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Mineral dust can be transported long distances in the lower atmosphere. Satellite measurements and model simulations show that dust generated during a storm in the Taklimakan Desert, China, in 2007 was transported more than once around the globe.

Liquid crystals are used in many applications, such as removable adhesives, but this requires both good bonding strength, and its rapid disappearance under an external stimulus. Here, Saito and others report a dynamic liquid crystal material that loses is bonding strength under photo irradiation.

Molecular alignment in liquid crystals is conventionally achieved by surface mediation from the substrate side. Fukuhara et al.develop a method to photocontrol the orientation of liquid crystalline polymer films from the air side, which is guided by a photoresponsive skin layer.

In this study, the effects of the polyrotaxane cross-linker concentration and solvent content on elastomer preparation were investigated to obtain elastomers with high toughnesses due to the properties of the polyrotaxane cross-linking agent. If elastomers were prepared in a state in which the slide-ring effect of the polyrotaxane was easily expressed by the concentration of the polyrotaxane cross-linker and the amount of solvent, the elastomers obtained elongated more and were tougher than elastomers made from conventional cross-linkers.

Masato Kasuga and colleagues and Shiro Maeda and colleagues each report the independent identification of SNPs in KCNQ1 associated with type 2 diabetes in the Japanese population. Each group replicated the associations in other populations of East Asian and European descent.

Postfunctionalization of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) was performed in supercritical carbon dioxide (sc-CO₂) for the selective functionalization of the amorphous region. The crystalline region was retained in the amorphous-selective acetylated PVA. The oriented structure of crystallites of the drawn PVA was maintained even after acetylation in sc-CO₂. Moisture adsorption behaviors affected the crystalline structure of PVA acetylated in sc-CO₂. The PVA acetylated in sc-CO₂ included a larger number of water molecules under humid conditions, but the increase in thickness after water adsorption was smaller than that of randomly acetylated PVA.

High-molecular-weight (HM_w) sulfonated polyimide thin films with a semialiphatic main chain exhibited an oriented lamellar structure and high proton conductivity (1.5 × 10^-1 S cm^-1) under humidified conditions. Low-molecular-weight (LM_w) sulfonated polyimide thin films with the same semialiphatic backbone exhibited a nonoriented lamellar structure and low proton conductivity (3.0 × 10^-2 S cm^-1) under humidified conditions. The results indicate that, in sulfonated polyimide thin films with semialiphatic main chain, the lamellar orientation greatly contributes to the high proton conductivity.

A novel hot-pressing method for preparing transparent poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogels (PVA-Hs) was developed, without using toxic dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) for solubilizing PVA during gelation. Size distribution of microcrystallites was uniform in PVA-Hs prepared by hot-pressing method with water, leading to formation of a transparent hydrogel. This could be a crucial step toward overcoming the current challenges for biomedical applications of PVA-Hs prepared without using toxic DMSO, especially in the field of artificial cartilages.

Octacalcium phosphate is a precursor to a key component of human bone and tooth enamel which can incorporate carboxylate species, but the effect of multivalent carboxylates is not well understood. Here the incorporation of tetracarboxylic acids into OCP is shown to influence the structural and optical properties of the resultant composite.

A method to control on-demand phase transition and alignment of organic–inorganic hybrid containing lyotropic liquid crystals (LLCs) have been developed. By using polysiloxane containing hygroscopicity and photocrosslinking groups, the phase transition of the LLCs can be induced by changes in humidity. The phase-transition behavior of the LLCs in polysiloxane can be suppressed by light irradiation. Further, the author proposed new methods for vertically aligning nanochannels by using surface interaction or the spontaneous vertical-aligned nature, and photopatterning of chromonic dye aggregates.

Two-dimensional sheet-shaped poly(methyl methacrylate) (2d-PMMA) with crosslinking only in the two-dimensional direction was synthesized via planar polymerization of MMA monomer in montmorillonite (MMT) nanolayers by using γ-ray irradiation, and the samples obtained were characterized by size-exclusion chromatography with a multiangle light scattering (SEC-MALS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Our results provided experimental proof that the desired sheet-like polymer was attained and the obtained samples were appropriately characterized, augmenting the previous reports.