A Self‐Sampling‐and‐Flow Biosensor for Continuous Monitoring

A self‐sampling‐and‐flow biosensor was fabricated by sandwiching a nitrocellulose strip on the working electrode side of the double‐sided microporous gold electrodes and a wicking pad on the counter electrode side. The double‐sided microporous electrodes were formed by plasma sputtering of gold on a porous nylon substrate. Sample was taken up to the enzyme‐immobilized working electrode by the capillary action of the front nitrocellulose strip dipped into the sample solution, analyzed electrochemically at the enzyme‐immobilized electrode, and diffuses out to the backside wicking pad through the micropores of the electrodes, constituting a complete flow cell device with no mechanical liquid‐transporting device. Biosensor was formed by co‐immobilizing the glucose oxidase and electron transfer mediator (ferrocene acetic acid) on the thioctic acid self‐assembled monolayer‐modified working electrode. A typical response time of the biosensor was about 5 min with the sensitivity of 2.98 nA/mM glucose, providing linear response up to 22.5 mM. To demonstrate the use of self‐sampling‐and‐flow biosensor, the consumption rate of glucose in the presence of yeast was monitored for five days.     

Kinetics of thermal degradation of poly(-caprolactone)

The thermal degradation/modification dynamics of poly(-caprolactone) (PCL) was investigated in a thermogravimetric analyzer under non-isothermal and isothermal conditions. The time evolution of the molecular weight distribution during degradation was studied using gel permeation chromatography. Experimental molecular weight evolution and weight loss profile were modeled using continuous distribution kinetics. The degradation exhibited distinctly different behavior under non-isothermal and isothermal heating. Under non-isothermal heating, the mass of the polymer remained constant at initial stages with rapid degradation at longer times. The Friedman and Chang methods of analysis showed a 3-fold change (from 18 to 55–62 kcal mol⁻¹) in the activation energy from low temperatures to high temperatures during degradation. This suggested the governing mechanism changes during degradation and was explained using two parallel mechanisms (random chain scission and specific chain end scission) without invoking the sequential reaction mechanisms. Under isothermal heating, the polymer degraded by pure unzipping of specific products from the chain end.     

Biocatalytic process intensification via efficient biocatalyst immobilization,miniaturization, and process integration

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Protein family classification and functional annotation

With the accelerated accumulation of genomic sequence data, there is a pressing need to develop computational methods and advanced bioinformatics infrastructure for reliable and large-scale protein annotation and biological knowledge discovery. The Protein Information Resource (PIR) provides an integrated public resource of protein informatics to support genomic and proteomic research. PIR produces the Protein Sequence Database of functionally annotated protein sequences. The annotation problems are addressed by a classification-driven and rule-based method with evidence attribution, coupled with an integrated knowledge base system being developed. The approach allows sensitive identification, consistent and rich annotation, and systematic detection of annotation errors, as well as distinction of experimentally verified and computationally predicted features. The knowledge base consists of two new databases, sequence analysis tools, and graphical interfaces. PIR-NREF, a non-redundant reference database, provides a timely and comprehensive collection of all protein sequences, totaling more than 1,000,000 entries. iProClass, an integrated database of protein family, function, and structure information, provides extensive value-added features for about 830,000 proteins with rich links to over 50 molecular databases. This paper describes our approach to protein functional annotation with case studies and examines common identification errors. It also illustrates that data integration in PIR supports exploration of protein relationships and may reveal protein functional associations beyond sequence homology.     

Evaluation of an on-line coupled continuous flow liquid membrane extraction and precolumn system as trace enrichment technique by liquid chromatographic determination of bisphenol A

An on-line coupled continuous flow liquid membrane extraction (CFLME) and C₁₈ precolumn system was developed for sample preconcentration in liquid chromatography determination. After preconcentration by CFLME, which is based on the combination of continuous flow liquid–liquid extraction and supported liquid membrane, bisphenol A (BPA) was enriched in 960 μl of 1 mol l⁻¹ NaOH used as acceptor. This acceptor was on-line neutralized and transported onto the C₁₈ precolumn where analytes were absorbed and focused. Then the focused analytes were injected onto a C₁₈ analytical column for separation and detected at 220 nm with a diode array detector. CFLME related parameters such as flow rates, pH of donor and acceptor, and enrichment time were optimized. The proposed method presents a detection limit of 0.03 μg l⁻¹ (S/N=3) when 60 ml samples was enriched with an enrichment time of 30 min. Compared with C₁₈ based column-switching procedure, this proposed procedure presents similar sample throughput and lower detection limits. The proposed method was successfully applied to determine BPA in tap water, river water, and municipal sewage effluent samples.     

Net information measures for modified Yukawa and Hulthén potentials

The dimensional analyses of the position and momentum variances‐based quantum mechanical Heisenberg uncertainty measure, as well as the entropic information measures given by the Shannon information entropy sum and the product of Fisher information measures are carried out for two widely used nonrelativistic isotropic exponential‐cosine screened Coulomb potentials generated by multiplying the superpositions of (i) Yukawa‐like, ?Z(e^?μr/r), and (ii) Hulthén‐like, ?Zμ(1/(e^μr ? 1)), potentials by cos(bμr) followed by addition of the term a/r², where a and b ≥ 0, μ are the screening parameters and Z, in case of atoms, denotes the nuclear charge. Under the spherical symmetry, all the information measures considered are shown to be independent of the scaling of the set [μ, Z] at a fixed value of μ/Z, a, and b and the other parameters defining the superpositions of the potentials. Numerical results are presented, which support the validity of the scaling properties. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2007     

On-line determination of manganese in solid seafood samples by flame atomic absorption spectrometry

Manganese is extracted on-line from solid seafood samples by a simple continuous ultrasound-assisted extraction system (CUES). This system is connected to an on-line manifold, which permits the flow-injection flame atomic absorption spectrometric determination of manganese. Optimisation of the continuous leaching procedure is performed by an experimental design. The proposed method allows the determination of manganese with a relative standard deviation of 0.9% for a sample containing 23.4 μg g⁻¹ manganese (dry mass). The detection limit is 0.4 μg g⁻¹ (dry mass) for 30 mg of sample and the sample throughput is ca. 60 samples per hour. Accurate results are obtained by measuring TORT-1 certified reference material. The procedure is finally applied to mussel, tuna, sardine and clams samples.     

Probability theory and polymer physics

This study applies the theory of stochastic processes to the equilibrium statistical physics of polymers in solution. The topics treated include random copolymers and randomly branching polymers, with self-consistent mean field effects. A new and more natural way of dealing with Boltzmann weighting is discussed, which makes it possible from the beginning of a calculation to consider only the physical polymer conformations. We also show that in general the random copolymer problem can be reduced to the ordinary polymer problem, and treat the self-consistent field problem for a general branching polymer.     

Absence of continuous symmetry breaking in a one-dimensional n−2 model

For a one-dimensional array ofS ^N–1 spins (N 2) with isotropic pair interactions (and more general systems) with J(j–i) obeying sup_n[n^–1 ₁ ⁿ j ²|J(j)|]<, we prove that every equilibrium state is invariant under the natural action ofSO(N). In particular, there is no long-range order of the conventional type. Included is the caseJ(n)=n ^–2.Research partially supported by U.S.N.S.F. Grant No. MCS-78-01885.S. Fairchild Scholar at Caltech. On leave from Departments of Mathematics and Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544.     

水平极化电磁脉冲模拟器空间场的数值模拟

 采用时域有限差分方法，对水平极化电磁脉冲模拟器所产生的电磁场进行数值模拟，在时域中计算了电磁场的时间 空间分布。讨论了电磁脉冲模拟器产生的电磁脉冲波形和场的空间变化、均匀性等重要因素。结果表明，模拟器产生的电磁脉冲前沿为10ns，接近脉冲电压前沿，波形与脉冲电压波形（双指数波）相差较大；峰值场强在对称轴上并非与距离成反比，而是随距离增大而迅速减弱；该模拟器的双锥 笼形天线能在大范围内（大于等于50m,水平方向）产生均匀分布、高峰值场强、快前沿的电磁脉冲。