Plasmonic gold-superparamagnetic hematite heterostructures

Bifunctional heterostructures composed of gold nanorods and hematite nanoparticle aggregates are prepared facilely through the hydrothermal decomposition of ferric acetylacetonate on the surface of the nanorods. The gold nanorod in the heterostructure is partially coated with the hematite nanoparticle aggregates. The hematite coating is porous. These heterostructures exhibit both plasmonic and superparamagnetic properties. They are well-dispersed in aqueous solutions. Such heterostructures will be potentially useful for many biotechnological applications.     

Effect of the Water Quenched Slag‐epoxy Resin Composite on Microwave Absorbing Properties

Although in recent years, the ash residues produced from municipal solid waste incinerators (MSWI) in Taiwan have been decreased gradually due to the public awareness of waste classification, it is still necessary to find a suitable landfill site to dispose these wastes safely and economically. For this reason, the plasma melting technology was selected to convert the unwanted ash residues into harmless water quenched slag. More importantly, the effect of the dielectric and magnetic properties of microwave absorber composed of water quenched slag‐epoxy resin composite was studied. The absorbing performance of water quenched slag‐epoxy composites at same sample thickness and at various sample thickness were also studied by measuring complex permittivity, complex permeability and reflection loss in the 2–18 and 18–40 GHz microwave frequency range using the free space method. It was found that the optimum thickness of absorber needed to yield the best reflection loss could be obtained and an absorption frequency range shifting at the frequency range of 2–18 and 18–40 GHz.     

Nanoparticle mixing through rapid expansion of high pressure and supercritical suspensions

Mixing of binary mixtures of nanopowders afforded by rapid expansion of high pressure and supercritical suspensions (REHPS) is investigated to examine the roles of two previously reported deagglomeration mechanisms. The quality of mixing was characterized through intensity and scale of segregation using concentration data obtained through energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy; the corresponding deagglomeration was quantified using differential mobility and image analyses in conjunction with electron microscopy. Increasing the pressure from which expansion was carried out, and decreasing the nozzle diameter led to improved deagglomeration. However, increased pressure alone did not influence the mixture quality, which was found to also depend on the scale of mixedness of the constituents before transport through the nozzle, establishing that the REHPS mixing is significantly improved by improving the quality of the premix. The scale of segregation correlated with the size of the most energetic eddies present during flow through the nozzle, both of which increased with nozzle diameter, corroborating the importance of previously reported shear-induced deagglomeration mechanism. Finally, REHPS was also shown to be capable of deagglomerating carbon nanotube bundles and mix them well with alumina, silica, and titania at submicron scale.     

Enzyme-catalyzed synthesis of (R)- and (S)-3-hydroxy-3-(10-alkyl-10H-phenothiazin-3-yl)propanoic acids

Starting from the racemic ethyl 3-hydroxy-3-(10-alkyl-10H-phenothiazin-3-yl)propanoates as substrates, a multienzymatic procedure was developed for the efficient synthesis of the corresponding highly enantiomerically enriched (R)- and (S)-3-heteroaryl-3-hydroxypropanoic acids.     

Resolution of problems in soft matter dynamics by combining calorimetry and other spectroscopies

In several current important problems in different areas of soft matter physics, controversy persists in interpreting the molecular dynamics observed by various spectroscopies including dielectric relaxation, light scattering, nuclear magnetic resonance, and neutron scattering. Outstanding examples include: (1) relaxation of water in aqueous mixtures, in molecular sieves and silica-gel nanopores, and in hydration shell of proteins; and (2) dynamics of each component in binary miscible polymer blends, in mixtures of an amorphous polymer with a small molecular glassformer, and in binary mixtures of two small molecular glassformers. We show the applications of calorimetry to these problems have enhanced our understanding of the dynamics and eliminated the controversies.     

The true Johari-Goldstein beta-relaxation of monosaccharides

Broadband isothermal dielectric relaxation measurements of anhydrous fructose, glucose, galactose, sorbose, and ribose were made at ambient pressure in their liquidus and glassy states. We found a new secondary relaxation in fructose and glucose that is slower than those seen before by others. This new secondary relaxation also appears in the dielectric spectra of galactose, sorbose, and ribose, and hence it is a general feature of the relaxation dynamics of the monosaccharides. Dielectric measurements at elevated pressure of fructose and ribose show that the new secondary relaxation shifts to lower frequencies with applied pressures, mimicking the behavior of the alpha-relaxation. In contrast, the faster secondary relaxation remains stationary on applying pressure. These results together with other inferences indicate that the slower secondary relaxation bears relations to the alpha-relaxation, and hence, it is the true Johari-Goldstein secondary relaxation of the monosaccharides.     

On intersections of conjugacy classes and bruhat cells

For a connected semisimple algebraic group G over an algebraically closed field k and a fixed pair (B, B ^– ) of opposite Borel subgroups of G, we determine when the intersection of a conjugacy class C in G and a double coset BwB ^– is nonempty, where w is in the Weyl group W of G. The question comes from Poisson geometry, and our answer is in terms of the Bruhat order on W and an involution m _C ∈ 2 W associated to C. We prove that the element m _C is the unique maximal length element in its conjugacy class in W, and we classify all such elements in W. For G = SL(n + 1; k), we describe m _C explicitly for every conjugacy class C, and when w ∈ W ≌ S_n+1 is an involution, we give an explicit answer to when C ∩ (BwB) is nonempty.     

Mixed recurrence relations and interlacing of the zeros of some q-orthogonal polynomials from different sequences

We use the generating functions of some q-orthogonal polynomials to obtain mixed recurrence relations involving polynomials with shifted parameter values. These relations are used to prove interlacing results for the zeros of Al-Salam-Chihara, continuous q-ultraspherical, q-Meixner-Pollaczek and q-Laguerre polynomials of the same or adjacent degree as one of the parameters is shifted by integer values or continuously within a certain range. Numerical examples are given to illustrate situations where the zeros do not interlace.     

A magnetic bead‐based serum proteomic fingerprinting method for parallel analytical analysis and micropreparative purification

ProteinChip surface‐enhanced laser desorption/ionization technology and magnetic beads‐based ClinProt system are commonly used for semi‐quantitative profiling of plasma proteome in biomarker discovery. Unfortunately, the proteins/peptides detected by MS are non‐recoverable. To obtain the protein identity of a MS peak, additional time‐consuming and material‐consuming purification steps have to be done. In this study, we developed a magnetic beads‐based proteomic fingerprinting method that allowed semi‐quantitative proteomic profiling and micropreparative purification of the profiled proteins in parallel. The use of different chromatographic magnetic beads allowed us to obtain different proteomic profiles, which were comparable to those obtained by the ProteinChip surface‐enhanced laser desorption/ionization technology. Our assays were semi‐quantitative. The normalized peak intensity was proportional to concentration measured by immunoassay. Both intra‐assay and inter‐assay coefficients of variation of the normalized peak intensities were in the range of 4–30%. Our method only required 2 μL of serum or plasma for generating enough proteins for semi‐quantitative profiling by MALDI‐TOF‐MS as well as for gel electrophoresis and subsequent protein identification. The protein peaks and corresponding gel spots could be easily matched by comparing their intensities and masses. Because of its high efficiency and reproducibility, our method has great potentials in clinical research, especially in biomarker discovery.