Evaluation of UiO‐66 metal organic framework as an effective sorbent for Curcumin's overdose

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) UiO‐66 (UiO stands for University of Oslo) and NH₂‐UiO‐66 were prepared and characterized as sorbent (antidotal agents) for curcumin (CUR) adsorption. The structure of products were characterized by X‐ray powder diffraction (XRD), Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Attenuated Total Reflectance‐Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR‐FTIR), and N₂ adsorption–desorption measurements. FESEM showed NH₂‐UiO‐66 displayed symmetrical crystals with triangular base pyramid morphology, with the particle size around 100 nm and uniform size distribution. Adsorption capacities of CUR/MOFs with different mass ratios in the feed were investigated in the present study, and this investigation revealed that when the CUR/MOFs with mass ratio was around 0.4, the absorption capacity of NH₂‐UiO‐66 had tended to maximum. Although, functionalization reduced the specific surface area and free volume, introducing polar amine groups could improve the affinity of NH₂‐UiO‐66 respect to CUR. Kinetic studies showed that the kinetic data are well fitted with the pseudo‐ second‐order model. MTT assay revealed that MOFs at the concentration range of 0–560 μg/ml had no cytotoxic effect on the Human Foreskin Fibroblast normal cell line (HFF‐2). These results suggest that these MOFs could be safe as sorbent for adsorb CUR from the body.     

Single Peptide Backbone Surrogate Mutations to Regulate Angiotensin GPCR Subtype Selectivity

Mutating the side-chains of amino acids in a peptide ligand, with unnatural amino acids, aiming to mitigate its short half-life is an established approach. However, it is hypothesized that mutating specific backbone peptide bonds with bioisosters can be exploited not only to enhance the proteolytic stability of parent peptides, but also to tune its receptor subtype selectivity. Towards this end, four [Y]⁶-Angiotensin II analogues are synthesized where amide bonds have been replaced by 1,4-disubstituted 1,2,3-triazole isosteres in four different backbone locations. All the analogues possessed enhanced stability in human plasma in comparison with the parent peptide, whereas only two of them achieved enhanced AT₂R/AT₁R subtype selectivity. This diversification has been studied through 2D NMR spectroscopy and unveiled a putative more structured microenvironment for the two selective ligands accompanied with increased number of NOE cross-peaks. The most potent analogue, compound 2 , has been explored regarding its neurotrophic potential and resulted in an enhanced neurite growth with respect to the established agent C21.     

Femtosecond laser assisted production of dichroitic 3D structures in composite glass containing Ag nanoparticles

Three-dimensional, permanent anisotropic modifications in glass containing spherical Ag nanoparticles are demonstrated using multicolor fs laser irradiation. The method can produce dichroism by deformation of nanoparticles to oblong shapes oriented parallel to the laser polarization. Using samples with a vertical gradient of the fill factor of Ag nanoparticles in the glass substrate and an accordingly inhomogeneous broadening of the surface plasmon band, modifications in various depths can be made using different excitation wavelengths. The induced modifications are reversible: heating to ≈600 °C restores the spherical shape of Ag nanoparticles. This technique could be used in manufacturing of different, 3D, polarization and wavelength selective micro-devices such as polarizers, filters, gratings, display and rewriting optical 3D data storage devices. PACS 78.55.Hx; 78.67.Bf; 78.40.Ha     

Robust finite-time tracking for a square fully actuated class of nonlinear systems

In this paper, the robust finite-time tracking problem is addressed for a square fully actuated class of nonlinear systems subjected to disturbances and uncertainties. Firstly, two applicable lemmas are derived and novel nonlinear sliding surfaces (manifolds) are defined by applying these lemmas. Secondly, by developing the nonsingular terminal sliding mode control, two different types of robust nonlinear control inputs are designed to meet and accomplish the aforementioned finite-time tracking objective. The global finite-time stability of the closed-loop nonlinear system is evaluated analytically and mathematically. The proposed control inputs are utilized to tackle and solve two interesting issues containing (a): the finite-time tracking problem of the unified chaotic system and (b): the finite-time synchronization of two non-identical hyperchaotic systems. Finally, based on MATLAB software, two numerical simulations are carried out to illustrate and demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed robust finite-time nonlinear control schemes.

     

A variable neighbourhood search for hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem with rework and set-up times

This paper deals with hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem with rework. In this problem, jobs are inspected at the last stage, and poorly processed jobs were returned and processed again. Thus, a job may visit a stage more than once, and we have a hybrid flow-shop with re-entrant flow. This kind of a shop may occur in many industries, such as final inspection system in automotive manufacturing. The criterion is to minimize the makespan of the system. We developed a 0–1 mixed-integer program of the problem. Since the hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem is NP-hard, an algorithm for finding an optimal solution in polynomial time does not exist. So we generalized some heuristic methods based on several basic dispatching rules and proposed a variable neighbourhood search (VNS) for the problem with sequence-dependent set-up times and unrelated parallel machines. The computational experiments show that VNS provides better solutions than heuristic methods.     

Ab initio intermolecular potential energy surface of Ne···NCCN van der Waals complex: effect of the place of midbond function on the interaction

The intermolecular potential energy surface of Ne···NCCN van der Waals complex was evaluated in the framework of the counterpoise-corrected supermolecular approach using CCSD(T) level and aug-cc-pVDZ basis set extended with a set of midbond (3s3p2d1f1g) functions. The effect of the place of midbond function on the accuracy of the calculated potential energy surface was examined and the optimised position for placing midbond function was determined. The calculated potential energy surface was fitted by an analytical function. The analytical function of intermolecular potential energy surface of Ne···NCCN demonstrated a global minimum energy of ?12.024 meV related to the T-shape geometry at the distance between Ne and the centre of mass of NCCN of 3.28 Å. Finally, the interaction second virial coefficients (B₁₂) of Ne and NCCN were calculated and used to calculate the second virial coefficients for the mixture of neon and cyanogen gases at different mole fractions of Ne gas.     

Laser-assisted generation of self-assembled microstructures on stainless steel

Utilising a Nd:YVO₄ laser (wavelength of 532 nm, pulse duration of 8 ns, repetition rate of 30 kHz) and a Nd:YAG laser (wavelength of 1064 nm, pulse duration of 7 ns, repetition rate of 25 kHz), it was found that during the pulsed laser ablation of metal targets, such as stainless steel, periodic nodular microstructures (microcones) with average periods ranging from ∼30 to ∼50 μm were formed. This period depends on the number of accumulated laser pulses and is independent of the laser wavelength. It was found that the formation of microcones could occur after as little as 1500 pulses/spot (a lower number than previously reported) are fired onto a target surface location at laser fluence of ∼12 J/cm², intensity of ∼1.5 GW/cm². The initial feedback mechanism required for the formation of structures is attributed to the hydrodynamic instabilities of the melt. In addition to this, it has been shown that the structures grow along the optical axis of the incoming laser radiation. We demonstrate that highly regular structures can be produced at various angles, something not satisfactorily presented on metallic surfaces previously. The affecting factors such as incident angle of the laser beam and the structures that can be formed when varying the manner in which the laser beam is scanned over the target surface have also been investigated.     

Smoothly Clipped Absolute Deviation (SCAD) regularization for compressed sensing MRI Using an augmented Lagrangian scheme

PurposeCompressed sensing (CS) provides a promising framework for MR image reconstruction from highly undersampled data, thus reducing data acquisition time. In this context, sparsity-promoting regularization techniques exploit the prior knowledge that MR images are sparse or compressible in a given transform domain. In this work, a new regularization technique was introduced by iterative linearization of the non-convex smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD) norm with the aim of reducing the sampling rate even lower than it is required by the conventional l₁ norm while approaching an l₀ norm.Materials and MethodsThe CS-MR image reconstruction was formulated as an equality-constrained optimization problem using a variable splitting technique and solved using an augmented Lagrangian (AL) method developed to accelerate the optimization of constrained problems. The performance of the resulting SCAD-based algorithm was evaluated for discrete gradients and wavelet sparsifying transforms and compared with its l₁-based counterpart using phantom and clinical studies. The k-spaces of the datasets were retrospectively undersampled using different sampling trajectories. In the AL framework, the CS-MRI problem was decomposed into two simpler sub-problems, wherein the linearization of the SCAD norm resulted in an adaptively weighted soft thresholding rule with a sparsity enhancing effect.ResultsIt was demonstrated that the proposed regularization technique adaptively assigns lower weights on the thresholding of gradient fields and wavelet coefficients, and as such, is more efficient in reducing aliasing artifacts arising from k-space undersampling, when compared to its l₁-based counterpart.ConclusionThe SCAD regularization improves the performance of l₁-based regularization technique, especially at reduced sampling rates, and thus might be a good candidate for some applications in CS-MRI.