Screening of glycoside isomers in P. scrophulariiflora using ionic liquid‐based ultrasonic‐assisted extraction and ultra‐performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization quadrupole time‐of‐flight tandem mass spectrometry

A powerful ionic liquid‐based ultrasonic‐assisted extraction (ILUAE) method combined with ultra‐performance liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization quadrupole time‐of‐flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC/ESI‐QTOFMSⁿ) was employed in the rapid simultaneous screening of iridoid glycosides, phenylethanoid glycosides, and cucurbitacin glycosides from P. scrophulariiflora. The ILUAE procedure was optimized over several ultrasonic parameters, including the ultrasonic power, concentration of the ionic liquid, and solid–liquid ratio. A comparison with conventional heat‐reflux extraction and regular UAE demonstrated that the optimized approach yielded a high extraction efficiency (Picroside I, 2.84%; Picroside II, 3.57%; 6‐O‐E‐feruloyl catalpol, 2.20%) within a short extraction time of 30 min. Negative ion mode ESI‐QTOFMS² analysis of the fragmentation reactions of the [M–H]^– ions was conducted to characterize the diagnostic ions related to the glycosyl moieties, aglycone units, and the type and substituted position of the ester groups. Interestingly, the positional isomers of the iridoid glycosides could be easily discriminated based on the characteristic ions. A total of 15 glycosides, including three groups of iridoid glycoside isomers and two groups of phenylethanoid glycoside isomers, were conveniently identified within 13.5 min. Moreover, 6'‐O‐vanilloyl catalpol was identified in P. scrophulariiflora for the first time. The method developed here was further validated by measuring the recovery, correlation coefficient (R²), and reproducibility (RSD, n = 5) of three iridoid glycosides: 89.60%–109.02%, 0.9991–0.9998, and 0.93%–1.44%, respectively. This study demonstrated the capabilities of ILUAE combined with UPLC/ESI‐QTOFMSⁿ for the rapid screening of glycosides in P. scrophulariiflora. This method offers an approach to similar studies on other natural plants. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An introduction to molecular spintronics

We review the progress and future possibilities in the emerging area of molecular spintronics. We first provide an overview of the different transport regimes in which electronic nanodevices can operate, then briefly overview the important characteristics of molecular magnetic materials that can be useful for application in spintronics and we eventually present several schemes to include such systems into spintronic nanodevices. We hightlight the importance of a chemical approach to the area, and in the last section we showcase some approaches to the creation of hybrids made of carbon nanostructures and molecular magnets, which are gaining increasing attention.     

Combining models in longitudinal data analysis

Model selection uncertainty in longitudinal data analysis is often much more serious than that in simpler regression settings, which challenges the validity of drawing conclusions based on a single selected model when model selection uncertainty is high. We advocate the use of appropriate model selection diagnostics to formally assess the degree of uncertainty in variable/model selection as well as in estimating a quantity of interest. We propose a model combining method with its theoretical properties examined. Simulations and real data examples demonstrate its advantage over popular model selection methods.     

Fringe pattern analysis by S-transform

S-transform proposed in 1996 by Stockwell R.G is a simple and popular technique for the time–frequency analysis. It has been introduced in optical three-dimensional shape measurement, recently. In this paper, a study about applications of S-transform in the demodulation of deformed fringe patterns is performed. We focus on discussing not only the S-transform spectrum filtering technique, the S-transform ridge technique and the phase gradient calculation method based on S-transform used in fringe pattern demodulation, but also the phase unwrapping technique. In addition, a generalized S-transform was introduced to analyze fringe patterns, which is helpful to improve the measurement accuracy and flexibility of the method based on S-transform. The reconstruction results based on S-transform were compared with that on wavelet transform and windowed Fourier transform in fringe analysis.     

Quantum Fisher information and chaos in the Dicke model

We introduce a method of quantum tomography for a continuous variable system in position and momentum space. We consider a single two-level probe interacting with a quantum harmonic oscillator by means of a class of Hamiltonians, linear in position and momentum variables, during a tunable time span. We study two cases: the reconstruction of the wavefunctions of pure states and the direct measurement of the density matrix of mixed states. We show that our method can be applied to several physical systems where high quantum control can be experimentally achieved.     

Synthesis and antitumor and antibacterial evaluation of fluoroquinolone derivatives(Ⅲ):Mono- and bis-Schiff-bases

To further explore an efficient modified route for the shift from an antibacterial fluoroquinolone to an antitumor one,mono-Schiff bases 6a-6h related to ciprofloxacin C3 carbonylhydrazone and bis-Schiff bases 4a-4h corresponding to C3/C7 carbonylhydrazone/hydrazone attached on a skeleton of ciprofloquinolone were designed and synthesized,and their in vitro antitumor activity against CHO,HL60,L1210 cells and antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli were also reported.     

Effect of Bi promoter on the performances of selective oxidation of isobutane to methacrolein over MoVO/AlPO4 catalysts

The effects of Bi on the catalytic performance of selective oxidation of isobutane to methacrolein over MoVO/AlPO4 catalyst were investigated by XRD, FT-Raman, XPS, UV-vis DRS techniques. The results show that the addition of Bi component into the MoVO/AlPO4 catalyst obviously improves the catalytic performance, and the selectivity to methacrolein can increase from 14.2% to 45.1% with the increase of Bi/V molar ratio from 0 to 1. Combining the characterization results with the reaction evaluation, it is concluded that the catalytic activities of the MoV0.3Bix/AlPO4 catalysts are related to the crystalline phase composition and the dispersion of molybdenum and vanadium oxides species in general, and also to the V5+/V4+ molar ratio on the surface in particular.