Direct determination of five fluoroquinolones in chicken whole blood and in veterinary drugs by HPLC

A direct, accurate, and sensitive chromatographic analytical method for the quantitative determination of five fluoroquinolones (enoxacin, ofloxacin, norfloxacin, ciprofloxacin, and enrofloxacin) in chicken whole blood is proposed in the present study. For quantitative determination lamotrigine was used as internal standard at a concentration of 20 ng/microL. The developed method was successfully applied to the determination of enrofloxacin, as the main component of commercially available veterinary drugs. Fluoroquinolone antibiotics were separated on an Inertsil (250 x 4 mm) C8, 5 microm, analytical column, at ambient temperature. The mobile phase consisted of a mixture of citric acid (0.4 mol L(-1))-CH3OH-CH3CN (87:9:4% v/v) leading to retention times less than 14 min, at a flow rate 1.4 mL min(-1). UV detection at 275 nm provided limits of detection of 2 ng/mL per 20 microL injected volume for enoxacin, norfloxacin, and ciprofloxacin, 0.4 ng/mL for ofloxacin, and 4 ng/mL for enrofloxacin. Preparation of chicken blood samples is based on the deproteinization with acetonitrile while the pharmaceutical drug was simply diluted with water. Peaks of examined analytes in real samples were identified by means of a photodiode array detector. The method was validated in terms of within-day (n=6) precision and accuracy after chicken whole blood sample deproteinization by CH3CN. Using 50 microL of chicken blood sample, recovery rates at fortification levels of 40, 60, and 80 ng ranged from 86.7% to 103.7%. The applicability of the method was evaluated using real samples from chicken under fluoroquinolone treatment.     

Microwave-promoted Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling of aryl halides with phenylboronic acid under aerobic conditions catalyzed by a new palladium complex with a thiosemicarbazone ligand

A new air- and moisture-stable palladium complex with salicylaldehyde N(4)-hexamethyleneiminylthiosemicarbazone has been synthesized. According to its crystal structure, the metal is bonded to 2 equiv monoanionic thiosemicarbazone moieties in a N,S-bidentate fashion, forming two five-membered chelate rings, while additional intramolecular bonds stabilize the structure. In contrast to other palladium complexes with thiosemicarbazones, this complex was inactive towards the Suzuki-Miyaura coupling under aerobic conditions, by conventional heating. On the other hand, microwave irradiation promoted the effective catalytic activity of the complex for the coupling of aryl bromides and chlorides with phenylboronic acid in DMF/H₂O, under aerobic conditions, with turnover numbers of up to 37,000.     

The monotone follower problem in stochastic decision theory

We consider the problem of optimally tracking the random demandx+w _t, w. Brownian motion, by a nondecreasing process. adapted to the Brownian past, so as to minimize the expected lossE ₀ ^T (x+w_t–_t)dt. The decision problem is reduced to a free boundary one, and the latter is studied and solved for a large class of cost functions().This research was supported in part by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, under AF-AFOSR 77-3063.     

Ene reaction of singlet oxygen,triazolinedione, and nitrosoarene with chiral deuterium-labeled allylic alcohols: the interdependence of diastereoselectivity and regioselectivity discloses mechanistic insights into the hydroxy-group directivity

The ene reaction of singlet oxygen ((1)O(2)), triazolinedione (TAD), and nitrosoarene, specifically 4-nitronitrosobenzene (ArNO), with the tetrasubstituted 1,3-allylically strained, chiral allylic alcohol 3,4-dimethylpent-3-en-2-ol (2) leads to the threo-configured ene products in high diastereoselectivity, a consequence of the hydroxy-group directivity. Hydrogen bonding favors formation of the threo-configured encounter complex threo-EC in the early stage of ene reaction. For the analogous twix deuterium-labeled allylic alcohol Z-2-d(3), a hitherto unrecognized dichotomy between (1)O(2) and the ArNO and TAD enophiles is disclosed in the regioselectivity of the tetrasubstituted alcohol: Whereas for ArNO and TAD, hydrogen bonding with the allylic hydroxy group dictates the regioselectivity (twix selectivity), for (1)O(2), the cis effect dominates (twin/trix selectivity). From the interdependence between the twix/twin regioselectivity and the threo/erythro diastereoselectivity, it has been recognized that the enophile also attacks the allylic alcohol from the erythro pi face without assistance by hydrogen bonding with the allylic hydroxy functionality.     

Olefin metathesis: remote substituents governing the stereoselectivity of 11-membered-ring formation

[reaction: see text] Stereospecific RCM reaction of 7 (R1 = Me) results in the formation of (Z)-11-membered macrocycle 9c. Cascade RCM/ROM/RCM transformation of 7 (R1 = H) affords the thermodynamically more stable spirocycle product 12.     

A refined theorem concerning the conditioning of semidefinite programs

Using a weaker version of the Newton-Kantorovich theorem [6] given by us in [3], we show how to refine the results given in [8] dealing with the analyzing of the effect of small perturbations in problem data on the solution. The new results are obtained under weaker hypotheses and the same computational cost as in [8].     

An improved unifying convergence analysis of Newton’s method in Riemannian manifolds

Using more precise majorizing sequences we provide a finer convergence analysis than before [1], [7] of Newton’s method in Riemannian manifolds with the following advantages: weaker hypotheses, finer error bounds on the distances involved and a more precise information on the location of the singularity of the vector field.     

Self-Supervised Variational Auto-Encoders

Density estimation, compression, and data generation are crucial tasks in artificial intelligence. Variational Auto-Encoders (VAEs) constitute a single framework to achieve these goals. Here, we present a novel class of generative models, called self-supervised Variational Auto-Encoder (selfVAE), which utilizes deterministic and discrete transformations of data. This class of models allows both conditional and unconditional sampling while simplifying the objective function. First, we use a single self-supervised transformation as a latent variable, where the transformation is either downscaling or edge detection. Next, we consider a hierarchical architecture, i.e., multiple transformations, and we show its benefits compared to the VAE. The flexibility of selfVAE in data reconstruction finds a particularly interesting use case in data compression tasks, where we can trade-off memory for better data quality and vice-versa. We present the performance of our approach on three benchmark image data (Cifar10, Imagenette64, and CelebA).