Effects of soluble surfactants on the deformation and breakup of stretching liquid bridges

Surfactants are routinely used to control the breakup of drops and jets in many applications such as inkjet printing, crop spraying, and DNA or protein microarraying. The breakup of surfactant-free drops and jets has been extensively studied. By contrast, little is known about the closely related problem of interface rupture when surfactants are present. Solutions of a nonionic surfactant, pentaethylene glycol monododecyl ether, or C12E5, in water and in 90 wt % glycerol/water are used to show the effects of surfactant and viscosity on the deformation and breakup dynamics of stretching liquid bridges. Equilibrium surface tensions for both solutions can be fitted with the Langmuir-Szyskowski equation. All experiments have been done at 24 degrees C. The critical micelle concentrations for C12E5 are 0.04 and 0.4 mM in water and the glycerol/water solution, respectively. With high-speed imaging, the dynamic shapes of bridges held captive between two rods of 3.15 mm diameter are captured and analyzed with a time resolution of 0.1-1 ms. The bridge lengths are 3.15 mm initially and about 5-7 mm at pinch-off. Breakup occurs after stretching for about 0.2-0.3 s, depending on the solution viscosity and the surfactant concentration. When the liquid bridges break up, the volume of the sessile drop left on the bottom rod is about 3 times larger than that of the pendant drop left on the top rod. This asymmetry is due to gravity and is influenced by the equilibrium surface tensions. Surfactant-containing low-viscosity water bridges are shown to break up faster than surfactant-free ones because of the effect of gravity. With or without surfactant, water bridges form satellite drops. Surfactant-containing high-viscosity glycerol/water bridges break up more slowly than surfactant-free ones because of strong viscous effects. Moreover, the shapes of the sessile drops close to breakup exhibit a "pear-like" tip; whether a satellite forms depends on the surface age of the bridge before stretching commences. These unexpected effects arising from the addition of surfactants are due to the capillary pressure reduction and Marangoni flows linked to dynamic surface tension.     

New layered materials: syntheses, structures, and optical and magnetic properties of CsGdZnSe3, CsZrCuSe3, CsUCuSe3, and BaGdCuSe3

Four new quaternary selenides CsGdZnSe3, CsZrCuSe3, CsUCuSe3, and BaGdCuSe3 have been synthesized with the use of traditional high-temperature solid-state experimental methods. These compounds are isostructural with KZrCuS3, crystallizing with four formula units in the orthorhombic space group Cmcm. Cell constants (A) at 153 K are CsGdZnSe3 4.1684(7), 15.765(3), 11.0089(18); CsZrCuSe3 3.903(2), 15.841(10), 10.215(6); CsUCuSe3 4.1443(7), 15.786(3), 10.7188(18); and BaGdCuSe3 4.1839(6), 13.8935(19), 10.6692(15). The structure of these ALnMSe3 compounds (A = Cs, Ba; Ln = Zr, Gd, U; M = Cu, Zn) is composed of 2 to infinity [LnMSe3(n-)] (n = 1, 2) layers separated by A atoms. The Ln atom is octahedrally coordinated to six Se atoms, the M atom is tetrahedrally coordinated to four Se atoms, and the A atom is coordinated to a bicapped trigonal prism of eight Se atoms. Because there are no Se-Se bonds in the structure, the oxidation state of A is 1+ (Cs) or 2+ (Ba), that of Ln is 3+ (Gd) or 4+ (Zr, U), and that of M is 1+ (Cu) or 2+ (Zn). CsGdZnSe3 and BaGdCuSe3, which are paramagnetic, obey the Curie-Weiss law and have effective magnetic moments of 7.87(6) and 7.85(5) muB for Gd(3+), in good agreement with the theoretical value of 7.94 muB. Optical transitions at 1.88 and 2.92 eV for CsGdZnSe3 and 1.96 eV for BaGdCuSe3 were deduced from diffuse reflectance spectra.     

Spectrophotometric determination of trimethoprim by oxidation in drug formulations

A spectrophotometric determination of trimethoprim is described based on the reaction of its amine group with persulfate which acts as a strong oxidizing agent in alkaline media. The reaction produces a stable yellow colored compound after heating in a boiling water bath for 30 min. At λ_max 355 nm, Beer’s law is obeyed in the concentration range 10–60 μg ml^–1 with a molar absorptivity of 2.7 × 10³ l mol^–1cm^–1. The method is applied to formulations with sulfamethoxazole. Received: 30 July 1996 / Revised: 16 October 1996 / Accepted: 22 October 1996     

The effect of phenyl substituents on the release rates of esterase-sensitive coumarin-based prodrugs

A coumarin-based prodrug system has been recently developed in our laboratory for the preparation of esterase-sensitive prodrugs of amines, peptides, and peptidomimetics. The drug release rates from this prodrug system were found to be dependent on the structural features of the drug moiety. In certain cases, the release can be undesirably slow for drugs that are secondary amines with relatively high pKa's. Aimed at finding ways to manipulate the release rates to suit the need of different drugs, we have examined the effect of the phenyl ring substitutions on the release kinetics of such prodrugs and found that appropriately positioned alkyl substituents on the phenyl ring could help to facilitate the release by as much as 16-fold. Therefore, introduction of alkyl substituents on the phenyl ring should allow us to manipulate the release rates and, therefore, time profiles for different drugs.     

Synthesis of PNIPAAm-g-P4VP Microgel as Draw Agent in Forward Osmosis by RAFT Polymerization and Reverse Suspension Polymerization to Improve Water Flux

Microgels have unique and versatile properties allowing their use in forward osmosis areas as a draw agent. In this contribution, poly(4-vinylpyridine) (P4VP) was synthesized via RAFT polymerization and then grafted to a poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) crosslinking network by reverse suspension polymerization. P4VP was successfully obtained by the quasiliving polymerization with the result of nuclear magnetic resonance and gel permeation chromatography characterization. The particle size and particle size distribution of the PNIPAAm-g-P4VP microgels containing 0, 5, 10, 15 and 20 wt% P4VP were measured by means of a laser particle size analyzer. It was found that all the microgels were of micrometer scale and the particle size was increased with the P4VP load. Inter/intra-molecular-specific interactions, i.e., hydrogen bond interactions were then investigated by Fourier infrared spectroscopy. In addition, the water flux measurements showed that all the PNIPAAm-g-P4VP microgels can draw water more effectively than a blank PNIPAAm microgel. For the copolymer microgel incorporating 20 wt% P4VP, the water flux was measured to be 7.48 L∙m⁻²∙h⁻¹.     

Flavonoids from Lycium barbarum Leaves Exhibit Anti-Aging Effects through the Redox-Modulation

Lycium barbarum leaves are a kind of vegetable, and modern nutrition studies have found that they have an anti-aging function. Our study aims to investigate the anti-aging effects of Lycium barbarum leaf flavonoid (LBLF) extracts and its underlying molecular mechanism. LBLFs were purified using D101 and polyamide resin, characterized by ultraperformance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, and administered to hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂)-treated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and Caenorhabditis elegans. Appropriate enrichment conditions were optimized through dynamic adsorption and desorption experiments, the content of flavonoids reached 909.84 mg/g, rutin and kaempferol being the main ones. LBLFs attenuated H₂O₂-induced HUVEC apoptosis, decreased reactive oxygen species and malondialdehyde production levels, increased superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and catalase activities. Furthermore, pre-treatment with LBLF increased mRNA expression of erythropoietin (EPO) and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) via the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway in HUVECs. Compared with 100 µM rutin monomer, LBLF prolonged the lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans, enhanced their mobility in middle life stages and upregulated expression of sod-2, gcs-1 and skn-1 genes, which indicated that the anti-aging effects of LBLF were due to its redox-modulation.     

Perturbative Power Counting,Lowest-Index Operators and Their Renormalization in Standard Model Effective Field Theory

We study two aspects of higher dimensional operators in standard model effective field theory.We first introduce a perturbative power counting rule for the entries in the anomalous dimension matrix of operators with equal mass dimension.The power counting is determined by the number of loops and the difference of the indices of the two operators involved,which in turn is defined by assuming that all terms in the standard model Lagrangian have an equal perturbative power.Then we show that the operators with the lowest index are unique at each mass dimension d,i.e.,(H~?H)~(d/2)for even d≥4,and(L~TεH)C(L~TεH)~T(H~?H)~((d-5)/2)for odd d≥5.Here H,L are the Higgs and lepton doublet,andε,C the antisymmetric matrix of rank two and the charge conjugation matrix,respectively.The renormalization group running of these operators can be studied separately from other operators of equal mass dimension at the leading order in power counting.We compute their anomalous dimensions at one loop for general d and find that they are enhanced quadratically in d due to combinatorics.We also make connections with classification of operators in terms of their holomorphic and anti-holomorphic weights.     

Relaxation dynamics of stretched polymer chains traced by shear induced Shish‐Kebab structure

We have developed a morphologic method to investigate the relaxation processing of the stretched polymer chains in melts, in which an atomic force microscope probe was used to shear the surface of an isotactic polypropylene melt to obtain the isolated shish‐kebab structure. We present the results of the time dependence of length of the isolated shish‐kebab structure and the stress dependence of the kebab density along the direction of shish in this paper. Our results demonstrate that the shear‐oriented polymer melts show the relaxation dynamics of worm‐like chain where the length deficit of the isolated shish‐kebab structure is scaled with the relaxation time as a power of 1/3. The melting behavior of shish‐kebab structure was also investigated. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2013, 51, 907–914