Differentiation of 3-O-sulfated heparin disaccharide isomers: Identification of structural aspects of the heparin CCL2 binding motif

The presence of 3-O-sulfated glucosamine residues in heparin or heparan sulfate plays a role in binding to antithrombin III and HSV infection. In this study, tandem mass spectrometry was used to differentiate between two heparin disaccharide isomers containing variable sulfate at C6 in a common disaccharide and C3 in a more rare one. The dissociation patterns shown by MS² and MS³ were clearly distinguishable between the isomers, allowing their differentiation and quantitation. Using this technique, we show that an octasaccharide with 11 sulfate groups with high affinity for inflammatory chemokine CCL2 does not contain 3-O-sulfated disaccharides.     

The Geodesic Problem in Quasimetric Spaces

In this article, we study the geodesic problem in a generalized metric space, in which the distance function satisfies a relaxed triangle inequality d(x,y)≤σ(d(x,z)+d(z,y)) for some constant σ≥1, rather than the usual triangle inequality. Such a space is called a quasimetric space. We show that many well-known results in metric spaces (e.g. Ascoli-Arzelà theorem) still hold in quasimetric spaces. Moreover, we explore conditions under which a quasimetric will induce an intrinsic metric. As an example, we introduce a family of quasimetrics on the space of atomic probability measures. The associated intrinsic metrics induced by these quasimetrics coincide with the d _α metric studied early in the study of branching structures arisen in ramified optimal transportation. An optimal transport path between two atomic probability measures typically has a “tree shaped” branching structure. Here, we show that these optimal transport paths turn out to be geodesics in these intrinsic metric spaces. This work is supported by an NSF grant DMS-0710714.     

Hájek-Inagaki convolution representation theorem for randomly stopped locally asymptotically mixed normal experiments

Under suitable regularity conditions imposed on a general discrete time-parameter stochastic process, the Hájek-Inagaki convolution representation theorem is established for randomly stopped locally asymptotically mixed normal experiments. D. Bhattacharya: On leave from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India.     

Hydrothermal synthesis and phase stability of Pb stabilized ZrO2 nanoparticles

The Pb doped metastable tetragonal ZrO₂ (t-ZrO₂:Pb) nanoparticles have been successfully synthesized by hydrothermal method. Pb ion doping has great effects on the phases, crystallite sizes and optical band gaps. Systematic structural characterization revealed that the introduction of Pb ion results in lattice expansion. The as-prepared t-ZrO₂:Pb with ca 4–6 nm in size has high specific surface area (>150 m²/g) and narrow particle size distributions. The diffuse reflectance spectra investigated that the band gap shifts from ultraviolet (E_g = 5.19 eV) for pure ZrO₂ to the visible region for t-ZrO₂:Pb and the gap can be effectively adjusted with the content of Pb in nanocrystals. Through thermal treatment, Pb ion doped in ZrO₂ crystals was excluded with increasing temperature. At 800 °C, the three t-ZrO₂:Pb samples of ZPO-2, ZPO-3 and ZPO-4 still contained the pure tetragonal phase, in which Pb content were not reduced to zero, while the transformation from tetragonal to monoclinic phase occurred due to zero Pb content in ZPO-1. The reason to this transformation and stabilized mechanism of Pb ion in ZrO₂ were discussed.     

Effect of guest-host interaction on the dynamics of ethylene glycol in H-ZSM5 zeolite

Dynamics of ethylene glycol (EG) adsorbed in H-ZSM5 zeolite as studied using quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) technique is reported here. Analysis of QENS data revealed that observed dynamics correspond to isotropic rotational motion of EG. Rotational diffusion coefficient of EG adsorbed in H-ZSM5 zeolite is found to be slower compared to bulk and comparable to that of benzene adsorbed in the same host. Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy (PAS) technique is used to understand the nature of guest-host interaction and the results of both QENS and PAS are found to be consistent with each other.     

Electrodeposition of Zn–Ni–P compositionally modulated multilayer coatings: An attempt to deposit Ni–P and Zn–Ni alloys from a single bath

The effects of bath composition and deposition variables on the electrodeposition of Zn–Ni–P alloys were studied in order to develop a single bath for deposition of Ni–P/Zn–Ni compositionally modulated multilayer coatings (CMMCs). The basis for development of the bath was a large increase in the Ni deposition rate compared to that of Zn at low deposition overpotentials combined with the impossibility of codeposition of Zn with P. EDS analysis demonstrated that the deposits obtained from the Zn–Ni–P bath at low overpotentials were practically all Ni–P, while the alloy deposited at high overpotentials was mainly Zn–Ni with around 3.2 wt% P content.     

Growth kinetics and properties of nanostructured hafnium diboride films

The composition, structure, substructure, and physicomechanical properties of hafnium diboride films deposited by nonreactive rf magnetron sputtering are studied by X-ray diffraction (including photographic recording) and electron microscopy. The results obtained are analyzed, and the film growth kinetics is revealed.     

Logarithmic Hesse’s problem

We show that if a Laurent polynomial on the coordinate ring of the complex algebraic torus on n variables has vanishing logarithmic Hessian, then up to an automorphism of the torus, the Laurent polynomial depends on at most n−1 variables.