Spectrophotometric determination of ascorbic acid in pharmaceuticals by background correction and flow injection

Background correction has been shown to be an effective and indispensable modification in the spectrophotometric determination of ascorbic acid. The decomposition of ascorbic acid in pharmaceutical samples was carried out by incubation with sodium hydroxide to give products that were insensitive to ultraviolet light. The rapid oxidation in air of ascorbic acid, especially in dilute solutions, was avoided by the use of the flow injection principle for spectrophotometric determination and by employing a carrier stream of an anti-oxidizing nature consisting of 6 micrograms ml(-1) of 2-mercaptoethanol in 0.25% sulphuric acid. The optimized method with a single channel manifold made use of a carrier stream flow rate of 1.1 ml min(-1), an injection volume of 50 microl, a delay coil of 50 cm (0.5 mm i.d.) and detection at 245 nm. The throughput was at least 180 injections h(-1). The proposed flow injection method yielded results for the analysis of 0-20 micrograms ml(-1) of ascorbic acid that were 99-102% (relative standard deviation 0.6% or better) in agreement with those produced by comparable methods involving titration with iodine, chloranil or 2,6-dichlorophenolindophenol [4-(2,6-dichloro-4-hydroxyphenylimino)cyclohexa-2,5-dieno ne], and high-performance liquid chromatography. When the agreement was not good (as low as 14% with respect to the method being compared), this was traced to the presence of substances which are known to interfere in one or other of the methods of comparison.     

A note on the eigenvalues of p‐fractional Hardy–Sobolev operator with indefinite weight

In this article, we study the eigenvalues of p‐fractional Hardy operator where , , , and Ω is an unbounded domain in with Lipschitz boundary containing 0. The weight function V may change sign and may have singular points. We also show that the least positive eigenvalue is simple and it is uniquely associated to a nonnegative eigenfunction. Moreover, we proved that there exists a sequence of eigenvalues as .     

An in silico expert system for the identification of eye irritants

This report describes development of an in silico, expert rule-based method for the classification of chemicals into irritants or non-irritants to eye, as defined by the Draize test. This method was developed to screen data-poor cosmetic ingredient chemicals for eye irritancy potential, which is based upon exclusion rules of five physicochemical properties – molecular weight (MW), hydrophobicity (log P), number of hydrogen bond donors (HBD), number of hydrogen bond acceptors (HBA) and polarizability (Pol). These rules were developed using the ADMET Predictor software and a dataset of 917 eye irritant chemicals. The dataset was divided into 826 (90%) chemicals used for training set and 91 (10%) chemicals used for external validation set (every 10th chemical sorted by molecular weight). The sensitivity of these rules for the training and validation sets was 72.3% and 71.4%, respectively. These rules were also validated for their specificity using an external validation set of 2011 non-irritant chemicals to the eye. The specificity for this validation set was revealed as 77.3%. This method facilitates rapid screening and prioritization of data poor chemicals that are unlikely to be tested for eye irritancy in the Draize test.     

Thermal studies of hypervalent iodine reagents

The use of unconventional synthesis methods in the formation of CaO·2Al₂O₃ (CA₂) is justified because it reduces the formation temperature of the compound. CA₂ is formed by classical method at temperatures above 1,400 °C. The polymeric precursor method allows a significant temperature decrease in CA₂ synthesis reaching temperatures of 1,000 °C. This paper deals with CA₂ synthesis by “citrate” method which is often presented as Pechini method, starting from a mixture of citric acid, ethylene glycol and calcium, and aluminum nitrates. A method based on the formation of a polymeric precursor was also used, starting from a mixture of acrylic acid and nitrates of calcium and aluminum. The results showed a net difference in favor of samples obtained from acrylic acid, which by annealing at 800 °C for 1 h, contain pure CA₂. The samples obtained from citric acid, after annealing at 800 °C are amorphous. After annealing at 900 °C in all samples CA₂ is single phase.     

Synthesis of five-membered N-heterocycles using silver metal

The heterocyclic chemistry field has been revolutionized using transition metal catalyst in recent years. Various research groups have focused on the development of general protocols to achieve better functional group compatibilities and greater levels of molecular complexity under mild reaction conditions using easily available starting substrates. These methods afford many advantages as compared to alternative pathways involved in the synthesis of heterocyclic compounds. In this review article, we have concentrated on the synthesis of nitrogen-containing five-membered heterocylces in the presence of silver catalyst.     

Carrier facilitated transport of thorium from HCl medium using Cyanex 923 in n-dodecane containing supported liquid membrane

Present studies deal with supported liquid membrane (SLM) technique for the separation of thorium from hydrochloric acid (HCl) medium using Cyanex 923 as a carrier. Effects of feed acidity, strippant, and membrane pore size and membrane thickness on the transport of thorium have been studied in detail. The optimized parameters were applied for separation of thorium from a radioanalytical waste. Stability of the membrane and membrane support was investigated. Transport of thorium increased from 78.3 to about 93.7 % with increase in acidity from 0.5 to 2 M using 0.3 M Cyanex 923 in n-dodecane as carrier and 2 M ammonium carbonate as stripping phase. The transport of thorium decreased above 2 M HCl. An attempt was made to model the physicochemical transport of thorium in SLM and understand the mechanism of thorium transport.