End-to-end Distance Distribution in Fluorescent Derivatives of Bradykinin in Interaction with Lipid Vesicles

Cellular membranes have relevant roles in processes related to proteases like human kallikreins and cathepsins. As enzyme and substrate may interact with cell membranes and associated co-factors, it is important to take into account the behavior of peptide substrates in the lipid environment. In this paper we report an study based on energy transfer in two bradykinin derived peptides labeled with the donor-acceptor pair Abz/Eddnp (ortho-aminobenzoic acid/N-[2,4-dinitrophenyl]-ethylenediamine). Time-resolved fluorescence experiments were performed in phosphate buffer and in the presence of large unilamelar vesicles of phospholipids, and of micelles of sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS). The decay kinetics were analyzed using the program CONTIN to obtain end-to-end distance distribution functions f(r). Despite of the large difference in the number of residues the end-to-end distance of the longer peptide (9 amino acid residues) is only 20?% larger than the values obtained for the shorter peptide (5 amino acid residues). The proline residue, in position 4 of the bradykinin sequence promotes a turn in the longer peptide chain, shortening its end-to-end distance. The surfactant SDS has a strong disorganizing effect, substantially broadening the distance distributions, while temperature increase has mild effects in the flexibility of the chains, causing small increase in the distribution width. The interaction with phospholipid vesicles stabilizes more compact conformations, decreasing end-to-end distances in the peptides. Anisotropy experiments showed that rotational diffusion was not severely affected by the interaction with the vesicles, suggesting a location for the peptides in the surface region of the bilayer, a result consistent with small effect of lipid phase transition on the peptides conformations.     

Solid solution formation, densification and ionic conductivity of Gd- and Sm-doped ceria

The processes of solid solution formation, densification and electrical conductivity in samaria and gadolinia-doped ceria solid electrolytes were studied by Raman spectroscopy, density and impedance spectroscopy measurements. Bulk specimens of Ce_0.9Gd_0.1O_1.95 and Ce_0.8Sm_0.2O_1.9 were prepared by solid state reactions at several dwell temperatures and holding times. Hydrostatic density results show a fast increase in sintered density up to 1 h holding time. Raman spectra of specimens sintered for 1 h show a prominent band at 463 cm^− 1 assigned to the cubic fluorite-type lattice of cerium oxide, and low-intensity bands at 344 and 363 cm^− 1 attributed to free samarium and gadolinium sesquioxides, respectively. Solid solution completion was achieved only at temperatures above 1400 °C. Electrical conductivity measurements were used to study mass transport. Analysis of impedance data allowed for determining the activation energy for cation diffusion in Ce_0.9Gd_0.1O_1.95 and Ce_0.8Sm_0.2O_1.9 sintered specimens.     

On nonlinear perturbations of a periodic fractional Schrödinger equation with critical exponential growth

In this paper we study the existence of solutions for fractional Schrödinger equations of the form where V is a potential bounded and the nonlinear term has the critical exponential growth. We prove the existence of at least one weak solution by combining the mountain‐pass theorem with the Trudinger–Moser inequality and a version of a result due to Lions for critical growth in .     

Minimal surfaces of rotation in Finsler space with a Randers metric

 We consider Finsler spaces with a Randers metric F=α+β, on the three dimensional real vector space, where α is the Euclidean metric and β=bdx ₃ is a 1-form with norm b,0≤b<1. By using the notion of mean curvature for immersions in Finsler spaces introduced by Z. Shen, we get the ordinary differential equation that characterizes the minimal surfaces of rotation around the x ₃ axis. We prove that for every b,0≤b<1, there exists, up to homothety, a unique forward complete minimal surface of rotation. The surface is embedded, symmetric with respect to a plane perpendicular to the rotation axis and it is generated by a concave plane curve. Moreover, for every there are non complete minimal surfaces of rotation, which include explicit minimal cones. Received: 30 November 2001 / Published online: 10 February 2003 RID="⋆" ID="⋆" Partially supported by CAPES RID="⋆⋆" ID="⋆⋆" Partially supported by CNPq and PROCAD.     

Influence of light-ion irradiation on the heavy-ion track etching of polycarbonate

We report on the effect of light-ion irradiation on the size distribution of etched tracks produced by medium energy heavy-ions in polycarbonate. Makrofol KG polycarbonate foils were treated with 2 MeV H⁺ ions at different fluences φ either before or after a short irradiation with 18 MeV Au⁷⁺. The heavy ion irradiation was used to produce the latent tracks in the foils and the proton beam acted as a perturbation to the matrix. The proton irradiation causes initially a decrease in the mean etched pore size, as compared to samples only bombarded by Au ions, reaching a minimum at H⁺ fluences around 2–5×10¹³ cm⁻², while at higher φ the pore size starts to grow again. This effect is attributed to the action of two competitive processes that dominate in different fluence regimes. The decrease in the pore radii at low fluences is attributed to an increase in crystallinity induced by the proton beam. As the total dose builds up, this effect is surpassed by chain scission and amorphization that grow at a lower rate and cause the pore radii to increase again.     

Formulations and valid inequalities for the node capacitated graph partitioning problem

We investigate the problem of partitioning the nodes of a graph under capacity restriction on the sum of the node weights in each subset of the partition. The objective is to minimize the sum of the costs of the edges between the subsets of the partition. This problem has a variety of applications, for instance in the design of electronic circuits and devices. We present alternative integer programming formulations for this problem and discuss the links between these formulations. Having chosen to work in the space of edges of the multicut, we investigate the convex hull of incidence vectors of feasible multicuts. In particular, several classes of inequalities are introduced, and their strength and robustness are analyzed as various problem parameters change.     

Improving Seismic Inversion Robustness via Deformed Jackson Gaussian

The seismic data inversion from observations contaminated by spurious measures (outliers) remains a significant challenge for the industrial and scientific communities. This difficulty is due to slow processing work to mitigate the influence of the outliers. In this work, we introduce a robust formulation to mitigate the influence of spurious measurements in the seismic inversion process. In this regard, we put forth an outlier-resistant seismic inversion methodology for model estimation based on the deformed Jackson Gaussian distribution. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal, we investigated a classic geophysical data-inverse problem in three different scenarios: (i) in the first one, we analyzed the sensitivity of the seismic inversion to incorrect seismic sources; (ii) in the second one, we considered a dataset polluted by Gaussian errors with different noise intensities; and (iii) in the last one we considered a dataset contaminated by many outliers. The results reveal that the deformed Jackson Gaussian outperforms the classical approach, which is based on the standard Gaussian distribution.     

Magnetic phase present in YBa2(Cu1−x Fe x )3O6+δ oxides

The Mössbauer study of⁵⁷Fe: YBa₂Cu₃O_6+δ oxides was very important to establish the preferential occupation of Cu(1) site by Fe at very low concentrations. Recent determination of antiferromagnetic ordering for Cu moments in Cu(2) sites (T≈450 K) and our early observation of a small proportion of a magnetic phase at room temperature for Fe:YBa₂Cu₃O₆ lead us to perform systematic studies of YBa₂(Cu_1?x Fe _x )₃O₆ withx=0.005, 0.03, 0.05, 0.10 and 0.15 in order to obtain information about the iron occupation of Cu(2) sites.     

Differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetric determination of Hg2+ at poly(Eriochrome Black T)-modified carbon paste electrode

The electrochemical behavior of Hg²⁺ was investigated in poly(Eriochrome Black T)-modified carbon paste electrode (CPE) using cyclic voltammetry (CV). Poly(Eriochrome Black T) was prepared in an alkaline medium on the surface of the CPE using a solution of Eriochrome Black T with the CV technique. The electrochemical impedance study revealed a better charge transfer kinetics at the modified electrode. The effects of variation of the experimental conditions, such as the concentration of electrolytes, pH, deposition time, and the deposition potential, which maximize current efficiency were studied. The optimum response of Hg²⁺ was observed in 1.0 M KCl solution. The differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetric technique was employed successfully to detect Hg²⁺, which gave a good linear response at low concentration levels of Hg²⁺. The detection limit was found to be 2.2?×?10^?10 M (S/N?=?3), which is comparable with that achieved in multiwall carbon nanotube-modified electrode. The remarkable electroanalytical performance of the modified electrode makes it amenable to employ it successfully as an electrochemical sensor for the determination of hazardous pollutant Hg²⁺ in environmental samples.