquid temperatures became equal at heat transfer lengths comparable with confinement sizes for no-dissipation cases. In case of non-negligible heat dissipation, viscous heating dominated the Nu value by enhancing the heating while decreasing the heat removal in cooling cases. Implementation of proposed procedure on a micro-channel convection problem from a micro-fluidics application showed the dominant effect of the model defining the slip and jump relationship. Direct use of kinetic gas theory resulted in an increase of Nu by an increase in non-equilibrium, while models developed from published liquid slip and jump values produced an opposite behavior., Izmir Institute of Technology (2016-IYTE-36); Marie Curie Actions under FP7 (TUBITAK 115C026)

Single-source precursor syntheses have been devised for the preparation of structurally similar graphitic carbon dots (CDs), with (g-N-CD) and without (g-CD) core nitrogen doping for artificial photosynthesis. An order of magnitude improvement has been realized in the rate of solar (AM1.5G) H$_{2}$ evolution using g-N-CD (7950 μmolH2 (gCD)$^{−1}$ h$^{−1}$ ) compared to undoped CDs. All graphitized CDs show significantly enhanced light absorption compared to amorphous CDs (a-CD) yet undoped g-CD display limited photosensitizer ability due to low extraction of photogenerated charges. Transient absorption spectroscopy showed that nitrogen doping in g-N-CD increases the efficiency of hole scavenging by the electron donor and thereby significantly extends the lifetime of the photogenerated electrons. Thus, nitrogen doping allows the high absorption coefficient of graphitic CDs to be translated into high charge extraction for efficient photocatalysis.

Introduction: Connexins (Cx) play essential roles in cellular homeostasis by forming gap junctions and non-junctional hemichannels. In vitro characterization of Cx26 mutations causing keratitis-ichthyosis-deafness (KID) syndrome, were shown to form leaky hemichannels. The molecular/ cellular mechanisms affected by aberrant hemichannels have recently been elucidated. Here, we further wanted to characterize Cx26 KID syndrome mutations, D50A and A88V, which were shown to form aberrant hemichannels and remained unaddressed in the literature. Methods: Neurobiotin uptake assay in HeLa and N2A cells transfected with Cx26-WT, D50A or A88V verified the presence of aberrant hemichannels and immunofluorescent staining with fluorescent microscopy determined cellular localization of Cx26. Finally, intracellular calcium content was examined by using calcium indicator, Fluo-3AM, and flow cytometer. Results: Cx26-D50A and A88V mutations prevented the formation of gap junction plaques at cell-cell appositions and mutant proteins were observed to localize to the Golgi apparatus. Further, comparison of intracellular calcium content showed an increase in calcium amount in cells containing Cx26-D50A and A88V relative to Cx26-WT. Conclusion: Retention of Cx26 in the Golgi apparatus and alteration in the intracellular calcium content due to KID syndrome mutations may influence various cellular processes that might contribute to development of epidermal phenotypes., Connexin molekülleri (Cx) kurdukları hücrelerarası kanallar ve hücrelerarası olmayan yarı kanallar sayesinde hücre yaşamını dengelemede önemli roller üstlenirler. İn vitro analizlerle keratitis-ichthyosis-deafness (KID) sendromuyla ilişkili Cx26 mutasyonlarının düzgün kapanamayan yarı kanalların oluşmasına sebep oldukları gösterilmiştir. Bu tip anormal çalışan yarı kanalların etkilediği moleküler / hücresel mekanizmalar son zamanlarda araştırılmaya başlanmıştır. Bu çalışmada amacımız, daha önce yarı kanallar yaptıkları gösterilen Cx26’da oluşan KID sendromu mutasyonlarından D50A ve A88V’nin hücre biyolojisinde yaptığı değişiklikleri incelemektir. Yöntemler: Cx26-WT, D50Y ve A88V ile transfekte edilen HeLa ve N2A hücrelerinde neurobiotin boya alım deneyleriyle anormal yarı kanalların varlığı teyit edilmiş ve floresan mikroskop ve immunoboyamasıyla Cx26’nın hücre içi lokalizayonu belirlenmiştir. Son olarak, kalsiyum belirteci, Fluo-3AM ve akış sitometresi kullanarak hücre içi kalsiyum içeriği belirlenmiştir., Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (210T035); FP7 Marie Curie Re-Integration (PIRG08-GA-2010-277101)

The relentless work ethic of Marie Sklodowska-Curie realized the discovery of radium. This led to its medical application and advent for the mainstay treatment of the most common primary intraocular tumor, uveal melanoma. It is clear that intellectual, physical and emotional obstacles challenged Marie’s accomplishments. Accompanied by her husband, Marie’s systemic approach using quantitative methodology allowed her to make numerous pioneering landmarks in history.

This work was supported by the EPSRC under EP/H000925. K.C.S. grateful acknowledges EU for the Marie Curie Fellowship (300390 NanoBioMOFs FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF).

Primary amine-guanidines derived from trans-cyclohexane-1,2-diamines are used as organocatalysts for the enantioselective conjugate addition of isobutyraldehyde to arylated and heteroarylated nitroalkenes. The reaction was performed in the presence of imidazole as the additive in aqueous DMF as the solvent at 0 °C. The corresponding Michael adducts bearing a new stereocenter were obtained in high yields and with enantioselectivities of up to 80%. Theoretical calculations are used to justify the observed sense of the stereoinduction. Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (projects CTQ2010-20387, CTQ2010-21263-C02 and Consolider Ingenio 2010, CSD2007-00006), FEDER, the COST Action CM0905 ‘Organocatalysis’, the Generalitat Valenciana (Prometeo/2009/039), the Basque Government (GV Grant IT-291-07), the FP7 Marie Curie Actions of the European Commission via the ITN ECHONET Network (MCITN-2012-316379) and the universities of Alicante and the Basque Country.

The painting Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well, which hangs in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK, is possibly one of the last figure painting executed by Nicolas Poussin at the very end of his life and is usually dated to the early 1660s. In this perspective special feature, Philippe Walter, Alain Brunelle and colleagues give new insights on the artist's working methods by a careful stateof-the-art imaging ToF-SIMS study of one sample taken on the edge of the painting. This approach allowed for the identification of the pigments used in the painting, their nature and components and those of the ground and preparatory layers, with the identification of the binder(s) and possible other additions of organic materials such as glue. This study paves the way to a wider use of ToF-SIMS for the analysis of ancient cultural heritage artefacts. Dr. Walter is the Director of the Molecular and Structural Archeology Laboratory (Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France). Dr. Brunelle is Head of the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France). Their long standing collaboration has led to several seminal publications on the analysis of ancient artefacts by mass spectrometry.

M. A. F. I. is grateful for financial support from the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) (CTQ 2012-35790) and the Consejeria de Educacion de la Comunidad de Madrid (programme AVANCAT, S2009/PPQ-1634). B. M. thanks the European Commission for a Marie Curie Integration Grant (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG). I. M. P. and D. A. A. are grateful for financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICINN) (project numbers CTQ2011-24165 and CTQ2010-20387, respectively) and from the University of Alicante.

Laboratoire de Physique The´orique de la Matie`re Condense´e, Universite´ Pierre et Marie Curie, Boite 121,4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, FranceReceived 30 October 2012, revised 19 December 2012, accepted 19 December 2012Published online 14 February 2013Keywords glasses, intermediate phase, molecular dynamics simulations, rigidity transitions, structure, supercooled liquids

The Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICINN) (projects CTQ2010-20387, and Consolider Ingenio 2010, CSD2007-00006), the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MINECO) (projects CTQ2013-43446-P and CTQ2014-51912-REDC), FEDER, the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO 2009/039 and PROMETEOII/2014/017), the Basque Government (GV Grant IT-291-07), the FP7 Marie Curie Actions of the European Commission via the ITN ECHONET network (MCITN-2012-316379) and the Universities of Alicante and Basque Country are gratefully acknowledged for financial support. We also thank for technical and human support provided by IZO-SGI SGIker of UPV-EHU and European funding (ERDF and ESF).

The authors thank the European Union (Marie Curie ITN SusPhos, Grant Agreement No. 317404) for financial support.

This work explores the kinetics, equilibrium and thermodynamics of peroxidase adsorption onto spherical guar gumalginate matrices. The effect of contact time, solution pH, initial protein concentration and temperature was studied in batch experiments. The results show that peroxidase adsorption increased with rising contact time and initial enzyme concentration, and was higher at pH 4.0. The kinetic processes can be predicted by both the pseudo-first-order rate kinetics and the pseudo-second-order rate kinetics. Equilibrium adsorption data were analyzed with different isotherm models. The experimental data fitted to the Freundlich model in agreement with the low energy activation, demonstrating the presence of a high physical and unspecific interaction between the enzyme and the matrix., The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: FonCyT, Projects PICT 2013–271 – Argentina Innovator 2020 and Biotechnologies to Valorize the regional food Biodiversity in Latin America – Marie Curie Actions – IRSES Project number 611493 – European Community., info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The authors thank the European Union (Marie Curie ITN SusPhos, Grant Agreement No. 317404) for financial support. The catalytic reduction of esters using H2 offers a more sustainable alternative compared to classic stoichiometric reagents. Nowadays a wide range of highly efficient homogeneous catalysts are known, but these suffer from poor catalyst recoverability. Therefore, most industrial applications are based on heterogeneous catalysts but these processes are generally operated under harsh conditions (>200 °C, >100 bar). Here we describe the first catalytic system which combines the activity of homogeneous catalysts with the recoverability of a heterogeneous catalyst. The presented system is capable of hydrogenating esters under very mild conditions (25 °C, 50 bar) and could easily be recovered. The catalyst is based on phosphorus ligands covalently attached to a polymeric support and could be readily obtained via a facile solid-phase synthetic protocol in high yields with minimal workup. Postprint

Different chiral bifunctional organocatalysts derived from trans-cyclohexane-1,2-diamine bearing different types of guanidine units able to form-hydrogen bonding activation have been designed. Conformational rigid 2-aminobenzimidazoles bearing a tertiary amino group have been used in enantioselective Michael type reactions of activated methylene compounds to nitroalkenes. The C2 symmetric bis(2-aminobenzimidazole) derivatives the appropriate organocatalyst for the conjugate addition of 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds to maleimides as well as for the SN1 reaction of benzylic alcohols with carbon nucleophiles. 2-Aminobenzimidazoles bearing a primary amino group have shown excellent catalytic activity in the Michael reaction of aldehydes to maleimides and nitroalkenes. Diastereomeric 2-aminopyrimidines bearing a prolinamide unit have been incorporated in the trans-cyclohexane-1,2-diamine scaffold and have been used for the inter- and intra-molecular direct aldol reaction under solvent-free conditions. For the Michael reaction of aldehydes with maleimides the primary amine 2-aminopyrimidine has shown excellent efficiency as organocatalyst. The bifunctional character of these organocatalysts has been demonstrated by means of DFT calculations. The Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) (projects CTQ2010-20387, and Consolider Ingenio 2010, CSD2007-00006), the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) (projects CTQ2013-43446-P and CTQ2014-51912-REDC), FEDER, the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO 2009/039 and PROMETEOII/2014/017), the Basque Government (GV Grant IT-291-07), the FP7 Marie Curie Actions of the European Commission via the ITN ECHONET network (MCITN-2012-316379) and the Universities of Alicante and Basque Country are gratefully acknowledged for financial support. We also thank for technical and human support provided by IZO-SGI SGIker of UPV-EHU and European funding (ERDF and ESF).

Therapeutic applications of alpha (α)-emitting radionuclides were introduced soon after the isolation of radium from pitch blende by Marie Curie in the early twentieth century. Because of the very high linear energy transfer (LET), α-emitters can be very lethal and result in very effective cell killing sterilization if the α-decay commences at the cellular target site. With recent innovations in cancer cell targeting with antibodies and peptides and rapid targeting strategies, the efficacy of several radiopharmaceuticals to which α-emitters have been attached has been demonstrated. In particular, the effectiveness of pain management has recently demonstrated with 223Ra chloride (Xofigo®) in patients with hormone refractory skeletal metastases from prostate cancer. This chapter discusses various α-emitting radionuclides for therapy and several interesting applications.

In 2014, an intercomparison exercise of passive radon detectors under field conditions in the Marie Curie’s tunnel belonging to the Lurisia spas complex (Lurisia, Piedmont, Italy) has been held. Radon activity concentration in the tunnel was measured with six radon active monitors, previously calibrated at ENEA-INMRI facilities. In the present paper, a synthesis of the metrological aspects of the intercomparison is given. Indeed particular attention was paid to metrological characterization of radon monitors and their response upon ambient conditions. Correction factors have been defined to be applied when measurements are performed in severe environmental conditions. In particular, it has been found that monitors are particularly sensitive to the effect of air density: the AlphaGUARD (AG-SAPHYMO, GmbH) efficiency decreases with the air density, while for the MR1 PLUS (Tesys, Italy), the opposite applies. When the reference monitors were placed into the Marie Curie’s tunnel, to the recorded average radon concentrations correction factors were applied. After the correction the difference between data coming from AG and MR1 PLUS is within the 1.7%.

In recent years a large number of radon intercomparison exercises has been organized; most of them took place in radon chambers, in reference atmosphere of the parameter to control (i.e. radon gas) under temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure stable conditions. In 2014, in the tunnel belonging to the Lurisia spas complex (Lurisia, Piedmont, Italy), with natural high concentrations of uranium and radon gas, an intercomparison exercise has been held to give to radon measurement services and laboratories the possibility to test their passive systems under field conditions, which are less controlled and much more challenging. The response of laboratories was very positive: 46 participants from 10 European countries and 3 non-European countries. Generally about 80% of results of participants were considered acceptable even if it was observed a global trend of a substantial underestimation of the actual radon concentration.

In this paper I try to explain why the potassium-argon dating method was developed much later than other radiometric methods (like U-He and U-Pb), which were established at the beginning of the 20th century. In fact the pioneering paper by Aldrich and Nier (1948) was published 50 years after the discovery of polonium and radium, when nearly all the details concerning potassium isotopes and radioactivity of potassium-40 had been investigated. The role of Marie Curie’s concept of the nature of radioactivity in the discovery of the radioactivity of potassium is emphasized.

Marie Sklodowska-Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize twice in different scientific disciplines, is an inspiring figure. She discovered two new elements, polonium and radium, and was appointed as the first female professor at the University of Paris, when in most countries women did not yet have the right to vote. She serves as a role model for scholarly and humanitarian endeavors through what she attained in science, and through the hardships she had to overcome and the gender discrimination barriers faced by women scientists of that period, which she had to break. This article is a tribute to Marie Sklodowska-Curie's achievements.

One hundred years on from Marie Curie being awarded her second Nobel Prize there has been only a handful of female scientists who have received the call from Stockholm. Why are women still under-represented? A lack of ability or passion, or could it be that we create labs into which women don’t quite fit?

CNRS; Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS); Universite Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC); French Ministry of Research; LIA CNRS XiamENS[UMR 8640]; PCOSS State Key Laboratory; China Scholarship Council

A series of codendrimers constituted by the first five generations of poly(propylene imine) (PPI) ionically substituted with 2H,2H,3H,3H- perfluoroundecanoic acid (af) and undecanoic acid (ac) in a fixed ratio (1:3) (af:ac) have been synthesized and their supramolecular organization has been investigated both in the liquid crystalline state and on a surface. Incompatibility generated by combining fluorinated and perhydrogenated chains in the same molecule causes a peculiar mesomorphic behavior depending on the generation of the codendrimers. Thus smectic A, frustrated smectic A or rectangular columnar mesophases have been detected. Despite their different liquid crystalline organization, they are capable to self-assemble in homogeneous molecular length layers on a surface, namely mica as revealed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments. Copyright © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., This work was supported by the MICINN, Spain, under Project CTQ2009-09030, and FEDER funding EU, by seventh FP-THE PEOPLE PROGRAMME, The Marie Curie Actions; ITN, No. 215884-2, and by the Gobierno de Aragón (Project PI109/09, Research Group E04).

Atomic wires (point contacts) and molecular junctions are two fundamental units in the fields of nanoelectronics and devices. This Minireview introduces our recent approaches aiming to develop versatile methods to fabricate and characterize these unique metallic and molecular structures reliably. Electrochemical methods are coupled with mechanically controllable break junction (EC-MCBJ) or scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) break junction (EC-STMBJ) methods to fabricate metallic point contacts and metal/molecule/metal junctions. With the designed electrodeposition method, the metal of interest (e.g. Au, Cu, Fe or Pd) is deposited in a controlled way on the original electrode pair, on a chip for MCBJ or on the STM tip, to make the metallic contact. Then, various metal atomic wires and molecular junctions can be fabricated and characterized systematically. Herein, we measured the quantized conductance through the construction of histograms of these metal atomic point contacts and of single molecules including benzene-1,4-dithiol (BDT), ferrocene-bisvinylphenylmethyl dithiol (Fc-VPM), 4,4'-bipyridine (BPY), 1,2-di(pyridin-4-yl)ethene (BPY-EE), and 1,2-di(pyridin-4-yl)ethane (BPY-EA). Finally, we briefly discussed the future of EC-MCBJ and EC-STM for nanoelectronics and devices, for example, for the formation of heterogeneous metal-based atomic point contacts and molecular junctions.

© 2018 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim This work reports the synthesis, characterization, photophysical, and photovoltaic properties of five new thieno[3,2-b][1]benzothiophene isoindigo (TBTI)-containing low bandgap donor–acceptor conjugated polymers with a series of comonomers and different side chains. When TBTI is combined with different electron-rich moieties, even small structural variations can have significant impact on thin film morphology of the polymer:phenyl C70 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) blends. More importantly, high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy is used to investigate the phase-separated bulk heterojunction domains, which can be accurately and precisely resolved, enabling an enhanced correlation between polymer chemical structure, photovoltaic device performance, and morphology.

We report results from lithium abundance determinations using high resolution spectral analysis of the 107 metal-rich stars from the Calan-Hertfordshire Extrasolar Planet Search programme. We set out to understand the lithium distribution of the population of stars taken from this survey. The lithium abundance with account NLTE effects was determined from the fits to the Li I 6708 ��~resonance doublet profiles in the observed spectra. We find that a) fast rotators tend to have higher lithium abundances, b) $\log$ N(Li) is higher in more massive/hot stars, c) $\log$ N(Li) is higher in less evolved stars, i.e. stars of lower \logg, d) stars with the metallicities $>$0.25~dex do not show the presence of lithium lines in their spectra, e) most of our planet hosts rotate slower, f) our estimate of a lower limit of lithium isotopic ratio is \Li $>$10 in the atmospheres of two SWP and two non-SWP stars. Measurable lithium abundances were found in the atmospheres of 45 stars located at distances of 20-170 pc from the Sun, for the other 62 stars the upper limits of log N(Li) were computed. We found well defined dependences of lithium abundances on \Teff, \vsini, and less pronounced for the \logg. In case of \vsini we see two sequences of stars: with measurable lithium and with the upper limit of log N(Li). About 10\% of our targets are known to host planets. Only two SWP have notable lithium abundances, so we found a lower proportion of stars with detectable Li among known planet hosts than among stars without planets. However, given the small sample size of our planet-host sample, our analysis does not show any statistically significant differences in the lithium abundance between SWP and stars without known planets., 19 pages, 6 tables, 13 figures, accepted by AA

A terbium double-decker phthalocyanine complex has been prepared and characterized. The mesomorphism of the liquidcrystalline complex is used as a tool to reversibly adjust its magnetic properties, thus allowing the coexistence of two different relaxation processes, which can be reversibly modified by simple thermal treatments, to be observed., This work was supported by the Marie Curie EST FuMaSSEC, EU NoE MAGMANet (515767-2), EMOCIONA (CTQ2006-06333/BQU), Grup de Recerca de Catalunya (2009 SGR-516) and Molecular Nanoscience (CSD2007-00010) and Molchip (MAT2009-13977-C03) projects.

1 Dipartimento di Biolog?a Animale edell'Uomo, University Sapienza, V?ale dell'Universit? 32,1-00185 Rome, Italy;2 Division of Neuroanatomy and Behaviour, Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland; and 3Laboratoire de Parasitologie Evolutive, CNRS UMR 7103, 6, Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie, B?t. A, 7?me ?tage, 7 quai St. Bernard, 7 Case 237, F-75252 Paris Cedex 05, France

The year 2006 marked 100 years since the death of Pierre Curie. It is therefore appropriate that we remember his life and his work, which was cut short by his untimely death from an accident on the Pont Neuf, Paris, on April 19, 1906. He had already accomplished much during his life, both before the discovery of radium with Marie Curie, in work co-authored with his brother Jacques on piezoelectricity, and afterwards, when he published the results of several experimental studies with radium and radon. He came from a medical family, and his grandfather Pierre Curie was a famous homeopathic physician. He has, in print, unfairly been relegated to the background—his own scientific contributions having been overtaken by the fame of Marie Curie, probably because she outlived him by 28 years.

The dinuclear copper(II) complex [Cu-2{bcmp(-H)}(mu-OH)](NO3)(2)center dot H2O (1, bcmp = 2,6-bis(1,4,7-triazacyclonon-1-ylmethyl)-4-methylphenol) has been synthesized and characterized by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, potentiometric titration and cyclovoltammetry. The X-ray structure of the analogous perchlorate salt [Cu-2{bcmp(-H)}(mu-OH)](ClO4)(2)center dot 2.5H(2)O (2) was determined. Cytotoxicity studies showed very promising activity of 1 against various pancreatic tumor cell lines with IC50 values comparable or even lower than those of cisplatin. The Cu complex displayed low toxicity against a human non-tumor cell line (HEM 293) demonstrating selectivity for cancer cells. 1 converts supercoiled pUC19 plasmid DNA into the nicked form at micromolar concentrations in the absence of added reductants. A detailed kinetic study on the hydrolysis of the DNA model bis(2,4-dinitrophenyl) phosphate (BDNPP) has been performed. 1 hydrolyses BDNPP with a second order rate constant of 0.047 M s(-1) at pH 8 and 40 degrees C. Finally, single cell electrophoresis (comet assay) and fluorescence microscopy analysis showed that 1 interacts with cellular DNA and induces apoptotic cell death of Capan-1 pancreatic cancer cells. Western blotting analysis indicated that the Cu complex activates the p53 dependent pathway of apoptosis. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Financial supports from the European Commission and Science Foundation Ireland (Marie Curie FP7-IEF to D.M., Stokes Lectureship to A.E., grant no. 07/SK/B1225b) and from the University of Padova (Progetto di Ateneo CPDA121973/12) are gratefully acknowledged. peer-reviewed

The reaction of the chiral dipeptide glycyl-L(S)-glutamate with CoII ions produces chiral ladders that can be used as rigid 1D building units. Spatial separation of these building units with linkers of different lengths allows the engineering of homochiral porous MOFs with enhanced pore sizes, pore volumes, and surface areas. This strategy enables the synthesis of a family of isoreticular MOFs, in which the pore size dictates the enantioselective adsorption of chiral molecules (in terms of their size and enantiomeric excess)., This work was supported by the MINECO-Spain under the project PN MAT2012-30994. I.I. thanks the MINECO for the RyC fellowship and K.C.S. is grateful to EU for the Marie Curie Fellowship (300390 NanoBioMOFs FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF). The authors thank the Diamond Light Source for access to beamline I19, which contributed to the results presented herein (MT8477). X.R. thanks for an ICREA Acadèmia award. The project “Factoría de Cristalización, CONSOLIDER INGENIO-2010” provided PXRD facilities. ICN2 acknowledges support of the Spanish MINECO through the Severo Ochoa Centers of Excellence Program under Grant SEV-2013-0295.

Simulations Complement Experimental Studies Jessica Nasica-Labouze,† Phuong H. Nguyen,† Fabio Sterpone,† Olivia Berthoumieu,‡ Nicolae-Viorel Buchete, Sebastien Cote, Alfonso De Simone, Andrew J. Doig, Peter Faller,‡ Angel Garcia, Alessandro Laio, Mai Suan Li, Simone Melchionna, Normand Mousseau, Yuguang Mu, Anant Paravastu, Samuela Pasquali,† David J. Rosenman, Birgit Strodel, Bogdan Tarus,† John H. Viles, Tong Zhang,†,▲ Chunyu Wang, and Philippe Derreumaux*,†,□ †Laboratoire de Biochimie Theorique, Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique (IBPC), UPR9080 CNRS, Universite Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cite, 13 rue Pierre et Marie Curie, 75005 Paris, France ‡LCC (Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination), CNRS, Universite de Toulouse, Universite Paul Sabatier (UPS), Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse (INPT), 205 route de Narbonne, BP 44099, Toulouse F-31077 Cedex 4, France School of Physics & Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland Deṕartement de Physique and Groupe de recherche sur les proteines membranaires (GEPROM), Universite de Montreal, C.P. 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3T5, Canada Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester, 131 Princess Street, Manchester M1 7DN, United Kingdom Department of Physics, Applied Physics, & Astronomy, and Department of Biology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, United States The International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Al. Lotnikow 32/46, 02-668 Warsaw, Poland Institute for Computational Science and Technology, SBI Building, Quang Trung Software City, Tan Chanh Hiep Ward, District 12, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Instituto Processi Chimico-Fisici, CNR-IPCF, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 00185 Roma, Italy School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 60 Nanyang Drive, 637551 Singapore Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Florida A&M University-Florida State University (FAMU-FSU) College of Engineering, 2525 Pottsdamer Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32310, United States National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 1800 East Paul Dirac Drive, Tallahassee, Florida 32310, United States Institute of Complex Systems: Structural Biochemistry (ICS-6), Forschungszentrum Julich GmbH, 52425 Julich, Germany School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom Institut Universitaire de France, 75005 Paris, France

The Curies published openly their processes and techniques for the separation of radium and polonium. They also decided against seeking any patents in spite of their lack of financial support. Chemists in Germany, which was more industrialized than the third French Republic of 1870–1940, were stimulated by the reports of radioactivity and new elements. Industrialized Germany had large chemical companies that could separate radium in larger quantities than the small laboratory of the Curies. German companies were the first to offer radium for sale, 1899–1901. The Curies worked to achieve industrial scale production by collaborating with various Paris companies. After 1900, the demand for radium resulted in the emergence of several European radium factories.