The effect of salt stoichiometry on protein-salt interactions determined by ternary diffusion in aqueous solutions

We report the four diffusion coefficients for the lysozyme-MgCl2-water ternary system at 25 degrees C and pH 4.5. The comparison with previous results for the lysozyme-NaCl-water ternary system is used to examine the effect of salt stoichiometry on the transport properties of lysozyme-salt aqueous mixtures. We find that the two cross-diffusion coefficients are very sensitive to salt stoichiometry. One of the cross-diffusion coefficients is examined in terms of common-ion, excluded-volume, and protein-preferential hydration effects. We use the four ternary diffusion coefficients to extract chemical-potential cross-derivatives and protein-preferential interaction coefficients. These thermodynamic data characterize the protein-salt thermodynamic interactions. We demonstrate the presence of the common-ion effect (Donnan effect) by analyzing the dependence of the preferential-interaction coefficient not only with respect to salt concentration but also with respect to salt stoichiometry. We conclude that the common-ion effect and the protein-preferential hydration are both important for describing the lysozyme-MgCl2 thermodynamic interaction.     

Theory of laser acceleration of light-ion beams from interaction of ultrahigh-intensity lasers with layered targets

Experiments at the LANL Trident facility demonstrated the production of monoenergetic ion beams from the interaction of an ultraintense laser with a target comprising a heavy ion substrate and thin layer of light ions. An analytic model is obtained that predicts how the mean energy and quality of monoenergetic ion beams and the energy of substrate ions vary with substrate material and light-ion layer composition and thickness. Dimensionless parameters controlling the dynamics are derived and the model is validated with particle-in-cell simulations and experimental data.     

Box-modeling of bone and tooth phosphate oxygen isotope compositions as a function of environmental and physiological parameters*

A time-dependent box model is developed to calculate oxygen isotope compositions of bone phosphate as a function of environmental and physiological parameters. Input and output oxygen fluxes related to body water and bone reservoirs are scaled to the body mass. The oxygen fluxes are evaluated by stoichiometric scaling to the calcium accretion and resorption rates, assuming a pure hydroxylapatite composition for the bone and tooth mineral. The model shows how the diet composition, body mass, ambient relative humidity and temperature may control the oxygen isotope composition of bone phosphate. The model also computes how bones and teeth record short-term variations in relative humidity, air temperature and δ¹⁸O of drinking water, depending on body mass. The documented diversity of oxygen isotope fractionation equations for vertebrates is accounted for by our model when for each specimen the physiological and diet parameters are adjusted in the living range of environmental conditions.     

On the Behavior of the Solutions for Certain Linear Autonomous Difference Equations

Certain linear autonomous delay as well as neutral delay difference equations are considered. A class of linear autonomous delay difference equations with continuous variable is also considered. Some results on the behavior of the solutions are established via two distinct positive roots of the corresponding characteristic equation.     

CuSO4/sodium ascorbate catalysed synthesis of benzosuberone and 1,2,3-triazole conjugates: Design,synthesis and in vitro anti-proliferative activity

A novel series of conjugates of benzosuberone and 1,2,3-triazole i.e. 3-(4-phenyl-1H-1,2,3-triazol-1-yl)propyl-9-chloro-2,3-dimethyl-6,7-dihydro-5H-benzo[7]annulene-8-carboxylic acids (8a-j) were synthesized in good to excellent yields catalysed by CuSO₄ under milder reaction conditions and evaluated for their anti-proliferative activity. The structural elucidation of the prepared compounds was carried out using IR, ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR and Mass spectral analysis. The newly synthesized derivatives (8a-j) were evaluated for their anti-proliferative activity against four human cell lines and the novel derivatives showed moderate to excellent activity. The obtained results suggest that these compounds can be considered as new hits for anti-proliferative drug development programme and further SAR studies can help obtain better anticancer agents.     

Model-independent analysis of tri-bimaximal mixing: A softly-broken hidden or an accidental symmetry?

To address the issue of whether tri-bimaximal mixing (TBM) is a softly-broken hidden or an accidental symmetry, we adopt a model-independent analysis in which we perturb a neutrino mass matrix leading to TBM in the most general way but leave the three texture zeros of the diagonal charged lepton mass matrix unperturbed. We compare predictions for the perturbed neutrino TBM parameters with those obtained from typical SO(10) grand unified theories with a variety of flavor symmetries. Whereas SO(10) GUTs almost always predict a normal mass hierarchy for the light neutrinos, TBM has a priori no preference for neutrino masses. We find, in particular for the latter, that the value of |U_e3| is very sensitive to the neutrino mass scale and ordering. Observation of |U_e3|²>0.001 to 0.01 within the next few years would be incompatible with softly-broken TBM and a normal mass hierarchy and would suggest that the apparent TBM symmetry is an accidental symmetry instead. No such conclusions can be drawn for the inverted and quasi-degenerate hierarchy spectra.     

Enhanced photoactivity of antimony phosphates by substitution of H+, Cu2+ and N3− in the K3Sb3P2O14·xH2O crystal lattice

Research on Chemical Intermediates - Substitutional doping of framework heteroatoms in photocatalysis is one of the approaches for harvesting visible light. Tunnel structure potassium antimony...     

Pressure induced phase transition behaviour in f-electron based dialuminides

The rare-earth and actinide based compounds are endowed with several exotic physical and chemical properties due to the presence of f-electrons. These properties exhibit interesting changes under the action of various thermodynamic fields and hence continues to be a subject of extensive research. For instance, under pressure, the nature of f-electrons can be changed from localized to itinerant, leading to a variety of changes in their structural, physical and chemical properties. The present review on the high pressure phase transition behaviour of dialuminides of rare earths and actinides is an outcome of research in our laboratory during the last five years using a unique combination of a Guinier diffractometer and a diamond anvil cell built in-house. To bring out the correlations between the compressibility and structural behaviour with the electronic structure, we have also carried out electronic structure calculation. Further, the usefulness of Villars’ three parameter structure maps in predicting pressure induced structural transitions has been explored and this has been illustrated with the available phase transition data.     

Small-angle Coulomb collision model for particle-in-cell simulations

We construct and investigate a set of stochastic differential equations that incorporate the physics of velocity-dependent small-angle Coulomb collisions among the plasma particles in a particle-in-cell simulation. Each particle is scattered stochastically from all the other particles in a simulation cell modeled as one or more Maxwellians. Total energy and momentum are conserved by linear transformation of the velocity increments. In two test simulations the proposed “particle-moment” collision algorithm performs well with time steps as large as 10% of the relaxation time – far larger than a particle-pairing collision algorithm, in which pairs of particles are scattered from one another, requires to achieve the same accuracy.