Determination of cocaine adulterants in human urine by dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction and high-performance liquid chromatography

Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry - This study aimed to determine simultaneously five major street cocaine adulterants (caffeine, lidocaine, phenacetin, diltiazem, and hydroxyzine) in human...     

On the efficacy of charging a battery using a chaotic energy harvester

Nonlinear Dynamics - Introduction of stiffness nonlinearities to broaden the frequency bandwidth of vibratory energy harvesters has the adverse influence of complicating the response behavior of...     

Development and application of electrochemical sensor of boron-doped diamond (BDD) modified by drop casting with tin hexacyanoferrate

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - This work presents the development and characterization of an electrochemical sensor of tin hexacyanoferrate (SnHCF), produced from the modification by...     

Cellular and subcellular localization of Marlin-1 in the brain

Background  

Marlin-1 is a microtubule binding protein that associates specifically with the GABA_B1 subunit in neurons and with members of the Janus kinase family in lymphoid cells. In addition, it binds the molecular motor kinesin-I and nucleic acids, preferentially single stranded RNA. Marlin-1 is expressed mainly in the central nervous system but little is known regarding its cellular and subcellular distribution in the brain.     

Quantum Control in Foundational Experiments

We describe a new class of experiments designed to probe the foundations of quantum mechanics. Using quantum controlling devices, we show how to attain a freedom in temporal ordering of the control and detection of various phenomena. We consider wave–particle duality in the context of quantum-controlled and the entanglement-assisted delayed-choice experiments. Then we discuss a quantum-controlled CHSH experiment and measurement of photon’s transversal position and momentum in a single set-up.     

Existence and data dependence of fixed points for multivalued operators on gauge spaces

The purpose of this note is to present some fixed point and data dependence theorems in complete gauge spaces and in hyperconvex metric spaces for the so-called Meir-Keeler multivalued operators and admissible multivalued aα-contractions. Our results extend and generalize several theorems of Espínola and Kirk [R. Espínola, W.A. Kirk, Set-valued contractions and fixed points, Nonlinear Anal. 54 (2003) 485-494] and Rus, Petru?el, and Sînt?m?rian [I.A. Rus, A. Petru?el, A. Sînt?m?rian, Data dependence of the fixed point set of some multivalued weakly Picard operators, Nonlinear Anal. 52 (2003) 1947-1959].     

Atomic fraction around defects associated with nanoparticles in AlCuMg alloys

A positron annihilation spectroscopy analysis method to obtain a quantitative determination of the chemical composition around defects inside nanoparticles is presented here. This methodology is applied to AlCuMg alloys to study the rapid hardening phenomena associated with solute-vacancy aggregation. Coincidence Doppler Broadening (CDB) and lifetime spectroscopy measurements of reference samples of pure elements with and without defects were analyzed to give quantitative information of the average chemical environment around vacancies, i.e. the atomic fraction of the first neighbors of these defects, in the alloys studied. The accuracy and reproducibility of the methodology is confirmed not only by good fits to the experimental data but, in most cases, by the consistency between the mean lifetime values predicted, using the CDB estimation, and the mean lifetime values independently measured. Discrepancies in the methodology are expected when there is poor CDB contrast between elements, i.e. having similar electronic structure (for example, Al and Mg). The criterion for establishing the statistical accuracy of the separation of elements in these special cases is discussed. The methodology can be applied not only to study homogeneous materials as metallic alloys, but also to study the depth profile in thin films.     

Heuristic solution approaches for the maximum minsum dispersion problem

The Maximum Minsum Dispersion Problem (Max-Minsum DP) is a strongly NP-Hard problem that belongs to the family of equitable dispersion problems. When dealing with dispersion, the operations research literature has focused on optimizing efficiency-based objectives while neglecting, for the most part, measures of equity. The most common efficiency-based functions are the sum of the inter-element distances or the minimum inter-element distance. Equitable dispersion problems, on the other hand, attempt to address the balance between efficiency and equity when selecting a subset of elements from a larger set. The objective of the Max-Minsum DP is to maximize the minimum aggregate dispersion among the chosen elements. We develop tabu search and GRASP solution procedures for this problem and compare them against the best in the literature. We also apply LocalSolver, a commercially available black-box optimizer, to compare our results. Our computational experiments show that we are able to establish new benchmarks in the solution of the Max-Minsum DP.     

Intermolecular interactions in electroactive thiol monolayers probed by linear scan voltammetry

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Molecular Hybridization Strategy on the Design,Synthesis, and Structural Characterization of Ferrocene-N-acyl Hydrazones as Immunomodulatory Agents

Immunomodulatory agents are widely used for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases, but the range of side effects of the available drugs makes necessary the search for new immunomodulatory drugs. Here, we investigated the immunomodulatory activity of new ferrocenyl-N-acyl hydrazones derivatives (SintMed(141–156). The evaluated N-acyl hydrazones did not show cytotoxicity at the tested concentrations, presenting CC₅₀ values greater than 50 µM. In addition, all ferrocenyl-N-acyl hydrazones modulated nitrite production in immortalized macrophages, showing inhibition values between 14.4% and 74.2%. By presenting a better activity profile, the ferrocenyl-N-acyl hydrazones SintMed149 and SintMed150 also had their cytotoxicity and anti-inflammatory effect evaluated in cultures of peritoneal macrophages. The molecules were not cytotoxic at any of the concentrations tested in peritoneal macrophages and were able to significantly reduce (p < 0.05) the production of nitrite, TNF-α, and IL-1β. Interestingly, both molecules significantly reduced the production of IL-2 and IFN-γ in cultured splenocytes activated with concanavalin A. Moreover, SintMed150 did not show signs of acute toxicity in animals treated with 50 or 100 mg/kg. Finally, we observed that ferrocenyl-N-acyl hydrazone SintMed150 at 100 mg/kg reduced the migration of neutrophils (44.6%) in an acute peritonitis model and increased animal survival by 20% in an LPS-induced endotoxic shock model. These findings suggest that such compounds have therapeutic potential to be used to treat diseases of inflammatory origin.