Determination of carbon monoxide in tuna by gas chromatography with micro-thermal conductivity detector

The suitability of a portable gas chromatograph equipped with a micro-thermal conductivity detector for the head-space determination of carbon monoxide (CO) in tuna samples is evaluated; CO is estimated after its liberation from tissue by acidic treatment at 70 degrees C. Using the tested technique, the CO contents in untreated and suspected treated samples are analyzed. A limit of detection of approximately 13 ng/g is reached. The results demonstrate that this apparatus has performances similar to more expensive and sophisticated instruments.     

Sudden death of entanglement induced by polarization mode dispersion

We study the decoherence of polarization-entangled photon pairs subject to the effects of polarization mode dispersion, the chief polarization decoherence mechanism in optical fibers. We show that fiber propagation reveals an intriguing interplay between the concepts of entanglement sudden death, decoherence-free subspaces, and nonlocality. We define the boundaries in which entanglement-based quantum communications protocols relying on fiber propagation can be applied.     

A minimum principle for a soap film problem in {\mathbb{R}^{2}}

In this note, we investigate the problem of a thin extensible film (a soap film), under the influence of gravity and surface tension, supported by the contour of a given strictly convex smooth domain Ω. Our main result is a minimum principle for an appropriate combination of u(x) and ${\left\vert \nabla u\left( \mathbf{x}\right) \right\vert }$ , that is, a kind of P-function in the sense of Payne (see the book of Sperb in Maximum Principles and Their Applications. Academic Press, New York, 1981), where u(x) is the solution of our problem. As an application of this minimum principle, we obtain some a priori estimates for the surface represented by the thin extensible film, in terms of the curvature of ${\partial \Omega}$ . The proofs make use of Hopf’s maximum principles, some topological arguments regarding the local behavior of analytic functions and some computations in normal coordinates with respect to the boundary ${\partial \Omega }$ .     

Effect of fiber-spinning profile on plug-and-play quantum-key distribution systems

The spin profile of a fiber is usually optimized to reduce transmission impairments caused by polarization-mode dispersion (PMD). In this paper, we show that fiber-optic-based plug-and-play quantum-key distribution systems using polarization modulation and fibers with a spin profile optimal for PMD may suffer from a large Faraday rotation induced by the geomagnetic field. We show that, for periodic spin patterns of small periods, the Faraday rotation is minimum when no spin is applied to the fiber.     

Loss of polarization entanglement in a fiber-optic system with polarization mode dispersion in one optical path

We characterize theoretically and experimentally the degradation of polarization entanglement in a fiber-optic entanglement distribution system where one of the optical fibers is exposed to the effects of polarization mode dispersion (PMD). We show gradual reduction of entanglement with increasing PMD and find that the highest PMD tolerance is achieved when the bandwidth of the pump used to generate the entangled photons in a χ((3)) process is approximately half the bandwidth of the quantum channels.     

Invariant Measures and Decay of Correlations for a Class of Ergodic Probabilistic Cellular Automata

We give new sufficient ergodicity conditions for two-state probabilistic cellular automata (PCA) of any dimension and any radius. The proof of this result is based on an extended version of the duality concept. Under these assumptions, in the one dimensional case, we study some properties of the unique invariant measure and show that it is shift-mixing. Also, the decay of correlation is studied in detail. In this sense, the extended concept of duality gives exponential decay of correlation and allows to compute explicitly all the constants involved.     

A computational analysis of the binding mode of closantel as inhibitor of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Onchocerca volvulus</Emphasis> chitinase: insights on macrofilaricidal drug design

Onchocerciasis is a leading cause of blindness with at least 37 million people infected and more than 120 million people at risk of contracting the disease; most (99%) of this population, threatened by infection, live in Africa. The drug of choice for mass treatment is the microfilaricidal Mectizan^® (ivermectin); it does not kill the adult stages of the parasite at the standard dose which is a single annual dose aimed at disease control. However, multiple treatments a year with ivermectin have effects on adult worms. The discovery of new therapeutic targets and drugs directed towards the killing of the adult parasites are thus urgently needed. The chitinase of filarial nematodes is a new drug target due to its essential function in the metabolism and molting of the parasite. Closantel is a potent and specific inhibitor of chitinase of Onchocerca volvulus (OvCHT1) and other filarial chitinases. However, the binding mode and specificity of closantel towards OvCHT1 remain unknown. In the absence of a crystallographic structure of OvCHT1, we developed a homology model of OvCHT1 using the currently available X-ray structures of human chitinases as templates. Energy minimization and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of the model led to a high quality of 3D structure of OvCHIT1. A flexible docking study using closantel as the ligand on the binding site of OvCHIT1 and human chitinases was performed and demonstrated the differences in the closantel binding mode between OvCHIT1 and human chitinase. Furthermore, molecular dynamics simulations and free-energy calculation were employed to determine and compare the detailed binding mode of closantel with OvCHT1 and the structure of human chitinase. This comparative study allowed identification of structural features and properties responsible for differences in the computationally predicted closantel binding modes. The homology model and the closantel binding mode reported herein might help guide the rational development of novel drugs against the adult parasite of O. volvulus and such findings could be extrapolated to other filarial neglected diseases.