Chemical Analysis and In Vitro Bioactivity of Essential Oil of Laurelia sempervirens and Safrole Derivatives against Oomycete Fish Pathogens

In this study, the essential oil (EO) from Laurelia sempervirens was analyzed by GC/MS and safrole (1) was identified as the major metabolite 1, was subjected to direct reactions on the oxygenated groups in the aromatic ring and in the side chain, and eight compounds (4 to 12) were obtained by the process. EO and compounds 4–12 were subjected to biological assays on 24 strains of the genus Saprolegnia, specifically of the species 12 S. parasitica and 12 S. australis. EO showed a significant effect against Saprolegnia strains. Compound 6 presents the highest activity against two resistant strains, with minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum oomyceticidal concentration (MOC) values of 25 to 100 and 75 to 125 µg/mL, respectively. The results show that compound 6 exhibited superior activities compared to the commercial controls bronopol and azoxystrobin used to combat these pathogens.     

Structural,energetic and spectroscopic characterisation of 5-fluorouracil anticarcinogenic drug isomers,tautomers and ions

ABSTRACT

In many cases, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) is the first-line drug used in combined chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments due to its radio-sensitization properties. It could participate in a tautomerization process similar to that of uracil, where 5-FU may couple to adenine in DNA. At present, we performed structural and spectroscopic studies using quantum chemical methods of neutral and cationic isolated 5-FU anticarcinogenic drug tautomers, either interacting with a water molecule or embedded into an implicit water solvent. Also, we determined the stationary points (both stable structures and transition states) on their ground potential energy surfaces playing a role during the tautomerization processes. For neutral and ionic species in the gas phase and in solvent, the ordering of the tautomers is found to be the same, where the di-keto form of 5-FU is the most stable structure, followed by the keto–enol and di-enol structural forms. The energy barriers for tautomerization are strongly reduced in solvent (< 0.5?eV) compared to isolated species (～2?eV). The patterns of their lowest electronic states are also computed. Our data may help for the identification of these species in vivo and in the laboratory.     

Free Damage Propagation with Memory

We introduce a simple model for free damage propagation based on non-local potentials. The model is developed using a state based peridynamic formulation. The resulting evolution is shown to be well posed. At each instant of the evolution we identify the damage set. On this set the local strain has exceeded critical values either for tensile or hydrostatic strain and damage has occurred. For this model the damage set is nondecreasing with time and associated with damage variables defined at each point in the body. We show that energy balance holds for this evolution. For differentiable displacements away from the damage set we show that the nonlocal model converges to the linear elastic model.     

Spectrophotometric Determination of Piroxicam via Chelation with Fe(III) in Commercial Dosage Forms

The objective of this work is to develop and validate spectrophotometric method for the determination of piroxicam in commercial dosage forms. The method is based on the chelation of the drug with Fe(III) to form pink coloured metal chelate at room temperature which absorbs maximally at 504 nm. Beer's law is obeyed over the concentration range of 8–160 μg mL^?1 (A = 1.07 × 10^?3 + 7.75 × 10^?3 C). Under the optimized experimental conditions, proposed method is validated as per the International Conference on Harmonisation guidelines. The limits of detection and quantitation for the proposed method are 0.775 and 2.348 μg mL^?1, respectively. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of piroxicam in commercial dosage forms. The results are compared with the reference El‐Ries et al. spectrophotometric method.     

Templating Ag on DNA/polymer hybrid nanowires: Control of the metal growth morphology using functional monomers

Ag nanowires and nanoparticles have been formed on hybrid λ-DNA/conducting polymer templates. The strong, but non-covalent, interaction of the conducting polymer with the double helix allowed us to incorporate chemical functionalities (alkynyl) into the DNA/conducting polymer strands by synthesis of functional monomers. Oxidative polymerisation of alkynyl-thienylpyrrole in the presence of λ-DNA produced conductive nanowires bearing alkyne groups; we show, using a combination of AFM, cAFM and EFM phase measurements that the alkyne functionality strong influences the subsequent templating reaction of Tollens’ reagent to produce uniform conductive nanowires comprised of many connected Ag clusters.     

Interpolymer Complexes of Poly(N,N-Dimethylacrylamide/Poly(Styrene-co-Acrylic Acid): Thermal Stability and FTIR Analysis

Summary: This contribution will focus on the elaboration and characterizations of new materials with optimal properties as interpolymer complexes, upon mixing poly (styrene-co-acrylic acid containing 18, 27 and 32 mol % of acrylic acid (SAA-x) and poly (N,N-dimethylacrylamide) (PDMA), through the control of the densities, strength, self-association and accessibility of the interacting species. These elaborated interpolymer complexes, of different structures, investigated by DSC and TGA, exhibited a significant improved thermal stability. Their DSC analysis showed that all these materials showed one composition-dependence glass transition temperature Tg, indicating the formation of a single homogeneous phase. The different behaviors of Tg-initial composition observed with these systems were analyzed by the approaches of Kwei and Brostow et al., recently developed. The specific interactions that occurred within the elaborated materials were evidenced qualitatively by ATR/FTIR spectroscopy, from the appearance of new bands in the 1800–1550 cm⁻¹ region.     

Nonlinear damped Timoshenko systems with second sound—Global existence and exponential stability

In this paper, we consider nonlinear thermoelastic systems of Timoshenko type in a one‐dimensional bounded domain. The system has two dissipative mechanisms being present in the equation for transverse displacement and rotation angle—a frictional damping and a dissipation through hyperbolic heat conduction modelled by Cattaneo's law, respectively. The global existence of small, smooth solutions and the exponential stability in linear and nonlinear cases are established. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Constrained regulation of continuous Petri nets

This paper deals with constrained regulation of continuous Petri nets under the so-called infinite servers semantics. Our aim is to design feedback gains that permit us to reach both desired stationary marking vector and desired asymptotic firing rate vector. The proposed approach takes into account constraints on the control, the marking of the Petri net, and the stability of the closed-loop system. The existence of a solution is first expressed geometrically, in terms of the inclusion of two polyhedral sets. They are reformulated algebraically as linear matrix inequalities, which provides an effective way to calculate feedback gains answering the problem. Finally, an application to an assembly production system is given.     

Layered hybrid organic-inorganic Co(II) alkylphosphonates. Synthesis, crystal structure and magnetism of the first two members of the series: Co[(CH3PO3)(H2O)] and Co[(C2H5PO3)(H2O)]

Co[(CH₃PO₃)(H₂O)] (1) and Co[(C₂H₅PO₃)(H₂O)] (2) were prepared by the hydrothermal method and isolated as blue-violet platelet crystals. They were characterized by X-ray diffraction, FT-IR, TGA-DSC techniques and their magnetic properties studied by a dc-SQUID magnetometer. Compound (1) shows an hybrid layered structure, made of alternating inorganic and organic layers along the a-direction of the unit cell. The inorganic layers contain Co(II) ions six-coordinated by five phosphonate oxygen atoms and one from the water molecule. These layers are separated by bi-layers of methyl groups and van der Waals contacts are established between them. In compound (2), the layered hybrid structure is rather similar to that described for compound (1), but the alternation of the inorganic and organic layers is along the b-direction of the unit cell. The magnetic behavior of (1) and (2) as function of temperature and magnetic field was studied. The compounds obey the Curie-Weiss law at temperatures above 100 K, the Curie C, and Weiss θ constants for the methyl derivative being and and for the ethyl derivative and , respectively. The observed magnetic moments for Co atom at room temperature (i.e. μ_eff=5.18 and 5.38 BM, respectively) are higher than those expected for a spin-only value for high spin Co(II) (S=3/2), revealing a substantial orbital contribution to the magnetic moment. The negative values of θ are an indication of the presence of antiferromagnetic exchange couplings between the near-neighbors Co(II) ions, within the layers. [Co(C_nH_2n+1PO₃)(H₂O)] (n=1,2) are 2D Ising antiferromagnets at low temperatures.     

Experimental three dimensional strain estimation from ultrasonic sectorial data

Most of the studies devoted to elastography are focused on the estimation of the axial component of the strain. However when subjected to any load, whatever the direction, soft biological media deform in the three spatial dimensions. The aim of our work is to build a three dimensional strain mapping from data acquired with a 3D clinical sectorial probe. The estimation of radial strain is based on the estimation of local scaling factors. A method of cross-correlation of interpolated signals between adjacent radiofrequency lines was used to estimate the angular displacement and strain. For the sectorial strain estimation, the same displacement estimation technique has been implemented. The method has been tested on experimental data acquired on calibrated phantoms and compared to simulation.