Reaction kinetics and pathway of hydrothermal decomposition of aspartic acid

The kinetics and pathway of hydrothermal decomposition of aspartic acid were studied using a continuous‐flow tubular reactor. The reaction was carried out in the temperature range of 200–260°C and at a pressure of 20 MPa. Deamination was the primary reaction, indicated by the presence of significant amount of ammonia, fumaric acid, or maleic acid in the products. Other reaction products were pyruvic acid, malic acid, and traces of succinic and lactic acid. Traces of alanine were also detected, showing the possibility of decomposing high‐molecular weight amino acids to obtain simple amino acids such as glycine or alanine. Results on the effect of reaction parameters demonstrated that decomposition of aspartic acid is highly temperature dependent under hydrothermal conditions. For a slight temperature difference of 60°C (from 200 to 260°C), the first‐order reaction rate constants of 0.003 significantly increased to 0.231 s^?1. The activation energy was 144 kJ/mol, as calculated by the Arrhenius equation. No significant effect was exhibited by other reaction parameters such as pH and pressure. The results are useful in controlling the hydrolysis of proteinaceous materials toward high yield of aspartic acid under hydrothermal conditions. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 39: 175–180, 2007     

Organic–inorganic nanocomposites prepared from fluoro-aramid and silica

Fluoro-aramid-based sol/gel-derived nanocomposites were synthesized by condensing a mixture of 4,4′-(hexafluoro-isopropylidene)dianiline and 1,3-phenylenediamine with terephthaloylchloride (TPC) in dimethylacetamide. TPC was added in slight excess to produce amide chains with carbonyl chloride end groups and then replaced with alkoxy groups using aminophenyltrimethoxysilane to develop bonding with the silica network. Mechanical, dynamic mechanical thermal, water absorption and morphological measurements were carried out on the thin hybrid films. Increase in the tensile strength and modulus was observed as compared to pristine polyamide. The thermal decomposition temperature was found in the range of 400–500 °C. The water absorption was found to be reduced with higher silica content. The glass transition temperature and the storage moduli increased with increasing silica concentration. The maximum increase in the T _g value (345 °C) was observed with 20 wt% silica. Scanning electron microscopy revealed the uniform distribution of silica in the matrix with an average particle size ranging from 8 to 50 nm.     

Uptake of Tm(III) ions onto polyurethane foam from H2O - ethanol mixture containing 1-(2-pyridylazo)-2-naphthol (PAN)

Summary The sorption of microquantities of Tm(III) ions on washed polyurethane foam (PUF) from a mixture of aqueous solution and ethanol containing PAN was examined. The maximum sorption of 3.18^. 10^-6M solution of Tm(III) ions was observed at pH 8 with 30-minute equilibration time. The optimum ratio of aqueous-ethanol phase for the sorption of Tm(III) ions was found to be 3:1 v/v, respectively. The sorption rate of metal ions on PUF is followed a first order kinetics and obeyed the equation for an intra particle diffusion process. The equilibrium concentration data of Tm(III) ions could be described satisfactorily by several adsorption isotherms. The Freundlich adsorption isotherm constants 1/nand K_Fare 0.66±0.02 and (5.7±0.3)^. 10^-3mol^. g^-1, respectively. The Langmuir isotherm constants for monolayer coverage (Q) and binding strength of sorption (b) are (2.5±0.7)^. 10^-5mol^. g^-1and (1.6±0.1)^. 10⁴l^. mol^-1, respectively. The sorption capacity derived from Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) isotherm is (1.7±0.2)^. 10^-4mol^. g^-1and the sorption free energy (E) is 9.8±0.2 kJ^. mol^-1indicating chemisorption phenomena. The thermodynamic parameters indicate that the sorption of Tm(III) ions onto PUF is endothermic, entropy driven and spontaneous in nature.     

Sensory, physicochemical and microbiological quality of irradiated minimally processed cauliflower

Minimally processed cauliflower samples were irradiated, stored at 5 °C for 2 weeks and analyzed for sensory, physicochemical and microbiological qualities at 0th, 7th and 14th days. The data showed highest mean values of 7.93 and 7.57 for appearance and flavor, respectively, for 1.0 kGy treated samples. The D₁₀ values of contaminating microorganisms on cauliflower were 0.20 (Escherischia coli) and 0.24 kGy (Salmonella paratyphae A.) and the resulting 5D₁₀ value was 1.2 kGy. The study revealed that a dose of 1.5 kGy is enough for retention of quality and reduction of microbial load to 5D₁₀ values in cauliflower during 2 weeks storage at refrigerated temperature.     

Three new cholinesterase-inhibiting cis-clerodane diterpenoids from Otostegia limbata

Three new tricyclic cis-clerodane type diterpenoids trivially named as limbatolide A (1), limbatolide B (2) and limbatolide C (3) have been isolated from the roots of Otostegia limbata along with two known compounds; oleanic acid and beta-sitosterol. The structure elucidation of the new compounds was based primarily on two-dimensional (2D) NMR techniques. Compounds 1-3 displayed inhibitory potential in a concentration-dependent manner against acetylcholinesterase (AChE; EC 3.1.1.7) and butyrylcholinesterase (BChE; EC 3.1.1.8) enzymes, respectively.     

Synthesis and structural characterization of a new heterobimetallic coordination complex of barium and cobalt for use as a precursor for chemical vapor deposition

Ba(dmae)2 (dmaeH=N,N-dimethylaminoethanol, C4H11NO) reacts with Co(acac)2 (acac=2,4-pentanedionate) to produce the trinuclear coordination complex [Ba2Co(acac)4(dmae)3(dmaeH)] in an 85% yield. Spectroscopic and single-crystal X-ray diffraction experiments indicate that the complex possesses a structure in which two barium atoms and a cobalt atom are bridged by acac and dmae groups. The barium centers are eight and nine coordinate with BaO7N and BaO7N2 coordination spheres while the cobalt is a more regular CoO5N octahedron. This 2:1 heterobimetallic molecular complex was investigated as precursor for the deposition of thin film by AACVD. The film was characterized by SEM and XRD. TGA shows that the complex starts thermal decomposition upon heating in nitrogen atmosphere at 105 degrees C to produce barium cobalt oxide material of a Ba2CoO3 composition with an orthorhombic structure. The synthetic approach detailed here represents a unique route to the formation of a heterobimetallic barium cobalt coordination complex.     

Dichotenone-a and -b: two new enones from the marine brown alga Dictyota dichotoma (Hudson) Lamour

Marine brown alga Dictyota dichotoma (Dictyotaceae) collected from Karachi coast of Arabian Sea yielded two new (1 and 2) enones (dolastane-diterpenoids) named: dichotenone-A and -B along with an olide (loliolide, 3) as a new source. Their structures have been characterized with the aid of 2D-NMR spectroscopic techniques.     

Copper corrosion in buffered and non-buffered synthetic seawater: a comparative study

The electrochemical behaviour of copper in neutral buffered and non-buffered synthetic seawater and in pure chloride solutions has been studied by cyclic voltammetry, weight loss measurements, open circuit potential and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Values of the repassivation potentials of Cu in non-buffered and buffered synthetic seawater, at 50 mV s^–1, were 0.12 and 0.46 V vs. SCE, respectively. The sharpness, heights and location of the different peaks as well as their charges were shown to be influenced by the composition of the solution, buffering conditions, deoxygenation, polarization potential and time. High chloride concentrations lead to higher oxidation charges. The anodic and the cathodic charges were shown to increase as the chloride concentration increases. The open circuit potential transients of copper in non-deoxygenated, non-buffered synthetic seawater indicate pitting from the beginning of the exposure, while in buffered solutions the pitting appeared only after a quite long exposure period, i.e. after 40 days. Corrosion rates of Cu samples after 3 months of immersion were higher in solutions of pure chloride (0.5 M) than in synthetic seawater. After six months the differences were even more noticeable. SEM images have showed a somewhat higher density of pits on copper samples immersed in the chloride solution (0.5 M), in comparison with those in synthetic seawater.     

Determination of the expiration date of chemical solutions

Thirty-five chemical solutions, acids, bases, complexing, argentometric, reducing, oxidising, salts and eluent mixtures, were studied continuously over a 7.5-month period. Twenty-seven remained reasonably stable and had acceptable expiration dates, which were equal to or more than 2 months longer than the established average deviation of ±2% relative to the initial value. Exceptions were made for potassium permanganate (0.1 M), perchloric acid (0.1 M) and disodium hydrogen phosphate (10%) solutions, as well as for HPLC eluent mixtures, which showed stability with expiration dates equal to stated values or shorter by 1 month. The eight chemical solutions presenting expiration dating higher than 6 months were hydrochloric acid (0.1 and 1 M), sulphuric acid (0.5 and 1.5 M), ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) (0.1 M), silver nitrate (0.1 M), ammonium thiocyanate (0.1 M) and iodine (0.1 M). The present data is a suitable guideline for the date of several chemical solutions routinely used in the analytical laboratories.     

A new approach for the derivation of bounds for the Jensen difference

There are many useful applications of Jensen's inequality in several fields of science, and due to this reason, a lot of results are devoted to this inequality in the literature. The main theme of this article is to present a new method of finding estimates of the Jensen difference for differentiable functions. By applying definition of convex function, and integral Jensen's inequality for concave function in the identity pertaining the Jensen difference, we derive bounds for the Jensen difference. We present integral version of the bounds in Riemann sense as well. The sharpness of the proposed bounds through examples are discussed, and we conclude that the proposed bounds are better than some existing bounds even with weaker conditions. Also, we present some new variants of the Hermite–Hadamard and Hölder inequalities and some new inequalities for geometric, quasi-arithmetic, and power means. Finally, we give some applications in information theory.