Evaluation of education scenarios for acquiring digital competences of secondary school students in Slovenia

Central European Journal of Operations Research - Digital competences are among the most important competences in modern society, with the education system playing a key role in the acquisition of...     

First integrals for Finsler metrics with vanishing $$\chi $$ -curvature

Annals of Global Analysis and Geometry - We prove that in a Finsler manifold with vanishing $$\chi $$ -curvature (in particular with constant flag curvature) some non-Riemannian geometric...     

Sensitive CE-MS method for monitoring of riociguat and desmethylriociguat levels in human serum

Riociguat is novel antihypertensive drug for treatment of pulmonary hypertension. As such, it is still being tested in many clinical and pharmacokinetic trials. Existing methods that determine serum riociguat and desmethylriociguat (DMR) are based solely on liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry. Therefore, we present a novel capillary electrophoresis with mass spectrometry method (CE-MS) for their determination in human serum as alternative method for ongoing trials. Complete resolution of both analytes was achieved by means of pH optimization of ammonium formate background electrolytes that are fully compatible with ESI/MS detection. Simple liquid-liquid extraction was used as sample pretreatment. The calibration dependence of the method was linear (in the range of 10–1000 ng/mL), with adequate accuracy (90.1–114.9%) and precision (13.4%). LOD and LOQ were arbitrarily set at 10 ng/mL for both analytes. Clinical applicability was validated using serum samples from patients treated with riociguat in pharmacokinetic study and the results corresponded with reference HPLC-MS/MS values. Capillary electrophoresis proved to be sensitive and selective tool for the analysis of riociguat and DMR.     

Structure and bonding of lanthanide dinitrogen complexes,Ln(N2)1-8

Lanthanide dinitrogen complexes, Ln(N₂) _x (x = 1-8), were investigated by Density Functional Theory computations using the B3LYP exchange-correlation functional in conjunction with quasirelativistic pseudopotentials for Ln. After a recent study on the lanthanum complexes (A. Kovács, Structural Chemistry 2018 , 29, 1825), the present study aimed to probe the changes upon variously filled 4f subshells of Ln on the structures, stabilities, and bonding properties in related complexes of Nd, Ho, and Lu. The bonding properties were assessed on the basis of natural atomic charges, Ln valence orbital populations, and analysis of bonding molecular orbitals.     

Influence of Polarity and Activation Energy in Microwave–Assisted Organic Synthesis (MAOS)

The aim of this work was to determine the parameters that have decisive roles in microwave-assisted reactions and to develop a model, using computational chemistry, to predict a priori the type of reactions that can be improved under microwaves. For this purpose, a computational study was carried out on a variety of reactions, which have been reported to be improved under microwave irradiation. This comprises six types of reactions. The outcomes obtained in this study indicate that the most influential parameters are activation energy, enthalpy, and the polarity of all the species that participate. In addition to this, in most cases, slower reacting systems observe a much greater improvement under microwave irradiation. Furthermore, for these reactions, the presence of a polar component in the reaction (solvent, reagent, susceptor, etc.) is necessary for strong coupling with the electromagnetic radiation. We also quantified that an activation energy of 20–30 kcal mol⁻¹ and a polarity (μ) between 7–20 D of the species involved in the process is required to obtain significant improvements under microwave irradiation.