Spin-glass energy landscape

We consider a nearest-neighbor-interaction ±J Ising spin glass in a square lattice. Inspired by natural evolution, we design a dynamic rule that includesselection, randomness, andmultibranch exploration. Following this rule, we succeed in walking along the space of states between local energy maxima and minima alternately. During the walk, we store various information about the spin states corresponding to these minima and maxima for later statistical analysis. In particular, we plot a histogram displaying how many times each minimum (or maximum) energy is visited as a function of the corresponding density value. Through finite-size scaling analysis, we conclude that a nonvanishing fraction of bonds remains unsatisfied (satisfied) at these energy minimum (maximum) states in the thermodynamic limit. This fraction measures the degree of unavoidable frustration of the system. Also in this limit, the width of these histograms vanishes, meaning that almost all metastable states occur at the same energy density value, with no dispersion.     

Determination of inorganic constituents and polymers in metallized plastic materials

This work presents results obtained in the analyses of metallized plastics by neutron activation analysis (NAA) and results of polymer identification by infrared spectroscopy (IR) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Metallized plastics of packagings, automobile accessories, toys, house wares, cards and compact discs were selected for these analyses. Toxic elements such as As, Cd, Cr, Ni, Sb and Sn as well as Ba, Br, Ca, Co, Fe, Sc, Se, and Zn were determined and their concentrations presented great variability. IR and DSC assays indicated that polyethylene, polypropylene, poly(ethylene terephthalate), polycarbonate, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene terpolymer are main types of polymers used in metallized plastics.     

Environmental inversion using high-resolution matched-field processing

This paper considers the inversion of experimental field data collected with light receiving systems designed to meet operational requirements. Such operational requirements include system deployment in free drifting configurations and a limited number of acoustic receivers. A well-known consequence of a reduced spatial coverage is a poor sampling of the vertical structure of the acoustic field, leading to a severe ill-conditioning of the inverse problem and data to model cost function with a massive sidelobe structure having many local extrema. This causes difficulties to meta-heuristic global search methods, such as genetic algorithms, to converge to the true model parameters. In order to cope with this difficulty, broadband high-resolution processors are proposed for their ability to significantly attenuate sidelobes, as a contribution for improving convergence. A comparative study on simulated data shows that high-resolution methods did not outperform the conventional Bartlett processor for pinpointing the true environmental parameter when using exhaustive search. However, when a meta-heuristic technique is applied for exploring a large multidimensional search space, high-resolution methods clearly improved convergence, therefore reducing the inherent uncertainty on the final estimate. These findings are supported by the results obtained on experimental field data obtained during the Maritime Rapid Environmental Assessment 2003 sea trial.     

Effects of Ultraviolet Radiation (UVA+UVB) and Copper on the Morphology,Ultrastructural Organization and Physiological Responses of the Red Alga Pterocladiella capillacea

The effect of ultraviolet (UV) radiation and copper (Cu) on apical segments of Pterocladiella capillacea was examined under two different conditions of radiation, PAR (control) and PAR+UVA+UVB (PAR+UVAB), and three copper concentrations, ranging from 0 (control) to 0.62, 1.25 and 2.50 μm . Algae were exposed in vitro to photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) at 70 μmol photons m^?2 s^?1, PAR + UVB at 0.35 W m^?2 and PAR +UVA at 0.70 W m^?2 during a 12‐h photocycle for 3 h each day for 7 days. The effects of radiation and copper on growth rates, content of photosynthetic pigments and photosynthetic performance were analyzed. In addition, samples were processed for light and transmission electron microscopy. The content of photosynthetic pigments decreased after exposure to radiation and Cu. Compared with PAR radiation and copper treatments modified the kinetics patterns of the photosynthesis/irradiance curve. The treatments also caused changes in the ultrastructure of cortical and subcortical cells, including increased cell wall thickness and accumulation of plastoglobuli, as well as changes in the organization of chloroplasts. The results indicate that the synergistic interaction between UV radiation and Cu in P. capillacea, led to the failure of protective mechanisms and causing more drastic changes and cellular imbalances.     

Synthesis of Novel Ethyl (substituted)phenyl‐4‐oxothiazolidin‐3‐yl)‐1‐ethyl‐4‐oxo‐1,4‐dihydroquinoline‐3‐Carboxylates as Potential Anticancer Agents

A series of ethyl (substituted)phenyl‐4‐oxothiazolidin‐3‐yl)‐1‐ethyl‐4‐oxo‐1,4‐dihydroquinoline‐3‐carboxylates ( 7a , 7b , 7c , 7d , 7e , 7f , 7g ) has been prepared from reactions between aminoquinolones 6 with arenealdehydes and mercaptoacetic acid. The critical intermediates, 6 a and 6b , were obtained from appropriate amines by a sequence of steps involving (i) reaction with diethylethoxymethylenemalonate, (ii) thermal cyclization in diphenyl ether, (iii) ethylation and (iv) Pd/C catalyzed reduction. New compounds 7a , 7b , 7c , 7d , 7e , 7f , 7g were fully identified and characterized by NMR (¹H and ¹³C) and specifically for 7d by X‐ray crystallography. Compounds 7b , 7c , 7d , 7e , 7f were found not to exhibit activity at 10 uM concentrations against gastric ascitis (AGP‐01), gastric adenocarcinoma kind intestinal (ACP‐02), colon (HCT‐116) and murine melanome (B16F10) cancer cells. However, none exhibited cytotoxicity against normal cells human fibroblast (MRC‐5), murine fibroblast (NIH3T3) and normal human melanocyte (Melan‐A).     

Calibration transfer employing univariate correction and robust regression

This paper proposes a new method for calibration transfer, which was specifically designed to work with isolated variables, rather than the full spectrum or spectral windows. For this purpose, a univariate procedure is initially employed to correct the spectral measurements of the secondary instrument, given a set of transfer samples. A robust regression technique is then used to obtain a model with low sensitivity with respect to the univariate correction residuals. The proposed method is employed in two case studies involving near infrared spectrometric determination of specific mass, research octane number and naphthenes in gasoline, and moisture and oil in corn. In both cases, better calibration transfer results were obtained in comparison with piecewise direct standardization (PDS). The proposed method should be of a particular value for use with application-targeted instruments that monitor only a small set of spectral variables.     

A near-infrared spectroscopy method to determine aminoglycosides in pharmaceutical formulations

The analytical determination of aminoglycosides in pharmaceutical formulations is very difficult due to the lack of chromophores or fluorophores. Several analytical methods have been developed along the years mainly based on derivatization reactions. The European Pharmacopeia (EP) and the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) describe a microbiological assay to the quantification of aminoglycosides. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) can be used alternatively to analyse aminoglycosides without the need of derivatization reactions or other type of sample processing. A new NIRS based method was developed for the analysis of the aminoglycoside antibiotic neomycin. The method was developed with samples based on a commercial formulation containing neomycin sulphate and three excipients: lactose, talc and magnesium stearate. Synthetic and doped samples were manufactured for this purpose. Three lots of a commercial solid formulation were also used to assess the validity of the method to quantify neomycin sulphate in the industrial pharmaceutical product. The method proposes measurements in reflectance mode using a Fourier-transform near infrared (FT-NIR) spectrometer. Partial least squares regression was the multivariate method adopted to calibrate the NIR spectra with the neomycin sulphate mass fraction. The concentration of neomycin sulphate present in the commercial samples was confirmed by HPLC with pre-column derivatization with phenylisocyanate. Results show that neomycin sulphate was determined successfully in the commercial samples using the method calibrated with the doped samples (mass fraction error of 6.6%). Moreover, the synthetic samples were found to be unqualified to develop the method, producing a biased calibration.     

Kinetics of Lime Pretreatment of Sugarcane Bagasse to Enhance Enzymatic Hydrolysis

The objective of this work was to determine the optimum conditions of sugarcane bagasse pretreatment with lime to increase the enzymatic hydrolysis of the polysaccharide component and to study the delignification kinetics. The first stage was an evaluation of the influence of temperature, reaction time, and lime concentration in the pretreatment performance measured as glucose release after hydrolysis using a 2³ central composite design and response surface methodology. The maximum glucose yield was 228.45 mg/g raw biomass, corresponding to 409.9 mg/g raw biomass of total reducing sugars, with the pretreatment performed at 90°C, for 90 h, and with a lime loading of 0.4 g/g dry biomass. The enzymes loading was 5.0 FPU/dry pretreated biomass of cellulase and 1.0 CBU/dry pretreated biomass of β-glucosidase. Kinetic data of the pretreatment were evaluated at different temperatures (60°C, 70°C, 80°C, and 90°C), and a kinetic model for bagasse delignification with lime as a function of temperature was determined. Bagasse composition (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) was measured, and the study has shown that 50% of the original material was solubilized, lignin and hemicellulose were selectively removed, but cellulose was not affected by lime pretreatment in mild temperatures (60–90°C). The delignification was highly dependent on temperature and duration of pretreatment.