A hierarchically porous carbon microsphere (PCM) with phosphorus doping (A-PCM) for an oxidase-like sensor and supercapacitor was prepared by the hydrothermal reaction using d-(+)-xylose as a carbon source, F127 as a pore expanding agent, and phosphoric acid as an activation agent. Phosphoric acid activation resulted in phosphorus doping that was beneficial to produce micropores. The introduction of F127 promoted the formation of large mesopores and macropores. In contrast with conventional PCMs, the prepared A-PCM demonstrated a large specific surface area of 1469.71 m2/g, distinctive adsorption and diffusion properties, best conductivity, and cycling stability, which enabled it to serve as a high-performance electrode material that displayed a high peak current response with about 130-fold enhancement compared with bare GCE, intrinsic oxidase-like characteristics, excellent electrocatalytic capacity for niclosamide in linear ranges from 0.3 to 100 μM with a low detection limit of 8.4 nM under the optimum operation conditions, and a high specific capacitance of 445.71 F/g at a current density of 1 A/g.

β-pinene is a monoterpene isolated from turpentine oil and numerous other plants’ essential oils, which has a broad spectrum of biological activities. In the current work, six novel β-pinene quaternary ammonium (β-PQA) salts were synthesized and evaluated in vitro for their antifungal, antibacterial and anticancer activities. The in vitro assay results revealed that compounds 4a and 4b presented remarkable antimicrobial activity against the tested fungi and bacteria. In particular, compound 4a showed excellent activities against F. oxysporum f.sp. niveum, P. nicotianae var.nicotianae, R. solani, D. pinea and Fusicoccumaesculi, with EC50 values of 4.50, 10.92, 9.45, 10.82 and 6.34 μg/mL, respectively. Moreover, compound 4a showed the best antibacterial action against E. coli, P. aeruginosa, S. aureus and B. subtilis, with MIC at 2.5, 0.625, 1.25 and 1.25 μg/mL, respectively. The anticancer activity results demonstrated that compounds 4a, 4b, 4c and 4f exhibited remarkable activity against HCT-116 and MCF-7 cell lines, with IC50 values ranged from 1.10 to 25.54 μM. Notably, the compound 4c displayed the strongest cytotoxicity against HCT-116 and MCF-7 cell lines, with the IC50 values of 1.10 and 2.46 μM, respectively. Furthermore, preliminary antimicrobial mechanistic studies revealed that compound 4a might cause mycelium abnormalities of microbial, cell membrane permeability changes and inhibition of the activity of ATP. Altogether, these findings open interesting perspectives to the application of β-PQA salts as a novel leading structure for the development of effective antimicrobial and anticancer agents.

A novel, sustainable, rosin-based quaternary ammonium salt, dehydroabietyltrimethyl ammonium bromine, has been applied for the synthesis of ordered hexagonal supermicroporous silica with nanosheet morphology. Unlike the conventional short chain surfactants, rosin-based surfactant possesses a rigid group of a three-ring phenanthrene skeleton. Such a hydrophobic group gives the surfactant a large total volume and small effective headgroup area, which are beneficial for the formation of 2D hexagonal phase. XRD, N 2 adsorption-desorption, TEM, and SEM are used to characterize the samples. The results indicate that the molar ratios of mixture of silicate source, template agent and inorganic acid in the synthesis system have great effects on the regularity of the pore structure. The synthesized material possesses large surface area (1229 m 2 g À1 ), high pore volume (0.59 cm 3 g À1 ) and narrow pore size distribution (centered at about 2.03 nm), which is on the borderline between the micropore and mesopore regions. Such a material will be attractive for applications in separations and catalysis because of its potential shape and size selectivities.

A quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) study on 43 amide repellents was carried out by the heuristic method in order to reveal the correlations between molecular parameters of these amides and their repellency against Aedes aegypti. Sketches and optimizations of molecular structures were achieved by the Gaussian software package. Generation and screening of molecular parameters were accomplished using CODESSA 2.7.10 software. The leave-one-out method was applied for the model validation. The results showed that a four-descriptor QSAR model with r of 0.897 was obtained. The average r values of the training set and test set of the QSAR model were 0.901 and 0.863, respectively, which suggested that the stability and predictability of the model were confirmed. Analysis of the implications of the descriptors that constitute the QSAR model indicated that all the descriptors were related to the charge distribution over the molecule and affect the dipole moment of the repellents.