Functionalization of cellulose nanocrystal powder by non-thermal atmospheric-pressure plasmas

Cellulose - Despite promising characteristics such as the biodegradability and the environmentally benign nature of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) based composites, their poor dispersion and...     

Efficient synthesis of N,N′-dialkyl-N″-dialkylaminocarbothioyl thioureas from cyclic secondary amines, CS2, and N,N′-dialkyl carbodiimides in water

A mild, convenient, and practical one-pot procedure for direct synthesis of N,N′-dialkyl-N″-dialkylaminocarbothioyl thioureas is described via three-component reaction of cyclic secondary amines, CS₂, and N,N′-dialkyl carbodiimides in water at room temperature.     

Meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) approximation to the two dimensional sine-Gordon equation

During the past few years, the idea of using meshless methods for numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDEs) has received much attention throughout the scientific community, and remarkable progress has been achieved on meshless methods. The meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) method is one of the “truly meshless” methods since it does not require any background integration cells. The integrations are carried out locally over small sub-domains of regular shapes, such as circles or squares in two dimensions and spheres or cubes in three dimensions. In this paper the MLPG method for numerically solving the non-linear two-dimensional sine-Gordon (SG) equation is developed. A time-stepping method is employed to deal with the time derivative and a simple predictor-corrector scheme is performed to eliminate the non-linearity. A brief discussion is outlined for numerical integrations in the proposed algorithm. Some examples involving line and ring solitons are demonstrated and the conservation of energy in undamped SG equation is investigated. The final numerical results confirm the ability of proposed method to deal with the unsteady non-linear problems in large domains.     

Chaos and reproduction in sea level

Prediction of sea-level is an important task for navigation, coastal engineering and geodetic applications, as well as recreational activities. This study presents a comparison of Chaos theory and Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) techniques for sea level modelling for daily, weekly, 10-day and monthly time scale at the Cocos (Keeling) islands from 1992 to 2001. The state space reconstruction of the unknown underlying process is directly employed from time series data, through Takens delay embedding method: optimal embedding dimension and delay time are obtained from false nearest neighbours and average mutual information techniques, respectively. Optimal values are then used for the estimation of the correlation dimension and the largest Lyapunov exponent, for inspecting possible signatures of chaotic dynamics. We find a positive Lyapunov exponent an evident feature of chaos. Indeed, the nonlinear prediction of sea level, in the period ranging from January 2001 to December 2001, is in an excellent agreement with the data for the same period, evidencing the nonlinear nature of the process. ARIMA method is also used for sea level modelling, for the same time scales; the performances of the two models are compared using such statistical indices as the root mean square error (RMSE) and correlation coefficient (CC). The comparative analyses show that the chaos theory model has a slight edge over ARIMA while both models are in principal acceptable.     

Directed Evolution of a Bacterial Laccase (CueO) for Enzymatic Biofuel Cells

Escherichia coli's copper efflux oxidase (CueO) has rarely been employed in the cathodic compartment of enzymatic biofuel cells (EBFCs) due to its low redox potential (0.36 V vs. Ag/AgCl, pH 5.5) towards O₂ reduction. Herein, directed evolution of CueO towards a more positive onset potential was performed in an electrochemical screening system. An improved CueO variant (D439T/L502K) was obtained with a significantly increased onset potential (0.54 V), comparable to that of high‐redox‐potential fungal laccases. Upon coupling with an anodic compartment, the EBFC exhibited an open‐circuit voltage (V_oc) of 0.56 V. Directed enzyme evolution by tailoring enzymes to application conditions in EBFCs has been validated and might, in combination with molecular understanding, enable future breakthroughs in EBFC performance     

Development and application of SBA‐15 assisted electromembrane extraction followed by corona discharge ion mobility spectrometry for the determination of Thiabendazole in fruit juice samples

A new sample preparation method based on SBA‐15 assisted electromembrane extraction coupled with corona discharge ion mobility spectrometer was developed for the determination of Thiabendazole as a model basic pesticide in fruit juice samples. The addition of SBA‐15 in the supported liquid membrane in electromembrane extraction system not only can lead to enhancement of the effective surface area, but also introducing the negatively charged silanol groups into supported liquid membrane might improve migration of positively charged analytes toward the supported liquid membrane and finally into the acceptor solution. To investigate the effect of the presence of SBA‐15 in the supported liquid membrane on the extraction efficiency, a comparative study was carried out between the conventional electromembrane extraction and SBA‐15/electromembrane extraction methods. Under the optimized conditions, SBA‐15/electromembrane extraction method showed higher extraction efficiencies in comparison with conventional electromembrane extraction method. SBA‐15/electromembrane extraction method exhibited a low limit of detection (0.9 ng/mL), high preconcentration factor (167) and high recovery (83%). Finally, the applicability of SBA‐15/electromembrane extraction method was studied by the extraction and determination of Thiabendazole as a model basic pesticide in fruit juice samples.     

Synthesis,characterization, cytotoxicity,DNA binding and computational studies of an anionic palladium(II) complex derived from 8-hydroxyquinoline and 1,1-cyclobutanedicarboxylate

A novel 1,1-cyclobutanedicarboxylato-8-hydroxyquinolinatopalladate(II), Na[Pd(8-QO)(cbdca)] (8-QO = 8-hydroxyquinoline and cbdca = 1,1-cyclobutanedicarboxylate) has been designed and synthesized. The structure of the complex has been characterized by elemental analysis, molar conductance, FT-IR, UV–Vis, ¹³C NMR, ¹H NMR spectroscopy. The cytotoxic activities of the complex have been tested against human foreskin fibroblast normal cell line, HFFF2 and two human breast cancer cell lines, T47D and MCF-7 by MTT assay techniques. The binding properties of the antitumor complex with calf thymus DNA (ctDNA) have been investigated under physiological condition in Tris–HCl buffer solution at pH 7.0 by absorption spectroscopy, fluorescence titration spectra, EB displacement and gel chromatography studies. All these results demonstrate that the water soluble complex can cooperatively bind to ctDNA at low concentrations through a static quenching procedure. Thermodynamic parameters were calculated according to Van’t Hoff equation which indicated that hydrogen bond and van der Waals force play predominant roles in the binding process. Finally, the results of molecular docking calculations clarify the binding mode which is in good accordance with experimental results.