Organic/inorganic hybrid materials from an epoxy resin cured by an amine silsesquioxane

The thermal behaviour of an epoxy resin cured with an amine-POSS was studied using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric (TG) analysis. The kinetic of polymerization reaction and the thermal degradation have been analyzed based on an iso-conversional model. The obtained results showed that the activation energies of both processes depend on the degree of conversion.     

Applications of synchrotron μ-XRF to study the distribution of biologically important elements in different environmental matrices: A review

Environmental matrices including soils, sediments, and living organisms are reservoirs of several essential as well as non-essential elements. Accurate qualitative and quantitative information on the distribution and interaction of biologically significant elements is vital to understand the role of these elements in environmental and biological samples. Synchrotron micro-X-ray fluorescence (μ-SXRF) allows in situ mapping of biologically important elements at nanometer to sub-micrometer scale with high sensitivity, negligible sample damage and enable tuning of the incident energy as desired. Beamlines in the synchrotron facilities are rapidly increasing their analytical versatility in terms of focusing optics, detector technologies, incident energy, and sample environment. Although extremely competitive, it is now feasible to find stations offering complimentary techniques like micro-X-ray diffraction (μ-XRD) and micro-X-ray absorption spectroscopy (μ-XAS) that will allow a more complete characterization of complex matrices. This review includes the most recent literature on the emerging applications and challenges of μ-SXRF in studying the distribution of biologically important elements and manufactured nanoparticles in soils, sediments, plants, and microbes. The advantages of using μ-SXRF and complimentary techniques in contrast to conventional techniques used for the respective studies are discussed.     

Green up-conversion of Er3+ in KGd(WO4)2 crystals. Effects of sample orientation and erbium concentration

Pumping with infrared light resonant to the energy position of ⁴ I _11/2 and ⁴ I _9/2 multiplets respectively has excited green up-conversion of Er³⁺ in KGd(WO₄)₂ single crystal. At room temperature the maximum green-emission intensity is achieved by pumping with light polarized parallel to the C₂ symmetry axis of the crystal (//p) at 981 and 801.5 nm, while pumping with light parallel to the principal m axis (//m) has maximum up-conversion at 978.2, 806 and 800 nm. The emission is weakly polarized. The maximum of the emission peaks at 547.8 nm if the light is analyzed parallel to the C₂ axis or at 552.4 nm for light perpendicular to it. The largest emission intensity was achieved with an erbium concentration about 3×10²⁰ cm^-3. A schematic model of the up-conversion process is suggested. Received: 4 July 2000 / Published online: 22 November 2000     

Alignment of capillary electrophoresis–mass spectrometry datasets using accurate mass information

Capillary electrophoresis–mass spectrometry (CE–MS) is a powerful technique for the analysis of small soluble compounds in biological fluids. A major drawback of CE is the poor migration time reproducibility, which makes it difficult to combine data from different experiments and correctly assign compounds. A number of alignment algorithms have been developed but not all of them can cope with large and irregular time shifts between CE–MS runs. Here we present a genetic algorithm designed for alignment of CE–MS data using accurate mass information. The utility of the algorithm was demonstrated on real data, and the results were compared with one of the existing packages. The new algorithm showed a significant reduction of elution time variation in the aligned datasets. The importance of mass accuracy for the performance of the algorithm was also demonstrated by comparing alignments of datasets from a standard time-of-flight (TOF) instrument with those from the new ultrahigh resolution TOF maXis (Bruker Daltonics).     

Cross sections for energetic heavy-ion impact on protonated water clusters

Energetic impact of multiple ionized oxygen on protonated water clusters in the range of eight to twenty-one water molecules is investigated on the ZERNIKE--LEIF facility. The target water clusters are stored in a Paul trap and thermalized by cold buffer gas. This well-controlled approach allows for a direct measurement of the total inelastic cross section leading to trap-loss processes of the target ions.     

An optimal monotone contention resolution scheme for bipartite matchings via a polyhedral viewpoint

Relaxation and rounding approaches became a standard and extremely versatile tool for constrained submodular function maximization. One of the most common rounding techniques in this context are contention resolution schemes. Such schemes round a fractional point by first rounding each coordinate independently, and then dropping some elements to reach a feasible set. Also the second step, where elements are dropped, is typically randomized. This leads to an additional source of randomization within the procedure, which can complicate the analysis. We suggest a different, polyhedral viewpoint to design contention resolution schemes, which avoids to deal explicitly with the randomization in the second step. This is achieved by focusing on the marginals of a dropping procedure. Apart from avoiding one source of randomization, our viewpoint allows for employing polyhedral techniques. Both can significantly simplify the construction and analysis of contention resolution schemes. We show how, through our framework, one can obtain an optimal monotone contention resolution scheme for bipartite matchings, which has a balancedness of 0.4762. So far, only very few results are known about optimality of monotone contention resolution schemes. Our contention resolution scheme for the bipartite case also improves the lower bound on the correlation gap for bipartite matchings. Furthermore, we derive a monotone contention resolution scheme for matchings that significantly improves over the previously best one. More precisely, we obtain a balancedness of 0.4326, improving on a prior 0.1997-balanced scheme. At the same time, our scheme implies that the currently best lower bound on the correlation gap for matchings is not tight. Our results lead to improved approximation factors for various constrained submodular function maximization problems over a combination of matching constraints with further constraints.

     

Molecular dynamics simulations,docking and MMGBSA studies of newly designed peptide-conjugated glucosyloxy stilbene derivatives with tumor cell receptors

Molecular Diversity - In this work, for the first time, we designed derivatives of beta-D-glucosyloxy-3-hydroxy-trans-stiblene-2-carboxylic acid (GHS), by conjugating GHS with tumor targeting...     

Thermo-Reversible Cellulose Micro Phase-Separation in Mixtures of Methyltributylphosphonium Acetate and γ-Valerolactone or DMSO

We have identified cellulose solvents, comprised of binary mixtures of molecular solvents and ionic liquids that rapidly dissolve cellulose to high concentration and show upper-critical solution temperature (UCST)-like thermodynamic behaviour - upon cooling and micro phase-separation to roughly spherical microparticle particle-gel mixtures. This is a result of an entropy-dominant process, controllable by changing temperature, with an overall exothermic regeneration step. However, the initial dissolution of cellulose in this system, from the majority cellulose I allomorph upon increasing temperature, is also exothermic. The mixtures essentially act as ‘thermo-switchable’ gels. Upon initial dissolution and cooling, micro-scaled spherical particles are formed, the formation onset and size of which are dependent on the presence of traces of water. Wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) and ¹³C cross-polarisation magic-angle spinning (CP-MAS) NMR spectroscopy have identified that the cellulose micro phase-separates with no remaining cellulose I allomorph and eventually forms a proportion of the cellulose II allomorph after water washing and drying. The rheological properties of these solutions demonstrate the possibility of a new type of cellulose processing, whereby morphology can be influenced by changing temperature.     

Exponential and polynomial stability of a wave equation for boundary memory damping with singular kernels

This work is concerned with stabilization of a wave equation stabilized by a boundary feedback. When the feedback is both frictional and with memory, we prove exponential stability of the solutions. In case of a boundary feedback which is only of memory type, uniform stability is not expected. We prove in this latter case, that the solutions decay polynomially. The method is new and uses the method of higher order energies (see [F. Alabau-Boussouira, J. Prüss, R. Zacher, Exponential and polynomial stabilization of wave equations subjected to boundary-memory dissipation with singular kernels, in preparation; F. Alabau, Stabilisation frontière indirecte de systèmes faiblement couplés, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris Sér. I Math. 328 (1999) 1015–1020; F. Alabau, P. Cannarsa, V. Komornik, Indirect internal damping of coupled systems, J. Evolution Equations 2 (2002) 127–150; F. Alabau, Indirect boundary stabilization of weakly coupled systems, SIAM J. Control Optim. 41 (2002) 511–541]), the multiplier method and the properties of a large class of singular kernels. Moreover, our method can be extended to include cases of nonsingular kernels (see [V. Vergara, R. Zacher, Lyapunov functions and convergence to steady state for differential equations of fractional order, Math. Z. 259 (2008) 287–309; R. Zacher, Convergence to equilibrium for second order differential equations with weak damping of memory type, preprint.]). To cite this article: F. Alabau-Boussouira et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 347 (2009).