The Michael Addition of Enamines to Propenamidines. A Convenient Synthesis of 2β-Amidinoethylcyclo-Alkanones by Amidinoethylation Reaction

A variety of propenamidines 3 have been reacted with enamines of cyclopentanone and cyclohexanone giving after hydrolysis of the Stork enamine 6, 2-β-amidinoethylcyclopentanones 8 and -hexanones 7. This reaction illustrates the electrophilic character of the C=C double bond due to the conjugated amidine function, thus providing with propenamidines 3 a new class of Michael acceptors for enamines.     

Extremal loading of soft fibrous tissues: multi-scale mechanics and constitutive modeling

In the current contribution, we present a multi-scale constitutive model capturing macroscopic inelastic effects (like stress softening and permanent set) in soft tissues under cyclic loading. Soft biological tissues can be described as a biological composite material. The extracellular matrix is hereby reinforced by collagen fibers which themself are an assembly of collagen fibrils embedded in a proteoglycan (PG) rich matrix. Micro-damage induced by cyclic loading is treated by an interaction scenario between the fibrils and the PGs. At the low strain regime PGs promote sliding between fibrils [1] which leads to the yielding of statistical distributed overlapping segments. The breakage of the PG-bridges is defined by a decreasing PG-density. Due to the accumulated damage of the PG connections at high tissue strains, the strains at the fibril level increases. This finally drives the over-stretching of the fibrils, which is associated with a permanent rupture of the hydrogen bonds inside of the tropocollagen molecules [2]. The so obtained model is in line with recent experimental findings [1, 2] and was additionally validated against experimental data available in literature. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Isolation of bicarbonate from equine urine for isotope ratio mass spectrometry

Sodium bicarbonate administration to horses prior to competition in order to enhance the buffer capacity of the organism is considered as a doping offence. The analysis of the isotopic composition of urinary bicarbonate/CO(2) (TCO(2)) may help to identify an exogenous bicarbonate source, as technical sodium bicarbonate exhibits elevated delta(13)C values compared with urinary total carbon. The isolation of TCO(2) from 60 equine urine samples as BaCO(3) followed by an isotopic analysis shows a significant variability of delta(13)C for TCO(2) of more than 10 per thousand. The delta(13)C of total carbon and TCO(2) seem to reflect different proportions of C3 and C4 plant material in the diet. The isotopic analysis of different mixtures of technical NaHCO(3) and equine urine shows that TCO(2) can be easily isolated without major isotopic fractionation; however, attention has to be paid to the storage time of urine samples, as a shift of delta(13)C of TCO(2) to lower values may occur.     

Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Pretreatment of Sugarcane Bagasse: the Influence of Biomass Particle Size in the Ozonation Process

Atmospheric pressure O₂ plasma was used to produce ozone in order to treat sugarcane bagasse as a function of particle sizes. The fixed bagasse moisture content was 50 %. The delignification efficiency had small improvement due to ozonation process as a function of particle size, varying from 75 up to 80 %. Few amounts of hemicellulose were removed, but the ozonation has not been affected significantly with particle size variance as well (from 30 up to 35 %). The cellulose presented some losses below 1.0 mm size (8–15 %) which was an unexpected result. The conversion of cellulose content into free sugar has shown a significant increase as the particle size has diminished as well. The best condition of the bagasse particle size was for 0.08 mm. For this case, a great quantity of cellulose (78.8 %) was converted into glucose. Optical absorption spectroscopy was applied to determine ozone concentrations in real time where the samples with typical bagasse particle sizes equal or below to 0.5 mm had shown a better absorption of ozone in comparison with greater particle size samples.     

Flow-through amperometric methods for detection of the bioactive compound quercetin: performance of glassy carbon and screen-printed carbon electrodes

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - Rapid methods using batch injection analysis (BIA) with amperometric detection were developed for the determination of quercetin extracted from the...     

Recent developments in the synthesis and functionalization of conducting poly(thiophenes)

The mechanism of the electropolymerization of thiophene derivatives has been investigated by varying the electrosynthesis conditions and the monomer structure. The results of these analyses led to the definition of optimized electrosynthesis conditions allowing the control of the electrical and electrochemical properties of poly(thiophenes). On the basis of these results, the properties of these polymers have been modified by means of a new one-step electrosynthesis of conducting composite materials and by the direct electropolymerization of tailor-made functionalized monomers. For this purpose, the steric conditions associated to the various possibilities of covalent derivatization have been analyzed, leading to the definition of a “functionalization space”, compatible with the preservation of high conductivity and electrochemical reversibility in the resulting polymers. This concept has been applied to the synthesis of highly conducting chiral poly(thiophenes) on which an effect of enantioselective molecular recognition has been demonstrated for the first time.