Xanthene-Based Nitric Oxide-Responsive Nanosensor for Photoacoustic Imaging in the SWIR Window

Shortwave infrared (SWIR) dyes are characterized by their ability to absorb light from 900 to 1400 nm, which is ideal for deep tissue imaging owing to minimized light scattering and interference from endogenous pigments. An approach to access such molecules is to tune the photophysical properties of known near-infrared dyes. Herein, we report the development of a series of easily accessible (three steps) SWIR xanthene dyes based on a dibenzazepine donor conjugated to thiophene ( SCR-1 ), thienothiophene ( SCR-2 ), or bithiophene ( SCR-3 ). We leverage the fact that SCR-1 undergoes a bathochromic shift when aggregated for in vivo studies by developing a ratiometric nanoparticle for NO ( rNP-NO ), which we employed to successfully visualize pathological levels of nitric oxide in a drug-induced liver injury model via deep tissue SWIR photoacoustic (PA) imaging. Our work demonstrates how easily this dye series can be utilized as a component in nanosensor designs for imaging studies.     

Evaporation of Lennard-Jones clusters

Extensive molecular dynamics simulations have been done to study the evaporation of a 13-atom Lennard-Jones cluster. The survival probability and the evaporative lifetime are calculated as a function of the cluster total energy from a classical trajectory analysis. The results are interpreted in terms of the RRK theory of unimolecular dissociation. The calculation of the binding energy of the evaporated species from the evaporation rate and the average kinetic energy release is discussed.     

Vanadium(V) environments in bismuth vanadates: A structural investigation using Raman spectroscopy and solid state V NMR

The Bi₂O₃---V₂O₅ system was examined using Raman spectroscopy and solid state ⁵¹V wideline, magic-angle spinning (MAS), and nutation NMR spectroscopy. The methods are shown to be complementary in the identification of the various phases and in the characterization of their vanadium site symmetries. Most of the compositions examined (1:1 ≤ Bi:V ≤ 60:1) are multiphasic. Depending on the Bi:V ratio, the following phases have been identified: BiVO₄, Bi₄V₂O₁₁, a triclinic type-II phase, a cubic type-I phase, γ-Bi₂O₃ doped with V(V) (sillenite), and β-Bi₂O₃. Detailed spectroscopic characterization reveals that vanadium is tetrahedrally coordinated in all these compounds, and that the degree of symmetry increases with increasing Bi:V ratio. At the highest Bi:V ratios, the combined interpretation of the Raman and NMR data provides strong evidence for the presence of Bi⁵⁺O₄ tetrahedra.     

Characterization and adsorption capacity of Brazilian kaolin

Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry - This study has evaluated chemical, radiological composition and determined the cation exchange capacity (CEC) for three commercially available...     

A heuristic algorithm based on multi-assignment procedures for nurse scheduling

This paper tackles a Nurse Scheduling Problem which consists of generating work schedules for a set of nurses while considering their shift preferences and other requirements. The objective is to maximize the satisfaction of nurses’ preferences and minimize the violation of soft constraints. This paper presents a new deterministic heuristic algorithm, called MAPA (multi-assignment problem-based algorithm), which is based on successive resolutions of the assignment problem. The algorithm has two phases: a constructive phase and an improvement phase. The constructive phase builds a full schedule by solving successive assignment problems, one for each day in the planning period. The improvement phase uses a couple of procedures that re-solve assignment problems to produce a better schedule. Given the deterministic nature of this algorithm, the same schedule is obtained each time that the algorithm is applied to the same problem instance. The performance of MAPA is benchmarked against published results for almost 250,000 instances from the NSPLib dataset. In most cases, particularly on large instances of the problem, the results produced by MAPA are better when compared to best-known solutions from the literature. The experiments reported here also show that the MAPA algorithm finds more feasible solutions compared with other algorithms in the literature, which suggest that this proposed approach is effective and robust.     

The Synthesis of 3,5-Diamino-1,2,4-oxadiazoles. 1st Communication

Reaction of the 1-substituted-3-cyano-isothioureas 6 with hydroxylamine gave mixtures of the 5-amino-3-substituted-amino-1,2,4-oxadiazoles 1 and the isomeric 3-amino-5-substituted-amino-1,2,4-oxadiazoles 8 in which 1 usually predominated. The structural assignment of these products is discussed. In a second method, the 2-hydroxy-1-methyl-1-phenyl-guanidine 15 was converted to the corresponding 3-disubstituted-amino-5-trichloromethyl-1,2,4-oxadiazole 16 , a precursor to the 5-amino derivatives 17 by nucleophilic displacement of the trichloromethyl group.     

A Note on Caterpillar-Embeddings with No Two Parallel Edges

Let G be a set of n points in general position (i.e., no three points are on a line) in the plane, and let C be a caterpillar on n vertices. We show that one can always find a rectilinear embedding of C in the plane such that the vertices of C are the points of G and no two edges of C go to parallel segments. This proves a conjecture of Robert E. Jamison.     

An Inexact Modified Subgradient Algorithm for Primal-Dual Problems via Augmented Lagrangians

We consider a primal optimization problem in a reflexive Banach space and a duality scheme via generalized augmented Lagrangians. For solving the dual problem (in a Hilbert space), we introduce and analyze a new parameterized Inexact Modified Subgradient (IMSg) algorithm. The IMSg generates a primal-dual sequence, and we focus on two simple new choices of the stepsize. We prove that every weak accumulation point of the primal sequence is a primal solution and the dual sequence converges weakly to a dual solution, as long as the dual optimal set is nonempty. Moreover, we establish primal convergence even when the dual optimal set is empty. Our second choice of the stepsize gives rise to a variant of IMSg which has finite termination.