Electron ionization mass spectrometric study of monomeric models of O-polysaccharides of Vibrio cholerae O:1, serotypes Ogawa and Inaba

Fragmentation mechanisms of electron ionization (EI) mass spectrometry of the title compounds have been elucidated by high-resolution (HR) mass spectrometric measurements of the elemental composition and measurements of the metastable transitions (B(2)/E, CID). The experimental results were interpreted with the help of Mass Frontier 3.0 software, which aided the elucidation of fragmentation mechanisms and helped to deduce structures of the ions formed. Characteristic under the conditions of EI-MS measurement was the production of protonated adducts. Three distinct pathways observed include the formation of oxonium type ions, the conjugated transfer of electrons in the pyranose ring, and cleavage of the acylamide side chains. By applying the results obtained, the molecular mass, as well as the structures of both the saccharide and acylamide side chain involved in related substances, can be determined.     

A Further Combinatorial Number-Theoretic Extension of Euler's Totient

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Practical method validation: Validation sufficient for an analysis method

Validation of an analysis method depends on the purpose of the method, the chosen technique and the procedure in question. Methods are used for different research, product development, process control and quality control purposes. The human and economical importance of results vary. Each of the techniques used, such as chromatography-(HPLC, HRGC, TLC), capillary electrophoresis-(CE), spectrophotometry-(UV/VIS, IR, fluorescence, AAS, ICP) or spectrometric techniques (NMR, MS) as well as the hyphenated methods, have their own special features and deficiencies which must be considered. The method can include a simple pretreatment or it may include many demanding steps, it can use automation and data processing in various ways, it can have an official status, it can be a thoroughly verified or less studied one. How should these differences be accounted for during the validation? What would be a sufficient certainty that the method does what is expected, that the method fits for the purpose it was intended? The client (or authority) decides the required timetable, cost and quality level. This is why within a laboratory different quality levels and associated levels of validation exist. This paper tries to outline a practical test frame for validation efforts to assist the analyst when planning validation of a method.     

Different aspects of the monotonicity of a function

In this paper, we investigate which aspects are overriding in the concept images of monotonicity of Finnish tertiary mathematics students, i.e., on which aspects of monotonicity they base their argument in different types of exercises related to that concept. Further, we examine the relationship between the quality of principal aspects and the success in solving monotonicity exercises and a few other standard problems in calculus. Our findings indicate that a mathematics student's conception about monotone functions is often restricted to continuous or differentiable functions and the algebraic aspect – the nearest one to the formal definition of monotonicity – is rare.     

Electronic structure of MgO-supported Au clusters: quantum dots probed by scanning tunneling microscopy

We investigate via density functional theory (DFT) the appearance of small MgO-supported gold clusters with 8 to 20 atoms in a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) experiment. Comparison of simulations of ultrathin films on a metal support with a bulk MgO leads to similar results for the cluster properties relevant for STM. Simulated STM pictures show the delocalized states of the cluster rather than the atomic structure. This finding is due to the presence of s- derived delocalized states of the cluster near the Fermi energy. The properties of theses states can be understood from a jellium model for monovalent gold.     

Meet and join matrices in the poset of exponential divisors

It is well-known that (ℤ₊, |) = (ℤ₊, GCD, LCM) is a lattice, where | is the usual divisibility relation and GCD and LCM stand for the greatest common divisor and the least common multiple of positive integers. The number $ d = \prod\nolimits_{k = 1}^r {p_k^{d^{(k)} } } $ d = \prod\nolimits_{k = 1}^r {p_k^{d^{(k)} } } is said to be an exponential divisor or an e-divisor of $ n = \prod\nolimits_{k = 1}^r {p_k^{n^{(k)} } } $ n = \prod\nolimits_{k = 1}^r {p_k^{n^{(k)} } } (n > 1), written as d | _e n, if d ^(k) for all prime divisors p _k of n. It is easy to see that (ℤ₊\{1}, | _e is a poset under the exponential divisibility relation but not a lattice, since the greatest common exponential divisor (GCED) and the least common exponential multiple (LCEM) do not always exist.