On-line coupling of packed capillary electrochromatography with coordination ion spray-mass spectrometry for the separation of enantiomers

Pressure-supported packed capillary electrochromatography (CEC) and packed capillary high-performance liquid chromatography (pHPLC) have been coupled on-line to electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and coordination ion spray-mass spectrometry (CIS-MS). Separation of enantiomers of barbiturates and chlorinated alkyl phenoxypropanoates were performed on a permethylated beta-cyclodextrin stationary phase by pressure-supported CEC. For on-line detection with ESI- and CIS-MS, a modified sheath-liquid interface was used. CIS-MS is a universal, novel ionization technique which improves the selectivity as well as the sensitivity. Charged complexes were formed through the addition of central complexing ions such as silver(I), cobalt(II), copper(II), and lithium(I) to the sheath flow. Advantages of CIS-MS detection compared to the ESI-MS mode are discussed. In the CIS-MS mode, increased sensitivity and high selectivity was attained through different possibilities of complexation. The superiority of pressure-supported CEC compared to pHPLC in the hyphenation with CIS-MS is demonstrated.     

Chemical strategies for iron acquisition in plants

Iron is an essential element for plant nutrition. Although iron is the fourth most abundant element (3 %) of the earth's crust, it is not readily available because of its low solubility. Therefore, plants need an active mechanism to extract iron from the soil. They have evolved several chemical strategies to acquire iron ions and the physiology of these mechanisms has been known for a long time. Only recently, the use of molecular genetic approaches has led to a biochemical and molecular characterization of the players involved, thus providing an entry to the manipulation of iron uptake in plants.     

Chiral silica-based monoliths in chromatography and capillary electrochromatography

Chiral-modified silica-based monoliths have become well-established stationary phases for both high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrochromatography (CEC). The silica-based monoliths were fabricated either in situ in the capillaries for nano-HPLC and CEC or in a mould for “conventional” HPLC. The present review summarizes the chiral modification of silica monoliths and the recent development in the field of enantioselective separations by nano-HPLC and CEC.     

Pseudodifferential Operators Associated with a Semigroup of Operators

Related to a semigroup of operators on a metric measure space, we define and study pseudodifferential operators (including the setting of Riemannian manifolds, fractals, graphs etc.). Boundedness on L ^p for pseudodifferential operators of order 0 is proved. We mainly focus on symbols belonging to the class $S^{0}_{1,\delta}$ for δ∈[0,1). For the limit class $S^{0}_{1,1}$ , we describe some results by restricting our attention to the case of a sub-Laplacian operator on a Riemannian manifold.