Electrophysiological Activity and Survival Rate of Rats Nervous Tissue Cells Depends on D/H Isotopic Composition of Medium

The deuterium content modification in an organism has a neuroprotective effect during the hypoxia model, affecting anxiety, memory and stress resistance. The aim of this work was to elucidate the possible mechanisms of the medium D/H composition modification on nerve cells. We studied the effect of an incubation medium with a 50 ppm deuterium content compared to a medium with 150 ppm on: (1) the activity of Wistar rats’ hippocampus CA1 field neurons, (2) the level of cultured cerebellar neuron death during glucose deprivation and temperature stress, (3) mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) and the generation of reactive oxygen species in cultures of cerebellar neurons. The results of the analysis showed that the incubation of hippocampal sections in a medium with a 50 ppm deuterium reduced the amplitude of the pop-spike. The restoration of neuron activity was observed when sections were returned to the incubation medium with a 150 ppm deuterium content. An environment with a 50 ppm deuterium did not significantly affect the level of reactive oxygen species in neuron cultures, while MMP decreased by 16–20%. In experiments with glucose deprivation and temperature stress, the medium with 50 ppm increased the death of neurons. Thus, a short exposure of nerve cells in the medium with 50 ppm deuterium acts as an additional stressful factor, which is possibly associated with the violation of the cell energy balance. The decrease in the mitochondrial membrane potential, which is known to be associated with ATP synthesis, indicates that this effect may be associated with the cell energy imbalance. The decrease in the activity of the CA1 field hippocampal neurons may reflect reversible adaptive changes in the operation of fast-reacting ion channels.     

Microarc Oxidation of Metal Surfaces: Coating Properties and Applications

Russian Physics Journal - The paper deals with one of the most promising, intensively developing methods of depositing functional oxide coatings onto aluminum and titanium alloys, namely microarc...     

Reactive diffusion in Sc/Si multilayer X-ray mirrors with CrB2 barrier layers

Processes undergoing in Sc/Si multilayer X-ray mirrors (MXMs) with periods of ∼27 nm and barrier layers of CrB₂0.3- and 0.7-nm thick within the temperature range of 420–780 K were studied by methods of small-angle X-ray reflectivity (λ=0.154 nm) and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. All layers with the exception of Sc ones are amorphous. Barrier layers are stable at least up to a temperature of 625 K and double the activation energy of diffusional intermixing at moderate temperatures. Introduction of barriers improves the thermal stability of Sc/Si MXMs at least by 80 degrees. Diffusion of Si atoms through barrier layers into Sc layers with formation of silicides was shown to be the main degradation mechanism of MXMs. A comparison of the stability for Sc/Si MXMs with different barriers published in the literature is conducted. The ways of further improvement of barrier properties are discussed.     

Nonclassical Impurity Transport in the Dykhne Model with Coordinate-Dependent Parameters. Fermat Principle

Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics - An asymptotic theory of impurity transport has been developed for the simplest regularly inhomogeneous medium (Dykhne model, demonstrating...     

New and efficient high Stokes shift fluorescent compounds: unsymmetrically substituted 1,2-bis-(5-phenyloxazol-2-yl)benzenes via microwave-assisted nucleophilic substitution of fluorine

Two new unsymmetric derivatives of 1,2-bis-(5-phenyloxazol-2-yl)benzene (ortho-POPOP) were synthesized via microwave-assisted nucleophilic substitution of fluorine which appears to be significantly more efficient compared with conventional thermal activation. The compounds synthesized are characterized by high fluorescence Stokes shifts (6000-11,000 cm⁻¹) in solvents of various polarity, intermediate-to-high fluorescence quantum yields and lifetimes in the range of several nanoseconds.     

Impurity transport in fractal media in the presence of a degrading diffusion barrier

We have analyzed the transport regimes and the asymptotic forms of the impurity concentration in a randomly inhomogeneous fractal medium in the case when an impurity source is surrounded by a weakly permeable degrading barrier. The systematization of transport regimes depends on the relation between the time t ₀ of emergence of impurity from the barrier and time t _* corresponding to the beginning of degradation. For t ₀ < t _*, degradation processes are immaterial. In the opposite situation, when t ₀ > t _*, the results on time intervals t < t _* can be formally reduced to the problem with a stationary barrier. The characteristics of regimes with t _* < t < t ₀ depend on the scenario of barrier degradation. For an exponentially fast scenario, the interval t _* < t < t ₀ is very narrow, and the transport regime occurring over time intervals t < t _* passes almost jumpwise to the regime of the problem without a barrier. In the slow power-law scenario, the transport over long time interval t _* < t < t ₀ occurs in a new regime, which is faster as compared to the problem with a stationary barrier, but slower than in the problem without a barrier. The asymptotic form of the concentration at large distances from the source over time intervals t < t ₀ has two steps, while for t > t ₀, it has only one step. The more remote step for t < t ₀ and the single step for t > t ₀ coincide with the asymptotic form in the problem without a barrier.