Chemosensors for the marine toxin saxitoxin

Eleven anthracylmethyl crown ethers have been synthesized and evaluated as fluorescence sensors for the marine toxin saxitoxin. Fluorescence enhancement data are consistent with a 1:1 binding complex for all crowns. The binding constants are in the range of 10(4) M(-)(1) in ammonium phosphate buffer (pH 7.1) in 80% ethanol solvent. Selectivity for sensing saxitoxin versus several organic analytes has been demonstrated for the first time. Possible modes of binding are presented, and relevance to saxitoxin monitoring programs are discussed.     

An approach to comparative analysis of chromatographic fingerprints for assuring the quality of botanical drugs

The present study was focused on developing the chemometric methods for analysis of the chromatographic fingerprint to control the quality of botanical drugs, which has gained attention in Asia and other countries. We developed a novel approach to generate a set of fingerprint features, called Fisher components (FCs) that were extracted from the chromatographic fingerprint. The method greatly reduces the dimensionality of the fingerprint vector, and the resulting FCs still retain most discriminatory information of the original fingerprint. Choosing an example of relevance to contemporary botanical drugs, we applied the FCs to a set of Shenmai injection samples. We successfully identified the manufacturers of the samples using two classifiers, linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) based on the FCs. We also applied a similarity assessment together with the visual analysis using the FCs to exam the products from different manufacturers. We found that the lot-to-lot consistency of products can be accurately determined using the FCs. Finally, we demonstrated that the application of chemometric methods for chromatographic fingerprinting offers reliability to detect suspected fraud samples. In summary, we demonstrated that the presented approaches could be useful to determine the identity, consistency, and authenticity of Shenmai injection through chromatographic fingerprinting. The methods are equally applicable to other botanical drugs.     

Unified gas and supercritical fluid chromatography on 50 μm i.d. Columns

A unified approach to sequential gas and supercritical fluid Chromatography using 50 μm i.d. open tubular columns is described. Sample introduction is performed by means of a rotary injection valve. In order that linear velocities can be optimized independently, a second rotary valve in the chromatographic oven is used to direct the flow of column eluate to the flame ionization detector through either fused silica tubing in GC, or a frit restrictor in SFC. Applications of sequential GC-SFC on a 50 μm i.d. open tubular column are demonstrated, and comparisons made between sequential GC-SFC on 50 and 100 μm i.d. columns.     

Stabilization and characterization of colloidal gas aphron dispersions

Colloidal gas aphrons (CGAs) are finding increasing application in water processing, bioseparation, bubble-entrained floc flotation, separation of oil from sand, etc. This article proposes an effective method of encapsulation to stabilize the CGA bubbles with silicic sol solution for their characterization. The stabilized CGA bubbles can keep shapes and sizes for at least 12 h; even the bubbles smaller than 25 mum can also be stabilized and exist for very long times. Effects of concentration and pH of silicic sol solution on CGA stabilization were studied. The optimal ranges of concentration and pH of silicic sol solution are 0.15-0.25 mol/dm(3) and 7-10, respectively. The bubble distortion behavior in disturbance and size distribution of CGAs were examined by using the stabilization method and photographic techniques.     

Chlorpromazine hydrochloride as an analytical reagent : A new indicator for titrations with very dilute ceric sulphate solutions

Chlorpromazine hydrochloride is proposed as an indicator for the microtitration of iron(II), arsenic(III), ascorbic acid and hydroquinone with 0.0005–0.001 N ceric sulphate; the indicator blanks are small. The colorimetric déterminations of μg quantities of cerium(lV) and arsenic(III) using the same reagent are also described.     

Solar Radiation Is Shown to Select for Pigmented Bacteria in the Ambient Outdoor Atmosphere

Abstract— The percentage of pigmented to total bacteria in the outdoor atmospheric population was studied in the field and in controlled laboratory experiments to evaluate the effects of solar radiation (SR) on bacterial survival. The field experiments showed that the percentage of pigmented bacteria positively correlated with SR activity during clear summer days. The percentage was lowest during darkness before dawn and around midnight ( ca 33%) and as the SR increased during the day, gradually increased to a maximum of ca 50–60% at noontime to early afternoon and decreased thereafter. In the laboratory the ambient outdoor atmospheric bacteria impacted on culture plates were exposed to simulated SR and a germicidal light. With increased exposure, more nonpig-mented bacteria were killed and the percentage of pigmented bacteria gradually increased. These observations suggest an inverse relationship between the atmospheric bacterial survival and the percentage of pigmented bacteria contained therein, thus supporting the notion that pigmentation might provide protection for outdoor atmospheric bacteria from sunlight damage. As a consequence, viable pigmented bacteria (and other UV-resistant forms) in the atmosphere could be enriched under areas of stratospheric ozone depletion.     

含氢硅氧烷的硅氢加成反应

含氢硅氧烷的硅氢加成反应师彤，谢择民，王清正（中国科学院化学研究所北京１０００８０）关键词含氢硅氧烷，二乙烯基四甲基二硅氧烷，硅氢加成反应，~1ＨＮＭＲ铂催化硅氢加成的机理~［１，２］、副反应￣［３，４］、聚合物性能￣［３，５］等均有报道，个别文献用粘?..     

Studies of poly-<Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>-lysine-starch nanoparticle preparation and its application as gene carrier

Anion starch nanoparticle (StNP) with a diameter of 50 nm was prepared in water-in-oil microemulsion, with soluble starch as raw materials and POCl₃ as crosslinking agent. PLL-StNP was prepared by linking poly-L-lysine (PLL) on the surface of StNP. At the same time, the size of PLL-StNP and its stability in aqueous solution were checked by AFM. The analysis of plasmid DNA binding, DNase I enzymatic degradation, toxicity and transfection were done. We discovered that PLL-StNP may be used as non-virus nanoparticle gene carrier. And we developed the method of preparing PLL-StNP gene carrier and used it in cell transfection. As non-virus gene carrier, PLL-StNP has some advantages, such as large load of DNA, high transfection efficiency, low cell toxicity and biodegradability.     

QSAR models using a large diverse set of estrogens

Endocrine disruptors (EDs) have a variety of adverse effects in humans and animals. About 58,000 chemicals, most having little safety data, must be tested in a group of tiered assays. As assays will take years, it is important to develop rapid methods to help in priority setting. For application to large data sets, we have developed an integrated system that contains sequential four phases to predict the ability of chemicals to bind to the estrogen receptor (ER), a prevalent mechanism for estrogenic EDs. Here we report the results of evaluating two types of QSAR models for inclusion in phase III to quantitatively predict chemical binding to the ER. Our data set for the relative binding affinities (RBAs) to the ER consists of 130 chemicals covering a wide range of structural diversity and a 6 orders of magnitude spread of RBAs. CoMFA and HQSAR models were constructed and compared for performance. The CoMFA model had a r2 = 0.91 and a q2LOO = 0.66. HQSAR showed reduced performance compared to CoMFA with r2 = 0.76 and q2LOO = 0.59. A number of parameters were examined to improve the CoMFA model. Of these, a phenol indicator increased the q2LOO to 0.71. When up to 50% of the chemicals were left out in the leave-N-out cross-validation, the q2 remained significant. Finally, the models were tested by using two test sets; the q2pred for these were 0.71 and 0.62, a significant result which demonstrates the utility of the CoMFA model for predicting the RBAs of chemicals not included in the training set. If used in conjunction with phases I and II, which reduced the size of the data set dramatically by eliminating most inactive chemicals, the current CoMFA model (phase III) can be used to predict the RBA of chemicals with sufficient accuracy and to provide quantitative information for priority setting.     

Selective preconcentration of Au(III), Pt(IV) and Pd(II) on silica gel modified with γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane

Silica gel functionalized by reaction with γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane was prepared and its adsorption characteirstics for metal ions were studied. This material selectively removes the Au(III), Pt(IV) and Pd(II) chloro complex ions from sample solutions containing Fe(III) and Cu(II) ions by ion exchange.