Hybrid Photonic Nanostructures by In Vivo Incorporation of an Organic Fluorophore into Diatom Algae

Biotechnological processes harnessing living organisms' metabolism are low‐cost routes to nanostructured materials for applications in photonics, electronics, and nanomedicine. In the pursuit of photonic biohybrids, diatoms microalgae are attractive given the properties of the porous micro‐to‐nanoscale structures of the biosilica shells (frustules) they produce. The investigations have focused on in vivo incorporation of tailored molecular fluorophores into the frustules of Thalassiosira weissflogii diatoms, using a procedure that paves the way for easy biotechnological production of photonic nanostructures. The procedure ensures uniform staining of shells in the treated culture and permits the resulting biohybrid photonic nanostructures to be isolated with no damage to the dye and periodic biosilica network. Significantly, this approach ensures that light emission from the dye embedded in the isolated biohybrid silica is modulated by the silica's nanostructure, whereas no modulation of photoluminescence is observed upon grafting the fluorophore onto frustules by an in vitro approach based on surface chemistry. These results pave the way to the possibility of easy production of photonic nanostructures with tunable properties by simple feeding the diatoms algae with tailored photoactive molecules.     

Evaluation of use of a very short polar microbore column segment in high-speed gas chromatography analysis

Very fast GC analyses are commonly carried out by using 10 m x 0.1 mm id capillaries. In order to achieve rapid elution times (1-3 min), the latter are operated under suboptimum conditions. The present research is focused on the evaluation of use of a 0.1 mm id polar column segment (2 m), operated under near-to-optimum conditions, in very fast GC analysis. The results attained are compared with those derived from using a 10 m microbore column in very fast GC experiments. Prior to method development, the effects of gas velocity, temperature program rate, and sample amounts on analytical performance were evaluated. Following these preliminary applications, a complex lipidic sample, cod liver oil, was subjected to rapid separation (approximately 2.1 min) on the 10 m capillary through the application of a 50 degrees C/min temperature rate and a 130 cm/s gas velocity. The same matrix was analyzed on the 2 m capillary using the same temperature program rate and range, but with a close-to-ideal linear velocity. The results observed were of interest, as the separation was achieved in less time (1.45 min) with improved peak resolution. Finally, both methods were validated in terms of retention time and peak area repeatability, LOQ, and linearity.     

Computer simulations study of biomolecules in non-aqueous or cosolvent/water mixture solutions

Pure organic solvents or mixtures with water are very common environments for studying protein and peptide in solution. These milieu conditions are used either for improving the catalytic performance of enzymes or for studying the effect of solvent on the protein stability and hence gaining insight into the protein folding mechanism. The atomic details of these processes are mainly addressed using computer simulation approaches. In particular, Molecular Dynamics simulation represents the most powerful and versatile tool to investigate the details of solvation processes at atomic level. In the last few years, the number of publications peptide and protein simulations in non-natural environments has proliferated. These studies are providing important contributions to shed light on the nature of non-aqueous solvent effects. In this review, the achievements and the future prospects in this field of computational biochemistry are reviewed by summarizing the most important theoretical results published in the last 10 years.     

Enhanced resolution of Mentha piperita volatile fraction using a novel medium‐polarity ionic liquid gas chromatography stationary phase

The evaluation of a novel medium‐polarity ionic‐liquid‐based gas chromatography column, SLB‐IL60, towards the analysis of a complex essential oil, namely, a peppermint essential oil sample, is reported. The SLB‐IL60 30 m column was subjected to bleeding measurements, by means of conventional gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. The SLB‐IL60 column was then evaluated in the analysis of pure standard compounds, chosen as typical constituents of peppermint essential oil. Resolution and peak symmetry (expressed as tailing factors at 10% of peak height) were measured and the results were compared to those obtained on the most widely used columns in such an application, namely a medium‐polarity [100% poly(ethyleneglycol)] stationary phase, and an apolar 5% diphenyl/95% dimethyl siloxane. The final part of the evaluation was dedicated to the gas chromatography with mass spectrometry analysis of a peppermint essential oil sample and again the data were compared to those obtained on the 100% poly(ethyleneglycol) and the 5% diphenyl/95% dimethyl siloxane phase. Linear retention indices were determined for all the identified components on the ionic liquid capillary.     

On finite groups with automorphisms whose fixed points are Engel

The main result of the paper is the following theorem. Let q be a prime, n a positive integer, and A an elementary abelian group of order q². Suppose that A acts coprimely on a finite group G and assume that for each \({a \in A^{\#}}\) every element of C_G(a) is n-Engel in G. Then the group G is k-Engel for some \({\{n,q\}}\)-bounded number k.     

Sequential Data Fusion via Vector Spaces: Fusion of Heterogeneous Data in the Complex Domain

A sequential data fusion approach via higher dimensional vector spaces is introduced. This is achieved by making use of the representation of directional signals within the field of complex numbers $C$ . The concept of data fusion is next introduced and the place of the proposed approach within that framework is identified. The benefits of such an approach are illustrated and a range of possible applications is shown. The concept introduced is supported by a real world case study which focuses on simultaneous forecasting of wind speed and direction. The architectures and learning algorithms which support this concept are introduced and their distributed sequential fusion nature is highlighted.     

A 10-A spectroscopic ruler applied to short polyprolines

Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) from the amino acid tryptophan (Trp) as donor and a 2,3-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]oct-2-ene-labeled asparagine (Dbo) as acceptor in peptides of the general structure Trp-(Pro)n-Dbo-NH2 (n = 1-6) was investigated by steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence, CD, and NMR spectroscopy as well as by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations (GROMOS96 force field). The Trp/Dbo FRET pair is characterized by a very short F?rster radius (R0 ca. 9 A), which allowed distance determinations in such short peptides. Water and propylene glycol were investigated as solvents. The peptides were designed to show an early nucleation of the poly(Pro)II (PPII) secondary helix structure for n > or = 2, which was confirmed by their CD spectra. The shortest peptide (n = 1) adopts preferentially the trans conformation about the Trp-Pro bond, as confirmed by NMR spectra. The FRET efficiencies ranged 2-72% and were found to depend sensitively on the peptide length, i.e., the number of intervening proline residues. The analysis of the FRET data at different levels of theory (assuming either a fixed distance or distance distributions according to a wormlike chain or Gaussian model) afforded donor-acceptor distances between ca. 8 A (n = 1) and ca. 16 A (n = 6) in water, which were found to be similar or slightly higher in propylene glycol. The distances afforded by the Trp/Dbo FRET pair were found to be reasonable in comparison to literature data, expectations from the PPII helix structure, and the results from MD simulations. The persistence lengths for the longer peptides were found to lie at 30-70 A in water and 220 +/- 40 A in propylene glycol, suggesting a more rigid PPII helical structure in propylene glycol. A detailed comparison with literature data on FRET in polyprolines demonstrates that the donor-acceptor distances extracted by FRET are correlated with the F?rster radii of the employed FRET pairs. This demonstrates the limitations of using FRET as a spectroscopic ruler for short polyprolines, which is presumably due to the breakdown of the point dipole approximation in F?rster theory, when the size of the chromophores becomes comparable or larger than the distances under investigation.     

Analysis of Roman wall paintings found in Verona

The present paper deals with the analysis of roman wall paintings fragments recovered from twelve buildings of Verona, Italy. The analytical techniques used were Optical Microscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) equipped with an EDS microanalysis detector, Xray powder diffraction (XRD) Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman Spectroscopy. The wall preparation generally consisted of three layer: the pictorial layer, an intonachino layer of hydrated lime and a plaster one made of slaked lime and sand. The pigments found in the studied domus are different reflecting the taste and culture of Xa Regio of Italy but also the economical possibilities of the dominus and the building period.     

Chiodo formulas for the <Emphasis Type="Italic">r</Emphasis>-th roots and topological recursion

We analyze Chiodo’s formulas for the Chern classes related to the r-th roots of the suitably twisted integer powers of the canonical class on the moduli space of curves. The intersection numbers of these classes with \(\psi \)-classes are reproduced via the Chekhov–Eynard–Orantin topological recursion. As an application, we prove that the Johnson-Pandharipande-Tseng formula for the orbifold Hurwitz numbers is equivalent to the topological recursion for the orbifold Hurwitz numbers. In particular, this gives a new proof of the topological recursion for the orbifold Hurwitz numbers.