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The lack of molecular-level understanding for the electronic excitation response of DNA to charged particle radiation, such as high-energy protons, remains a fundamental scientific bottleneck in advancing proton and other ion beam cancer…
Lattice stability and metastability, as well as melting, are important features of the physics and chemistry of dense hydrogen. Using ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD), the classical superheating limit and melting line of metallic…
We study the dynamics of DNA hairpin formation using oxDNA, a nucleotide-level coarse-grained model of DNA. In particular, we explore the effects of the loop stacking interactions and non-native base pairing on the hairpin closing times. We…
Biological hydrogels have been increasingly sought after as e.g. wound dressings or scaffolds for regenerative medicine, due to their inherent biofunctionality in biological environments. Especially in moist wound healing, the ideal…
Melanins are promising materials for organic bioelectronics devices like transistors, sensors and batteries. However, in general, melanin either natural or synthetic has low solubility in most solvents. In this study, the chemical…
Studying the freezing of saltwater on a molecular level is of fundamental importance for improving freeze desalination techniques. Here, we investigate the freezing process of NaCl solutions using a combination of x-ray diffraction and…
The hydration of magnesium oxide (MgO) to magnesium hydroxide (Mg(OH)$_2$) is a fundamental solid-surface chemical reaction with significant implications for materials science. Yet its molecular-level mechanism from water adsorption to…
We study hydrogen plasmas at magnetic fields B ~ 10^{12}-10^{13} Gauss, densities ~ 10^{-3}-10^3 g/cc and temperatures T ~ 10^{5.5}-10^{6.5} K, typical of photospheres of middle-aged cooling neutron stars. We construct an analytical free…
We report 23Na NMR studies of the polycrystalline samples of double-layer hydrated cobalt oxides NaxCoO2.yH2O (x ~ 0.35 and y ~ 1.3) with the superconducting transition temperatures Tc < 1.8K and ~4.5K, and the dehydrated NaxCoO2 (x ~…
The mean kinetic energy of protons in water is determined by Deep Inelastic Neutron Scattering experiments, performed above and below the temperature of maximum density and in the supercooled phase. The temperature dependence of this energy…
Hydrogen point defects in silicon still hold unsolved problems, whose disclosure is fundamental for future advances in Si technologies. Among the open issues is the mechanism for the condensation of atomic hydrogen into molecules in Si…
When water molecules are confined to nanoscale spacings, such as in the nanometer size pores of activated carbon fiber (ACF), their freezing point gets suppressed down to very low temperatures ($\sim$ 150 K), leading to a metastable liquid…
The formation of a spanning hydrogen-bonded network of hydration water is found to occur via a 2D percolation transition in various systems: smooth hydrophilic surfaces, the surface of a single protein molecule, protein powder and diluted…
We aim at investigating the formation of jet-like features in the lower solar atmosphere, e.g. chromosphere and transition region, as a result of magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection as occurring at chromospheric and transition…
When the DNA double helix is subjected to external forces it can stretch elastically to elongations reaching 100% of its natural length. These distortions, imposed at the mesoscopic or macroscopic scales, have a dramatic effect on…
The dynamics of the structured water molecules in the hydration shell of the DNA double helix is of paramount importance for the understanding of many biological mechanisms. In particular, the vibrational dynamics of a water spine that is…
When pulled along the axis, double-strand DNA undergoes a large conformational change and elongates roughly twice its initial contour length at a pulling force about 70 pN. The transition to this highly overstretched form of DNA is very…
Significant influence of aerogel surface heterogeneity on the processes of 3He nuclear magnetic relaxation at temperatures 1.5 - 4.2 K is discovered. This influence appears, for instance, in differences of 3He T1 relaxation times for small…
We elucidate the mechanism of cold denaturation through constant-pressure simulations for a model of hydrophobic molecules in an explicit solvent. We find that the temperature dependence of the hydrophobic effect is the driving…
The distance-resolved effective interaction potential between two parallel DNA molecules is calculated by computer simulations with explicit tetravalent counterions and monovalent salt. Adding counterions first yields an attractive minimum…