Calculation of the dynamic temperature characteristics of a heated graphite tube used in electrothermal atomic absorption measurements

A method and computer program were developed for calculating the temperature of any part of a graphite furnace tube at any instant of time after onset of the heating cycle. Results for tubes of the Massman design show large differences in spatial temperature distributions during and at the end of the heating cycle when equilibrium is reached. When constant current is applied to contoured tubes, greater heating rates at the tube centres are obtained than with standard tubes.     

Large-scale production of cellulose-binding domains. Adsorption studies using CBD-FITC conjugates

A method for the gram-scale production of cellulose-binding domains (CBD) through the proteolytic digestion of a commercial enzymatic preparation (Celluclast) was developed. The CBD obtained, isolated from Trichoderma reesei cellobiohydrolase I, is highly pure and heavily glycosylated. The purified peptide has a molecular weight of 8.43 kDa, comprising the binding module, a part of the linker, and about 30% glycosidic moiety. Its properties may thus be different from recombinant ones expressed in bacteria. CBD-fluorescein isothiocyanate conjugates were used to study the CBD-cellulose interaction. The presence of fluorescent peptides adsorbed on crystalline and amorphous cellulose fibers suggests that amorphous regions have a higher concentration of binding sites. The adsorption is reversible, but desorption is a very slow process.     

Cantor exchange systems and renormalization

We prove a one-to-one correspondence between (i) C¹⁺ conjugacy classes of C^1+H Cantor exchange systems that are C^1+H fixed points of renormalization and (ii) C¹⁺ conjugacy classes of C^1+H diffeomorphisms f with a codimension 1 hyperbolic attractor Λ that admit an invariant measure absolutely continuous with respect to the Hausdorff measure on Λ. However, we prove that there is no C^1+α Cantor exchange system, with bounded geometry, that is a C^1+α fixed point of renormalization with regularity α greater than the Hausdorff dimension of its invariant Cantor set.     

Solving multiple-objective problems in the objective space

Projection and relaxation techniques are employed to decompose a multiobjective problem into a two-level structure. The basic manipulation consists in projecting the decision variables onto the space of the implicit tradeoffs, allowing the definition of a relaxed multiobjective master problem directly in the objective space. An additional subproblem tests the feasibility of the solution encountered by the relaxed problem. Some properties of the relaxed problem (linearity, small number of variables, etc.) render its solution efficient by a number of methods. Representatives of two different classes of multiobjective methods [the Geoffrion, Dyer, Feinberg (GDF) method and the fuzzy method of Baptistella and Ollero] are implemented and applied within this context to a water resources allocation problem. The results attest the computational viability of the overall procedure and its usefulness for the solution of multiobjective problems.This work was partially sponsored by grants from CNP_q and FAPESP, Brazil. The authors are indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.     

Self-assembled peptide tubelets with 7 A pores

Here we report the preparation and structural characteristics of self-assembling peptide tubelets composed of 32-membered rings formed of alternating alpha-amino acids and cis-3-aminocyclohexanecarboxylic acids. The tubelets possess a partial hydrophobic core environment, provided by the projection of the cyclohexane C2 methylene moiety into the lumen, and a Van der Waals pore diameter of about 7 A.     

Hypotheses sur la formation par pyrolyse du premier intermediaire a silicium digonal

The synthesis of 2,8-dimethyl 3,9-dichloro 6-sila[5.5] spiro undecatetra 2.4,8,10-ene is described. The thermal decomposition of the adduct formed by the reaction of this product with methyl acetylene dicarboxylate is studied. From the characterization of the copyrolysis products, two possible mechanisms are proposed which imply the formation of digonal silicon such as 2-silaallene and 2-silaketene.     

Le probleme de la conjugaison a travers un atome de silicium π-lie dans les systemes sila-2 butadieniques

The chemical behaviour of sila-2 butadienes, formed as transient intermediates either by thermolysis or by photolysis of various 1-vinylsilacyclobutanes, was studied with respect to hydroxylated compounds of different pKa values Two mechanisms can explain the nature of the products obtained on the co-thermolysis of the cyclic compounds with phenol, one with 1-silacyclobut-1-ene intermediate and the other involving an allylic silicenium cation. In both hypothetical mechanisms, the 2-silabutadienes behave as a conjugated system since they lead either to (2+2) cycloaddition or to (1,2)- and (1,4)-electrophilic addition. This evidence for a conjugation phenomenon through a silicon atom is supported by the calculation of the delocalisation energies of butadiene and 2-silabutadiene.