Polymers for DNA delivery

Nucleic acid delivery has many applications in basic science, biotechnology, agriculture, and medicine. One of the main applications is DNA or RNA delivery for gene therapy purposes. Gene therapy, an approach for treatment or prevention of diseases associated with defective gene expression, involves the insertion of a therapeutic gene into cells, followed by expression and production of the required proteins. This approach enables replacement of damaged genes or expression inhibition of undesired genes. Following two decades of research, there are two major methods for delivery of genes. The first method, considered the dominant approach, utilizes viral vectors and is generally an efficient tool of transfection. Attempts, however, to resolve drawbacks related with viral vectors (e.g., high risk of mutagenicity, immunogenicity, low production yield, limited gene size, etc.), led to the development of an alternative method, which makes use of non-viral vectors. This review describes non-viral gene delivery vectors, termed "self-assembled" systems, and are based on cationic molecules, which form spontaneous complexes with negatively charged nucleic acids. It introduces the most important cationic polymers used for gene delivery. A transition from in vitro to in vivo gene delivery is also presented, with an emphasis on the obstacles to achieve successful transfection in vivo.     

Urea oxidation electrocatalysis on nickel hydroxide: the role of disorder

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - The urea oxidation reaction (UOR) is an important challenge in electrocatalysis, in the context of electrolyzers, fuel cells, medical sensing, and...     

Antifeedant effects of mixed methylphenyl hexaorganoditin compounds of the type PhnMe6–nSnSn on larvae of Spodoptera littoralis and Epilachna varivestis

Compounds of the series Ph_nMe_6–nSn₂ were prepared and tested for their antifeedant effects against Spodoptera littoralis (Boisduval) and Epilachna varivestis (Mulsant) larvae. In addition, phytotoxicity towards bean seedlings was measured. The most active compound against both Spodoptera and Epilachna was Ph₃Me₃Sn₂. The compound at 50 mg dm^?3 was comparatively innocuous in phytotoxicity tests against bean seedlings.     

Composition algebras and cyclic p-algebras in characteristic 3

Given a central simple algebra A of degree 3 over a field of characteristic 3, we prove that there is a unique symmetric composition algebra extending the commutator operation on the trace-zero part modulo scalars. This is analogous to Okubo’s construction of symmetric composition algebras in the case of characteristic not 3. We apply the composition algebra tools to obtain a classification of maximal 3-central spaces and maximal Galois hyperplanes of A, and prove a new common slot lemma for such algebras.     

Factorization for non-nevanlinna classes of analytic functions

A generalization of the Blaschke product is constructed. This product enables one to factor out the zeros of the members of certain non-Nevanlinna classes of functions analytic in the unit disc, so that the remaining (non-vanishing) functions still belong to the same class. This is done for the classesA ⁻ⁿ (0<n<∞) andB ⁻ⁿ (0<n<2) defined as follows:f ∈A ⁻ⁿ iff |f(z)|≦C _f (1−|z|)⁻ⁿ ,f ∈B ⁻ⁿ iff |f(z)|≦exp {C _f (1−|z|)⁻ⁿ }, whereC _f depends onf.     

Non-monotonic driven vortex noise in HTSC

We present noise measurements on YBCO thin films in different conditions of magnetic field and driving current. Noise spectra for non-driven and driven cases (in the flux-creep region) evidence deep differences in vortex dynamics between these two regimes. For the driven case, the effect of applying magnetic field is a reduction in noise, which can be explained by the increase in the fraction of vortices that undergo flux-flow. For the non-driven case, magnetic field has no significative influence on noise, probably due to the absence of Lorentz force that causes coherent movement of vortices. For all magnetic fields studied in this work (0-154 mT) the effect of increasing current is an increase of noise, which is in contrast to the results from other authors. This behavior can be explained by an increase of current induced vortex-antivortex annihilation events. We propose that driven noise has a non-monotonic behavior due to the competition between annihilation events and driving force which causes opposite effects on noise.     

Isotropic subspaces in symmetric composition algebras and Kummer subspaces in central simple algebras of degree 3

The maximal isotropic subspaces in split Cayley algebras were classified by van der Blij and Springer in Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde VIII(3):158–169, 1960. Here we translate this classification to arbitrary composition algebras. We study intersection properties of such spaces in a symmetric composition algebra, and prove two triality results: one for two-D isotropic spaces, and another for isotropic vectors and maximal isotropic spaces. We bound the distance between isotropic spaces of various dimensions, and study the strong orthogonality relation on isotropic vectors, with its own bound on the distance. The results are used to classify maximal p-central subspaces in central simple algebras of degree p = 3. We prove various linkage properties of maximal p-central spaces and p-central elements. Analogous results are obtained for symmetric p-central elements with respect to an involution of the second kind inverting a third root of unity.     

All dihedral division algebras of degree five are cyclic

In 1982 Rowen and Saltman proved that every division algebra which is split by a dihedral extension of degree of the center, odd, is in fact cyclic. The proof requires roots of unity of order in the center. We show that for , this assumption can be removed. It then follows that , the -torsion part of the Brauer group, is generated by cyclic algebras, generalizing a result of Merkurjev (1983) on the and torsion parts.