Surface functionalization of silica nanoparticles supports colloidal stability in physiological media and facilitates internalization in cells

The influence of the surface functionalization of silica particles on their colloidal stability in physiological media is studied and correlated with their uptake in cells. The surface of 55 ± 2 nm diameter silica particles is functionalized by amino acids or amino- or poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-terminated alkoxysilanes to adjust the zeta potential from highly negative to positive values in ethanol. A transfer of the particles into water, physiological buffers, and cell culture media reduces the absolute value of the zeta potential and changes the colloidal stability. Particles stabilized by L-arginine, L-lysine, and amino silanes with short alkyl chains are only moderately stable in water and partially in PBS or TRIS buffer, but aggregate in cell culture media. Nonfunctionalized, N-(6-aminohexyl)-3-aminopropyltrimethoxy silane (AHAPS), and PEG-functionalized particles are stable in all media under study. The high colloidal stability of positively charged AHAPS-functionalized particles scales with the ionic strength of the media, indicating a mainly electrostatical stabilization. PEG-functionalized particles show, independently from the ionic strength, no or only minor aggregation due to additional steric stabilization. AHAPS stabilized particles are readily taken up by HeLa cells, likely as the positive zeta potential enhances the association with the negatively charged cell membrane. Positively charged particles stabilized by short alkyl chain aminosilanes adsorb on the cell membrane, but are weakly taken up, since aggregation inhibits their transport. Nonfunctionalized particles are barely taken up and PEG-stabilized particles are not taken up at all into HeLa cells, despite their high colloidal stability. The results indicate that a high colloidal stability of nanoparticles combined with an initial charge-driven adsorption on the cell membrane is essential for efficient cellular uptake.     

Milstein Approximation for Advection-Diffusion Equations Driven by Multiplicative Noncontinuous Martingale Noises

In this paper, the strong approximation of a stochastic partial differential equation, whose differential operator is of advection-diffusion type and which is driven by a multiplicative, infinite dimensional, càdlàg, square integrable martingale, is presented. A finite dimensional projection of the infinite dimensional equation, for example a Galerkin projection, with nonequidistant time stepping is used. Error estimates for the discretized equation are derived in?L ² and almost sure senses. Besides space and time discretizations, noise approximations are also provided, where the Milstein double stochastic integral is approximated in such a way that the overall complexity is not increased compared to an Euler?CMaruyama approximation. Finally, simulations complete the paper.     

Nonlinear dynamics of parts in engineering systems

By definition, chaotic vibrations arise from nonlinear deterministic physical systems or non-random differential or difference equations. In numerous engineering systems there exist nonlinearities which might affect the dynamic behaviour of the system. The objectives in this work are to summarise previous work on nonlinear dynamics of engineering parts and products and to investigate if research on how nonlinear parts can effect the total behaviour of the products have been performed. It is found that common nonlinear parts are machine elements such as gears, bearings, brakes and suspension systems. The most studied part in a product is of impact hammer type. The products are ordinary products, from sewing machines, drilling machines and printers to railway vehicles. In order to be able to design reliable products the methodology should be further developed to enable use by engineers. One can conclude that the effect of nonlinear parts on the total system behaviour is still a fairly uninvestigated area.     

Scheduling project networks with resource constraints and time windows

Project networks with time windows are generalizations of the well-known CPM and MPM networks that allow for the introduction of arbitrary minimal and maximal time lags between the starting and completion times of any pair of activities.We consider the problem to schedule such networks subject to arbitrary (even time dependent) resource constraints in order to minimize an arbitrary regular performance measure (i.e. a non-decreasing function of the vector of completion times). This problem arises in many standard industrial construction or production processes and is therefore particularly suited as a background model in general purpose decision support systems.The treatment is done by a structural approach that involves a generalization of both the disjunctive graph method in job shop scheduling [1] and the order theoretic methods for precedence constrained scheduling [18,23,24]. Besides theoretical insights into the problem structure, this approach also leads to rather powerful branch-and-bound algorithms. Computational experience with this algorithm is reported.     

Determination of (13)CO(2)/(12)CO(2) Ratio by IRMS and NDIRS

Abstract Breath tests using (13)C-labelled substrates require the measurement of (13)CO(2)/(12)CO(2) ratio in breath gas samples. Next to isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS), which is very sensitive but also complex and expensive, alternatively isotope selective nondispersive infrared spectrometry (NDIRS) can be used to determine the (13)CO(2)/(12)CO(2) ratio in expired breath. In this study we compared NDIRS- with IRMS-results to investigate whether the less expensive and very simply to operate NDIRS works as reliable as IRMS. For this purpose we applicated 1-(13)C-Phenylalanine to patients with advanced liver cirrhosis and healthy volunteers and took duplicated breath samples for IRMS and NDIRS at selected time points. Our data show a good correlation between these two methods for a small number of samples as required for simple breath tests. Longer series, where repeated measurements are required on the NDIRS instrument lead to a decreasing correlation. This indicates the superiority of IRMS concerning (13)CO(2)-kinetics over longer time periods.     

Studies towards the total synthesis of an epoxy isoprostane phospholipid,a potent activator of endothelial cells

We report studies toward the total synthesis of an epoxy isoprostane, namely the preparation of compound 9 which is an analogue of the elimination product 7 of the naturally occurring epoxy isoprostane 4 by a straightforward route using a three-component coupling, and have shown by several spectroscopic criteria that it closely resembles the natural material.     

Stochastic scheduling problems II-set strategies-

The paper introduces the finite class of set strategies for stochastic scheduling problems. It is shown that the knownstable classes of strategies such as ES and MES strategies are of this type, as arelist-scheduling strategies such as LEPT and SEPT and other, more complicatedpriority-type strategies. Roughly speaking, set strategies are characterized by the fact that the decision as to which jobs should be started at timet depends only on the knowledge of the two sets of jobs finished up to timet and being processed at timet. Contrary to list scheduling strategies, set strategies may involve deliberate idleness of machines, i.e. may not be greedy and can therefore not generally be induced by priority rules. It is demonstrated that set strategies have useful properties. They are e.g. ⁿ -almost everywhere continuous and therefore show satisfactorystability behaviour w.r.t. weak convergence of the joint distribution of job durations. Furthermore, the optimum w.r.t.all strategies is already attained on this class if job durations are independent and exponentially distributed and the performance measure fulfills a certainshift condition. This shift property is a quite natural concept and generalizes aspects of the notion ofadditivity in semi-Markov decision theory and stochastic dynamic optimization. Its complete analytical characterization is a major object of this paper. Typical additive cost criteria such as makespan and flowtime are of course covered, which yields simultaneously a first step towards generalization of optimality of LEPT and SEPT rules, as known for special cases. In fact, in view of the obtained optimality result, the question of when deliberate idleness of machines can be avoided, gains considerable interest, as it characterizes stochastic environments in whichpriority strategies are optimal. This provides a major link with current research on the analysis of networks of queues in the context of computer systems.The work of the first two authors was supported by the Minister für Wissenschaft und Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, while the work of the last author was supported by DAAD.     

Molecular structure of decamethylgermanocene in the solid state

The low temperature X-ray structure analysis of decamethylgermanocene reveals two independent molecules in the unit cell, both of which have a bent sandwich structure with angles between the planes of the two C₅Me₅ rings of 31.26(0.09)° and 31.55(0.10)°, respectively. The perpendicular germanium to ring distances are 220 pm, corresponding to Ge-C bond lengths ranging from 240 to 266 pm.