Method Development for Determination of Antibiotic Drugs Using Newly Prepared <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-Morpholinomethylcalix[4]arene Mesoporous Silica-Based HPLC Column

Mesoporous materials are described by their relatively high surface areas and pore volumes. They possess uniform channels within nanometer range. These materials have numerous applications in catalysis, separation and many other fields. The qualitative and quantitative determination of antibiotic drugs, i.e., ciprofloxacin and cefixime has clinical and analytical importance due to their broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity and stability. Both antibiotic drugs are orally active and have excellent activity against different pathogens. It is for the first time that we have developed an analytical method for the simultaneous analyses of both drugs using a newly developed p-morpholinomethylcalix[4]arene (p-MC4) mesoporous silica-based HPLC column (15?×?3 mm I.D.). Furthermore, separation of these two components was carried out using isocratic elution of methanol and 0.1% aqueous formic acid (70:30 v/v) with flow rate of 1 ml min^?1 at retention time of 2.71 and 4.21 min and retention factor 1.85 and 1.19 for ciprofloxacin and cefixime, respectively; while total run time was 5 min. The developed method was repeatable with a relative standard deviation (RSD) of 0.90–2.08% for antibiotic drugs. The limits of detection and quantification of ciprofloxacin and cefixime were obtained within the range of 0.152–0.801 and 0.40–1.23 µg mL^?1, respectively. The method is highly applicable, rapid, simple, very reproducible and accurate for the separation and determination of antibiotic drugs.     

Stereoselective synthesis of functionalized vinyl ethers from allyl bromides activated by triethylamine

An efficient coupling reaction of allyl bromides with various alcohols as nucleophiles activated by triethylamine, leading to functionalized vinyl ethers in good yields and with full stereoselectivity.     

Proficiency test exercise on the determination of natural levels of radionuclides in mushroom reference material

The results from a proficiency test exercise for the determination of natural levels of radionuclides in mushroom reference material carried out by laboratories in six different countries are discussed. These laboratories submitted data on seven radionuclides, namely ¹³⁴Cs, ¹³⁷Cs, ⁴⁰K, ⁹⁰Sr, ²⁴¹Am, ²²⁶Ra, and ²¹⁰Po. However, only the data received for three of these radionuclides could be statistically evaluated to obtain consensus mean values and confidence intervals (at a significance level of 0.05). The contents of ¹³⁴Cs, ¹³⁷Cs and ⁴⁰K were quantified as 4.4, 2,899 and 1,136 Bq/kg, respectively.     

Evaluation of antibacterial and antioxidant activities of Artemisia campestris (Astraceae) and Ziziphus lotus (Rhamnacea)

The present work quantitatively evaluates the antimicrobial and antioxidant potentials of two Libyan folk medicinal plants [Artemisia campestris (Astraceae) and Ziziphus lotus (Rhamnacea)] that commonly grow in the south of Libya. The crude methanolic leaves extracts of both plants are appreciably active against Gram-positive species, associated with week anti-Gram-negative activity. These two plant extracts also showed reasonably high contents of polyphenolics and alkaloids, with minimal inhibitory concentrations between 12.5–25 and 250–1000 μg/ml for Gram-positive and Gram-negative species, respectively. Results collectively suggest that A. campestris and Z. lotus are not only reliable natural sources of antimicrobials but also potential sources of phenolic antioxidants and hence could be nominated for future intensive studies.     

Enhanced photoelectrochemical activity of magnetically modified TiO2 prepared by a simple ex-situ route

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - Modified TiO2 nanocomposites have been recognized as attractive photocatalytic materials in solar energy conversion. The aim of this study is to enhance...     

Regenerative,low-cost and switchable photoelectrochemical sensor for detection of Cu2+ using MnO2-GO heterojunction

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - In this work, we investigate the properties of manganese dioxide (MnO2) and graphene oxide (GO) to develop a new photoelectrochemical (PEC) sensor-based...     

Evaluating the efficiency of the GO‐Fe3O4/TiO2 mesoporous photocatalyst for degradation of chlorpyrifos pesticide under visible light irradiation

In this work, the photocatalytic activity of the synthesized graphene oxide (GO)‐Fe₃O₄/TiO₂ mesoporous photocatalysts was evaluated using chlorpyrifos (CP) as a contaminant. The nano‐photocatalyst was characterized by X‐ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy with energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and specific surface area by the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method. Using visible light, the GO‐Fe₃O₄/TiO₂ mesoporous photocatalyst was investigated on the degradation of CP pesticide. The GO‐Fe₃O₄/TiO₂ photocatalyst displayed a good photocatalytic activity, which was achieving 97% of CP degradation after 60 min. Finally, experiments were performed to evaluate GO‐Fe₃O₄/TiO₂ mesoporous nanocatalyst activity on repeated applications; after several uses, its photocatalytic activity was retained, which indicated stability.     

Pseudocapacitive Lithium Storage of Cauliflower-Like CoFe2O4 for Low-Temperature Battery Operation

Binary transition-metal oxides (BTMOs) with hierarchical micro–nano-structures have attracted great interest as potential anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Herein, we report the fabrication of hierarchical cauliflower-like CoFe₂O₄ (cl-CoFe₂O₄) via a facile room-temperature co-precipitation method followed by post-synthetic annealing. The obtained cauliflower structure is constructed by the assembly of microrods, which themselves are composed of small nanoparticles. Such hierarchical micro–nano-structure can promote fast ion transport and stable electrode–electrolyte interfaces. As a result, the cl-CoFe₂O₄ can deliver a high specific capacity (1019.9 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.1 A g⁻¹), excellent rate capability (626.0 mAh g⁻¹ at 5 A g⁻¹), and good cyclability (675.4 mAh g⁻¹ at 4 A g⁻¹ for over 400 cycles) as an anode material for LIBs. Even at low temperatures of 0 °C and −25 °C, the cl-CoFe₂O₄ anode can deliver high capacities of 907.5 and 664.5 mAh g⁻¹ at 100 mA g⁻¹, respectively, indicating its wide operating temperature. More importantly, the full-cell assembled with a commercial LiFePO₄ cathode exhibits a high rate performance (214.2 mAh g⁻¹ at 5000 mA g⁻¹) and an impressive cycling performance (612.7 mAh g⁻¹ over 140 cycles at 300 mA g⁻¹) in the voltage range of 0.5–3.6 V. Kinetic analysis reveals that the electrochemical performance of cl-CoFe₂O₄ is dominated by pseudocapacitive behavior, leading to fast Li⁺ insertion/extraction and good cycling life.     

Biological Activities Evaluation of Enantiopure Isoxazolidine Derivatives: In Vitro,In Vivo and In Silico Studies

Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology - A series of enantiopure isoxazolidines (3a–c) were synthesized by 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition between a (−)-menthone-derived nitrone and various...     

Empirical Interpolation Decomposition

The Kantorovich metric provides a way of measuring the distance between two Borel probability measures on a metric space. This metric has a broad range of applications from bioinformatics to image processing, and is commonly linked to the optimal transport problem in computer science (Deng and Du in Electron. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci. 253: 73–82, 2009; Villani in Optimal Transport: Old and New, Grundlehren der mathematischen Wissenschaften, vol. 338, 2009). Noteworthy to this paper will be the role of the Kantorovich metric in the study of iterated function systems, which are families of contractive mappings on a complete metric space. When the underlying metric space is compact, it is well known that the space of Borel probability measures on this metric space, equipped with the Kantorovich metric, constitutes a compact, and thus complete metric space. In previous work, we generalized the Kantorovich metric to operator-valued measures for a compact underlying metric space, and applied this generalized metric to the setting of iterated function systems (Davison in Acta Appl. Math., 2014, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10440-014-9976-y; Generalizing the Kantorovich Metric to Projection-Valued Measures: With an Application to Iterated Function Systems, 2015; Acta Appl. Math., 2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10440-018-0161-6). We note that the work of P. Jorgensen, K. Shuman, and K. Kornelson provided the framework for our application to this setting (Jorgensen in Adv. Appl. Math. 34(3):561–590, 2005; Jorgenson et al. in J. Math. Phys. 48(8):083511, 2007; Jorgensen in Operator Theory, Operator Algebras, and Applications, Contemp. Math., vol. 414, pp. 13–26, 2006). The situation when the underlying metric space is complete, but not necessarily compact, has been studied by A. Kravchenko (Sib. Math. J. 47(1), 68–76, 2006). In this paper, we extend the results of Kravchenko to the generalized Kantorovich metric on operator-valued measures.