Silane adsorption onto cellulose fibers: hydrolysis and condensation reactions

The hydrolysis of three alkoxysilane coupling agents, gamma-methacryloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (MPS), gamma-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APS), and gamma-diethylenetriaminopropyltrimethoxysilane (TAS), was carried out in an ethanol/water (80/20) solution and followed by 1H, 13C, and 29Si NMR spectroscopy, which showed that its rate increased in the order MPS < APS < TAS. The formation of the silanol groups was followed by their self-condensation to generate oligomeric structure. APS and MPS only gave soluble products, whereas colloidal particles precipitated in the medium when TAS was hydrolyzed. Pristine and hydrolyzed MPS were then adsorbed onto a cellulose substrate and thereafter a thermal treatment at 110-120 degrees C under reduced pressure was applied to the modified fibers to create permanent bonding of the coupling agent at their surface.     

Molecular mass determination of plasma-derived glycoproteins by ultraviolet matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry with internal calibration

Human plasma-derived antithrombin III (AT-III), factor IX (FIX) and vitronectin (VN) were characterized as native glycoproteins and in their de-N-glycosylated form by means of MALDI mass spectrometry. The average molecular masses of the three complex glycoproteins were determined applying internal calibration with high-mass, well-defined protein calibrants. Internal calibration generated for the 47 kDa yeast protein enolase a mass precision in the continuous and delayed extraction mode of +/-0.12 and +/-0.022%, respectively. The achievable mass accuracy for such a high-mass, unmodified protein was in the range of 0.02% in the continuous mode, which turned out to be better than in the delayed extraction mode. Purification of all (glyco) proteins (even the calibration proteins) by means of ZipTip technology and direct elution with a solvent system containing the appropriate MALDI matrix turned out to be a prerequisite to measure the exact molecular masses with an internal calibration. The average molecular masses of the two different forms of AT-III, namely AT-III(alpha) and AT-III(beta), were shown to be 57.26 and 55.04 kDa, respectively. The 2.22 kDa mass difference is attributed to the known difference in carbohydrate content at one specific site (Asn-135). After exhaustive de-N-glycosylation (by means of PNGase F) of the alpha- and beta-form and subsequent MALDI-MS analysis, average molecular masses of 48.96 and 48.97 kDa, respectively, were obtained. These values are in good agreement (-0.15%) with the calculated molecular mass (49.039 kDa) of the protein part based on SwissProt data. The molecular mass of the heavily post-translational modified glycoprotein FIX was found to be 53.75 kDa with a peak width at 10% peak height of 4.5 kDa, because of the presence of many different posttranslational modifications (N- and O-glycosylation at multiple sites, sulfation, phosphorylation, hydroxylation and numerous gamma-carboxyglutamic acids). MALDI-MS molecular mass determination of the native, size-exclusion chromatography-purified, VN sample revealed that the glycoprotein was present as dimer with molecular mass of 117.74 kDa, which could be corroborated by non-reducing SDS-PAGE. After sample treatment with guanidine hydrochloride and mass spectrometric analysis, a single, new main component was detected. The molecular mass turned out to be 59.45 kDa, representing the monomeric form of VN, known as V75. The determined molecular mass value was shown to be on one hand lower than from SDS-PAGE and on the other higher than the calculated amino acid sequence molecular mass (52 277 Da), pointing to the well-known SDS-PAGE bias and to considerable post-translational modifications. Further treatment of the sample with a reducing agent and subsequent MALDI-MS revealed two new components with molecular masses of 49.85 and 9.41 kDa, corresponding to V65 and V10 subunits of VN. PNGase F digest of the V75 and V65 units and MS analysis, exhibiting a molecular mass reduction of 6.37 kDa in both cases, verified the presence of a considerable amount of N-glycans.     

Aurasperone F--a new member of the naphtho-gamma-pyrone class isolated from a cultured microfungus, Aspergillus niger C-433

A novel dimeric naphtho-gamma-pyrone, named aurasperone F (1), was isolated from the fermentation broth of the culture extracts of Aspergillus niger C-433, isolated from grapes, along with the known compounds fonsecin (2), aurasperone B (3), aurasperone C (4), aurasperone D (5) and aurasperone E (6). The chemical structure of the new natural product was established by extensive one- and two-dimensional NMR spectroscopic studies (1H, 13C, COSY, HMQC, 1D NOE spectra), as well as on the UV, MS and IR spectral analysis.     

Characterization of cysteinylation of pharmaceutical-grade human serum albumin by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry and low-energy collision-induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry

Three samples of albumin derived from human plasma (pharmaceutical grade, HSA) obtained from different commercial sources were investigated for their micro-heterogeneities by means of electrospray ionization (ESI) ion trap mass spectrometry (ITMS). The study covered MS analyses of the intact proteins as well as on the tryptic peptide level. The intact protein samples were analyzed without any separation step except for simple desalting. With these samples we observed in the positive ion ESI mass spectra that the multiply charged ion signals of HSA consisted of a number of fully or partly resolved peaks with relative intensities depending on the analyzed sample. The non-modified form of HSA was detected in the three HSA preparations at m/z values of 66448 +/- 3.6, 66450 +/- 0.6 and 66451 +/- 3.2 ([MH]+), respectively. The value calculated from the amino acid sequence was 66439. The second compound present with high intensity (in two cases the base peak in the deconvoluted mass spectrum) is interpreted as a modified HSA, and the molecular mass increase in relation to the unmodified HAS was between 116 and 118 Da (m/z of 66 564, 66 567 and 66 569), suggesting the presence of a covalently bound cysteine residue. A further peak in the deconvoluted ESI spectra was found in all three samples with rather low signal/noise ratio at m/z 66 619, 66 621 and 66 613, respectively, which may correspond to a non-enzymatic glycation described in the literature. The verification of the proposed covalent HSA modifications was subsequently done on the peptide level using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)/ESI-MS and HPLC/ESI-MS/MS including low-energy collision-induced dissociation (CID). Prior to the tryptic digestion, the HSA samples were alkylated without a prior reduction step. Following this procedure we detected peptides of the sequence T21-41 that included the Cys-34 residue in both forms: cysteinylated (m/z 639.15 [M+4H]4+) as well as vinylpyridine-alkylated (m/z 635.69 [M+4H]4+, which means in its previously native free SH form). In the next step on-line LC/ESI low-energy CID MS/MS experiments were performed to verify these two proposed structures. By means of MS/MS analysis of the mentioned ions the described modification (cysteinylation) at the Cys-34 residue could be proven. This abundant modification of HSA in pharmaceutical-grade preparations could be unambiguously identified as cysteinylation at the Cys-34 residue. On the other hand, the proposed non-enzymatic glycation was not detectable on the peptide level in the on-line HPLC/ESI-MS mode, maybe due to the low concentration in the three samples under investigation.     

The mortar spectral element method in domains of operators. Part II: the curl operator and the vector potential problem

F. Ben Belgacem ^{The mortar spectral element method is a domain decompositiontechnique that allows for discretizing second- or fourth-orderelliptic equations when set in standard Sobolev spaces. Theaim of this paper is to extend this method to problems formulatedin the space of square-integrable vector fields with square-integrablecurl. We consider the problem of computing the vector potentialassociated with a divergence-free function in 3D and proposea discretization of it. The numerical analysis of the discreteproblem is performed and numerical experiments are presented;they turn out to be in good agreement with the theoretical results.}     

Viscous effects on elliptic flow and shock waves

Fast thermalization and a strong buildup of the elliptic flow of QCD matter as found at RHIC are understood as the consequence of perturbative QCD (pQCD) interactions within the 3+1 dimensional parton cascade BAMPS. The main contributions stem from pQCD bremsstrahlung 2↔3 processes. By comparison to Au+Au data of the flow parameter v₂ as a function of participation number the shear viscosity to entropy ratio is dynamically extracted, which lies in the range of 0.08 and 0.2, depending on the chosen coupling constant and freeze out condition. Furthermore, first simulations on the temporal propagation of dissipative shock waves are given. The cascade can either simulate true ideal shocks as well as initially diluted, truly viscous shocks, depending on the employed cross sections or mean free path, respectively.     

Cauchy Matrices in the Observation of Diffusion Equations

Observability Gramians of diffusion equations have been recently connected to infinite Pick and Cauchy matrices. In fact, inverse or observability inequalities can be obtained after estimating the extreme eigenvalues of these structured matrices,with respect to the diffusion semi-group matrix. The purpose is hence to conduct a spectral study of a subclass of symmetric Cauchy matrices and present an algebraic way to show the desired observability results. We revisit observability inequalities for three different observation problems of the diffusion equation and show how they can be (re)stated through simple proofs.     

Modified Cellulose Fibers as Reinforcing Fillers for Macromolecular Matrices

Various cellulose substrates were submitted to different surface OH chemical modifications in non-swelling media and then fully characterised by FTIR, XPS, contact angle measurements and elemental analysis. The alternative procedures adopted were: (i) simple grafting with monomeric or oligomeric agents which bore one or several reactive functions, either as a single terminal moiety or as numerous moieties placed along the chain; (ii) grafting with polymerisable molecules, which involved the use of reagents of small molecular size, but bearing two functions, one able of reacting with the surface cellulose OH groups and the other used as a source of subsequent covalent linkage with the matrix; (iii) the use of planar stiff molecular configurations bearing two identical reactive functions, calling upon the working hypothesis that only one function will react with a cellulose OH group, whereas the other will be left to copolymerise with the matrix; (iv) coupling with siloxanes using the same strategy as in (ii), except for the fact that this specific approach involves molecules already commonly used in glass fibres treatment; (v) grafting with organometallics such as triethyl aluminium following the same working hypothesis as in (iii) but with a second reaction involving monomeric or polymeric alcohols or amines.     

Adsorption of a cationic surfactant onto cellulosic fibers I. Surface charge effects

The adsorption of four cationic surfactants with different alkyl chain lengths on cellulose substrates was investigated. Cellulose fibers were used as model substrates, and primary alcohol groups of cellulose glycosyl units were oxidized into carboxylic groups to obtain substrates with different surface charges. The amount of surfactant adsorbed on the fiber surface, the fiber zeta-potential, and the amount of surfactant counterions (Cl(-)) released into solution were measured as a function of the surfactant bulk concentration, its molecular structure, the substrate surface charge, and the ionic strength. The contribution of each of these parameters to the shape of the adsorption isotherms was used to verify if surfactant adsorption and self-assembly models usually used to describe the behavior of surfactant/oxide systems can be applied, and with which limitations, to describe cationic surfactant adsorption onto oppositely charged cellulose substrates.     

Some Linear Functionals Having Classical Orthogonal Polynomials as Moments

In this paper, we deal with some linear functionals on the vector space of polynomials whose moments are, in certain normalization, classical orthogonal polynomials (Hermite, Laguerre and Gegenbauer). We show that these linear functionals are semiclassical of class, at most, three. We give the coefficients in the three-term recurrence relations that the corresponding monic orthogonal polynomial sequences satisfy.