Intensive 2-phenylethanol production in a hybrid system combined of a stirred tank reactor and an immersed extraction membrane module

Bioconversion of l-phenylalanine to 2-phenylethanol using Saccharomyces cerevisiae is connected with the growth of biomass strongly limited by product inhibition. Therefore, fermentation can proceed only at low conversions of l-phenylalanine with very low yield of the desired product, which allows reaching the maximum concentration of 2-phenylethanol, 4 g L^?1, in an ordinary batch, fed-batch, or chemostat bioreactor. To minimize capital and operating costs in the bioproduction of chemical specialties where the product inhibits the bioreaction, using a hybrid system based on the application of membrane extraction integrated in the bioreactor to remove the product is a suitable solution. Integration can be done by an external module for membrane extraction or, as a more efficient solution, by an extraction membrane module immersed directly in the bioreactor. Such a hybrid system can be used to remove 2-phenylethanol from the fermentation media and thus to overcome the product inhibition of the biotransformation process. In this paper, a hybrid system consisting of a stirred tank bioreactor (3.5 L) and an immersed extraction hollow fiber membrane module was studied. In the proposed system, the kinetics of 2-phenylethanol extraction from a water solution with and without biomass in the bioreactor to alkanes at different operational conditions was measured. Extraction kinetics was compared with the predictions obtained by a mathematical model. In the hybrid system, two extractive biotransformation experiments were performed and compared with that without product removal. Experimental data were also mathematically predicted with good accuracy between the simulation and the experiment.     

MR detection of mechanical vibrations using a radiofrequency field gradient

A new method for NMR characterization of mechanical waves, based upon radiofrequency field gradient for motion encoding, is proposed. A binomial B1 gradient excitation scheme was used to visualize the mobile spins undergoing a periodic transverse mechanical excitation. A simple model was designed to simulate the NMR signal as a function of the wave frequency excitation and the periodicity of the NMR pulse sequence. The preliminary results were obtained on a gel phantom at low vibration frequencies (0-200 Hz) by using a ladder-shaped coil generating a nearly constant RF field gradient along a specific known direction. For very small displacements and/or B1 gradients, the NMR signal measured on a gel phantom was proportional to the vibration amplitude and the pulse sequence was shown to be selective with respect to the vibration frequency. A good estimation of the direction of vibrations was obtained by varying the angle between the motion direction and the B1 gradient. The method and its use in parallel to more conventional MR elastography techniques are discussed. The presented approach might be of interest for noninvasive investigation of elastic properties of soft tissues and other materials.     

Photoluminescence of tetrahedral quantum-dot quantum wells

Taking into account the tetrahedral shape of a quantum-dot quantum well (QDQW) when describing excitonic states, phonon modes, and the exciton-phonon interaction in the structure, we obtain within a nonadiabatic approach a quantitative interpretation of the photoluminescence spectrum of a single CdS/HgS/CdS QDQW. We find that the exciton ground state in a tetrahedral QDQW is bright, in contrast to the dark ground state for a spherical QDQW. The position of the phonon peaks in the photoluminescence spectrum is attributed to interface optical phonons. We also show that the experimental value of the Huang-Rhys parameter can be obtained only within the nonadiabatic theory of phonon-assisted transitions.     

Bipartite Subgraphs and Quasi-Randomness

We say that a family of graphs is p-quasi-random, 0<p<1, if it shares typical properties of the random graph G(n,p); for a definition, see below. We denote by the class of all graphs H for which and the number of not necessarily induced labeled copies of H in G_n is at most (1+o(1))p^e(H)n^v(H) imply that is p-quasi-random. In this note, we show that all complete bipartite graphs K_a,b, a,b2, belong to for all 0<p<1.Acknowledgments We would like to thank Andrew Thomason for fruitful discussions and Yoshi Kohayakawa for organizing Extended Workshop on Combinatorics in eq5 Paulo, Ubatuba, and Rio de Janeiro, where a part of this work was done. We also thank the referees for their careful work.The first author was partially supported by NSF grant INT-0072064The second author was partially supported by NSF grants DMS-9970622, DMS-0301228 and INT-0072064Final version received: October 24, 2003     

Creep strain recovery of Fe-Ni-B amorphous metallic ribbon

Creep strain recovery and structural relaxation of the amorphous metallic glass Fe₄₀Ni₄₁B₁₉ after longtime loading at different annealing temperatures below the glass transition temperature have been studied using anisothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and dilatometry (TMA). It has been demonstrated that structural relaxation effects depend on the stress-annealing temperature of the amorphous ribbon. The structural relaxation states of the amorphous ribbon annealed at different temperatures under and without applied stress have been compared. The activation energy spectra were calculated from the anisothermal dilatometric measurements using the modern method based on the Fourier transformation technique. The influence of the annealing temperature on the shape of creep strain recovery spectra has been analyzed.      

Synthesis of 2,6-disubstituted piperidine alkaloids from ladybird beetles Calvia 10-guttata and Calvia 14-guttata

Optically pure (+)-calvine, (+)-2-epicalvine, (2S,6S)-(6-pentylpiperidin-2-yl)acetic acid methyl ester and (2R,6S)-(6-pentylpiperidin-2-yl)acetic acid methyl ester, four piperidine alkaloids isolated from ladybird beetles of the genus Calvia (Coccinellidae), were synthesised from a common precursor using cyclisative Pd(II)/Cu(II)-catalysed carboamination-(methoxy)carbonylation tandem reaction of alkenylamines as a key step. The first single-crystal X-ray analysis of (+)-calvine confirmed its proposed absolute configuration to be (2S,6S) corresponding to that of natural product.     

Electrophoretic deposition of bacterial cells

The possibility to use alternating current electrophoretic deposition (AC-EPD) to deposit living cells in the form of Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli on stainless steel was assessed. The experimental results revealed that these bacteria can be successfully deposited on metallic surfaces from demineralized water and sucrose based solutions using asymmetric unbalanced electric fields. Cell viability of the deposited bacteria was influenced by the strain and deposition medium.     

Tellurium delta‐doped InGaP layers grown by metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy

Heavily n‐type doped and several nanometres thick In_0.485Ga_0.515P layers are necessary for various devices. We studied the delta‐doping of this ternary with tellurium; the layers were grown by metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy (MOVPE), and diethyltelluride was used as the precursor. A maximum Hall sheet concentration of 2.75 × 10¹³ cm^–2 was achieved in our samples grown at 560 °C. The Te profiles were analyzed with secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), and a very narrow spectrum with a full width at half maximum of 7.5 nm was measured. This value indicates that the memory effect, referred to in the literature, was practically eliminated with appropriate growth conditions. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Nanotubes Made from Deeply Undercooled Cryolite/Alumina Melts

The rapid‐solidification processing (by a cooling rate of 10⁵–10⁶ K/s) was used for the preparation of deeply undercooled cryolite/alumina (Na₃AlF₆/Al₂O₃) melts. We found a mass of nanotubes on the surface of these undercooled melts. The nanotubes were preferentially located on the defect places of the surface with the following approximate dimensions: base≈100×100 nm, length≈1000 nm. The solidified samples with the nanotubes on the surface were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (EDX), X‐ray diffraction (XRD), and infrared spectroscopy (IR).