Pseudo-conservation laws in cyclic-service systems with a class of limited service policies

This paper considers a cyclic-service system with a class of limited service policies that consists of exhaustive limited, gated limited and general decrementing policies. Under these policies, the number of customers served consecutively during a server visit is limited by a vector of integers. The major results in this paper are derivations of expected amount of work left in the queues at the server departures for these three policies. Exact expressions of weighted sum of mean waiting times, known as pseudo-conservation laws, are subsequently obtained. The conservation laws for this class of policies contain unknown boundary probabilities. We estimate these probabilities using corresponding server vacation models. Numerical results presented for the exhaustive limited policy are noted to be very accurate compared with simulation results. Moreover, we have obtained analytical bounds for the weighted sums. Finally, we present a conservation law with mixed service policies, and mean waiting times for symmetric systems.This work was completed while the author was in the Ph.D. program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.This work was partially supported by the Center for Advanced Technologies of the New York State.     

Preparation and characterization of diphenyllead(IV) and triphenyllead(IV) complexes with N-protected amino-acids and the dipeptides

The diphenyllead(IV) derivatives of N-benzoyl-(glycine, DL -alanine); N-formyl and N-acetyl-L -phenylalanine; N-monochloroacetyl-L -phenylalanine; N-benzoyl-(glycylglycine, DL -alanylglycine), and N-formyl- N-acetyl- and N-monochloroacetyl-(L -phenylalanylglycine) have been prepared in 1:2 molar ratio by reaction of diphenyllead dichloride with the appropriate amino-acid or dipeptide. Corresponding triphenyllead(IV) derivatives have been prepared in 1:1 molar ratio by reaction of triphenyllead chloride with the thallium(I) salts of the amino-acid or the dipeptide. These complexes have been characterized by elemental analysis, IR and ¹H NMR spectral studies. A polymeric hexacoordinated octahedral structure for diphenyllead(IV), and a five-coordinated distorted trigonalbipyramidal chain-type structure for triphenyllead(IV), complexes is confirmed by IR spectra. The carboxylate group acts in a bidentate manner, not as in diorgano and triorganotin(IV) complexes with these acids, where it is monodentate. The available bonding sites such as amide and peptide carbonyl (CO) and amide and peptide nitrogen atoms are not involved in bonding with lead (IV) and thus are available for bonding with the biological systems. The presence of different N-protecting groups does not affect the coordination sites around lead(IV). The triphenyllead(IV) compounds are relatively more stable than the diphenyllead(IV) compounds.     

Nucleophilic additions of phosphines to a π-cyclobutadiene ligand

Nucleophilic addition of phosphines to the cyclobutadiene ring in [(h⁴-C₄H₄)Fe(CO)₂ NO]⁺PF₆^? leads to the formation of (exo-phosphonium-h³-cyclobutenyl) dicarbonylnitrosyliron hexafluorophosphate.     

Complexation reaction of metal ions with peptide systems. Part IV. A potentiometric study of rare earth complexes of glycyl-L-proline

Amino acids and dipeptides are of biological importance and therefore their metal complexes are of special interest. Many workers have studied the complexes of various peptides with different transition metals in solution^{1 – 5}. Although the stability of complexes of lanthanum with amino acids has been studied^{6 – 11}, no work appears to have been done with dipeptide systems. In continuation to our previous work^{12, 13} on the complexation reactions of lanthanides with dipeptide systems, the present communication reports the stability constants and thermodynamic functions of Y(III), La(III), Ce(III), Pr(III) and Nd(III) with glycyl-L-proline in aqueous medium at 25, 35 and 45°C at 0.15 M (KNO₃) ionic strength. The Calvin—Bjerrum titration technique^{14, 15} as modified by Irving and Rossotti¹⁶ was used.     

Chemistry of iron complexes—III. X-ray diffraction,ESR and other spectral studies of new iron(II) and iron(III) complexes with tri-p-tolylarsine oxide

Reactions of iron(II) and iron(III) salts with tri-p-tolylarsine oxide(L) in suitable organic solvents yield complexes of formulas: (i) [FeL₂Cl₂(OH₂)₂] [FeCl₄].2H₂O, [FeL₂Br₂] [FeBr₄].2H₂O; (ii) [Fe(NCS)₃L₂].H₂O; (iii) [FeL(O₂ClO₂)₂(OH₂)] (ClO₄).0.25C₆H₆; (iv) [FeL₃I] [FeI₃].H₂O and (v) [Fe(CO)₃LI]I. Characterization has been done through elemental analyses, IR, far IR, ESR, and reflectance spectra, molar conductance, magnetic moments, t.g.a. and X-ray diffraction (powder) data. The species [FeL₂Cl₂(OH₂)₂]⁺, [FeL₂Br₂]⁺, [Fe(NCS)₃L₂], [FeL(O₂ClO₂)₂OH₂]⁺, [FeL₃I]⁺ and [Fe(CO)₃LI]⁺ have been assigned trans-octahedral, trans-square planar, trans-trigonal bipyramid, trans-octahedral, tetrahedral and cis-trigonal bipyramid structures respectively.     

Gateable suppression of spin relaxation in semiconductors

The decay of spin memory in a 2D electron gas is found to be suppressed close to the metal-insulator transition. By dynamically probing the device using ultrafast spectroscopy, relaxation of optically excited electron spin is directly measured as a function of the carrier density. Motional narrowing favors spin preservation in the maximally scattered but nonlocalized electronic states. This implies that the spin-relaxation rate can be both tuned in situ and specifically engineered in appropriate device geometries.     

Detection and elimination profile of cathinone in equine after norephedrine (Propalin®) administration using a validated liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry method

Cathinone is the principal psychostimulant present in the leaves of khat shrub, which are widely used in East Africa and the Arab peninsula as an amphetamine-like stimulant. Cathinone readily undergoes metabolism in vivo to form less potent cathine and norephedrine as the metabolites. However, the presence of cathine and norephedrine in biological fluids cannot be used as an indicator of cathinone administration. The metabolism of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine, commonly used in cold and allergy medications, also produces cathine and norephedrine, respectively, as the metabolites. Besides, cathine and norephedrine may also originate from the ingestion of nutritional supplemental products containing extracts of Ephedra species. In Canada, ephedrine and norephedrine are available for veterinary use, whereas cathinone is not approved for human or veterinary use. In this article, the detection of cathinone in equine after administration of norephedrine is reported. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such report in any species where administration of norephedrine or ephedrine generates cathinone as the metabolite. This observation is quite significant, because in equine detection of cathinone in biological fluids could be due to administration of the potent stimulant cathinone or the nonpotent stimulant norephedrine. A single oral dose of 450 mg norephedrine was administered to four Standardbred mares. Plasma and urine samples were collected up to 120 h after administration. The amount of cathinone and norephedrine detected in post administration samples was quantified using a highly sensitive, specific, and validated liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry method. Using these results, we constructed elimination profiles for cathinone and norephedrine in equine plasma and urine. A mechanism that generates a geminal diol as an intermediate is postulated for this in vivo conversion of norephedrine to cathinone. Cathinone was also detected in samples collected after a single intramuscular administration of 200 mg ephedrine and oral administration of 300 mg ephedrine in equine.

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Figure Electron density structure of cathinone

     

Development of novel magnetic nano-carriers for high-performance affinity purification

We developed novel magnetic nano-carriers around 180 nm in diameter for affinity purification. Prepared magnetic nano-carriers possessed uniform core/shell/shell nano-structure composed of 40 nm magnetite particles/poly(styrene-co-glycidyl methacrylate (GMA))/polyGMA, which was constructed by admicellar polymerization. By utilizing relatively large 40 nm magnetite particles with large magnetization, the magnetic nano-carriers could show good response to permanent magnet. Thanks to uniform polymer shell with high physical/chemical stability, the magnetic nano-carriers could disperse in a wide range of organic solvent without disruption of core/shell structure and could immobilize various kinds of drugs. We examined affinity purification using our prepared magnetic nano-carriers with anti-cancer agent methotrexate (MTX) as ligand. Our magnetic nano-carriers showed higher performance compared to commercially available magnetic beads in terms of purification efficiency of target including extent of non-specific binding protein.     

Short echo time in vivo prostate ¹H-MRSI

Visualization of short echo time (TE) metabolites in prostate magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging is difficult due to lipid contamination and pulse timing constraints. In this work, we present a modified pulse sequence to permit short echo time (TE=40ms) acquisitions with reduced lipid contamination for the detection of short TE metabolites. The modified pulse sequence employs the conformal voxel MRS (CV-MRS) technique, which automatically optimizes the placement of spatial saturation planes to adapt the excitation volume to the shape of the prostate, thus reducing lipid contamination in prostate magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI). Metabolites were measured and assessed using a modified version of LCModel for analysis of in vivo prostate spectra. We demonstrate the feasibility of acquiring high quality spectra at short TEs, and show the measurement of short TE metabolites, myo-inositol, scyllo-inositol, taurine and glutamine/glutamate for both single and multi-voxel acquisitions. In single voxels experiments, the reduction in TE resulted in 57% improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Additional 3D MRSI experiments comparing short (TE=40 ms), and long (TE=130 ms) TE acquisitions revealed a 35% improvement in the number of adequately fitted metabolite peaks (775 voxels over all subjects). This resulted in a 42 ± 24% relative improvement in the number of voxels with detectable citrate that were well-fitted using LCmodel. In this study, we demonstrate that high quality prostate spectra can be obtained by reducing the TE to 40 ms to detect short T2 metabolites, while maintaining positive signal intensity of the spin-coupled citrate multiplet and managing lipid suppression.