Dark Energy with Phantom Crossing and the H0 Tension

We investigate the possibility of phantom crossing in the dark energy sector and the solution for the Hubble tension between early and late universe observations. We use robust combinations of different cosmological observations, namely the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), local measurement of Hubble constant (H0), Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) and SnIa for this purpose. For a combination of CMB+BAO data that is related to early universe physics, phantom crossing in the dark energy sector was confirmed at a 95% confidence level and we obtained the constraint H0=71.0−3.8+2.9 km/s/Mpc at a 68% confidence level, which is in perfect agreement with the local measurement by Riess et al. We show that constraints from different combinations of data are consistent with each other and all of them are consistent with phantom crossing in the dark energy sector. For the combination of all data considered, we obtained the constraint H0=70.25±0.78 km/s/Mpc at a 68% confidence level and the phantom crossing happening at the scale factor am=0.851−0.031+0.048 at a 68% confidence level.     

PTML modeling for peptide discovery: in silico design of non-hemolytic peptides with antihypertensive activity

Molecular Diversity - Hypertension is a medical condition that affects millions of people worldwide. Despite the high efficacy of the current antihypertensive drugs, they are associated with...     

ParaHydrogen Polarized Ethyl-[1-13C]pyruvate in Water,a Key Substrate for Fostering the PHIP-SAH Approach to Metabolic Imaging

An efficient synthesis of vinyl-[1-¹³C]pyruvate has been reported, from which ¹³C hyperpolarized (HP) ethyl-[1-¹³C]pyruvate has been obtained by means of ParaHydrogen Induced Polarization (PHIP). Due to the intrinsic lability of pyruvate, which leads quickly to degradation of the reaction mixture even under mild reaction conditions, the vinyl-ester has been synthesized through the intermediacy of a more stable ketal derivative. ¹³C and ¹H hyperpolarizations of ethyl-[1-¹³C]pyruvate, hydrogenated using ParaHydrogen, have been compared to those observed on the more widely used allyl-derivative. It has been demonstrated that the spin order transfer from ParaHydrogen protons to ¹³C, is more efficient on the ethyl than on the allyl-esterdue to the larger J-couplings involved. The main requirements needed for the biological application of this HP product have been met, i. e. an aqueous solution of the product at high concentration (40 mM) with a good ¹³C polarization level (4.8 %) has been obtained. The in vitro metabolic transformation of the HP ethyl-[1-¹³C]pyruvate, catalyzed by an esterase, has been observed. This substrate appears to be a good candidate for in vivo metabolic investigations using PHIP hyperpolarized probes.     

A non-isothermal Ginzburg–Landau model in superconductivity: Existence,uniqueness and asymptotic behaviour

In this paper we study a Ginzburg–Landau model which describes the behaviour of a superconducting material including thermal effects. We extend the traditional formulation of the problem, by introducing the temperature as an additional state variable. Accordingly, together with the Gor’kov–Eliashberg system, we introduce an evolution equation for the absolute temperature. We examine in detail the case which allows only variations of the concentration of superconducting electrons and of the temperature, neglecting the electromagnetic field. For this problem existence and uniqueness of the solution are shown. Finally we analyze the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions, proving that the system possesses a global attractor.     

A novel approach based on recurrent neural networks applied to nonlinear systems optimization

This paper presents an efficient approach based on recurrent neural network for solving nonlinear optimization. More specifically, a modified Hopfield network is developed and its internal parameters are computed using the valid subspace technique. These parameters guarantee the convergence of the network to the equilibrium points that represent an optimal feasible solution. The main advantage of the developed network is that it treats optimization and constraint terms in different stages with no interference with each other. Moreover, the proposed approach does not require specification of penalty and weighting parameters for its initialization. A study of the modified Hopfield model is also developed to analyze its stability and convergence. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed neural network.     

Infinitely renormalizable diffeomorphisms of the disk at the boundary of chaos

We show that, among area contracting embeddings of the 2-disk, infinitely renormalizable maps with a bounded geometry either have positive topological entropy or correspond to a cascade of period doubling.

     

Electrochemical determination of minoxidil in different pharmaceutical formulations by flow injection analysis.

The electrochemical behavior and amperometric-FIA quantification of minoxidil at a glassy carbon electrode is described. The procedure is based on electrochemical oxidation at 0.800 V (vs. Ag/AgCl/NaCl(3 M) in a phosphate buffer solution. Minoxidil was determined over the range 1 x 10(-7) - 1 x 10(-4) M. Different analytical parameters and electrode stability were analyzed to obtain the best electrode performance. The optimal conditions were: working potentials, 0.800 V; flow rate, 0.74 mL min(-1); and solution pH 7.0. This system allowed a sampling rate of 120 samples per hour without any pretreatment. The proposed method was used for minoxidil quantification in pharmaceutical preparations with satisfactory results. The accuracy of FIA-amperometric method was established by a comparison with the conventional UV determination technique using a paired t-test indicating the absence of systematic errors.     

ZnS bubble clusters with onion-like structures

Following recent studies which showed that the most stable structures for (ZnS)(n) clusters (n= 10-47) are the so-called "bubble clusters", in which all the atoms are three-coordinated, we have used simulated annealing techniques to find the most stable structure for a larger cluster, (ZnS)(60). We find an onion-like structure, with one small cluster enclosed inside a bigger one. The inner cluster has the structure of a sodalite cage. Bonding between the inner and the outer clusters creates a network of four-coordinated atoms.     

Nanophase segregation and water dynamics in the dendrion diblock copolymer formed from the Fréchet polyaryl ethereal dendrimer and linear PTFE

We propose a new material consisting of a dendrion copolymer formed from (a) a water-soluble dendritic polymer and (b) a hydrophobic backbone. Using molecular dynamics simulations techniques, we determine the structure and dynamics of the dendrion formed by second-generation Fréchet polyaryl ethereal dendrimer as the hydrophilic component and linear polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) as the hydrophobic polymer, with 5 and 10 wt % of water. We find that this material produces a well-developed nanoscale structure in which water forms a continuous nanophase, making this new family of compounds promising candidates for applications in fuel cell membranes. We find that the water molecules are incorporated into the dendrimer block of the copolymer to form a nanophase-segregated structure. The well-developed nanophase-segregated structures rendered by this material have characteristic dimensions of segregation ( approximately 30 Angstrom) and dendrimer conformational properties that are independent of water content. Calculations of water dynamics and proton transport in these nanophase-segregated structures indicate that the dendrion copolymer membrane with 10 wt % of water content has a water structure and transport properties equivalent to that of the hydrated Nafion membrane with 20 wt % of water content.     

Wavy graphene sheets from electrochemical sewing of corannulene

The presence of non-hexagonal rings in the honeycomb carbon arrangement of graphene produces rippled graphene layers with valuable chemical and physical properties. In principle, a bottom-up approach to introducing distortion from planarity of a graphene sheet can be achieved by careful insertion of curved polyaromatic hydrocarbons during the growth of the lattice. Corannulene, the archetype of such non-planar polyaromatic hydrocarbons, can act as an ideal wrinkling motif in 2D carbon nanostructures. Herein we report an electrochemical bottom-up method to obtain egg-box shaped nanographene structures through a polycondensation of corannulene that produces a new conducting layered material. Characterization of this new polymeric material by electrochemistry, spectroscopy, electron microscopy (SEM and TEM), scanning probe microscopy, and laser desorption-ionization time of flight mass spectrometry provides strong evidence that the anodic polymerization of corannulene, combined with electrochemically induced oxidative cyclodehydrogenations (Scholl reactions), leads to polycorannulene with a wavy graphene-like structure.

A bottom-up synthesis of wavy graphene structures obtained through an anodic polymerization process, combined with an electrochemically triggered oxidative cyclodehydrogenation, of the bowl-shaped polyaromatic hydrocarbon corannulene.