Altered protein synthesis in rat kidney cells exposed to semiconductor materials

It is thought that the extensive industrial use of arsenic, gallium and indium, which have applications as the materials for III–V semiconductors, will increase human exposure to these compounds in the near future. We have undertaken the development of new biological indicators for assessing exposure to these elements. Element-specific alterations in protein synthesis patterns were expected to occur following exposure to arsenic compounds. We examined alterations in protein synthesis in primary cultures of rat kidney proximal tubule epithelial cells by sodium arsenite, gallium chloride and indium chloride, utilizing two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. After incubation with the chemicals for 20 h, newly synthesized proteins were labeled with [³⁵S]methionine. A protein with a molecular weight (M_r) of 30 000 was markedly induced on exposure to 10 μM arsenite or 300 μM gallium chloride, and synthesis of proteins with M_r values of 85 000, 71 000, 65 000, 51 000, 38 000 and 28 000 were also increased by exposure to arsenite and gallium chloride. No significant changes were observed upon exposure to indium. Some of these increased proteins could be heat-shock proteins.     

Origins and structures of background ions produced by fast-atom bombardment of glycerol

Accurate mass measurements were used to assign elemental compositions and tandem mass spectrometry was used to characterize the peak-at-every-mass background ions produced by kiloelectron-volt-particle bombardment of neat fast-atom bombardment matrices. The majority of the background ions observed in the mass spectrum of neat glycerol was identified. On the basis of the experiments with glycerol, a theory for the formation of background ions is presented. Results are discussed according to the chemical and physical changes that ygoe;on-volt-particle bombardment produces in the matrix.     

A convenient method for regioselective C-5 halogenation of 4(3H)-oxo-7H-pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidines

N-7, O-Disilylation of 4(3H)-oxo-7H-pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidines provides a convenient method for activation of these compounds toward regiospecific halogenation at C-5. The sequence is conveniently carried out without isolation of the silylated derivatives and desilylation is spontaneous upon addition of water to the reaction mixture.     

Nanocrystalline ceramic films for efficient conversion of light into electricity

Transparent nanocrystalline films of oxide semiconductors such as TiO₂ and Fe₂O₃ have been prepared on a conducting glass support employing a sol-gel procedure. The films are composed of nanometer-sized particles sintered together to allow for percolative charge carrier transport. The internal surface of these films is very high, roughness factors of the order of 1000 being readily obtained. Electric polarization was applied for forward and reverse biasing of the films and the resulting optical changes have been analyzed to derive their flat band potential. Band gap excitation of such nanocrystalline semiconductors produces electron-hole pairs which migrate through the film to be collected as electric current. Steady state photolysis and time resolved laser techniques have been applied to scrutinize the mechanism of light induced charge separation within the nanostructure. When derivatized with a suitable chromophore, TiO₂ films give extraordinary efficiencies for the conversion of incident photons into electric current, exceeding 90% for certain transition metal complexes within the wavelength range of their absorption band. The underlying physical principles of these astonishing findings will be discussed. Exploiting this discovery, we have developed a new type of photovoltaic device whose overall light to electric energy conversion yield is 10% under simulated AM 1.5 solar radiation.     

Optimal control of unsteady compressible viscous flows

The control of complex, unsteady flows is a pacing technology for advances in fluid mechanics. Recently, optimal control theory has become popular as a means of predicting best case controls that can guide the design of practical flow control systems. However, most of the prior work in this area has focused on incompressible flow which precludes many of the important physical flow phenomena that must be controlled in practice including the coupling of fluid dynamics, acoustics, and heat transfer. This paper presents the formulation and numerical solution of a class of optimal boundary control problems governed by the unsteady two‐dimensional compressible Navier–Stokes equations. Fundamental issues including the choice of the control space and the associated regularization term in the objective function, as well as issues in the gradient computation via the adjoint equation method are discussed. Numerical results are presented for a model problem consisting of two counter‐rotating viscous vortices above an infinite wall which, due to the self‐induced velocity field, propagate downward and interact with the wall. The wall boundary control is the temporal and spatial distribution of wall‐normal velocity. Optimal controls for objective functions that target kinetic energy, heat transfer, and wall shear stress are presented along with the influence of control regularization for each case. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthetic DNA and Biology (Nobel Lecture)

Most of the significant work has been summarized in a number of reviews and articles. In these there was, of necessity, a good deal of simplification and omission of detail…. With the passage of time, even I find myself accepting such simplified accounts. F Sanger^[1]