Surface-initiated atom-transfer radical polymerization of 4-acetoxystyrene for immunosensing

A novel immunosensing strategy based on surface‐initiated atom‐transfer radical polymerization (SI‐ATRP) in combination with electrochemical detection is proposed. Specifically, 4‐acetoxystyrene (AS) has been chosen as a monomer for ATRP due to its ability to provide acetoxyl groups, which can be converted into phenolic hydroxyl groups for electrochemical detection in the presence of tyrosinase. A controlled radical polymerization reaction of 4‐acetoxystyrene at 60 °C was triggered after immobilization of initiator molecules on an electrode surface. The growth of long‐chain polymeric materials increased the concentration of phenolic hydroxyl groups, which in turn significantly enhanced the electrochemical signal output. Polymerization conditions, such as temperature and duration, monomer concentration, and the catalyst/monomer ratio have been optimized. The in situ surface‐initiated ATRP was confirmed by scanning electron microscope (SEM) images and X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. Cyclic voltammetric investigation revealed a pair of well‐defined oxidation and reduction peaks at 0.232 and 0.055 V, which corresponded to the redox behavior of catechol/o‐quinone on the electrode surface. The proposed approach has been successfully extended to immune recognition. A detection limit of 0.3 ng mL^?1 for rabbit immunoglobulin G (IgG) as a model antigen has been achieved. Despite the limited availability of the IgG antibody, this technology might also be expanded to the detection of other proteins and DNA.     

A DFT theoretical study of CH_4 dissociation on gold-alloyed Ni(111)surface

A density-functional theory(DFT)method has been conducted to systematically investigate the adsorption of CHx(x=0～4)as well as the dissociation of CHx(x=1～4)on(111)facets of gold-alloyed Ni surface.The results have been compared with those obtained on pure Ni(111)surface.It shows that the adsorption energies of CHx(x=1～3)are lower,and the reaction barriers of CH4 dissociation are higher in the first and the fourth steps on gold-alloyed Ni(111)compared with those on pure Ni(111).In particular,the rate-determining step for CH4 dissociation is considered as the first step of dehydrogenation on gold-alloyed Ni(111),while it is the fourth step of dehydrogenation on pure Ni(111).Furthermore,the activation barrier in rate-determining step is higher by 0.41 eV on gold-alloyed Ni(111)than that on pure Ni(111).From above results,it can be concluded that carbon is not easy to form on gold-alloyed Ni(111)compared with that on pure Ni(111).     

Catalytic combustion of ethyl acetate over CeMnO_x and CeMnZrO_x compounds synthesized by coprecipitation method

Ce0.6Mn0.4O2 catalysts with different sources of manganese and Ce0.6-xZrxMn0.4O2 mixed oxide catalysts were prepared by coprecipitation method and were characterized by N2 adsorption-desorption,TPR,XRD,and XPS techniques.The activities of the prepared catalysts for ethyl acetate combustion,and the effects of calcination temperature and space velocity on catalytic activity were investigated.The results showed that partial replacement of Mn(NO3)2 with KMnO4 as sources of manganese could improve activities of catalysts.Ce0.45Zr0.15Mn0.4O2 catalyst exhibited the best catalytic activity and high thermal stability,e.g.,T90 could be still below 210℃ even if space velocity was up to 20000h-1.     

恒电流电解-BCO分光光度法测定纯铜中铜含量不确定度的评定

对采用恒电流电解-BC0分光光度法测定纯铜中铜含量的不确定度进行了评定.对测量重复性、电解重量法、光度法等影响测量结果的不确定度分量进行了分析和量化.当纯铜中铜的质量分数为99.93%时,扩展不确定度为0.01%,k=2.     

Synthesis of raspberry-like monodisperse magnetic hollow hybrid nanospheres by coating polystyrene template with Fe(3)O(4)@SiO(2) particles

A new inorganic/organic hybrid material containing silsesquioxane was prepared by the reaction of caged octa (aminopropyl silsesquioxane) (POSS-NH(2)) with n-butyl glycidyl ether (nBGE) and 1,4-butanediol diglycidyl ether (BDGE). The copolymers of POSS, nBGE, and BDGE could be obtained with varied feed ratio of POSS-NH(2), nBGE, and BDGE in the preparation. The hybrid material was added into an epoxy resin (E51) for enhancing the toughening and thermal properties of the epoxy resin. The results showed that the toughening and the thermal properties of the cured epoxy resin were greatly improved by the addition of the hybrid. The enhancement was ascribed to nano-scale effect of the POSS structure and the formation of anchor structure in the cured network. The investigation of kinetics for the curing process of the hybrid-modified epoxy resin revealed that two kinds of curing reactions occurred in different temperature ranges. They were attributed to the reactions between amino groups of the curing agent with epoxy groups of E51 and with residue epoxy groups in the hybrid. The reacting activation energies were calculated based on Kissinger's and Flynn-Wall-Ozawa's methods, respectively.     

Characterization and thermal behavior of kaolin

The effect of nitric oxide (NO) on heat production and oxygen consumption was studied in excised roots of 5-day-old wheat seedlings grown in CaCl₂ solution (2.5 × 10⁻⁴ mol/L). Sodium nitroprusside (SNP), NaNO₃, NaNO₂ were used as NO donors. Incubation of the cut roots (wound stress) in the presence of NO donors led to the decrease of heat production and suppressed oxygen consumption. The increase of potassium (K⁺) ions exit was observed, pointing to the increase of the plasma membrane permeability and to the disruption of the adaptive processes development in roots in the NaNO₂ presence.     

Epitope prediction based on random peptide library screening: benchmark dataset and prediction tools evaluation

Epitope prediction based on random peptide library screening has become a focus as a promising method in immunoinformatics research. Some novel software and web-based servers have been proposed in recent years and have succeeded in given test cases. However, since the number of available mimotopes with the relevant structure of template-target complex is limited, a systematic evaluation of these methods is still absent. In this study, a new benchmark dataset was defined. Using this benchmark dataset and a representative dataset, five examples of the most popular epitope prediction software products which are based on random peptide library screening have been evaluated. Using the benchmark dataset, in no method did performance exceed a 0.42 precision and 0.37 sensitivity, and the MCC scores suggest that the epitope prediction results of these software programs are greater than random prediction about 0.09-0.13; while using the representative dataset, most of the values of these performance measures are slightly improved, but the overall performance is still not satisfactory. Many test cases in the benchmark dataset cannot be applied to these pieces of software due to software limitations. Moreover chances are that these software products are overfitted to the small dataset and will fail in other cases. Therefore finding the correlation between mimotopes and genuine epitope residues is still far from resolved and much larger dataset for mimotope-based epitope prediction is desirable.     

ON ASYMPTOTIC CRITERIA FOR A SECOND ORDER ELLIPTIC DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

In this paper, we present some new asymptotic results for a second order elliptic differential equations by using integral averaging and completing square technique.