Extraction-spectrophotometric determination of iron with 2-(2′-benzothiazolylazo)-4,6-dimethylphenol

An extraction-spectrophotometric method for the determination of trace amounts of iron based on its extraction into chloroform with 2-(2-benzothiazolylazo)-4,6-dimethylphenol (BTADMP) from a pH 6.5 medium has been developed. The extracted 12 FeBTADMP complex species allow the determination of 4–30gmg of iron (=3.92×10⁴1·mol^–1·cm^–1 at 790 nm). The method is highly selective and has been applied to the determination of iron in polymineral-polyvitamin pharmaceutical products.     

A method of determining and removing sulphide to allow the determination of sulphate,phosphate, nitrite and ammonia by conventional methods in small volumes of anoxic waters

Mercury(II) chloride is used to precipitate free sulphide from <10-ml samples of anoxic water. The sulphide-free supernatant solution can be used for estimation of sulphide by measuring the concentration of unreacted mercury(II) ion and for determinations of sulphate, inorganic phosphate, ammonia and nitrite by spectrophotometric methods which normally cannot be used because of sulphide interference. Concentrations that can be determined lie within the ranges: sulphide 0.5–180 000 μg S l^?1, sulphate 0.024–2.77 g S l^?1, ammonia 1–70 000 μg N l^?1, nitrite 1–3000 μg N l^?1, inorganic phosphate 1–4000 μg P l^?1. Interstitial waters from estuarine sediments, tidal flats, mangrove swamps, and an anoxic estuarine basin were examined.     

Residual‐based stabilization of the finite element approximation to the acoustic perturbation equations for low Mach number aeroacoustics

The acoustic perturbation equations (APE) are suitable to predict aerodynamic noise in the presence of a non‐uniform mean flow. As for any hybrid computational aeroacoustics approach, a first computational fluid dynamics simulation is carried out from which the mean flow characteristics and acoustic sources are obtained. In a second step, the APE are solved to get the acoustic pressure and particle velocity fields. However, resorting to the finite element method (FEM) for that purpose is not straightforward. Whereas mixed finite elements satisfying an appropriate inf–sup compatibility condition can be built in the case of no mean flow, that is, for the standard wave equation in mixed form, these are difficult to implement and their good performance is yet to be checked for more complex wave operators. As a consequence, strong simplifying assumptions are usually considered when solving the APE with FEM. It is possible to avoid them by resorting to stabilized formulations. In this work, a residual‐based stabilized FEM is presented for the APE at low Mach numbers, which allows one to deal with the APE convective and reaction terms in its full extent. The key of the approach resides in the design of the matrix of stabilization parameters. The performance of the formulation and the contributions of the different terms in the equations are tested for an acoustic pulse propagating in sheared‐solenoidal mean flow, and for the aeolian tone generated by flow past a two‐dimensional cylinder. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discovery of Homobivalent Bitopic Ligands of the Cannabinoid CB2 Receptor**

Single chemical entities with potential to simultaneously interact with two binding sites are emerging strategies in medicinal chemistry. We have designed, synthesized and functionally characterized the first bitopic ligands for the CB₂ receptor. These compounds selectively target CB₂ versus CB₁ receptors. Their binding mode was studied by molecular dynamic simulations and site-directed mutagenesis.     

Microstructure and properties of styrene‐butadiene rubber based nanocomposites prepared from an aminosilane modified synthetic lamellar nanofiller

In this work, a novel nanocomposite series based on styrene‐butadiene rubber (SBR latex) and alpha‐zirconium phosphate(α‐ZrP) lamellar nanofillers is successfully prepared. The α‐ZrP lamellar filler is modified at the cation exchange capacity by γ‐aminopropyltrimethoxysilane and the filler surface modification is first discussed. A significant improvement of the mechanical properties is obtained by using the surface modified nanofillers. However, no modification of the gas barrier properties is observed. The impact of addition of bis(triethoxysilylpropyl)tetrasulfide (TESPT) as coupling agent in the system is discussed on the nanofiller dispersion state and on the filler–matrix interfacial bonding. Simultaneous use of modified nanofillers and TESPT coupling agent is found out with extraordinary reinforcing effects on both mechanical and gas barrier properties and the key factors at the origin of the improvement of these properties are identified. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2013 , 51, 1051–1059