Protonation and oligomerization of gaseous isoprene on mildly acidic surfaces: implications for atmospheric chemistry

In a global process linking the Earth's climate with its ecosystems, massive photosynthetic isoprene (ISOP) emissions are converted to light-scattering haze. This phenomenon is imperfectly captured by atmospheric chemistry models: predicted ISOP emissions atop forest canopies would deplete the oxidizing capacity of the overhead atmosphere, at variance with field observations. Here we address this key issue in novel laboratory experiments where we apply electrospray mass spectrometry to detect online the products of the reactive uptake of gaseous ISOP on the surface of aqueous jets as a function of acidity. We found that ISOP is already protonated to ISOPH(+) and undergoes cationic oligomerization to (ISOP)(2)H(+) and (ISOP)(3)H(+) on the surface of pH < 4 water jets. We estimate uptake coefficients, γ(ISOP) = (0.5 - 2.0) × 10(-6) on pH = 3 water, which translate into the significant reuptake of leaf-level ISOP emissions in typical (surface-to-volume ～5 m(-1)) forests during realistic (a few minutes) in-canopy residence times. Our findings may also account for the rapid decay of ISOP in forests after sunset and help bring the global budget of volatile organic compounds closer to balance.     

Removal of Congo Red dye from its aqueous solution using natural coagulants

The textile dyeing industry consumes large quantities of water and produces large volumes of wastewater from different processes in dyeing and finishing processes. The low-cost, easily available naturally prepared coagulants like Surjana seed powder (SSP), Maize seed powder (MSP) and Chitosan as an ideal alternative to recent expensive coagulant methods for Congo Red (CR) dye removal has been investigated in this study. Various process parameters like pH, coagulant dose, flocculation time and temperature and also its optimization were exploited. The maximum percentage CR removal was found to be 98.0, 94.5 and 89.4 for SSP, Chitosan and MSP, respectively, at pH 4.0, coagulant dose of 25 mg/l, flocculation time 60 min and temperature of 340 K. The Sludge Volume Index (SVI) and turbidity were calculated for these parameters including process optimization. SSP found more preferable for CR removal and Chitosan was a better coagulant, which corresponds to SVI than the other coagulants investigated.     

Comparative Study of Lead(II) Selective Poly(vinyl chloride) Membrane Electrodes Based on Podand Derivatives as Ionophores

The two podand chelates based on diethylsulfide, 1,5‐bis(2′‐hydroxy‐4′‐nitrophenoxy)‐3‐thiapentane (L₁) and 1,5‐bis(8′‐oxybenzopyridine)‐3‐thia pentane (L₂), have been synthesized and explored as neutral ionophores for preparing poly(vinyl chloride) based membrane electrodes selective to Pb²⁺. The addition of anionic additives and various plasticizers has been found to substantially improve the performance of the electrode. The best performance was obtained with the electrode No. 1 having a membrane of ionophore (L₁) with the composition PVC:o‐NPOE:ionophore (L₁):NaTFPB (%w/w) of 33 : 62 : 3 : 2. The electrode exhibits Nernstian response with a slope of 31.57±0.3 mV decade^?1 of activity in the concentration range from 2.0×10^?9 to 1.0×10^?1 M Pb²⁺, performs satisfactorily over a wide pH range (1.6–7.0), with a fast response time (5 s).     

Polyhydrazide‐Based Organic Nanotubes as Efficient and Selective Artificial Iodide Channels

Reported herein is a series of pore‐containing polymeric nanotubes based on a hydrogen‐bonded hydrazide backbone. Nanotubes of suitable lengths, possessing a hollow cavity of about a 6.5 Å diameter, mediate highly efficient transport of diverse types of anions, rather than cations, across lipid membranes. The reported polymer channel, having an average molecular weight of 18.2 kDa and 3.6 nm in helical height, exhibits the highest anion‐transport activities for iodide (EC₅₀=0.042 μm or 0.028 mol % relative to lipid), whcih is transported 10 times more efficiently than chlorides (EC₅₀=0.47 μm ). Notably, even in cholesterol‐rich environment, iodide transport activity remains high with an EC₅₀ of 0.37 μm . Molecular dynamics simulation studies confirm that the channel is highly selective for anions and that such anion selectivity arises from a positive electrostatic potential of the central lumen rendered by the interior‐pointing methyl groups.     

Facile synthesis of non-ionic dimeric molecular resonance imaging contrast agent: its relaxation and luminescence studies

A bis-polyazamacrocycle, 10'-bis(acetamido)ethane-bis[1,4,7-tri(carboxymethane)-1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane] (DO3A-AME-DO3A) was synthesized for application in magnetic resonance imaging. The efficacy of DO3A-AME-DO3A as non ionic magnetic contrast agent was tested by performing relaxometric studies on its gadolinium complex. The longitudinal relaxivity, r(1) and transverse relaxivity, r(2) values were found to be 5.84 mM(-1)s(-1) and 6.82 mM(-1)s(-1), per Gd(III) at pH 7.0, 37 °C. The luminescence properties of europium complex of DO3A-AME-DO3A were investigated in aqueous medium. The lifetime of Eu(2)-DO3A-AME-DO3A in water was found to be 0.786 ms. Emission and luminescence lifetime measurements on the europium complex of DO3A-AME-DO3A gives a hydration number of q = 1.9. The reaction enthalpy and entropy were found to be, ΔH(0) = -(6.2 ± 2) kJ mol(-1), ΔS(0) = - (1.8 ± 0.4) kJ mol(-1)K(-1), and K(Eu)(298) = (1.8 ± 0.1).     

Effect of surface modification of indium tin oxide by nanoparticles on the electrochemical determination of tryptophan

The effect of surface modification of indium tin oxide (ITO) by multi wall carbon nanotube (MWNT) and gold nanoparticles attached multi wall carbon nanotube (AuNP-MWNT) has been studied to determine tryptophan, an important and essential amino acid for humans and herbivores. A detailed comparison has been made among the voltammetric response of bare ITO, MWNT/ITO and AuNP-MWNT/ITO in respects of several essential analytical parameters viz. sensitivity, detection limit, peak current and peak potential of tryptophan. The AuNP-MWNT/ITO exhibited a well defined anodic peak at pH 7.2 at a potential of ∼669 mV for the oxidation of tryptophan as compared to 760 mV at MWNT/ITO electrode. Under optimum conditions linear calibration curve was obtained over tryptophan concentration range 0.5-90.0 μM in phosphate buffer solution of pH 7.2 with detection limit and sensitivity of 0.025 μM and 0.12 μA μM⁻¹, respectively. The oxidation of tryptophan occurred in a pH dependent, 2e⁻ and 2H⁺ process and the electrode reaction followed adsorption controlled pathway. The method has been found selective and successfully implemented for the determination of tryptophan in human urine and plasma samples using standard addition method. The electrode exhibited an efficient catalytic response with good reproducibility and stability.     

Performance analysis and improvement of spectrally amplitude encoded/decoded OCDMA system

This paper describes a performance analysis of an incoherent optical code-division multiple-access scheme based on wavelength/time (W/T) codes. The system supports 16 users operating at 2.5Gb/s/user while maintaining bit-error rate (BER) < 10⁻¹¹ for the correctly decoded signal. It has been observed that there are two major problems giving rise to performance degradation of the system in terms of number of users and type of code.In this paper we have studied the optical simulator Encoding/Decoding for different lengths & gain in terms of Quality factor (Q) and Bit Error Rate (BER) performance. The system supports 16 users while maintaining bit-error rate (BER) < 10⁻¹¹ for the correctly decoded signal. Our aim is to design and simulate a Tree Network Topology Optical Code Division Multiple Access System for large number of users using wavelength–time code and to analyze the performance of the system based on BER and Eye Diagram under the influence of number of simultaneous users with different received powers.     

High pressure behavior of nano-crystalline CeO2 up to 35 GPa: a Raman investigation

The present paper reports the results of in situ Raman studies carried out on nano-crystalline CeO₂ up to a pressure of 35 GPa at room temperature. The material was characterized at ambient conditions using X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy and was found to have a cubic structure. We observed the Raman peak at ambient at 465 cm^?1, which is characteristic of the cubic structure of the material. The sample was pressurized using a diamond anvil cell using ruby fluorescence as the pressure monitor, and the phase evolution was tracked by Raman spectroscopy. With an increase in the applied pressure, the cubic band was seen to steadily shift to higher wavenumbers. However, we observed the appearance of a number of new peaks around a pressure of about 34.7 GPa. CeO₂ was found to undergo a phase transition to an orthorhombic α -PbCl₂-type structure at this pressure. With the release of the applied pressure, the observed peaks steadily shift to lower wavenumbers. On decompression, the high pressure phase existed down to a total release of pressure.     

Surface tension with normal curvature in curved space-time

With an aim to include the contribution of surface tension in the action of the boundary, we define the tangential pressure in terms of surface tension and Normal curvature in a more naturally geometric way. For a thin shell approximation of a static spherically symmetric surface and for weak and slowly varying fields, the negative tangential pressure $\tau _{\alpha \beta }$ is chosen to be analogous to $S_{\alpha \beta },$ where $S_{\alpha \beta }$ is the classical surface tension. First, by a suitable choice of the enveloping surfaces, we show that the negative tangential pressure is independent of the four-velocity of a very thin hyper-surface. Second, using suitable definition of the normal curvature for such a surface layer, we relate the 3-pressure of a surface layer to the normal curvature and the surface tension. Third, using the fact that the tangential pressure on the surface layer is independent of the four-velocity and a central force interaction, we relate the surface tension $S_{\alpha \beta }$ to the energy of the surface layer. Four, we show that the delta like energy flows across the hypersurface will be zero for such a representation of intrinsic 3-pressure. Five, for the weak field approximation and for static spherically symmetric configuration, we deduce the classical Kelvin’s relation between surface tension, pressure difference and mean curvature from this sort of representation of negative tangential pressure $\tau _{\alpha \beta }$ in terms of surface tension $S_{\alpha \beta }$ and the normal curvature. Six, using the representation of tangential pressure in terms of surface tension and normal curvature, we write a modified action for the boundary having contributions both from surface tension and normal curvature of the surface layer. Also we propose a method to find the physical action assuming a reference background, where the background is not flat. (The $g_{\mu \nu }^{+}$ or just $g_{\mu \nu }$ has been chosen to represent the metric coefficent of the hypersurface of $V_{+}$ space which is time-like surface layer here. The $g_{\mu \nu }^{-}$ represents the metric coefficient of the space like hypersurface of $V_{-}$ space.)