Article says that the steric stability of inorganic colloidal particles in an apolar solvent is usually described in terms of the balance between three contributions: the van der Waals attraction, the free energy of mixing, and the ligand compression. The authors demonstrate that for sufficiently large nanoplatelets, solvation forces are proportional to the interacting facet area, and their strength is intrinsically tied to the softness of the ligand shell.

Authors of the article discuss that to uncover genes and pathways involved in the differential clinical manifestations of COVID-19 they developed a novel gene co-expression network-based pipeline that uses gene expression obtained from different SARS-CoV-2 infected human tissues. Their study shines a new light on genes and their networks (modules) that drive the progression of COVID-19 from moderate to extremely severe condition, which could aid development of new therapeutics to combat COVID-19.

Article investigates the effect of KCl on moist CO oxidation in a laminar flow quartz reactor. Experiments were conducted in the absence of O2 (gasification), as well as under reducing and fuel-lean conditions, in the temperature range 873–1573 K, and the results were interpreted in terms of a chemical kinetic model.

Article describes how titanium and nickel alloys are used in the creation of components exposed to harsh and variable operating conditions. The authors state that a search is underway for cutting parameters that will minimize the vibration while meeting the quality requirements.

Article describes how protective coatings are important for enhancing tribological behavior, preventing surface degradation, and reducing friction-induced energy losses during the operation of mechanical systems. The authors study the effect of catalytic metals, specifically their compositions and amount, on the tribocatalysis process.

Article describes how symmetry breaking charge transfer is one of the important photo-events occurring in photosynthetic reaction centers that is responsible for initiating electron transfer leading to a long-lived charge-separated state and has been successfully employed in light-to-electricity converting optoelectronic devices. In this study, the authors report a newly synthesized, far-red absorbing and emitting BODIPY-dimer to undergo symmetry-breaking charge transfer leading to charge-separated states of appreciable lifetimes in polar solvents.

This article is about how rate coefficients for reactions of H2SO4 with OH, O(3P) and Cl radicals over 160–298 K were estimated computationally. The authors propose kOH = 8.5 × 10-14 exp(-50 K/T), kO = 1.1 × 10-12 exp(-5012 K/T) and kCl = 3.1 × 10-9 exp(-3314 K/T) cm3 molecule-1 s−1.