Effects of solvent casted poly (lactic acid)/poly(ethylene glycol)/paraben derivative triazine films on antibacterial performance and cytotoxicity

A series of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) films that including fully paraben substituted triazine derivatives having anti-bacterial properties have been prepared by utilizing the solvent-casting method. PLA as biodegradable polymer, poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) as a plasticizing agent and s-triazine molecules (TA01, TA02, TA03, TA04, and TA05) behaving as an anti-bacterial component have been utilized in the experiments. The influence of TA compounds on the antibacterial performance of PLA/PEG films was investigated for the first time against Gram-negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) bacteria via the contact active method. TA01-03-05 incorporated PLA/PEG films gave the best results against E.coli bacteria and log10 reductions of these films were 0.78, 0.64, and 0.65 respectively. The effect of TA compounds on the cell viability was investigated against cancer and non-cancerous cell lines using an MTS assay. The results showed that TA compounds had a positive effect on cell growth in non-cancerous cells, while they had a negative effect on cell growth in cancer cells. Furthermore, the addition of TA considerably increased the decomposition temperatures from 349° to 361° and char yield from 0.65 for PLA/PEG film to 2.3 for PLA/PEG/TA05. All of the films had good transparency and low opacity which was 7.2 for pure PLA used for control and the maximum opacity value was 11.2 observed for PLA/PEG/01. TA03 and TA04 caused a decrement of water vapor permission when compared to PLA/PEG films from 1439 to 749 and 664. It was also observed that pure PLA/PEG film lost weight rapidly over time during degradation tests. On the other hand, weight loss wasn't observed in PLA/PEG/TA films. This study focused on demonstrating the use of our new, flexible PLA/PEG derivatives in food and medical packaging.     

Sliding frictional contact between a rigid punch and a laterally graded elastic medium

Analytical and computational methods are developed for contact mechanics analysis of functionally graded materials (FGMs) that possess elastic gradation in the lateral direction. In the analytical formulation, the problem of a laterally graded half-plane in sliding frictional contact with a rigid punch of an arbitrary profile is considered. The governing partial differential equations and the boundary conditions of the problem are satisfied through the use of Fourier transformation. The problem is then reduced to a singular integral equation of the second kind which is solved numerically by using an expansion–collocation technique. Computational studies of the sliding contact problems of laterally graded materials are conducted by means of the finite element method. In the finite element analyses, the laterally graded half-plane is discretized by quadratic finite elements for which the material parameters are specified at the centroids. Flat and triangular punch profiles are considered in the parametric analyses. The comparisons of the results generated by the analytical technique to those computed by the finite element method demonstrate the high level of accuracy attained by both methods. The presented numerical results illustrate the influences of the lateral nonhomogeneity and the coefficient of friction on the contact stresses.     

Design of a new biosensor platform for creatinine determination

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - In this study, a new amperometric biosensor for creatinine determination was developed. For this purpose, a polypyrrole-polyvinylsulfonate film was...     

Surface‐initiated single‐electron transfer reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer polymerization of 2‐hydroxyethyl acrylamide on silicon substrate at ambient temperature

2‐Hydroxyethyl acrylamide was successfully polymerized via single‐electron transfer initiation on the silicon surface and propagation through the reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (SET‐RAFT) polymerization at ambient temperature for different polymerization times. This work is the first time application of the surface‐initiated SET‐RAFT mechanism to afford the preparation of well‐defined poly(2‐hydroxyethyl acrylamide) [poly(HEAAm)] brushes at ambient temperature. The polymerization was well controlled and produced poly(HEAAm) brushes on the silicon surface with a well‐defined target molecular weight. The controlled nature of the polymerization was further demonstrated in the presence of sulfur atoms at the chain ends in X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy experiments. The grafting density (σ, chains nm^?2) and the average distance between grafting points (D, nm) were found to be 0.42 chains nm^?2 and 1.74 nm, respectively, indicating moderate grafting density. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2019 , 57, 1140–1146     

Construction of amperometric biosensor modified with conducting polymer/carbon dots for the analysis of catechol

Phenolic compounds used in food industries and pesticide industry, are environmentally toxic and pollute the rivers and ground water. For that reason, detection of phenolic compounds such as catechol by using simple, efficient and cost-effective devices have been becoming increasingly popular. In this study, a suitable and a novel matrix was composed using a novel conjugated polymer, namely poly[1-(5-(4,8-bis(5-(2-ethylhexyl)thiophen-2-yl)benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophen-2-yl)furan-2-yl)-5-(2-ethylhexyl)-3-(furan-2-yl)-4H thieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6(5H)-dione] (PFTBDT) and carbon dots (CDs) to detect catechol. PFTBDT and CDs were synthesized and the optoelectronic properties of PFTBDT were investigated via electrochemical and spectroelectrochemical studies. Laccase enzyme was immobilized onto the constructed film matrix on the graphite electrode. The proposed biosensor was found to have a low detection limit (1.23 μM) and a high sensitivity (737.44 μA/mM.cm⁻²) with a linear range of 1.25–175 μM. Finally, the applicability of the proposed enzymatic biosensor was evaluated in a tap water sample and a satisfactory recovery (96–104%) was obtained for catechol determination.     

Multiplication operators on Cesàro second order function spaces

Positivity - In this article, we investigate bounded, invertible and compact multiplication operators on the second order Cesàro function spaces.     

A time-based pheromone approach for the ant system

The ant system (AS) is a metaheuristic approach originally developed for solving the traveling salesman problem. AS has been successfully applied to various hard combinatorial optimization problems and different variants have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we introduce a time-based pheromone approach for AS (TbAS). Due to this nature TbAS is applicable to routing problems involving time-windows. The novelty in TbAS is the multi-layer pheromone network structure which implicitly utilizes the service time information associated with the customers as a heuristic information. To investigate the performance of TbAS, we use the well-known vehicle routing problem with time-windows as our testbed and we conduct an extensive computational study using the Solomon (Algorithms for the vehicle routing and scheduling problems with time window constraints 35:254?C265, 1987) instances. Our results reveal that the proposed time-based pheromone approach is effective in obtaining good quality solutions.     

Synthesis of bishomoinositols and an entry for construction of a substituted 3-oxabicyclo[3.3.1]nonane skeleton

1,3,3a,7a-Tetrahydro-2-benzofuran was used as key compound for the synthesis of various bishomoinositol derivatives. The diene was subjected to an epoxidation reaction for further functionalization of the diene unit. The bisepoxide obtained was submitted to a ring-opening reaction with acid in the presence of water. Various bishomoinositols were synthesized. However, when the reaction was carried out in the presence of acetic anhydride, a substituted 3-oxabicyclo[3.3.1]nonane skeleton was formed. The mechanism of the formation of the products is discussed.     

Theoretical investigations of α,α,α-trifluoro-3, -p and o-nitrotoluene by means of density functional theory

This study reports the optimized molecular structures, vibrational frequencies including Infrared intensities and Raman activities, corresponding vibrational assignments, (1)H and (13)C NMR chemical shifts, the magnitudes of the JCH and JCC coupling constants, Ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) spectra, thermodynamic properties and atomic charges of the title compounds, α,α,α-trifluoro-3, -p and o-nitrotoluene, in the ground state by means of the density functional theory (DFT) with the standard B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) method and basis set combination for the first time. Theoretical vibrational spectra were interpreted by normal coordinate analysis based on scaled density functional force field. The results show that the vibrational frequencies and chemical shifts calculated were obtained to be in good agreement with the experimental data. Based on the comparison between experimental results and theoretical data, the calculation level chosen is powerful approach for understanding the identification of all the molecules studied. In addition, not only were frontier molecular orbitals (HOMO and LUMO), molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) and electrostatic potential (ESP) simulated but also the dipole moment, softness, electronegativity, chemical hardness, electrophilicity index, transition state and energy band gap values were predicted. According to the investigations, all compounds were found to be useful to bond metallically and interact intermolecularly; however, the thermodynamic properties confirm that the α,α,α-trifluoro-p-nitrotoluene was more reactive and more polar than the others.     

On Gauss-Weierstrass semigroups and inversion of potentials associated with the Bessel differential operator

In this paper, we define the generalized Gauss Weierstrass semigroups with Weierstrass kernel, and give some of their properties. Using them, we study the inversion formulas for the generalized Riesz and Bessel potentials, generated by the generalized shift operators and associated with the Laplace Bessel differential operator.