New synthesis of 2',3'-didehydro-2',3'-dideoxynucleosides.

The 3'-iodonucleoside 4 and the 3'-O-methylsulfonylthymidine 9 have been synthesized by condensation of silylated uracils 2 with methyl 5-O-tert-butyldiphensilyl-2,3-dideoxy-3-iodo-D-threo-pentofuran oside (3) and methyl 5-O-tert-butyldiphenylsilyl-2-deoxy-3-methylsulfonyl-D-erythro- pentofuranoside (8), respectively. The nucleoside 4 and 9 produced the corresponding 2',3'-didehydro-2',3'-dideoxynucleosides 5 in an elimination reaction on treatment with sodium methoxide. The compounds 5b showed no antiviral activity against HIV-1.     

Effects of surface roughness on the electronic structure of metallic clusters

We study the electronic level density in spherical clusters. Due to the granularity of the ionic background the surface is irregular at the microscopical level. We show that this affects the shell structure and that the level statistics display from the bottom to the top of the spectrum a transition from a poissonian behaviour to one consistent with the predictions of random matrices theory.     

Complex point sources in probe-corrected cylindrical near-field scanning

A probe-corrected theory based on complex point sources is presented for computing the acoustic field of an arbitrary finite source from measurements of the near field on a cylindrical scanning surface. The complex point sources are used both as basis functions for the expansion of the field outside the scan cylinder and for the representation of the probe. The resulting probe-corrected formulas are considerably simpler than the standard probe-corrected formulas based on cylindrical waves. The new formulation makes simulations of near-field scanning systems much less computationally intensive than simulations based on standard theory. The complex point-source theory is validated through numerical examples involving a baffled circular piston transducer probe.     

An adaptive pruning algorithm for the discrete L-curve criterion

We describe a robust and adaptive implementation of the L-curve criterion. The algorithm locates the corner of a discrete L-curve which is a log–log plot of corresponding residual norms and solution norms of regularized solutions from a method with a discrete regularization parameter (such as truncated SVD or regularizing CG iterations). Our algorithm needs no predefined parameters, and in order to capture the global features of the curve in an adaptive fashion, we use a sequence of pruned L-curves that correspond to considering the curves at different scales. We compare our new algorithm to existing algorithms and demonstrate its robustness by numerical examples.     

The intramolecular hydrogen bond in ortho-hydroxy acetophenones

The crystal structures of two ortho-hydroxy ketones (5-chloro-2-hydroxyacetophenone (I K) and 3,5-dichloro-2-hydroxyacetophenone (II K)) have been determined with X-ray diffraction at 100 K. A comparison of steric effects on properties of pseudoaromatic hydrogen bonds in ortho-hydroxy acetophenone and ortho-hydroxy ketimines have been carried out with the application of crystallographic data.

Nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) spectra have been measured and interpreted.     

Statistical mechanics of warm and cold unfolding in proteins

We present a statistical mechanics treatment of the stability of globular proteins which takes explicitly into account the coupling between the protein and water degrees of freedom. This allows us to describe both the cold and the warm unfolding, thus qualitatively reproducing the known thermodynamics of proteins. Received: 19 March 1998 / Revised and Accepted: 25 May 1998     

Resistivity exponent of two-dimensional lattice animals

We calculate the average resistanceR(L) of lattice animals spanningL×L cells on the square lattice using exact and Monte Carlo methods. The dynamical resistivity exponent, defined asR(L) L , is found to be =1.36±0.07. This contradicts the Alexander-Orbach conjecture, which predicts 0.8. Our value for differs from earlier measurements of this quantity by other methods yielding =1.17±0.05 and 1.22±0.08 by Havlin et al.On leave from the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.     

Human insulin and desamido human insulin isotherms in ethanol-water reversed phase systems

The multi-component isotherms for human insulin (HI) and desamido human insulin (dHI) over reversed phase packing (C18) and with 29.8% (w/w) ethanol-water as mobile phase have been determined experimentally. The isotherms of HI in ethanol-water differ from those obtained with the more commonly applied methanol-water and acetonitrile-water mobile phase, as described in this paper. The isotherm exhibits anti Langmuirian behavior and can be very well modeled by an anti Langmuir isotherm presented in this paper. The HI and dHI anti Langmuir isotherm are determined as: qHI = (8.4C(HI) + 3C(HI)CdHI)/(1 - 0.05C(HI) - 0.14CdHI + 0.04C(HI)CdHI) and qdHI = (11.4CdHI + 2C(HI)CdHI)/ (1 - 0.05C(HI) - 0.14CdHI + 0.04C(HI)CdHI)     

Determination of zearalenone and ochratoxin A in soil

Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites, formed by the action of fungi on agricultural crops in the field or during storage. These metabolites are highly toxic to animals and humans and high levels have been measured in agricultural crops. In order to evaluate human risks due to ingestion of mycotoxin-contaminated food different methods have been developed for analysis of mycotoxins in cereals and maize. In this project the focus was on mycotoxins in agricultural soil and the fate of these toxins in the soil-water-plant system. Two different mycotoxins were selected in the study: zearalenone (ZON) produced by species of Fusariumor Aspergillusand ochratoxin A (OTA) produced by species of Penicillium. We developed a method for analysis of these toxins in soil. Soil samples were extracted with methanol-water (9:1) and purified by solid-phase extraction (SPE, C8-columns). The final extract was analysed using high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection. A Phenyl Hexyl column was used to separate the toxins. The detection limits obtained were 0.1 and 1.0 microg kg(-1) dry weight (dw) for OTA and ZON, respectively. The developed method has been used for analysis of different soils in connection with growth chamber experiments. The soil types used in the growth chamber experiments were a sandy soil, a sandy clay soil, and a soil with high content of organic matter. The recovery was determined as 85.8 and 93.4% and the repeatability to 5.1 and 12.8% for OTA and ZON, respectively. The reproducibility obtained was 8.5 and 15.0% for soil samples, representing concentration levels from 0.2-30 microg kg(-1) dw (OTA) and from 1.0-100 microg kg(-1) dw (ZON).