ParaHydrogen Polarized Ethyl-[1-13C]pyruvate in Water,a Key Substrate for Fostering the PHIP-SAH Approach to Metabolic Imaging

An efficient synthesis of vinyl-[1-¹³C]pyruvate has been reported, from which ¹³C hyperpolarized (HP) ethyl-[1-¹³C]pyruvate has been obtained by means of ParaHydrogen Induced Polarization (PHIP). Due to the intrinsic lability of pyruvate, which leads quickly to degradation of the reaction mixture even under mild reaction conditions, the vinyl-ester has been synthesized through the intermediacy of a more stable ketal derivative. ¹³C and ¹H hyperpolarizations of ethyl-[1-¹³C]pyruvate, hydrogenated using ParaHydrogen, have been compared to those observed on the more widely used allyl-derivative. It has been demonstrated that the spin order transfer from ParaHydrogen protons to ¹³C, is more efficient on the ethyl than on the allyl-esterdue to the larger J-couplings involved. The main requirements needed for the biological application of this HP product have been met, i. e. an aqueous solution of the product at high concentration (40 mM) with a good ¹³C polarization level (4.8 %) has been obtained. The in vitro metabolic transformation of the HP ethyl-[1-¹³C]pyruvate, catalyzed by an esterase, has been observed. This substrate appears to be a good candidate for in vivo metabolic investigations using PHIP hyperpolarized probes.     

Characterization of low molecular weight hydrocarbon oligomers by laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry using a solvent-free sample preparation method.

A new solvent-free sample preparation method using silver trifluoroacetate (AgTFA) was developed for the analysis of low molecular weight paraffins and microcrystalline waxes by laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LDI-TOFMS). Experiments show that spectral quality can be enhanced by dispersing AgTFA directly in liquid paraffins without the use of additional solvents. This preparation mixture is applied directly to the MALDI probe. Solid waxes could be examined by melting prior to analysis. The method also provides sufficiently reproducible spectra that peak area ratios between mono- and bicyclic alkane peaks indicated variations in the cycloalkane content of paraffin samples. Dehydrogenation of hydrocarbons observed during the desorption/ionization process was studied by analysis of alkane standards.     

Design of neutral, mono- or di-cationic water-soluble trihydrazidophosphoradamantanes

The versatile behavior of a trihydrazidophosphoradamantane allowing the synthesis of a variety of neutral, mono- or di-cationic water-soluble molecules of potential interest for biphasic catalysis is reported.     

Spectroscopic characterization of core and shell regions in monolayer protected gold nanoparticles

We report studies on the structure of the metallic core and the alkyl cap layer in monolayer protected gold nanoparticles having sizes down to 1.6 nm. These particles are obtained by laser ablating gold targets in alkane-thiol solutions at different concentrations. The electronic structure of gold core and the vibrational properties of the capping hydrocarbon chains reveal effects connected with the nanosized nature of the particles.     

On the geometry of infinite cyclic subgroups

In this paper we construct an example of a word metric on an infinite cyclic subgroup. This example shows that subexponential distortion does not obstruct non-trivial growth of connected radii. This answers a question of Gromov [6]. The constructed metric has other pathological properies. Specifically, its asymptotic cone depends on the choice of ultrafilter and scaling sequence. The work has been partially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.     

IFS attractors and Cantor sets

We build a metric space which is homeomorphic to a Cantor set but cannot be realized as the attractor of an iterated function system. We give also an example of a Cantor set K in R³ such that every homeomorphism f of R³ which preserves K coincides with the identity on K.     

Classes de symétrie des solides piézoélectriquesSymmetry classes of piezoelectric solids

We apply here the harmonic and Cartan decomposition techniques to piezoelectric material symmetries classification. We show in particular that we shall reduce from 19 to 17 the number of symmetry classes corresponding to the piezoelectric phenomenon. To cite this article: G. Geymonat, T. Weller, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 335 (2002) 847–852.     

Integral Inequalities and Global Solutions of Semilinear Evolution Equations

A criterion for the nonexplosion of solutions to semilinear evolution equations on Banach spaces is proved. The result is obtained by applying a modification of the Bihari type inequality to the case of a weakly singular nonlinear integral inequality.     

Sulla K-variazione Essenziale di Una Funzione reale

In this paper we consider a definition of essentialK-variation for real functions which gives information on the absolute integrability of its approximate derivate on a measurable set.     

Asymptotic Analysis of the Current-Voltage Curve of a pnpn Semiconductor Device

We consider the one-dimensional steady-state semiconductor deviceequations modelling a pnpn device. There are two relevant scalingsof the equations corresponding to small and large applied voltages.In both scalings, the semiconductor equations can be consideredas singularly perturbed. It turns out that the small-voltagescaling breaks down for current values between two saturationcurrents. In that interval, the large-voltage scaling has tobe employed. For both scalings, we derive the first-order termsof an asymptotic expansion and show that the reduced problemhas a solution. An example verifies that the current-voltagecurves obtained have the expected qualitative structure.