Thermal analysis and health safety

Hardwood dust is a human carcinogen; upon inhalation, it can cause sinonasal adenocarcinoma. Softwood, on the other hand, is only suspected of carcinogenic properties. However, the toxicology-based recommended exposure limits for hardwood and softwood dust in working environments have been derived identically. While it is very simple to distinguish the wood by morphological evaluations, the wood dust produced in working activities does not allow differentiation. Thermal analysis, especially thermogravimetry, was applied to evaluate the different characteristic thermal profile of standard hardwood and softwood dusts. The different TG and DTG traces allow to propose thermogravimetry as a new tool to distinguish and quantify the different dust origin.     

Direct Chromatographic Resolution of P-Chiral Organophosphorus Compounds at Analytical and Preparative Levels

Abstract

High-performance liquid chromatography utilizing chiral stationary phases (CSPs) is well established as a very simple and efficient method for obtaining discrete amounts of optically active compounds with high e.e., as well as for determining their enantiomeric composition We wish to demonstrate in the present work that a totally synthetic brush-type π-acidic CSP based on a bis(N,N′-3,5-dinitrobenzoyl) derivative of (R,R)- or (S,S)-trans-1,2-diaminocyclohexane as selector can be used successfully to resolve variety of chiral organophosphorus compounds containing stereogenic centers at phosphorus     

Controlling the propagation of broadband light pulses by Electromagnetically Induced Transparency

We present an experimental and theoretical investigation, performed on hot sodium atoms in a ladder scheme, showing the control of the absorption and of the propagation velocity of a probe light pulse with a spectral bandwidth as large as 1.8 GHz. The predictions of the theoretical model compare favorably with the experimental results.     

Ambivalent role of metal chlorides in ring opening reactions of 2H-azirines: synthesis of imidazoles,pyrroles and pyrrolinones

2H-Azirines were found to react with imines, enaminones and enaminoesters in the presence of metal salts. Imidazoles, pyrroles and new pyrrolinones derivatives are isolated in good overall yields. The role of metal salts was investigated as they can act as Lewis acids or electron donors. Mechanisms are proposed suggesting that imidazoles arise from addition of azirine to imines via radical or ionic mechanism; pyrroles and pyrrolinones are obtained from azirines with enamino derivatives when the salt acts as a Lewis acid. In the latter case the properties of the metallic compound influence the reaction regioselectivity.     

The statistical significance of selected sense–antisense peptide interactions

Sense and antisense peptides, encoded by sense and corresponding antisense DNA strands, are capable of specific interactions that could be a driving force to mediate protein–protein or protein–peptide binding associations. The complementary residue hypothesis suggests that these interactions are founded upon the sum of pairwise interactions between amino acids encoded by corresponding sense and antisense codons. Despite many successful experimental results obtained with the hypothesis, however, the physicochemical basis for these interactions is poorly understood. We examined the potential of the hypothesis for general identification of protein–protein interaction sites, and the possible role of the hypothesis in determining folding in a broad set of protein structures. In addition, we performed a structural study to investigate the binding of a complementary peptide to IL‐1F2. Our results suggest that complementary residue pairs are no more frequent or conserved than average in protein–protein interfaces, and are statistically under‐represented amongst contacting residue pairs in folded protein structures. Although our structural results matched experimental observations of binding between the peptide and IL‐1F2, complementary residue interactions do not appear to be dominant in the bound structure. Overall, our data do not allow us to conclude that the complementary residue hypothesis accounts for specific sense–antisense peptide interactions. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Exotic states in the dynamical Casimir effect

Inhibited decoherence has been recently observed in a dissipative two-level system by increasing the strength of the coupling with the reservoir. The system is described by the spin-boson model under a perturbation approach in the delocalized phase regime occurring in weak-coupling limit at zero temperature. Within this scenario, persistence of coherence is found over long times for various low frequency structures of the bosonic environment near a band gap. Special resonances provoke transitions in the long time dynamics if the transition amplitude of the two-level system is greater than the band gap frequency or in absence of any band gap. These transitions may hinder the the loss of coherence in the spin-boson model. Limitations of the approximations are also discussed.     

Complete self-shrinkers confined into some regions of the space

We study geometric properties of complete non-compact bounded self-shrinkers and obtain natural restrictions that force these hypersurfaces to be compact. Furthermore, we observe that, to a certain extent, complete self-shrinkers intersect transversally a hyperplane through the origin. When such an intersection is compact, we deduce spectral information on the natural drifted Laplacian associated to the self-shrinker. These results go in the direction of verifying the validity of a conjecture by H.D. Cao concerning the polynomial volume growth of complete self-shrinkers. A finite strong maximum principle in case the self-shrinker is confined into a cylindrical product is also presented.