Radioactivity in the Baltic Sea: inventories and temporal trends of <Superscript>137</Superscript>Cs and <Superscript>90</Superscript>Sr in water and sediments

The Baltic Sea is ecologically unique as one of the world’s largest brackish water basins. It was significantly contaminated by radioactivity following the Chernobyl accident in 1986, the major contaminant being long-lived ¹³⁷Cs. Due to the slow exchange of water between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea and the relatively rapid sedimentation rates, radionuclides have prolonged residence times in the Baltic Sea. ¹³⁷Cs levels are consequently still clearly higher than in other water bodies around the world. In addition to the Chernobyl accident, artificial radionuclides in the Baltic Sea originate from the global fallout following nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s, while discharges into the Baltic Sea from nuclear power plants and other facilities are of minor importance. Here, inventories and the temporal evolution of radionuclides both in seawater and sediments of the Baltic Sea are presented and discussed.     

Neutralino and chargino masses and related sum rules beyond MSSM

We study the implications of dimension five operators involving Higgs chiral superfields for the masses of neutralinos and charginos in the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). These operators can arise from additional interactions beyond those of MSSM involving new degrees of freedom at or above the TeV scale. In addition to the masses of the neutralinos and charginos, we study the sum rules involving the masses and squared masses of these particles for different gaugino mass patterns in presence of the dimension five operators. We derive a relation for the higgsino mixing mass parameter and tan β in the presence of the dimension five operators.     

Phenomenology of radions

In this paper I will discuss the phenomenology of radion of the Randall-Sundrum type models. I will consider the radion couplings and its production and decay, in the same time taking into account the mixing of radion with Higgs.     

13C NMR study of some polychloro-isobutane and -isobutene compounds

The ¹³C chemical shifts and the carbon–proton coupling constants have been determined for some chlorinated isobutane and isobutene compounds. The one-bond coupling constants in isobutane derivatives showed a regular increase with an increasing number of γ-chlorine substituents. The three-bond coupling constant of the methyl carbon decreased from 4.2 to 2.0 Hz as the number of chlorine substituents in the γ-position increased. In the isobutene compounds, the vicinal coupling of C-1 was larger to protons in a group that is trans with respect to a chlorine substituent on C-1 than to those in the corresponding group cis to the chlorine. The vicinal coupling constants between atoms in geminal groups (on C-2) seem to be affected by the orientation of the chlorine substituent on C-1.     

Comparison of infrared-excited up-converting phosphors and europium nanoparticles as labels in a two-site immunoassay

Research in the field of immunoassays and labels used in the detection has been recently focused on particulate reporters, which possess very high specific activity that excludes the label as a sensitivity limiting factor. However, the large size and shape of the particulate labels may produce additional problems to immunoassay performance. The aim of this work was to study with two identical non-competitive two-site immunoassays whether up-converting phosphor (UCP) particles are comparable in performance with europium(III) chelate-dyed nanoparticles as particulate labels. In addition we strived to verify the common assumption of the photostability of up-converting phosphor particles supporting their potential applicability in imaging. Detection limits in two-site immunoassay for free prostate-specific antigen (free-PSA) were 0.53 ng L⁻¹ and 1.3 ng L⁻¹ using two different up-converting phosphors and 0.16 ng L⁻¹ using europium(III) nanoparticle. Large size distribution and non-specific binding of up-converting phosphor particles caused assay variation in low analyte concentrations and limited the analytical detection limit. The non-specific binding was the major factor limiting the analytical sensitivity of the immunoassay. The results suggests the need for nanoscaled and uniformely sized UCP-particles to increace the sensitivity and applicability of up-converting phosphor particles. Anti-Stokes photoluminescence of up-converting phosphor particles did not photobleach when measured repeatedly, on the contrary, the time-resolved fluorescence of europium nanoparticles photobleached relatively rapidly.     

1H, 13C and 15N NMR spectral characterization of twenty-seven 1,2-diaryl-(4E)-arylidene-2-imidazolin-5-ones

1H, 13C and 15N NMR chemical shifts and couplings (n)J(H,C) in DMSO-d(6) at 30 degrees C have been determined for 1,2-diaryl-(4E)-arylidene-2-imidazolin-5-one derivatives 1-27. Their chemical shift assignments are based on PFG DQF 1H,1H COSY, PFG 1H,13C HMQC as well as PFG 1H,13C and 1H,15N HMBC experiments. For compounds 1-10 including aryl fluorine substituent(s) also the couplings (n)J(F,C) (n = 1 - 4) are reported.