Stereoselective, electrophilic α-C-sialidation

5-N-Acetyl-5-N,4-O-oxazolidinone protected α- and β-sialyl phosphates react with allyltributylstannane and a variety of trimethylsilyl enol ethers to give α-sialyl C-glycosides in high yield and excellent selectivity. Elimination to give the 2,3-glycal is minimized by the presence of the oxazolidinone ring. The oxazolidinone ring can be subsequently cleaved under mild conditions at room temperature leaving in place the native acetamide group.     

Conservation of ultrafast photoprotective mechanisms with increasing molecular complexity in sinapoyl malate derivatives

Sinapoyl malate is a natural plant sunscreen molecule which protects leaves from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Here, the ultrafast dynamics of three sinapoyl malate derivatives, sinapoyl L-dimethyl malate, sinapoyl L-diethyl malate and sinapoyl L-di-t-butyl malate, have been studied using transient electronic absorption spectroscopy, in a dioxane and methanol solvent environment to investigate how well preserved these dynamics remain with increasing molecular complexity. In all cases it was found that, upon photoexcitation, deactivation occurs via a trans-cis isomerisation pathway within ∼20–30 ps. This cis-photoproduct, formed during photodeactivation, is stable and longed-lived for all molecules in both solvents. The incredible levels of conservation of the isomerisation pathway with increased molecular complexity demonstrate the efficacy of these molecules as ultraviolet photoprotectors, even in strongly perturbing solvents. As such, we suggest these molecules might be well-suited for augmentations to further improve their photoprotective efficacy or chemical compatibility with other components of sunscreen mixtures, whilst conserving their underlying photodynamic properties.     

Cobalt-Catalyzed 1,4-Aryl Migration/Desulfonylation Cascade: Synthesis of α-Aryl Amides

A cobalt-catalyzed 1,4-aryl migration/disulfonylation cascade applied to α-bromo N-sulfonyl amides was developed. The reaction was highly chemoselective, allowing the preparation of α-aryl amides possessing a variety of functional groups. The method was used as the key step to synthesize an alkaloid, (±)-deoxyeseroline. Mechanistic investigations suggest a radical process.     

Electrolytic Cell Design to Simulate the Electrochemical Skin Response

Small fiber peripheral neuropathy is an early complication of diabetes. Electric skin response to some stimulus, as electrochemical skin conductance ECS, is a promising route in the early follow‐up of such diseases. It is related to sweat gland innervations and their permeability to chlorides and protons; it is non‐invasive, quantitative and reproducible. In routine clinical use, it could allow to better adapt the treatments and improve the adhesion for preventing pathological progress, thus reducing colossal healthcare costs. To optimize the measurements and understand the electrochemical behavior of electrodes, an original electrolytic cell was designed in lab scale. Thereby, an electrolyte is chosen to mimic sweat composition. For achieving currents range of ESC in vivo measurements, the original idea was to play on electrolyte viscosity by adding sucrose. In this paper, the novel electrolytic lab cell is presented with its limiting kinetics processes. A model of chloride migration to the anode and global electric model dedicated to the cell are proposed. Cell parameters are thoroughly studied, e. g. the resistance, which is equivalent to the inverse of ESC, by exploiting the models and through in vitro experiments, with protocols focusing on reproducibility. This original approach establishes, inter alia, an important result: the resistance is accurately retrieved using linear voltammetry, whereas single voltage measurement fails notably and is, therefore, unsatisfactory.     

Monitoring cell culture media degradation using surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy

The quality of the cell culture media used in biopharmaceutical manufacturing is a crucial factor affecting bioprocess performance and the quality of the final product. Due to their complex composition these media are inherently unstable, and significant compositional variations can occur particularly when in the prepared liquid state. For example photo-degradation of cell culture media can have adverse effects on cell viability and thus process performance. There is therefore, from quality control, quality assurance and process management view points, an urgent demand for the development of rapid and inexpensive tools for the stability monitoring of these complex mixtures. Spectroscopic methods, based on fluorescence or Raman measurements, have now become viable alternatives to more time-consuming and expensive (on a unit analysis cost) chromatographic and/or mass spectrometry based methods for routine analysis of media. Here we demonstrate the application of surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy for the simple, fast, analysis of cell culture media degradation. Once stringent reproducibility controls are implemented, chemometric data analysis methods can then be used to rapidly monitor the compositional changes in chemically defined media. SERS shows clearly that even when media are stored at low temperature (2–8 °C) and in the dark, significant chemical changes occur, particularly with regard to cysteine/cystine concentration.     

Probing the stereo‐electronic properties of cationic rhodium complexes bearing chiral diphosphine ligands by 103Rh NMR

¹⁰³Rh NMR represents a powerful tool to assess the global electronic and steric contribution of diphosphine ligands on [Rh(COD)(diphosphine)]⁺ complexes. In the case of DIOP, BINAP and MeDUPHOS, this approach proved to be more informative than classical CO‐stretching frequency measurements. After validation, this method has been extended to a set of seven diphosphines. ¹⁰³Rh NMR measurements on [Rh(COD)(diphosphine)]PF₆ lead to the following order of donor properties: dppe > MeBPE > MeDUPHOS > dppb > DIOP > BINAP > Tol‐BINAP. This trend has been validated by DFT in the case of DIOP, BINAP and MeDUPHOS. In conjunction, ³¹P NMR chemical shift has been shown to reflect the ring constraints of the Rh‐diphosphine scaffold. This contribution is a step towards a mechanistic investigation of the catalytic hydrogenation of unsaturated substrates by ¹⁰³Rh NMR and DFT. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fast rotating Bose-Einstein condensates in an asymmetric trap

We investigate the effect of the anisotropy of a harmonic trap on the behaviour of a fast rotating Bose-Einstein condensate. This is done in the framework of the 2D Gross-Pitaevskii equation and requires a symplectic reduction of the quadratic form defining the energy. This reduction allows us to simplify the energy on a Bargmann space and study the asymptotics of large rotational velocity. We characterize two regimes of velocity and anisotropy; in the first one where the behaviour is similar to the isotropic case, we construct an upper bound: a hexagonal Abrikosov lattice of vortices, with an inverted parabola profile. The second regime deals with very large velocities, a case in which we prove that the ground state does not display vortices in the bulk, with a 1D limiting problem. In that case, we show that the coarse grained atomic density behaves like an inverted parabola with large radius in the deconfined direction but keeps a fixed profile given by a Gaussian in the other direction. The features of this second regime appear as new phenomena.     

Substituted tren-capped porphyrins: probing the influence of copper in synthetic models of cytochrome c oxidase

Tris(2-aminoethylamine) (tren)-capped porphyrins bearing electron donating or withdrawing groups on the amino functions of their tripod have been synthesised and the catalytic activity of each complex was carefully studied both as the iron and the iron-copper complexes: only one of our iron-copper complexes was shown to be active and selective towards the reduction of dioxygen to water.     

Comparative Study of Three Models for Moisture Transfer in Hygroscopic Materials

Transport in Porous Media - Prediction of moisture transfer within material using a classic diffusive model may lack accuracy, since numerical simulations underestimate the adsorption process when...     

Giant Vortex and the Breakdown of Strong Pinning in a Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensate

We consider a two-dimensional model for a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in an anharmonic trap. The special shape of the trapping potential, negative in a central hole and positive in an annulus, favors an annular shape for the support of the wave function u. We study the minimizers of the energy in the Thomas-Fermi limit, where a small parameter ɛ tends to 0, for two different regimes of the rotational speed Ω. When Ω is independent of ɛ, we observe that the energy minimizers acquire vorticity beyond a critical Ω, but the vortices are strongly pinned in the central hole where the potential is negative. In this regime, minimizers exhibit no vortices in the annular bulk of the condensate. There is a critical rotational speed Ω=O(|lnɛ|) for which this strong pinning effect breaks down and vortices begin to appear in the annular bulk. We derive an asymptotic formula for the critical Ω, and determine precisely the location of nucleation of the vortices at the critical value. These results are related to very recent experimental and numerical observations on BEC.