A ferrocene-modified platinum electrode as a potentiometric sensor for l-ascorbic acid

A half-oxidized platinum electrode modified with a monolayer of ferrocene is proposed as a potentiometric sensor for l-ascorbic acid in an aqueous glycine buffer pH 2.2. The ferrocene was covalently attached to the surface by a silane carbon chain. The potentials of 15 electrodes were measured and a slope of (50 ± 8.8) mV per decade change in concentration of ascorbic acid was obtained over the concentration range 10^?3-10^?6 M. Recovery experiments with pure l-ascorbic acid solutions showed a relative standard deviation of 1.9%, in the analysis of fresh orange juice, the relative standard deviation was 6.1%.     

Octonion algebras obtained from associative algebras with involution

A natural octonion algebra structure on the symmetric elements of trace 0 of central simple associative algebras of degree 3 with involution of the second kind is obtained.

     

Über eine Spurbildung bei automorphen Formen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Separation of lipids from blood utilizing ultrasonic standing waves in microfluidic channels

A method to continuously separate different particle types in a suspension is reported. Acoustic forces in a standing wave field were utilized to discriminate lipid particles from erythrocytes in whole blood. The presented technology proposes a new method of cleaning, i.e. removing lipid emboli from, shed blood recovered during cardiac surgery. Blood contaminated with lipid particles enter a laminar flow micro channel. Erythrocytes and lipid particles suspended in blood plasma are exposed to a half wavelength standing wave field orthogonal to the direction of flow as they pass through the channel. Because of differences in compressibility and density the two particle types move in different directions, the erythrocytes towards the centre of the channel and the lipid particles towards the side walls. The end of the channel is split into three outlet channels conducting the erythrocytes to the centre outlet and the lipid particles to the side outlets due to the laminar flow profile. The separation channel was evaluated in vitro using polyamide spheres suspended in water, showing separation efficiencies approaching 100%. The system was also evaluated on whole blood using tritium labelled lipid particles added to bovine blood. More than 80% of the lipid particles could be removed while approximately 70% of the erythrocytes were collected in one third of the original fluid volume. The study showed that the further reduced micro channel dimensions provided improved performance with respect to; (i) separation efficiency, (ii) actuation voltage, and (iii) volumetric throughput as compared to earlier work.     

An evaluation of the robustness of the Tanaka characterization protocol for reversed-phase liquid chromatography columns

The robustness of the popular 'Tanaka' LC column characterization protocol has been evaluated by the statistical tools of reduced factorial design, multiple linear regression and principal component analysis. These have shown that in order to obtain reliable and reproducible results, it is especially important to control the methanol content, the temperature and, in the case of the total ion-exchange capacity test (alphaB/P pH 7.6), the pH of the mobile phase. In particular, the hydrophobicity tests (kPB and alphaCH2) are sensitive to small changes in methanol content. Provided that the operating parameters for the Tanaka column characterization protocol are controlled within the following experimental limits, i.e. methanol content +/-0.5% v/v, temperature +/-3degreesC, pH +/-0.10 and buffer concentration +/-2.0 mM, it is feasible to distinguish between RP materials that possess selectivity differences larger than their batch-to-batch reproducibility. These experimental requirements can be easily met by current LC instrumentation. Hence, the validity of the Tanaka testing protocol for characterizing columns has been verified.     

Chromatographic classification and comparison of commercially available reversed-phase liquid chromatographic columns containing polar embedded groups/amino endcappings using principal component analysis

Polar embedded phases have become increasingly popular in liquid chromatography (LC) analysis. These phases can produce diverse chromatographic selectivities as a result of their differing base silica, the type of polar embedded group (i.e. amide, urea, carbamate, ether or sulphonamide moieties) and the length of the alkyl ligand. Four column characterization protocols, using differing test probes, have been used to characterize 18 of these phases together with 17 alkyl phases (some of which contained novel polar endcapping, i.e. amino), which have been evaluated using principal component analysis (PCA). PCA provided graphical comparisons of the differences/similarities between these phases and between their corresponding C-alkyl, amino endcapped and enhanced polar selectivity phases.