Electroanalytical determination of cadmium and lead in deciduous teeth after microwave oven digestion

A method using differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry after microwave oven digestion was developed for the simultaneous determination of Cd(II) and Pb(II) in the deciduous teeth of children. Each tooth was weighed; deposited in a 120 mL capped Teflon vessel with 5 mL 65% nitric acid, Suprapur analytical grade; and digested in a 2-step microwave oven for 15 min. The detection limits for Cd(II) and Pb(II) in the final solution were 0.078 and 0.323 microg/L, and the quantitation limits 0.394 and 1.613 microg/L, respectively, with a linearity range of 2 microg/L for Cd(II) and 23.3 microg/L for Pb(II). The sensitivity was 2.51 nA/microg-L and 1.37 nA/microg-L, for Cd(II) and Pb(II). The main advantages of this technique are a complete and satisfactory dissolution of the tooth material with the proposed microwave oven digestion procedure, without sample pretreatments, such as drying, ashing, or powdering. The voltammetric procedure proved to be well designed because of significant goodness of fit to a linear model, and the accuracy of the method was established as compared with standard reference material. The methodology has enabled us to study Cd(II) and Pb(II) in 371 deciduous teeth from school children in Cartagena, Spain.     

Radioisotope method for characterization of vegetable tannins, extracted from waste of forestry production in Cuba

Vegetable tannins are polyphenolic plants secondary metabolites, widely distributed in all parts of trees and herbs. The role of these substances in many metabolic processes is very important. Vegetable tannins have been implicated as probable antinutritional factors, decreasing the assimilation of diet protein assimilation by cattle. On the other hand, protective antioxidant and antimutagenic properties have been ascribed for these compounds. Characterization of vegetable tannins is important in order to find new sources of natural raw materials with medical and pharmaceutical applications. Protein precipitation capacity as a function of pH, competitive protein and ADN binding assays and the determination of tannins concentration are described. Radioisotope labeled protein and tannins were used in all of the determinations.     

Conformational analysis of sulfur-containing 6-deoxy-l-hexose derivatives by molecular modeling and NMR spectroscopy. A theoretical study and experimental evidence of intramolecular nonbonded interactions between sulfur and oxygen

6-Deoxy-l-mannose diphenyldithioacetal (1) unexpectedly gave the rearranged products phenyl 3,4-di-O-acetyl-2-S-phenyl-1,2-dithio-6-deoxy-beta-l-glucopyranoside (9) and 3,4-di-O-acetyl-2,5-anhydro-6-deoxy-l-glucose diphenyldithioacetal (10) upon treatment with acetyl chloride, while 6-deoxy-l-mannose ethylenedithioacetal (3) yielded (4aR,6S,7S,8R,8aS)-7,8-diacetyloxy-6-methylhexahydro-4aH-[1,4]dithiino[2,3b]pyran (11), whose structure was further confirmed by X-ray diffraction, and 3,4-di-O-acetyl-2,5-anhydro-l-rhamnose ethylenedithioacetal (12). The geometry of the four rearranged products as well as that of 1-thio-6-deoxy-l-mannopyranosides 5 and 7 and their acetyl derivatives 6 and 8 was studied by density functional theory (B3LYP/6-31G) molecular models, in combination with a Karplus-type analysis of the NMR vicinal coupling constants, revealing that the six-membered ring of pyranosides 5-9 and 11 exists in a slightly distorted chair conformation (6-13% distortion) and that the conformational behavior of the 2,5-anhydro-6-deoxy-l-glucose dithioacetals 10 and 12 is strongly influenced by the presence of stabilizing intramolecular nonbonded sulfur-oxygen 1,4- and 1,5-interactions. Compounds 9-12 were formed by a molecular rearrangement via sulfonium ion intermediates followed by stereoselective intramolecular cyclizations as formulated by the quantum chemical calculations performed in the present study.     

Bubble finite elements for the primitive equations of the ocean

We introduce in this paper two original Mixed methods for the numerical resolution of the (stationary) Primitive Equations (PE) of the Ocean. The PE govern the behavior of oceanic flows in shallow domains for large time scales. We use a reduced formulation (Lions et al. [28]) involving horizontal velocities and surface pressures. By using bubble functions constructed ad-hoc, we are able to define two stable Mixed Methods requiring a low number of degrees of freedom. The first one is based on the addition of bubbles of reduced support to velocities elementwise. The second one makes use of conic bubbles of extended support along the vertical coordinate. The latter constitutes a genuine mini-element for the PE, e.g., it requires the least number of extra degrees of freedom to stabilize piecewise linear hydrostatic pressures. Both methods verify a specific inf-sup condition and provide stability and convergence. Finally, we compare several numerical features of the proposed pairs in the context of other FE methods found in the literature.     

Conformational study of galphimines A and B

A conformational study has been performed for galphimines A and B, which differ from each other only in an acetate moiety on ring B of galphimine A. Mechanical molecular calculations showed that the predominant conformers in a Boltzman distribution are those which establish an intramolecular hydrogen bond between the hydroxyls on rings A and B, keeping a similar conformation on the rest of the molecule. The existence of these conformers was confirmed by NMR spectroscopy in (D6) DMSO solution. Furthermore, an unbound hydrogen conformation was found. These types of conformations very probably coexist in solution, for both types of galphimines A and B. Additional experiments suggest that the acetate group on galphimine A does not distort rings B and A, neither does it disturb the intramolecular hydrogen bond formation that also shows galphimine B. Finally, it does not present a steric effect on ring A to avoid any type of interaction of the functional groups on this ring with the biological receptor. The acetate group, which is responsible for the lost of activity of galphimine A very probably prevent that the hydroxyls OH4 and OH7 from interacting, either in a hydrogen bounded or free form, with the receptor, indicating the importance that these hydroxyls play in the biological activity of the molecule.     

Tailoring Disorder and Dimensionality: Strategies for Improved Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Electrolytes

Towards cooler solid oxide fuel cells: Disorder and dimensionality (see picture) play an important role in determining ion mobility of bulk and artificially nanolayered materials and should be considered in the design of new electrolytes with enhanced conductivity.

     

Localized SVEP, Property (b) and Property (ab)

Property (b) for a bounded linear operator ${T \in L(X)}$ on a Banach space X means that the points λ of the approximate point spectrum for which λI – T is upper semi-Weyl are exactly the spectral points λ for which λI – T is Browder. In this paper we shall give several characterizations of operators T for which T, or its dual T*, has property (b). We also investigate the property (ab) which is closely related to property (b).     

Property (R) under Perturbations

Property (R) holds for a bounded linear operator ${T \in L(X)}$ , defined on a complex infinite dimensional Banach space X, if the isolated points of the spectrum of T which are eigenvalues of finite multiplicity are exactly those points λ of the approximate point spectrum for which λI ? T is upper semi-Browder. In this paper we consider the permanence of this property under quasi nilpotent, Riesz, or algebraic perturbations commuting with T.     

Error estimates of a linear decoupled Euler–FEM scheme for a mass diffusion model

We present error estimates of a linear fully discrete scheme for a three-dimensional mass diffusion model for incompressible fluids (also called Kazhikhov–Smagulov model). All unknowns of the model (velocity, pressure and density) are approximated in space by C ⁰-finite elements and in time an Euler type scheme is used decoupling the density from the velocity–pressure pair. If we assume that the velocity and pressure finite-element spaces satisfy the inf–sup condition and the density finite-element space contains the products of any two discrete velocities, we first obtain point-wise stability estimates for the density, under the constraint lim_(h,k)→0 h/k = 0 (h and k being the space and time discrete parameters, respectively), and error estimates for the velocity and density in energy type norms, at the same time. Afterwards, error estimates for the density in stronger norms are deduced. All these error estimates will be optimal (of order O(h+k){\mathcal{O}(h+k)}) for regular enough solutions without imposing nonlocal compatibility conditions at the initial time. Finally, we also study two convergent iterative methods for the two problems to solve at each time step, which hold constant matrices (independent of iterations).