Synthese De (1,2a)Benzimidazolo-1,3,5,2-triazaphosphorine-2-oxides

The reaction of hexamethylphosphotriamide or methylphosphonic bis(dimethylamide) compounds with amidines derived from N-Benzimidazoyl imidates 1 leads to (1,2a)benzimidazolo-1,3,5,2-tiazaphosphorine-2-oxides 4 in good yields. If the condensation is realized at room temperature, N-phosphonic amidines 3 can be isolated as intermediates. The isolated compounds 2 , 3 , and 4 are identified by spectroscopic methods: IR, 1 H, 13 C, 31 P, NMR, and M.S.     

A Convenient Synthesis of 1,2,4-Triazolo-1,3,5-triazin-4-ones and 1,2,4-Triazolo-1,3,5-triazin-4-thiones

The imidates derived from 3-aminotriazole 1 react with isocyanates and isothiocyanates to give corresponding 1,2,4-triazolo-1,3,5-triazin-4-ones and 1,2,4-triazolo-1,3,5-triazin-4-thiones in a 60–75% overall yield. If the condensation is realized at r.t., then the intermediate 2 can be isolated.     

A Novel Synthetic Route to New 1,2,4-Triazolo-1,3,5-triazin-4-ones Derivatives

The reaction of ethyl chloroformate with iminoesters derived from 3-aminotriazole, followed by amine or phenyl hydrazine condensation, leads to a variety of 1,2,4-triazolo-1,3,5-triazin-4-ones in a 60–85% overall yield.     

Curcumin Attenuated Neurotoxicity in Sporadic Animal Model of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases leading to dementia. Despite research efforts, currently there are no effective pharmacotherapeutic options for the prevention and treatment of AD. Recently, numerous studies highlighted the beneficial effects of curcumin (CUR), a natural polyphenol, in the neuroprotection. Especially, its dual antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties attracted the interest of researchers. In fact, besides its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, this biomolecule is not degraded in the intestinal tract. Additionally, CUR is able to cross the blood–brain barrier and could therefore to be used to treat neurodegenerative pathologies associated with oxidative stress, inflammation and apoptosis. The present study aimed to assess the ability of CUR to induce neuronal protective and/or recovery effects on a rat model of neurotoxicity induced by aluminum chloride (AlCl₃), which mimics the sporadic form of Alzheimer’s disease. Our results showed that treatment with CUR enhances pro-oxidant levels, antioxidant enzymes activities and anti-inflammatory cytokine production and decreases apoptotic cells in AlCl₃-exposed hippocampus rats. Additionally, histopathological analysis of hippocampus revealed the potential of CUR in decreasing the hallmarks in the AlCl₃-induced AD. We also showed that CUR post-treatment significantly improved the behavioral, oxidative stress and inflammation in AlCl₃-exposed rats. Taken together, our data presented CUR as a nutraceutical potential through its protective effects that are more interesting than recovery ones in sporadic model of AD.     

An implicit-gradient-enhanced incremental-secant mean-field homogenization scheme for elasto-plastic composites with damage

This paper presents an incremental-secant mean-field homogenization (MFH) procedure for composites made of elasto-plastic constituents exhibiting damage. During the damaging process of one phase, the proposed method can account for the resulting unloading of the other phase, ensuring an accurate prediction of the scheme. When strain softening of materials is involved, classical finite element formulations lose solution uniqueness and face the strain localization problem. To avoid this issue the model is formulated in a so-called implicit gradient-enhanced approach, with a view toward macro-scale simulations. The method is then used to predict the behavior of composites whose matrix phases exhibit strain softening, and is shown to be accurate compared to unit cell simulations and experimental results. Then the convergence of the method upon strain softening, with respect to the mesh size, is demonstrated on a notched composite ply. Finally, applications consisting in a stacking plate, successively without and with a hole, are given as illustrations of the possibility of the method to be used in a multiscale framework.     

Purification and Properties of a Thermostable Xylanase GH 11 from Penicillium occitanis Pol6

An extracellular, endo-??-1,4-xylanase was purified to homogeneity from the culture filtrate of the filamentous fungus Penicillium occitanis Pol6, grown on oat spelt xylan. The purified enzyme (PoXyn2) showed a single band on SDS?CPAGE with an apparent molecular weight of 30?kDa. The xylanase activity was optimal at pH?3.0 and 65?°C. The specific activity measured for oat spelt xylan was 2,368?U?mg^?1. The apparent K _m and V _max values were 8.33?mg?ml^?1 and 58.82???mol?min^?1?ml^?1, respectively, as measured on oat spelt xylan. Thin-layer chromatography experiments revealed that purified PoXyn2 degrades xylan in an endo-fashion releasing xylobiose as main end product. The genomic DNA and cDNA encoding this protein were cloned and sequenced. This PoXyn2 presents an open reading frame of 962?bp, not interrupted by any introns and encoding for a mature protein of 320 amino acids and 29.88?kDa.     

Interprotein Electron Transfer between FeS-Protein Nanowires and Oxygen-Tolerant NiFe Hydrogenase

Self-assembled redox protein nanowires have been exploited as efficient electron shuttles for an oxygen-tolerant hydrogenase. An intra/inter-protein electron transfer chain has been achieved between the iron-sulfur centers of rubredoxin and the FeS cluster of [NiFe] hydrogenases. [NiFe] Hydrogenases entrapped in the intricated matrix of metalloprotein nanowires achieve a stable, mediated bioelectrocatalytic oxidation of H₂ at low-overpotential.     

Micromechanics of particle-reinforced elasto-viscoplastic composites: Finite element simulations versus affine homogenization

The micromechanics of elasto-viscoplastic composites made up of a random and homogeneous dispersion of spherical inclusions in a continuous matrix was studied with two methods. The first one is an affine homogenization approach, which transforms the local constitutive laws into fictitious linear thermo-elastic relations in the Laplace–Carson domain so that corresponding homogenization schemes can apply, and the temporal response is computed after a numerical inversion of Laplace transform. The second method is the direct numerical simulation by finite elements of a three-dimensional representative volume element of the composite microstructure. The numerical simulations carried out over different realizations of the composite microstructure showed very little scatter and thus provided – for the first time – “exact” results in the elasto-viscoplastic regime that can be used as benchmarks to check the accuracy of other models. Overall, the predictions of the affine homogenization model were excellent, regardless of the volume fraction of spheres, of the loading paths (shear, uniaxial tension and biaxial tension as well as monotonic and cyclic deformation), particularly at low strain rates. It was found, however, that the accuracy decreased systematically as the strain rate increased. The detailed information of the stress and strain microfields given by the finite element simulations was used to analyze the source of this difference, so that better homogenization methods can be developed.     

Multi-scale constitutive modeling of the small deformations of semi-crystalline polymers

A multi-scale constitutive model for the small deformations of semi-crystalline polymers such as high density Polyethylene is presented. Each macroscopic material point is supposed to be the center of a representative volume element which is an aggregate of randomly oriented composite inclusions. Each inclusion consists of a stack of parallel crystalline lamellae with their adjacent amorphous layers.Micro-mechanically based constitutive equations are developed for each phase. A viscoplastic model is used for the crystalline lamellae. A new nonlinear viscoelastic model for the amorphous phase behavior is proposed. The model takes into account the fact that the presence of crystallites confines the amorphous phase in extremely thin layers where the concentration of chain entanglements is very high. This gives rise to a stress contribution due to elastic distortion of the chains. It is shown that the introduction of chains’ elastic distortion can explain the viscoelastic behavior of crystalline polymers. The stress contribution from elastic stretching of the tie molecules linking the neighboring lamellae is also taken into account.Next, a constitutive model for a single inclusion considered as a laminated composite is proposed. The macroscopic stress-strain behavior for the whole RVE is found via a Sachs homogenization scheme (uniform stress throughout the material is assumed).Computational algorithms are developed based on fully implicit time-discretization schemes.     

A second-moment incremental formulation for the mean-field homogenization of elasto-plastic composites

In this paper, the incremental formulation for the mean-field homogenization (MFH) of elasto-plastic composites is enriched by including second statistical moments of per-phase strain increment fields, thus combining two advantages. The first one is to handle non-monotonic loading histories and the second is to better account for the heterogeneity of microscopic fields. The proposal is currently restricted to elasto-plasticity with J2 flow theory in each phase, under the small perturbation hypothesis. The formulation crucially exploits the return mapping algorithm for the J2 model, with its two steps: elastic predictor, and plastic corrections. It is shown that the second-moment measure of the average von Mises stress in each phase at the elastic predictor step plays a major role in the computation of both the average stress and the comparison tangent operator. The proposal is implemented for an extended Mori-Tanaka scheme. Predictions are compared to results provided by full-field, finite element computations of representative volume elements or unit cells, for various composite materials, with polymer or metal matrices. There are cases where the predictions of the proposed modeling improve significantly over those of a first-order incremental formulation.