On retardation,radiation and Liénard–Wiechert type potentials in electrodynamics and elastodynamics

The aim of this paper is to investigate the fundamental problems of retardation and radiation caused by non-uniformly moving point sources using the theories of electrodynamics and elastodynamics. This paper investigates and compares the retarded electromagnetic fields and the retarded elastodynamic fields. For the non-uniform motion of a general point source, the Liénard–Wiechert type potentials and the radiation and nonradiation fields are derived for a point charge and for a point force.     

Effect of electrospray needle voltage on electroosmotic flow in capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry

The effect of the electrospray ionization (ESI) needle voltage on the electroosmotic flow (EOF) in capillary electrophoresis (CE)-mass spectrometry (MS) was investigated. The radial electric field that penetrates across the CE capillary wall imposed by the ESI needle voltage modifies the typical EOF. This effect was investigated for buffers commonly used in CE-MS. Variations as high as ±30% were observed.     

Channeling of fast ions through the bent carbon nanotubes:The extended two-fluid hydrodynamic model

We investigate the interactions of charged particles with straight and bent single-walled carbon nanotubes(SWNTs)under channeling conditions in the presence of dynamic polarization of the valence electrons in carbon. This polarization is described by a cylindrical, two-fluid hydrodynamic model with the parameters taken from the recent modelling of several independent experiments on electron energy loss spectroscopy of carbon nano-structures. We use the hydrodynamic model to calculate the image potential for protons moving through four types of SWNTs at a speed of 3 atomic units. The image potential is then combined with the Doyle–Turner atomic potential to obtain the total potential in the bent carbon nanotubes.Using that potential, we also compute the spatial and angular distributions of protons channeled through the bent carbon nanotubes, and compare the results with the distributions obtained without taking into account the image potential.     

Inclusion of neutral guests by water-soluble macrocyclic hosts – a comparative thermodynamic investigation with cyclodextrins,calixarenes and cucurbiturils

Abstract

The driving forces of association between three different families of macrocycles as hosts, namely cyclodextrins (α-, β-, and γ-), p-sulfonatocalix[n]arenes (n = 4–6) as well as cucurbit[n]urils (n = 6–8), and three different bicyclic azoalkane homologues as guests, namely 2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.1]hept-2-ene (DBH), 2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]oct-2-ene (DBO) as well as 2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.3]non-2-ene (DBN), were examined by means of calorimetric titrations, NMR spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulation, all in aqueous solution. The small, spherical and uncharged guests preferably bind inside the cavities of the medium sized hosts. The inclusion complexation by β-cyclodextrin and p-sulfonatocalix[4]arene shows medium binding affinities (millimolar), while cucurbit[7]uril macrocycle shows very strong binding (micromolar). For all types of macrocycles, the complex formation is enthalpically driven (ΔH° < 0), accompanied by slightly unfavourable entropy changes (ΔS° < 0). The results are discussed in terms of the flexibility of the hosts, the hydrophobic character of their cavities and the release of high-energy water upon binding, and generalised by including two additional guests, the ketones cyclopentanone and (+)-camphor.     

Toward the computer-aided discovery of FabH inhibitors. Do predictive QSAR models ensure high quality virtual screening performance?

Antibiotic resistance has increased over the past two decades. New approaches for the discovery of novel antibacterials are required and innovative strategies will be necessary to identify novel and effective candidates. Related to this problem, the exploration of bacterial targets that remain unexploited by the current antibiotics in clinical use is required. One of such targets is the \(\beta \) -ketoacyl-acyl carrier protein synthase III (FabH). Here, we report a ligand-based modeling methodology for the virtual-screening of large collections of chemical compounds in the search of potential FabH inhibitors. QSAR models are developed for a diverse dataset of 296 FabH inhibitors using an in-house modeling framework. All models showed high fitting, robustness, and generalization capabilities. We further investigated the performance of the developed models in a virtual screening scenario. To carry out this investigation, we implemented a desirability-based algorithm for decoys selection that was shown effective in the selection of high quality decoys sets. Once the QSAR models were validated in the context of a virtual screening experiment their limitations arise. For this reason, we explored the potential of ensemble modeling to overcome the limitations associated to the use of single classifiers. Through a detailed evaluation of the virtual screening performance of ensemble models it was evidenced, for the first time to our knowledge, the benefits of this approach in a virtual screening scenario. From all the obtained results, we could arrive to a significant main conclusion: at least for FabH inhibitors, virtual screening performance is not guaranteed by predictive QSAR models.     

Non-singular dislocation loops in gradient elasticity

Using gradient elasticity, we give in this Letter the non-singular fields produced by arbitrary dislocation loops in isotropic media. We present the ‘modified’ Mura, Peach–Koehler and Burgers formulae in the framework of gradient elasticity theory.     

Acoustic analysis by spherical microphone array processing of room impulse responses

Spherical microphone arrays have been recently used for room acoustics analysis, to detect the direction-of-arrival of early room reflections, and compute directional room impulse responses and other spatial room acoustics parameters. Previous works presented methods for room acoustics analysis using spherical arrays that are based on beamforming, e.g., delay-and-sum, regular beamforming, and Dolph-Chebyshev beamforming. Although beamforming methods provide useful directional selectivity, optimal array processing methods can provide enhanced performance. However, these algorithms require an array cross-spectrum matrix with a full rank, while array data based on room impulse responses may not satisfy this condition due to the single frame data. This paper presents a smoothing technique for the cross-spectrum matrix in the frequency domain, designed for spherical microphone arrays, that can solve the problem of low rank when using room impulse response data, therefore facilitating the use of optimal array processing methods. Frequency smoothing is shown to be performed effectively using spherical arrays, due to the decoupling of frequency and angular components in the spherical harmonics domain. Experimental study with data measured in a real auditorium illustrates the performance of optimal array processing methods such as MUSIC and MVDR compared to beamforming.     

A convenient synthesis of pyrazolo[3,4‐d]pyrimidine‐4,6‐dione and pyrazolo[4,3‐d]pyrimidine‐5,7‐dione derivatives

Pyrazolo‐[3,4‐d]pyrimidine‐4,6‐diones 5 and pyrazolo[4,3‐d]pyrimidine‐5,7‐diones 7 were synthesized by Curtius rearrangement of pyrazolic mono‐esters 2 and 3 followed by hetero‐cyclization via the ureas derivatives 4 and 6 under alkaline conditions.     

Growth and characterization of borono phenylalanine

Borono phenylalanine abbreviated as BPA is a biologically important compound which is obtained from L‐Phenylalanine (C₉H₁₁NO₂) in which a boron atom is bonded. BPA is an amino acid analogue, helpful in the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme, a highly malignant form of brain tumor is crystallized in silica gel under pH 6.0 by single diffusion method in a period of 30 minutes. The grown crystals were characterized by x‐ray powder diffraction, Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy and visible ultraviolet spectroscopy. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)