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Molecular interactions at interfaces have a significant effect on the wetting properties of surfaces on a macroscale. 

MicroRNA (miRNA) has emerged as a promising alternative therapeutic treatment for cancer, but its delivery has been hindered by low cellular uptake and degradation during circulation. In this review, we discuss the various methods of delivering miRNA, including viral and non-viral delivery systems such as liposomes and nanoparticles. We also examine the use of nanoparticles for miRNA-based diagnostics. We focus specifically on non-viral delivery systems utilizing coinage metals in the form of nanoparticles and the use of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) as a method of surface modification. We review the use of SAMs for the conjugation and delivery of small noncoding ribonucleic acid (ncRNA), particularly SAMs derived from positively charged adsorbates to generate charged surfaces that can interact electrostatically with negatively charged miRNA. We also discuss the effects of the cellular uptake of gold and other plasmonic nanoparticles, as well as the challenges associated with the degradation of oligonucleotides. Our review highlights the potential of SAM-based systems as versatile and robust tools for delivering miRNA and other RNAs in vitro and in vivo and the need for further research to address the challenges associated with miRNA delivery and diagnostics. 

The resistance of surfaces to biomaterial adsorption/adhesion is paramount for advancing marine and biomedical industries. A variety of approaches that involve bioinert materials have been developed to modify surfaces. Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) are powerful platforms in which the surface composition is easily fabricated and a well-defined structure is provided; thus, the molecular-level interaction between biomolecules/biofoulants and the surface can be understood. In this review, we describe a wide variety of SAM structures on gold and silica surfaces for antifouling applications and the corresponding mechanism of nonfouling surfaces. Our analysis divides the surface properties of films into the following types: (1) hydrophilic, (2) hydrophobic, and (3) amphiphilic films. 

The BigCode community, an open-scientific collaboration working on the responsible development of Large Language Models for Code (Code LLMs), introduces StarCoder and StarCoderBase: 15.5B parameter models with 8K context length, infilling capabilities and fast large-batch inference enabled by multi-query attention. StarCoderBase is trained on 1 trillion tokens sourced from The Stack, a large collection of permissively licensed GitHub repositories with inspection tools and an opt-out process. We fine-tuned StarCoderBase on 35B Python tokens, resulting in the creation of StarCoder. We perform the most comprehensive evaluation of Code LLMs to date and show that StarCoderBase outperforms every open Code LLM that supports multiple programming languages and matches or outperforms the OpenAI code-cushman-001 model. Furthermore, StarCoder outperforms every model that is fine-tuned on Python, can be prompted to achieve 40% pass@1 on HumanEval, and still retains its performance on other programming languages. We take several important steps towards a safe open-access model release, including an improved PII redaction pipeline and a novel attribution tracing tool, and make the StarCoder models publicly available under a more commercially viable version of the Open Responsible AI Model license. 

Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) have found use in diverse applications that range from corrosion prevention to biosensing. However, for all of these applications, stability remains a key challenge for the utilization of SAMs. Over the last decade, intermolecular crosslinking as a method to enhance the thermal and chemical stability of SAMs has attracted increased attention from scientists and engineers. As such, this review introduces a variety of crosslinked SAMs: (1) aromatic thiol-based SAMs; (2) olefinic- and acetylenic-based alkanethiols; (3) other aliphatic alkanethiols; (4) silane-based alkanethiols; (5) boronic acid-based alkanethiols; and (6) crosslinked SAMs realized by hydrogen bonding. By offering insight into the structure-application relationships of the aforementioned SAMs, this review seeks to inspire researchers toward the development of new classes of SAMs with enhanced stabilities and working lifetimes. 

We combine state-of-the-art oxide epitaxial growth by hybrid molecular beam epitaxy with transport, x-ray photoemission, and surface diffraction, along with classical and first-principles quantum mechanical modeling to investigate the nuances of insulating layer formation in otherwise high-mobility homoepitaxial n-SrTiO 3 (001) films. Our analysis points to charge immobilization at the buried n-SrTiO 3 /undoped SrTiO 3 (001) interface as well as within the surface contamination layer resulting from air exposure as the drivers of electronic dead-layer formation. As Fermi level equilibration occurs at the surface and the buried interface, charge trapping reduces the sheet carrier density ( n 2 D ) and renders the n-STO film insulating if n 2 D falls below the critical value for the metal-to-insulator transition.