Multicomponent spectrometric analysis of riboflavin and photoproducts and their kinetic applications

Riboflavin (RF) is a light sensitive compound and is known to form a number of photoproducts. These photoproducts possess the same nucleus and may interfere in the analysis of RF by UV and visible spectrometry. Therefore, it is necessary to apply the methods of multicomponent spectrometric analysis to quantify the vitamin and its photoproducts accurately. Such methods are useful in the study of the kinetics of photodegradation reactions of RF to obtain accurate and reliable results. Any interference in these methods due to linear or nonlinear irrelevant absorption of the minor unknown products can be accounted for by the application of appropriate correction procedures prior to kinetic treatment. Various factors affecting the accuracy, precision and selectivity of these analytical procedures are also discussed. This review highlights the principles and applications of multicomponent spectrometric methods and their application to the simultaneous determination of RF and its major photoproducts in degraded solutions to evaluate the kinetics of degradation.      

Arenes and Heteroarenes C−H Functionalization Under Enabling Conditions: Electrochemistry,Photoelectrochemistry & Flow Technology

C−H bond functionalization generates molecular complexity in single-step transformation. However, the activation of C−H bonds requires expensive metals or stoichiometric amounts of oxidizing/reducing species. In many cases, they often require pre-functionalization of starting molecules. Such pre-activating measures cause waste generation and their separation from the final product is also troublesome. In such a scenario, reactions activating elements generating from renewable energy resources such as electricity and light would be more efficient, green, and cost-effective. Further, incorporation of growing flow technology in chemical transformation processes will accelerate the safer accesses of valuable products. Arenes & heteroarenes are ubiquitous in pharmaceuticals, natural products, medicinal compounds, and other biologically important molecules. Herein, we discussed enabling tools and technologies used for the recent C−H bonds functionalization of arenes and heteroarenes.     

Facilitated Cd(II) transport across CTA polymer inclusion membrane using anion (Aliquat 336) and cation (D2EHPA) metal carriers

PIMs have been involved as affinity membranes for recovery of metals (Cd, Pb, Zn) by facilitated transport from aqueous solutions under different speciation forms, either anionic or cationic. The motivation of this work is to compare the efficiency of the recovery process in the case of Cd(II) using extractants such as D2EHPA and Aliquat 336 that can form complexes with the cation Cd²⁺ or the anions CdCl₃⁻ and CdCl₄²⁻, respectively. The maximal Cd(II) recovery factors obtained in 8 h are 97.5% and 91.8% with D2EHPA and Aliquat 336, respectively. Although the transport fluxes with both carriers are not strongly different (ca. 2 μmol m⁻² s⁻¹), the recovery process in case of mixture of metals is better achieved with Aliquat 336. PIMs have shown a very good stability and a constancy of the transmembrane transport flux over 12 replicate measurements, each one lasting for 8 h repeated every 24 h.     

Nanomaterials for targeted detection and photothermal killing of bacteria

Despite the modern treatment processes, contamination of food, water and medical equipment by pathogenic bacteria is very common in this world. Since the last two decades, one of the most important and complex problems our society has been facing is that several human pathogens became resistant to most of the clinically approved antibiotics. Recent advancement in nanoscience and nanotechnology has expanded our ability to design and construct nanomaterials with targeting, therapeutic, and diagnostic functions. These multifunctional materials have attracted our attention to be used as the promising tool for selective bacteria sensing and therapy without the current drugs. This tutorial review provides the basic concepts and critical properties of the different nanostructures that are useful for the pathogen detection and photothermal applications. In addition, bio-conjugated nanomaterial based strategies have been discussed with the aim to provide readers an overview of exciting opportunities and challenges in this field.     

Short-time asymptotics of heat kernels of hypoelliptic Laplacians on unimodular Lie groups

We consider the problem of computing heat kernel small-time asymptotics for hypoelliptic Laplacians associated to left-invariant sub-Riemannian structures on unimodular Lie groups of type I. We use the non-commutative Fourier transform of the Lie group together with perturbation theory for semigroups of operators in deriving these asymptotics. We illustrate our approach on the example of the Heisenberg group, and, as an application, we compute the short-time behaviour of the hypoelliptic heat kernel on the step 3 nilpotent Cartan and Engel groups, for which no closed-form expression for the hypoelliptic heat kernel is yet known.     

An exact penalty on bilevel programs with linear vector optimization lower level

We are interested in a class of linear bilevel programs where the upper level is a linear scalar optimization problem and the lower level is a linear multi-objective optimization problem. We approach this problem via an exact penalty method. Then, we propose an algorithm illustrated by numerical examples.     

Analytic model for ZnO-thin film transistor under dark and UV illumination

A ZnO thin film transistor (TFT) was fabricated on a SiO₂/Si substrate by sol-gel method. Electrical characteristics of the zinc oxide transistor under various illuminations were analyzed. We have developed a method to extract the TFT parameters under dark and under UV illuminations. This component requires an ohmic source and drain contacts for ideal operation. The performance of electronic-device is often limited by injection. In many real situations, the injection of charge carriers from metals into semiconductors is non-linear. This paper deals with the effects of non-ohmic contacts on the modeling of ZnO thin film transistor and gives specific rules on how to extract the real transistor parameters using only electrical measurements under dark and illumination.We have extracted the TFT parameters using developed method from output characteristics under dark and UV illumination. The drain current of the ZnO thin film transistor under UV illumination is improved. We have demonstrated that the UV illumination reduce the total resistance and improve the performance of the transistor.     

Chiral Lewis Base-Catalysed Asymmetric Syntheses of Benzo-fused ϵ-Lactones

We herein report a two-step protocol for the asymmetric synthesis of novel chiral benzofused ϵ-lactones starting from O-protected hydroxymethyl-para-quinone methides and activated aryl esters. By using chiral isothiourea Lewis base catalysts a broad variety of differently substituted products could be obtained in yields of around 50 % over both steps with high levels of enantioselectivities, albeit low diastereoselectivities only.