Current Organic Chemistry - Volume 9, Issue 16, 2005

This is the first issue of Current Organic Chemistry dedicated to "stimuli-induced functions". Functional materials currently cover a diverse range of applications. It is ideal to activate these functions at any time and in any environment. To realize this reality, I am convinced that it is necessary to create systems with induced-function that respond to a certain stimuli, e.g. light, heat, or physical force. When people wish to apply the Read More

Over about the last two decades, many kinds of stimuli-responsive polymer gels in response to the change in their surroundings such as solvent composition, temperature, pH, and supply of electric field, etc., have been developed. They have attracted much attention as intelligent (or smart, biomimetic) materials which have sensor, processor and actuator functions. Applications to actuator (artificial muscle), biosensor, drug Read More

Various materials that show reversible changes in the rheological properties in response to external stimuli, especially electric and/or magnetic fields, have attracted attention because of their possible applications to devices of transformation of electric/magnetic stimulus into mechanical (passive) force. These materials are called electrorheological (ER), magnetorheological (MR), and electromagnetorheological (EMR) mat Read More

Helical polymers and macromolecules have precisely ordered stereostructures, and their potential applications include chiral separation and sensing based on molecular recognition and liquid crystalline formation by molecular ordering. Among them, πconjugated polymers with a helical structure have often exhibited unique electro- and magnetoresponsibilies. In this review, we describe the helical πconjugated macromol Read More

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as superoxide anion radical (O2-. ) play an essential role on normal cellular growth and homeostasis. However, excess ROS generated by perturbing O2-. homeostasis under various conditions of oxidative stress induce high radical toxicity, resulting in many diseases such as cancer, brain and myocardial infarction, and inflammation. Quantitative analysis of O2-. by a convenient method is a s Read More