Developing Novel Antimicrobial and Antiviral Textile Products

In conjunction with an increasing public awareness of infectious diseases, the textile industry and scientists are developing hygienic fabrics by the addition of various antimicrobial and antiviral compounds. In the current study, sodium pentaborate pentahydrate and triclosan are applied to cotton fabrics in order to gain antimicrobial and antiviral properties for the first time. The antimicrobial activity of textiles treated with 3 % sodium pentaborate pentahydrate, 0.03 % triclosan, and 7 % Glucapon has been investigated against a broad range of microorganisms including bacteria, yeast, and fungi. Moreover, modified cotton fabrics were tested against adenovirus type 5 and poliovirus type 1. According to the test results, the modified textile goods attained very good antimicrobial and antiviral properties. Thus, the results of the present study clearly suggest that sodium pentaborate pentahydrate and triclosan solution-treated textiles can be considered in the development of antimicrobial and antiviral textile finishes.     

Structure elucidation of cresylviolet perchlorate in polyvinylbutyral by the joint application of IR, FTIR, Raman, UV and visible spectroscopy

Infrared, Fourier transform infrared, Raman, UV absorption and emission spectra of cresylviolet perchlorate (CV) in polyvinylbutyral (PVB) were recorded in the region 1250-4000 cm(-1) at room temperature and assignments have been made for the observed absorption emission and Raman scattered lines.     

Catalytic wet air oxidation of 2-nitrotoluidine and 2,4-dinitrotoluene

The rates of wet air oxidation of 2-nitrotoluidine and 2,4-dinitrotoluene in the presence of excess oxygen and at different temperatures and oxygen pressures was investigated. Oxidation experiments were carried out at temperatures between 180 and 225^oC and oxygen partial pressures of 1,0-3,0 MPa, in a 280 mL glass vessel-inserted stainless steel reactor. Copper sulfate (CuSO₄ .5H₂O) was used as a catalyst, and the effect of catalyst loading was studied by varying the concentration: 0.75, 2.5 and 25 mg/L as Cu²⁺. Addition of Cu²⁺ ions in the reaction media accelerated 2-nitrotoluidine oxidation nearly ten times even if it exists in trace amount in the reaction medium (0.75 ppm Cu²⁺). Unfortunately copper did not show catalytic effect for the oxidation of 2,4-dinitrotoluene. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Wet-air oxidation of p-nitrophenol

Summary Wet air oxidation rates of p-nitrophenol in the presence of excess oxygen, at different temperatures and oxygen pressures conditions were investigated. The experiments were carried out at between 120 and 200^oC and at 1.0-3.0 MPa partial pressures of oxygen, in a glass vessel inserted in a stainless steel reactor. Initial p-nitrophenol concentration was 3.59x10^-4 mol/L. Copper sulfate (CuSO₄.5H₂O) was used as a catalyst. Presence of Cu²⁺ ions in the reaction medium accelerated oxidation reaction slightly. Oxidation kinetics have also been investigated with respect to p-nitrophenol disappearance and TOC results.     

Obtaining a secure and efficient key agreement protocol from (H)MQV and NAXOS

LaMacchia, Lauter and Mityagin recently presented a strong security definition for authenticated key agreement strengthening the well-known Canetti-Krawczyk definition. They also described a protocol, called NAXOS, that enjoys a simple security proof in the new model. Compared to MQV and HMQV, NAXOS is less efficient and cannot be readily modified to obtain a one-pass protocol. On the other hand MQV does not have a security proof, and the HMQV security proof is extremely complicated. This paper proposes a new authenticated key agreement protocol, called CMQV (‘Combined’ MQV), which incorporates design principles from MQV, HMQV and NAXOS. The new protocol achieves the efficiency of HMQV and admits a natural one-pass variant. Moreover, we present a relatively simple and intuitive proof that CMQV is secure in the LaMacchia-Lauter-Mityagin model.      

Inversion of a generalized Radon transform by algebraic iterative methods

Inversion of a generalized Radon transform (GRT) of seismic type is investigated by employing the algebraic iterative methods ART and SIRT, which require discrete formulations of the reconstruction problem. To this aim, two discretization procedures are proposed: a direct discretization and a discretization via the relation of GRT with the regular Radon transform (RT). The feasibility and the semi-convergence behavior of the proposed methods are analyzed and compared by discussing the effect of noisy data.     

Novel Thiosemicarbazone Derivatives: In Vitro and In Silico Evaluation as Potential MAO-B Inhibitors

MAO-B inhibitors are frequently used in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Due to the limited number of compounds available in this field, there is a need to develop new compounds. In the recent works, it was shown that various thiosemicarbazone derivatives show hMAO inhibitory activity in the range of micromolar concentration. It is thought that benzofuran and benzothiophene structures may mimic structures such as indane and indanone, which are frequently found in the structures of such inhibitors. Based on this view, new benzofuran/benzothiophene and thiosemicarbazone hybrid compounds were synthesized, characterized and screened for their hMAO-A and hMAO-B inhibitory activity by an in vitro fluorometric method. The compounds including methoxyethyl substituent (2b and 2h) were found to be the most effective agents in the series against MAO-B enzyme with the IC₅₀ value of 0.042 ± 0.002 µM and 0.056 ± 0.002 µM, respectively. The mechanism of hMAO-B inhibition of compounds 2b and 2h was investigated by Lineweaver–Burk graphics. Compounds 2b and 2h were reversible and non-competitive inhibitors with similar inhibition features as the substrates. The K_i values of compounds 2b and 2h were calculated as 0.035 µM and 0.046 µM, respectively, with the help of secondary plots. The docking study of compound 2b and 2h revealed that there is a strong interaction between the active sites of hMAO-B and analyzed compound.     

Anonymity and one-way authentication in key exchange protocols

Key establishment is a crucial cryptographic primitive for building secure communication channels between two parties in a network. It has been studied extensively in theory and widely deployed in practice. In the research literature a typical protocol in the public-key setting aims for key secrecy and mutual authentication. However, there are many important practical scenarios where mutual authentication is undesirable, such as in anonymity networks like Tor, or is difficult to achieve due to insufficient public-key infrastructure at the user level, as is the case on the Internet today. In this work we are concerned with the scenario where two parties establish a private shared session key, but only one party authenticates to the other; in fact, the unauthenticated party may wish to have strong anonymity guarantees. We present a desirable set of security, authentication, and anonymity goals for this setting and develop a model which captures these properties. Our approach allows for clients to choose among different levels of authentication. We also describe an attack on a previous protocol of Øverlier and Syverson, and present a new, efficient key exchange protocol that provides one-way authentication and anonymity.     

Preparation and Application of a Hydrochar-Based Palladium Nanocatalyst for the Reduction of Nitroarenes

In the present study, a novel heterogeneous catalyst was successfully fabricated through the decoration of palladium nanoparticles on the surface of designed Fe₃O₄-coffee waste composite (Pd-Fe₃O₄-CWH) for the catalytic reduction of nitroarenes. Various characterization techniques such as XRD, FE-SEM and EDS were used to establish its nano-sized chemical structure. It was determined that Pd-Fe₃O₄-CWH is a useful nanocatalyst, which can efficiently reduce various nitroarenes, including 4-nitrobenzoic acid (4-NBA), 4-nitroaniline (4-NA), 4-nitro-o-phenylenediamine (4-NPD), 2-nitroaniline (2-NA) and 3-nitroanisole (3-NAS), using NaBH₄ in aqueous media and ambient conditions. Catalytic reactions were monitored with the help of high-performance liquid chromatography. Additionally, Pd-Fe₃O₄-CWH was proved to be a reusable catalyst by maintaining its catalytic activity through six successive runs. Moreover, the nanocatalyst displayed a superior catalytic performance compared to other catalysts by providing a shorter reaction time to complete the reduction in nitroarenes.