Surfactant-sensitive polymeric membrane electrodes

The development and testing is described of surfactant-sensitive electrodes in which the active element is a plasticised polymeric membrane containing a dissolved complex of a cationic and anionic surfactant. Electrodes made with poly(vinyl chloride) membranes plasticised with 40–60% tricresyl phosphate and containing cetyl trimethylammonium dodecyl sulphate are reasonably satisfactory for determining sodium dodecyl sulphate activities below and above the critical micelle concentration. A new class of membrane electrodes has been introduced in which ion-exchange groups are chemically bound to the ends of the poly(vinyl chloride) chains either through the use of an amine as chain transfer agent during polymerisation or by using the SO₃^? radical-anion as polymerisation initiator. The resulting electrodes are specific to anionic or to cationic surfactants but selectivity between different surfactants of the same charge sign is not high. The electrode lifetimes in micellar solutions are much higher than those of previously described electrodes because the electroactive material cannot be lost by solubilisation.     

Development of the protocol for purification of artemisinin based on combination of commercial and computationally designed adsorbents

A polymeric adsorbent for extraction of the antimalarial drug artemisinin from Artemisia annua L. was computationally designed. This polymer demonstrated a high capacity for artemisinin (120 mg g^?1), quantitative recovery (87%) and was found to be an effective material for purification of artemisinin from complex plant matrix. The artemisinin quantification was conducted using an optimised HPLC‐MS protocol, which was characterised by high precision and linearity in the concentration range between 0.05 and 2 μg mL^?1. Optimisation of the purification protocol also involved screening of commercial adsorbents for the removal of waxes and other interfering natural compounds, which inhibit the crystallisation of artemisinin. As a result of a two step‐purification protocol crystals of artemisinin were obtained, and artemisinin purity was evaluated as 75%. By performing the second stage of purification twice, the purity of artemisinin can be further improved to 99%. The developed protocol produced high‐purity artemisinin using only a few purification steps that makes it suitable for large scale industrial manufacturing process.     

67Cu Production Capabilities: A Mini Review

Is the ⁶⁷Cu production worldwide feasible for expanding preclinical and clinical studies? How can we face the ingrowing demands of this emerging and promising theranostic radionuclide for personalized therapies? This review looks at the different production routes, including the accelerator- and reactor-based ones, providing a comprehensive overview of the actual ⁶⁷Cu supply, with brief insight into its use in non-clinical and clinical studies. In addition to the most often explored nuclear reactions, this work focuses on the ⁶⁷Cu separation and purification techniques, as well as the target material recovery procedures that are mandatory for the economic sustainability of the production cycle. The quality aspects, such as radiochemical, chemical, and radionuclidic purity, with particular attention to the coproduction of the counterpart ⁶⁴Cu, are also taken into account, with detailed comparisons among the different production routes. Future possibilities related to new infrastructures are included in this work, as well as new developments on the radiopharmaceuticals aspects.     

Differential response induced by exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation in SHSY-5Y and normal human fibroblast cells

Radiation therapy has been used in the treatment of a wide variety of cancers for nearly a century and is one of the most effective ways to treat cancer. Low-dose ionizing radiation (IR) can interfere with cell division of cancer and normal cells by introducing oxidative stress and injury to DNA. The differences in the response to IR-induced DNA damage and increased reactive oxygen species between normal human fibroblasts (NHFs) and cancerous SHSY-5Y cells were considered. H2AX staining and comet assays revealed that NHF cells responded by initiating a DNA repair sequence whereas SHSY-5Y cells did not. In addition, NHF cells appeared to quench the oxidative stress induced by IR, and after 24 h no DNA damage was present. SHSY-5Y cells, however, did not repair their DNA, did not quench the oxidative stress, and showed characteristic signs that they were beginning to undergo apoptosis. These results indicate that there is a differential response between this cancerous and normal cell line in their ability to respond to low-dose IR, and these differences need to be exploited in order to treat cancer effectively. Further study is needed in order to elucidate the mechanism by which SHSY-5Y cells undergo apoptosis following radiation and why these normal cells are better equipped to deal with IR-induced double-strand breaks and oxidative stress.     

The Maximum Number of Complete Subgraphs of Fixed Size in a Graph with Given Maximum Degree

In this article, we make progress on a question related to one of Galvin that has attracted substantial attention recently. The question is that of determining among all graphs G with n vertices and , which has the most complete subgraphs of size t, for . The conjectured extremal graph is , where with . Gan et al. (Combin Probab Comput 24(3) (2015), 521–527) proved the conjecture when , and also reduced the general conjecture to the case . We prove the conjecture for and also establish a weaker form of the conjecture for all r.     

Thermalization of199Hg ion macromotion by a light background gas in an RF quadrupole trap

The largest systematic uncertainty in the performance of atomic frequency standards using a cloud of ions stored in an rf quadrupole trap is the second-order Doppler shift which depends on ion temperature and trapping parameters. This paper presents evidence that cooling the ions by collisions with atoms of a background gas light compared to the ions results in the condensation of the ions into a cloud of almost uniform density determined by space charge versus potential well forces. In this condition the second-order Doppler shift is simple to calculate and is found to depend only on readily measured characteristics of the ion cloud. This along with already observed good signal-to-noise ratio shows that the frequency standard we have constructed using the hyperfine splitting of singly ionized¹⁹⁹Hg, with helium cooling can have an order of magnitude better performance in accuracy, stability, and reproducibility than presently available commercial cesium beam standards.     

CARS spectral fitting with multiple resonant species using sparse libraries

The coherent anti‐Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) technique is often used in the study of turbulent flames. Fast and accurate algorithms are needed for fitting CARS spectra for temperature and multiple chemical species. This paper describes the development of such an algorithm. The algorithm employs sparse libraries whose size grows more slowly with number of species than a regular library. It was demonstrated by fitting synthetic ‘experimental’ dual‐pump CARS spectra containing four resonant species (N₂, O₂, H₂ and CO₂), both with added noise and without it, and by fitting experimental spectra from a H₂ air flat flame produced by a Hencken burner. In the four‐species example, the library was nearly an order of magnitude smaller than the equivalent regular library (fitting times are correspondingly faster), and the fitting errors in the absence of added noise were negligible compared to the random errors associated with fitting noisy spectra. When fitting noisy spectra, weighted least squares fitting to signal intensity, as opposed to least squares fitting or least squares fitting to square root of intensity, minimized random and bias errors in fit parameters. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Space-charge effects in liquid metal ion sources of different geometries

The current work considers the effect of geometry, other than the ideal Taylor cone, on space charge and axial fields of liquid metal ion sources. Solutions of the spacecharge equation for the concentric sphere and hyperboloidal-planar models of a liquid emitter demonstrate a rather dramatic dependence of the space charge and axial fields on the geometry of the emitting surface.This research was supported in part by the NATO Research Grants Division, Grant No. 1902, Scientific Affairs Division, Brussels, BelgiumAltoona Campus     

Gauge invariance and gauge independence of the S-matrix in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum field theories

The gauge independence of transition rates as opposed to the gauge invariance of the equations of motion and gauge dependence of operators and state vectors is critically examined and explicitly demonstrated, both in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Time independent as well as time dependent gauge transformations are explicitly analyzed using several techniques in order to clarify the physical content and significance of gauge independence and the conditions for its applicability.