Determination of amoxapine and nortriptyline in blood plasma and serum by salt-assisted liquid-liquid microextraction and high-performance liquid chromatography

A new, selective and sensitive method has been developed for the determination of tricyclic antidepressant drugs, amoxapine and nortriptyline, in human blood plasma and serum, involving their reaction with allyl isothiocyanate and extraction of thiourea derivatives with water-miscible organic solvent acetonitrile. The phase separation was effected by addition of ammonium sulphate, a process called salt-assisted liquid-liquid microextraction. The extract was analyzed by HPLC with UV detection at 254?nm. The method has been optimized for derivatization reaction time and temperature, solvent for extraction, and salt for solvent phase separation. Under the optimal conditions, a linear calibration graph was obtained between the amount of drug and the peak area of thiourea derivatives in the range of 0.002-20?mg/L drugs. The correlation coefficient and limit of detection values for amoxapine and nortriptyline in serum/plasma samples were in the range of 0.9953-0.9999 and 0.46-0.58?μg/L, respectively. The recovery in spiking experiments ranged, respectively, 75-88% (RSD 3.4-7.2%) and 79-97% (RSD 3.7-7.9%) for the two drugs.     

A higher-order hybrid spline difference method on adaptive mesh for solving singularly perturbed parabolic reaction–diffusion problems with robin-boundary conditions

We propose a hybrid numerical scheme to discretize a class of singularly perturbed parabolic reaction–diffusion problems with robin-boundary conditions on an equidistributed grid. The hybrid difference scheme is developed by using a modified backward difference scheme in time, a combination of the cubic spline and exponential spline difference scheme in space. The proposed scheme uses a cubic spline difference scheme for the discretization of robin-boundary conditions. For the time discretization of the problem, we use the standard uniform mesh while a layer adapted equidistributed grid is generated for the spatial discretization. By equidistributing a curvature-based monitor function, the spatial adaptive grid is able to capture the presence of parabolic boundary layers without using any prior information about the solution. Parameter uniform error estimates are derived to illustrate an optimal convergence of first-order in time and second-order in space for the proposed discretization. The accuracy of the proposed scheme is confirmed by the numerical experiments that underpin the theoretical analysis.     

Cytotoxic agents for KB and SiHa cells from n-hexane fraction of Cissampelos pareira and its chemical composition

Eleven constituents were characterised by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis, and five molecules were isolated using column chromatography. The in vitro study of the extract and isolated molecules against KB and SiHa cell lines revealed oleanolic acid (1) and oleic acid (2) as potent cytotoxic molecules with potential anticancer activity. The IC₅₀ values of n-hexane extract (CPHF), oleanolic acid (1) and oleic acid (2) were >300, 56.08 and 70.7 μg/mL (μM), respectively, against KB cell lines and >300, 47.24 and 80.2 μg/mL (μM), respectively, against SiHa cell lines.     

Multiple proton ionizable calixarene derivatives with different ring sizes and complexation ability as efficient ionophores for complexation and solvent extraction of trivalent indium

The solvent extraction behavior of multiple proton ionizable p-tert-butylcalix[4]arene and [6]arene carboxylic acid derivatives towards indium has been investigated along with an acyclic monomeric analogue from weakly acidic media into chloroform. The extraction mechanism is ion exchange and carboxylic acid groups are adequate ligating sites for extraction. The cyclic structure of calixarene ligands to accommodate the potential guest species and the cooperativity effect of multifunctional groups significantly affect the complexation behavior and calixarene derivatives are found to be excellent extractants over the monomeric analogue. The composition of the extracted complex depends on the solution pH and attempts to determine the composition of the extracted complex for the extraction of indium have been stymied by complications arising from the formation of polynuclear species of indium and bridged polymeric species of calixarene carboxylic acid derivatives. One mole of calix[4]arene derivative extracts 2.5 moles of indium whereas the calix[6]arene derivative tends to extract 4.0 moles of indium. The loaded indium is back extracted with 1 mol dm(-3) hydrochloric acid solution. Though quantitative back extraction of indium was achieved from the fully loaded calix[6]arene derivative, it was only achieved up to 85% in the case of the calix[4]arene derivative.     

Finite size effect on Gd doped CoGdxFe2−xO4 (0.0≤x≤0.5) particles

Nanoparticles of CoGd_xFe_2−xO₄ (where x=0.0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5) series have been prepared by chemical co-precipitation. The effect of Gd³⁺ ion concentration on crystalline phase, crystallinity, crystallite size, molecular vibrations and magnetic resonance has been investigated in detail. The crystallinity decreases with an increase in Gd³⁺ ion concentration and changes the structural parameters. The spin lattice relaxation has been correlated with the doping ion concentration. Similarly, the superparamagnetic behavior of these particles has been observed with EPR spectroscopy.     

EPR and optical absorption studies of vanadyl impurity in lithium hydrogen oxalate single crystal

Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and optical absorption studies of vanadyl ions in lithium hydrogen oxalate monohydrate single crystal and powder are reported at room temperature. Single crystal rotations in each of the three mutually orthogonal crystalline planes, $a{b}^1$, $b^1{c}^1$ and $a{c}^1$ indicate four different vanadyl complexes. The detailed investigation of EPR spectra indicates that one of the VO^{2 +} sites (the intense one) may enter the lattice substitutionally and the other three occupy the interstitial positions. From the angular variation, the spin Hamiltonian parameters are evaluated and discussed. The optical absorption spectrum shows four bands. From the optical and EPR data, various bonding parameters are determined and the nature of bonding in the crystal is discussed.     

Ant colony approach to constrained redundancy optimization in binary systems

This paper presents an ant colony optimization algorithm to address the constrained redundancy allocation problem in order to maximize system reliability for complex binary systems. The constraints involved, though separable, are both linear and non-linear. We couple an adaptive penalty function with the basic ant colony approach to handle highly constrained problems and embed a local search technique to find still better locally optimal solutions. The proposed algorithm has been tested on a large number of problems, containing even up to 500 subsystems, with both fixed and randomly generated parameters. Experimental results demonstrate the advantage of the proposed algorithm to solve similar types of problems.     

Quantification of Flavonoids,Phenols and Antioxidant Potential from Dropped Citrus reticulata Blanco Fruits Influenced by Drying Techniques

Physiologically dropped immature Citrus reticulata Blanco fruits are regarded as waste and discarded in the citrus orchard but are a good source of bioactive compounds including flavonoids, antioxidants and total phenols. A study was undertaken to identify and quantify these bioactive compounds and to investigate the influence of different drying techniques, namely freeze drying and hot air oven drying, on flavonoids namely flavanone glycosides, antioxidant potential and total phenol content in immature dropped fruits of Citrus reticulata Blanco. Flavonoids were quantified in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The antioxidant activity were investigated with three assays azino-bis [3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid]) (ABTS), 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical (DPPH), Ferric Reducing Ability of Plasma (FRAP) and total phenol content was determined. Freeze dried samples of 12 and 14 mm size retained maximum hesperidin flavonoid content (27.03% and 27.20%) as compared to the hot air dried samples (17.99%) and retained higher phenolic content ranged from 50.54–54.19 mg GAEL⁻¹. The antioxidant activity in freeze dried fruits was from 12.21–13.55 mM L⁻¹ Trolox and 15.27–16.72 mM L⁻¹ Trolox with ABTS, DPPH assay and FRAP values ranging from 7.31–9.07 mM L⁻¹ Trolox. Significant positive correlation was found between the flavonoid hesperidin with antioxidant assays and total phenolic content (TPC). The results showed that waste citrus fruits can act as potential source of bioflavonoids, especially hesperidin, and antioxidants for pharmaceutical as well as nutraceutical industry.     

Coordination chemistry of Schiff base tin complexes

The most important results of extensive studies of tin metal complexes with Schiff base ligands are reviewed. A large number of inorganic compounds are known but still there is a need of new compounds to develop various efforts in different fields for biomedical applications.