OPTIMIZING COLLAGEN TRANSPORT THROUGH TRACK-ETCHED NANOPORES

Polymer transport through nanopores is a potentially powerful tool for separation and organization of molecules in biotechnology applications. Our goal is to produce aligned collagen fibrils by mimicking cell-mediated collagen assembly: driving collagen monomers in solution through the aligned nanopores in track-etched membranes followed by fibrillogenesis at the pore exit. We examined type I atelo-collagen monomer transport in neutral, cold solution through polycarbonate track-etched membranes comprising 80-nm-diameter, 6-μm-long pores at 2% areal fraction. Source concentrations of 1.0, 2.8 and 7.0 mg/ml and pressure differentials of 0, 10 and 20 inH(2)O were used. Membrane surfaces were hydrophilized via covalent poly(ethylene-glycol) binding to limit solute-membrane interaction. Collagen transport through the nanopores was a non-intuitive process due to the complex behavior of this associating molecule in semi-dilute solution. Nonetheless, a modified open pore model provided reasonable predictions of transport parameters. Transport rates were concentration- and pressure-dependent, with diffusivities across the membrane in semi-dilute solution two-fold those in dilute solution, possibly via cooperative diffusion or polymer entrainment. The most significant enhancement of collagen transport was accomplished by membrane hydrophilization. The highest concentration transported (5.99±2.58 mg/ml) with the highest monomer flux (2.60±0.49 ×10(3) molecules s(-1) pore(-1)) was observed using 2.8 mg collagen/ml, 10 inH(2)O and hydrophilic membranes.     

Transport numbers of ionic electrolyte components: A new measuring method based on bidirectional capillary isotachophoresis

A concept of a new isotachophoretic method for measuring transport numbers of ionic components and electromigration transport of solvent in electrolytes, which is free of many drawbacks of other methods evident at high concentrations, is proposed and substantiated.Translated from Elektrokhimiya, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2005, pp. 375–379.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Gorshkov.     

Modelling of water transport in ionic hydrophilic polymers

Water and ion transport in thin sheets of initially dry, ionic, hydrophilic crosslinked polymers was modelled throughout the dynamic swelling process. The water transport was expressed in terms of a non-Fickian equation with a diffusion term containing a Fujitatype concentration-dependent diffusion coefficient coupled with a pseudoconvective term arising from the reasonable assumption that the stress in ionic polymers is proportional to the total number of ionized pendant groups in the polymer. Ion transport was expressed in terms of generalized Fickian equations with water concentration-dependent diffusion coefficients. These equations were solved with appropriate boundary conditions to establish the water uptake as a function of time, pH and ionic strength in a citrate-phosphate-borate buffer solution. A new dimensionless number, the Stress Swelling number, A, was defined to quantify the relative importance of stress in the overall swelling process. Water uptake was a strong function of A. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Eine Untersuchungsmethode zur Gasphasentransport in einer geschlossenen Ampulle

A Method for Investigation of the Gas Phase Transport in a Closed Ampoule . The chemical and physical vapor transport are investigated using binary systems of germanium/iodine and iodine/krypton, respectively, as examples. For that purpose, the solid component is placed at the end of a closed ampoule of which the other end is pyramidally shaped. As a consequence of a sudden temperature difference between the ampoule ends, the solid material is transported into the modified end. The contur of the deposition is continuously determined by a computer assisted video technique until the temperature difference has disappeared. The experimental results are compared with the quasi-stationary one-dimensional mass diffusion.     

Effect of Structure on Titration Curves of p-Bromoaniline-Formaldehyde-p-Cresol Copolymers in Nonaqueous Media

Copolymers obtained by the condensation of p-bromoaniline, formaldehyde, and p-cresol have been separated into five fractions by a fractional precipitation method. Some of these copolymers showed characteristic titration curves in non-aqueous media. The titration curves indicated a series of breaks which bear integral relations to each other. These features have been interpreted in terms of homoconjugation, intramolecular hydrogen bonding, and composition of the copolymers.     

EMISSION CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANIC LIGHT-EMITTING DIODES WITH A HETEROSTRUCTURE OF DYE DOPED POLY(N-VINYLCARBAZOLE)/TRIS(8-HYDROXYQUINOLINE) ALUMINUM*

Organic electroluminescent diodes with a heterostructure of 9,10-bis(phenylethnyl) anthracene(BPEA) doped poly(N-vinylcarbazole) (PVK)/tris(8-hydroxyquinoline)aluminum (Alq_3) have beenfabricated. The electroluminescence (EL) both from BPEA and Alq_3 were observed when the Alq_3 layer isthin enough. With increasing thickness of the Alq_3 layer, the relative emission intensity of BPEA is graduallydecreased. For the thin Alq_3 layer structure, the light emission of Alq_3 becomes more dominant as the appliedvoltage increases. It is proposed that the electron-hole recombination takes place in both PVK and Alq_3 films.The field-induced quenching theory has also been applied to explain the change of the EL spectra withapplied voltage.     

Cation‐Transporting Peptides: Scaffolds for Functionalized Pores?

Protein pores that selectively transport ions across membranes are among nature’s most efficient machines. The selectivity of these pores can be exploited for ion sensing and water purification. Since it is difficult to reconstitute membrane proteins in their active form for practical applications it is desirable to develop robust synthetic compounds that selectively transport ions across cell membranes. One can envision tuning the selectivity of pores by incorporating functional groups inside the pore. Readily accessible octapeptides containing (aminomethyl)benzoic acid and alanine are reported here that preferentially transport cations over halides across the lipid bilayer. Ion transport is hypothesized through pores formed by stable assemblies of the peptides. The aromatic ring(s) appear to be proximal to the pore and could be potentially utilized for functionalizing the pore interior.     

Gas transport property of polyallylamine–poly(vinyl alcohol)/polysulfone composite membranes

Polyallylamine (PAAm) was synthesized by free radical polymerization and characterized by Fourier transform infrared resonance (FT-IR) spectroscopy, hydrogen nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H NMR) spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The composite membranes were prepared by using PAAm–poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) blend polymer as the separation layer and polysulfone (PSF) ultrafiltration membranes as the support layer. The surface and cross-section morphology of the membrane was inspected by environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM). The gas transport property of the membranes, including gas permeance, flux and selectivity, were investigated by using pure CO₂, N₂, CH₄ gases and CO₂/N₂ gas mixture (20 vol% CO₂ and 80 vol% N₂) and CO₂/CH₄ gas mixture (10 vol% CO₂ and 90 vol% CH₄). The plots of gas permeance or flux versus feed gas pressure imply that CO₂ permeation through the membranes follows facilitated transport mechanism whereas N₂ and CH₄ permeation follows solution–diffusion mechanism. Effect of PAAm content in the separation layer on gas transport property was investigated by measuring the membranes with 0–50 wt% PAAm content. With increasing PAAm content, gas permeance increases initially, reaches a maximum, and then decreases gradually. For CO₂/N₂ gas mixture, the membranes with 10 wt% PAAm content show the highest CO₂ permeance of about 1.80 × 10⁻⁵ cm³ (STP) cm⁻² s⁻¹ KPa⁻¹ and CO₂/N₂ selectivity of 80 at 0.1 MPa feed gas pressure. For CO₂/CH₄ gas mixture, the membranes with 20 wt% PAAm content display the highest CO₂ permeance of about 1.95 × 10⁻⁵ cm³ (STP) cm⁻² s⁻¹ KPa⁻¹ and CO₂/CH₄ selectivity of 58 at 0.1 MPa feed gas pressure. In order to explore the possible reason of gas permeance varying with PAAm content, the crystallinity of PVA and PAAm–PVA blend polymers was measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectra. The experimental results show an inverse relationship between crystallinity and gas permeance, e.g., a minimum crystallinity and a maximum CO₂ permeance are obtained at 20 wt% PAAm content, indicating that the possibility of increasing CO₂ permeance with PAAm content due to the increase of carrier concentration could be weakened by the increase of crystallinity.     

Electrogenic transport by lipophilic guanidinium salts as anion carriers in bilayer membranes

Anion transport by four isomers of tetradecylguanidinium in vesicle bilayer membranes was investigated by ion-selective electrode and pH-sensitive fluorescence methods. On a macroscopic scale, these carriers mediate hydroxide-anion antiport. In the absence of an externally imposed ionic gradient, the carriers produce a pH gradient due to rapid partition-deprotonation of the carrier and diffusion of the guanidine conjugate base. The formally coupled anion transport is slow relative to this process, and the system exhibits a corresponding membrane polarisation detected with potential-sensitive fluorescent dyes. Selective anion transport in competition with the efficient hydroxide transport is detected only with relatively easily extracted anions and N,N′-disubstituted isomers. Membrane polarisation changes can be deduced from simple equivalent circuits derived from the Goldman–Hodgkin–Katz voltage equation.     

Synthetic ionophores. 2. Effect of incorporation of sulphur and ester moieties on the ionophore character of 18-crown-6

In 18-crown-6, the replacement of two methylene groups by two carbonyl groups or one oxygen with sulphur, increases the transport selectivity of K⁺/Na⁺ and Tl⁺/Na⁺ picrates. However, the presence of a combination of two carbonyl and one sulphur moiety or their multiples adversely affects the transport rates and selectivity.For part 1 see ref. 1.     

Selectivity of Transport of Sodium, Magnesium, and Calcium Ions through a Sulfo-Cationite Membrane in Mixtures of Solutions of Their Chlorides

The transport numbers and the selectivity of transport of sodium, magnesium, and calcium ions through a heterogeneous sulfo-cationite membrane in solutions of sodium, magnesium, and calcium chlorides and their mixtures are studied at various current densities. Equations for calculating the selectivity of transport of the ions through the membrane are suggested for two extreme cases. One case corresponds to low currents, when one can assume that the membrane is at equilibrium with the outside solution. The selectivity of transport of the ions is defined in this case by their migration through the membrane. The other case occurs at currents that are close to a limiting value. Under these conditions the transport of the ions through the membrane is defined by their transport through a diffusion layer that forms near the membrane surface. Calculations with the aid of these equations satisfactorily conform to experiment. The deviation from calculation in the case of the magnesium cation is connected probably with its hydration being substantially greater as compared with sodium and calcium. It is established that the selectivity of transport of the ions through the membrane may be controlled to a certain extent by varying the current density.__________Translated from Elektrokhimiya, Vol. 41, No. 8, 2005, pp. 997–1000.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Greben’, Rodzik.     

Preparation of a Chelating Polymeric Membrane and Application to Uphill Transport

Abstract

Modification of an anion-exchange membrane by (1-(2-arsono-phenylazo))-2-hydroxy-3,6-naphthalenedisulfonic acid (thoron) results in a membrane that can chelate metals. The high affinity of the disulfonate for the anion-exchange sites together with molecular adsorption of the aromatic thoron onto the polymers yields a system that is stable in strong acids at or below 1 M. By employing a relatively high pH sample (5-9) in conjunction with an acidic stripping solution (0.2 - 1.0 M HCl), uphill transport of Cu(II) and Zn(II) was accomplished. The transport rate was increased by means (lower chelating capacity and the use of a chelate-forming aid on in the stripping solution) of promoting the volume diffusion mechanism of membrane transport. With a 0.05 mmol per dry gram chelating capacity and a 0.1 M EDTA stripping solution (pH 6.5), an enrichment factor of 16 was observed in a one-hour experiment with a 200 mL sample, 11 cm² membrane, and 5 mL stripping solution. This value compares favorably with those obtained by other uphill transport modes under the same conditions.     

Mutual spontaneous and electrosurface processes at heterophase interfaces WO<Subscript>3</Subscript>|Me<Subscript>2</Subscript>(WO<Subscript>4</Subscript>)<Subscript>3</Subscript> (Me = In,Eu, Sc)

For the first time ever it is demonstrated in this work that, in spontaneous conditions and following the imposition of an electric field, mutual penetration of components of WO₃ and Me₂(WO₄)₃ occurs at heterophase interfaces WO₃|Me₂(WO₄)₃ where Me = In, Eu, or Sc. Tungstic oxide WO₃ is pulled onto the inner surface of ceramic Me₂(WO₄)₃ and, in turn, components of Me₂(WO₄)₃ penetrate onto the surface of grains of ceramic WO₃, which is confirmed by the method of x-ray—fluorescence analysis. Data concerning the conductivity and transport numbers of Eu₂(WO₄)₃ and a composite on its basis, which was manufactured as a result the electrosurface transport of WO₃, are obtained for the first time ever. With allowance made for the data on the O_2? character of the ionic conduction in MeWO₄ and Eu₂(WO₄)₃ it is concluded that the type of ionic carriers in tungstates (Me ⁿ⁺)_2/n [WO₄] makes no impact on the mechanism of spontaneous and field-induced processes that are developing at the (Me ⁿ⁺)_2/n [WO₄]|WO₃ interfaces.     

Zum chemischen Transport von Molybdän mit SbBr3 – Experimente und Modellrechnungen

On the Chemical Transport of Molybdenum using SbBr₃ – Experiments and Thermochemical Calculations Mo migrates in a temperature gradient from the region of higher temperature to the lower temperature using SbBr₃ as transport agent. For various mean transport temperatures (750 ? T ? 1000°C; T = 0,5 (T₁ + T₂); T₂ ? T₁ = 100°C) we observed small transport rates (? ? 0,6 mg/h) which rise up to 16 mg/h for higher transport agent concentrations. Small amounts of MoO₂ and Sb were detected beside Mo in the sink. The observed solid phases in the sink are in agreement with thermodynamical calculations by CVTrans which also demonstrate that the formation of MoO₂ and Sb as well as the transport effect of SbBr₃ are caused by traces of H₂O from the quartz glass wall. The sequence of deposition of Mo, MoO₂ and Sb in the examined temperature range can be calculated (CVTrans) and measured with the transport balance.     

ActTRANS: Functional classification in active transport proteins based on transfer learning and contextual representations

MotivationPrimary and secondary active transport are two types of active transport that involve using energy to move the substances. Active transport mechanisms do use proteins to assist in transport and play essential roles to regulate the traffic of ions or small molecules across a cell membrane against the concentration gradient. In this study, the two main types of proteins involved in such transport are classified from transmembrane transport proteins. We propose a Support Vector Machine (SVM) with contextualized word embeddings from Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) to represent protein sequences. BERT is a powerful model in transfer learning, a deep learning language representation model developed by Google and one of the highest performing pre-trained model for Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. The idea of transfer learning with pre-trained model from BERT is applied to extract fixed feature vectors from the hidden layers and learn contextual relations between amino acids in the protein sequence. Therefore, the contextualized word representations of proteins are introduced to effectively model complex structures of amino acids in the sequence and the variations of these amino acids in the context. By generating context information, we capture multiple meanings for the same amino acid to reveal the importance of specific residues in the protein sequence.ResultsThe performance of the proposed method is evaluated using five-fold cross-validation and independent test. The proposed method achieves an accuracy of 85.44 %, 88.74 % and 92.84 % for Class-1, Class-2, and Class-3, respectively. Experimental results show that this approach can outperform from other feature extraction methods using context information, effectively classify two types of active transport and improve the overall performance.     

The charge carrier mobility’s activation energies and pre-factor dependence on dopant concentration in molecularly doped polymers

The elucidation of the charge transport mechanism in molecularly doped polymers MDP has been confused by disagreement on the role of disorder, which has led to disagreement on how to analyze the experimental mobility data. Plotting the mobility vs. T⁻¹ or T⁻² where T is temperature gives an Arrhenius activation energy or disorder energy respectively, which cannot be compared. A methodology is suggested to convert disorder energies into activation energies. This allows a compilation of a list of the activation energies of all MDP’s which have been characterized as a function of dopant concentration and a correlation of the activation energies with material properties.     

Modeling of Diffusive Transport of Polymers Moments Using Limiting Cases of the Maxwell–Stefan Model

A polymer distribution is usually represented by its moments. Thus, to calculate transport in a polymer system, a formulation for the transport of moments of the polymer is needed. This is only possible if the moments close or if there is a suitable closing condition. To archive this, two simplifications of the Stefan–Maxwell diffusion are derived, which convert the transport equation of polymeric species to a closed set of transport equations for the polymer moments. The first approach corresponds to an infinitely diluted polymer system, whereas the second one describes a highly concentrated polymer system. Both formulations are compared with the full Stefan-Maxwell model of a ternary mixture of a solvent and two polymer species of different chain length.     

Rail vs truck transport of biomass

This study analyzes the economics of transshipping biomass from truck to train in a North American setting. Transshipment will only be economic when the cost per unit distance of a second transportation mode is less than the original mode. There is an optimum number of transshipment terminals which is related to biomass yield. Transshipment incurs incremental fixed costs, and hence there is a minimum shipping distance for rail transport above which lower costs/km offset the incremental fixed costs. For transport by dedicated unit train with an optimum number of terminals, the minimum economic rail shipping distance for straw is 170 km, and for boreal forest harvest residue wood chips is 145 km. The minimum economic shipping distance for straw exceeds the biomass draw distance for economically sized centrally located power plants, and hence the prospects for rail transport are limited to cases in which traffic congestion from truck transport would otherwise preclude project development. Ideally, wood chip transport costs would be lowered by rail transshipment for an economically sized centrally located power plant, but in a specific case in Alberta, Canada, the layout of existing rail lines precludes a centrally located plant supplied by rail, whereas a more versatile road system enables it by truck. Hence for wood chips as well as straw the economic incentive for rail transport to centrally located processing plants is limited. Rail transshipment may still be preferred in cases in which road congestion precludes truck delivery, for example as result of community objections.     

Carrier‐Mediated Transport of Hg(II) through Bulk and Supported Liquid Membranes

The transport of Hg (II) ions from an aqueous solution into an aqueous receiving solution through bulk and supported liquid membranes containing a calix[4]arene derivative 1 as a carrier was examined. The kinetic parameters of bulk liquid membrane studies were analyzed assuming two consecutive, irreversible first‐order reactions. The influence of temperature, stirring rate, carrier concentration and solvent on the kinetic parameters (k₁, k₂, R_m ^max, t_max, J_d ^max, J_a ^max) has also been investigated. The membrane entrance rate, k₁, and the membrane exit rate, k₂, increased with increasing temperature and stirring rate. The activation energy values are calculated as 4.87 and 48.63 kj mol^?1 for extraction and reextraction, respectively. The values of calculated activation energy indicate that the process is diffusionally controlled by species. Also, the transport behavior of Hg²⁺ from aqueous solution through a flat‐sheet supported liquid membrane has been investigated by the use of calix[4]arene derivative 1 as carrier and Celgard 2500 as the solid support. A Danesi mass transfer model was used to calculate the permeability coefficients for each parameter studied. The highest values of permeability were obtained with 2‐nitrophenyloctyl‐ether (NPOE) solvent and the influence was found to be in the order of NPOE>chloroform>xylene.