A Spectroscopic and Molecular Modelling Study of the Nature of the Association Complexes of Nile Red with Cyclodextrins

The polarity-sensitive fluorescent dye Nile Red forms association complexes with various cyclodextrins in aqueous solution. The formation of such association complexes has a significant effect on the Nile Red fluorescence, with the largest effect being observed in -cyclodextrin solution. When -cyclodextrin is used to increase the Nile Red concentration in solution, the absorption spectrum shows a large blue shift indicating the formation of an inclusion complex, but surprisingly the Nile Red fluorescence is strongly suppressed. A proposed explanation for this observation involves the formation of 1:2 host:guest complexes, in which the Nile Red guests are included as relatively non-fluorescent dimers. When the solutions were prepared by adding -cyclodextrinto a near-saturated aqueous solution of Nile Red (so that 1:1 or 2:1 complexation shouldbe favoured), significant fluorescence enhancement was observed. Analysis of thefluorescence enhancement as a function of host concentration indicated the formationof 2:1 host:guest complexes in these solutions. However, electrospray mass spectroscopic studies show no evidence for the formation of any such inclusion complexes. Furthermore, molecular modelling shows that the formation of a complex involving full insertion of Nile Red in the -cyclodextrin cavity is not stable, and will quickly eject the Nile Red guest molecule. These modelling results suggest that an association complex involving capping (via the association of Nile Red parallel to the cavity opening, or by partial insertion into the cavity) of the -cyclodextrin cavity by one or two Nile Red molecules is much more likely.     

On exact toral endomorphisms

A necessary and sufficient condition for the exactness of a toral endomorphism is given in terms of the characteristic polynomial of the matrix which induces it.     

Influence of Open Chain and Cyclic Structure of Peptidomimetics on Antibacterial Activity in E. coli Strains

An efficient method for the synthesis of functionalized peptidomimetics via multicomponent Ugi reaction has been developed. The application of trifluoroethanol (TFE) as a reaction medium provided desired products with good yields. Further, using the developed cyclisation reaction, the obtained peptidomimetics were transformed into the cyclic analogues (diketopiperazines, DKPs). The goal of the performed studies was to revised and compare whether the structure of the obtained structurally flexible acyclic peptidomimetics and their rigid cycling analogue DKPs affect antimicrobial activity. We studied the potential of synthesized peptidomimetics, both cyclic and acyclic, as antimicrobial drugs on model E. coli bacteria strains (k12, R2–R4). The biological assays reveal that DKPs hold more potential as antimicrobial drugs compared to open chain Ugi peptidomimetics. We believe that it can be due to the rigid cyclic structure of DKPs which promotes the membrane penetration in the cell of studied pathogens. The obtained data clearly indicate the high antibiotic potential of synthesized diketopiperazine derivatives over tested antibiotics.     

Quasi‐Relativistic Heat Equation via Lévy Stable Distributions: Exact Solutions

We introduce and study an extension of the heat equation relevant to relativistic energy formula involving square root of differential operators. We furnish exact solutions of corresponding Cauchy (initial) problem using the operator formalism invoking one‐sided Lévy stable distributions. We note a natural appearance of Bessel polynomials which allow one to obtain closed form solutions for a number of initial conditions. The resulting diffusion is slower than the non‐relativistic one, although it still can be termed a normal one. Its detailed statistical characterization is presented in terms of exact evaluation of arbitrary moments and kurtosis and is compared with the non‐relativistic case.     

The Synthesis and Evaluation of Diethyl Benzylphosphonates as Potential Antimicrobial Agents

The impact of substituent at phenyl ring of diethyl benzylphosphonate derivatives on cytotoxic activity was studied. The organophosphonates were obtained based on developed palladium-catalyzed α, β-homodiarylation of vinyl esters protocol. The new synthetic pathway toward 1,2-bis(4-((diethoxyphosphoryl)methyl)phenyl)ethyl acetate was proposed which significantly improves the overall yield of the final product (from 1% to 38%). Several newly synthesized organophosphonates were tested as new potential antimicrobial drugs on model Escherichia coli bacterial strains (K12 and R2-R3). All tested compounds show the highest selectivity and activity against K12 and R2 strains. Preliminary cellular studies using MIC and MBC tests and digestion of Fpg after modification of bacterial DNA suggest that selected benzylphosphonate derivatives may have greater potential as antibacterial agents than typically used antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin, bleomycin and cloxacillin. These compounds are highly specific for pathogenic E. coli strains based on the model strains used and may be engaged in the future as new substitutes for commonly used antibiotics, which is especially important due to the increasing resistance of bacteria to various drugs and antibiotics.     

Synergy Between Expert and Machine‐Learning Approaches Allows for Improved Retrosynthetic Planning

When computers plan multistep syntheses, they can rely either on expert knowledge or information machine‐extracted from large reaction repositories. Both approaches suffer from imperfect functions evaluating reaction choices: expert functions are heuristics based on chemical intuition, whereas machine learning (ML) relies on neural networks (NNs) that can make meaningful predictions only about popular reaction types. This paper shows that expert and ML approaches can be synergistic—specifically, when NNs are trained on literature data matched onto high‐quality, expert‐coded reaction rules, they achieve higher synthetic accuracy than either of the methods alone and, importantly, can also handle rare/specialized reaction types.     

Studies on hydrogen diffusivity in iron aluminides using the Devanathan–Stachurski method

An electrolytic method for cathodic hydrogen saturation developed by Devanathan and Stachurski was successfully used to study hydrogen diffusivity in iron aluminides. Both an appropriate electrolyte and a saturating current density are required for this method. A proper form of the saturation curve was only obtained with 35% NaCl electrolyte, which removed the oxide film blocking hydrogen penetration without further corrosive destruction of the iron aluminide. The optimum saturation current density for determining the most reliable diffusivity was 1.91 A/cm², yielding D_eff,H = 4.81 × 10⁻⁶ cm²/s for Fe–40 at.% Al.     

Low-T Asymptotic Expansion of the Solution to the Yang–Yang Equation

We prove that the unique solution to the Yang–Yang equation arising in the context of the thermodynamics of the so-called non-linear Schrödinger model admits a low-temperature expansion to all orders. Our approach provides a rigorous justification, for a certain class of non-linear integral equations, of the low-temperature asymptotic expansions that were argued previously in various works related to the low-temperature behaviour of integrable models.     

Collective uncertainty entanglement test

For a given pure state of a composite quantum system we analyze the product of its projections onto a set of locally orthogonal separable pure states. We derive a bound for this product analogous to the entropic uncertainty relations. For bipartite systems the bound is saturated for maximally entangled states and it allows us to construct a family of entanglement measures, we shall call collectibility. As these quantities are experimentally accessible, the approach advocated contributes to the task of experimental quantification of quantum entanglement, while for a three-qubit system it is capable to identify the genuine three-party entanglement.