Analysis method of the angiotensin-I converting enzyme inhibitory activity based on micellar electrokinetic chromatography.

A micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) method was developed for estimating the angiotensin-I converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory activity by separating the hippuric acid liberated in the ACE reaction mixture in the presence of an inhibitor, captopril. The hippuric acid was successfully separated and detected by MEKC with a 25 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate solution in a 25 mM phosphate-50 mM borate buffer at pH 7.0; the total analysis took about 5 min. A good linear relationship was observed between the inhibitor and the peak area of hippuric acid release. No significant difference in the ACE inhibitory activity (IC50) of captopril (an antihypertensive medicine) or autolyzed-mushrooms (functional foods) was observed between the conventional method and the MEKC method. The MEKC method was found to be a useful technique for a rapid assay of the ACE inhibitory activity.     

Thermal properties and fracture toughness of a liquid‐crystalline epoxy resin cured with an aromatic diamine crosslinker having a mesogenic group

A mesogenic‐type curing agent was synthesized to introduce a mesogenic group not only into epoxy resin backbones but also into the crosslink units. In the mesogenic curing agent system, the domain size became larger, and the network arrangement in each domain existed to a greater extent than that in a system cured with the ordinary diamine curing system according to the evidence from polarized optical micrographs and polarized Fourier transform infrared mapping measurements. Moreover, the fracture toughness of the system was considerably improved. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 44: 2486–2494, 2006     

Porphyrin acids

The structural change from the porphyrin free base to monoacid and diacid by successive protonation has been studied by the IR, visible and NMR spectroscopy. The results have indicated that the cation and anion of the porphyrin diacid are strongly associated through H-bonding. The far IR spectra show especially marked differences in the free base, monoacid, and diacid due to the changes of the inner core of the porphyrin ring.     

Density results for uniform families

A familyF of subsets is calledk-dense if there exists ak-element setA such that all 2 ^k of its subsets can be obtained in the formAF for someFF. Best possible bounds are obtained for the maximum number of sets in notk-densek-partite families. This is a consequence of a new rank formula for inclusion matrices.