Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) grafted into nanopores: Thermo-responsive behaviour in the presence of different salts

Surface initiated polymerization of N(isopropylacrylamide) (NIPAM) was performed by controlled radical polymerization on PET track-etched membranes presenting two different pore diameters (narrow pores: ∼80 nm and large pores: ∼330 nm). The opening and closing characteristics of the resulting PNIPAM-g-PET membranes were investigated by conductometric measurements carried out at different temperatures below and above the LCST of PNIPAM and in the presence of different salts. Depending on the membrane pore size, two types of permeation control mechanisms are observed. In large pore membranes, expanded PNIPAM chains conformations result in reduced effective pore size and therefore lower permeabilities relative to collapsed macromolecules chain conformations. In contrast, in narrow pore membranes, the expanded PNIPAM brush presents greater degrees of hydration in the surface layer and therefore gives rise to higher permeabilities than the collapsed conformation. In this situation, the overall permeability is thus comparable to that of a hydrogel membrane.     

Dual topology of the Heisenberg motion groups

Let ? _n be the (2n + 1)-dimensional Heisenberg group, and let T ⁿ be the n-dimensional torus acting on ? _n by automorphisms. In this paper, we describe the space of admissible coadjoint orbits of the Heisenberg motion group G _n = T ⁿ ? ? _n and we determine the topology of this space. We show that the bijection between the unitary dual ? _n of G _n and its admissible coadjoint orbit space is a homeomorphism.     

Electrochemical Affinity Sensors Using Field Effect Transducer Devices for Chemical Analysis

The review presents advances and main challenges of the affinity sensors based on field- effect transistors published during the last five years. The different nanomaterial-based field-effect transistors are classified according to the nature of the nanomaterials, beginning by silicon, the “gold-standard” semiconductor, the gallium nitride semiconductor, the organic semiconductors, the silicon nanowires, the inorganic nanomaterials, the carbon nanotubes and the graphene. Due to its exceptional electrical properties, the main works are devoted to graphene. The obtained analytical performances for the detection of biomarkers, of DNA sequences and of miRNA are listed. The relation between the operational conditions - nature of the nanomaterials, procedure of preparation, choice of the receptor molecule, method of immobilization – and the analytical performance are discussed. The perspective of industrialization of these affinity sensors based on field-effect transistors is discussed.     

Channel inclusion of primary alcohols in isostructural solvates of the antiretroviral nevirapine: an X-ray and thermal analysis study

X-ray structural and thermoanalytical data for a series of solvates 2–7 of the anti-HIV drug nevirapine containing primary alcohols CH₃(CH₂) _n OH with n = 2–7 are reported. The structures of 2–7 are based on a common isostructural framework comprising centrosymmetric hydrogen-bonded nevirapine dimers and contain a common channel parallel to the crystal b-axis whose repeat length spans a narrow range (~8.43–8.52 Å) in the series and accommodates the various solvent molecules in 2–7. Thermogravimetry yielded a guest–host ratio close to 0.5 for the 1-butanol solvate 3 and a steady decrease in this ratio from 0.43 to 0.32 for the solvates 4–7. This anomalous stoichiometric variation was resolved following successful X-ray analysis of solvate 3 which revealed that the length spanned by the disordered 1-butanol molecule is commensurate with the channel periodicity b, resulting in a stoichiometric compound. Instead, solvates 5–7, for which single crystal X-ray data were available, showed significant disorder for the solvent molecules, attributed to their increasing chain lengths being incommensurate with the parameter b.     

Two conformers of ethyl pivalate studied by microwave spectroscopy

The rotational spectra of two conformers of ethyl pivalate, (CH₃)₃C-COO-C₂H₅ have been recorded by molecular beam FT microwave spectroscopy. The analysis yielded a set of three rotational constants and five quartic centrifugal distortion constants for each conformer. The conformers were identified by comparing the experimental rotational constants with those obtained by ab initio calculations at MP2/6-311++G∗∗ level. One conformer has C_s symmetry, the other one forms a pair of enantiomers with C₁ symmetry. Additionally, the torsional potentials of the tert-butyl group and of the methyl groups were obtained by ab initio methods.     

Fuzzy complex Grassmannians and quantization of line bundles

We construct by purely representation-theoretic methods fuzzy versions of an arbitrary complex Grassmannian M=Gr _n (ℂ ^n+m ), i.e., a sequence of matrix algebras tending SU(n+m)-equivariantly to the algebra of smooth functions on M. We also show that this approximation can be interpreted in terms of the Berezin-Toeplitz quantization of M. Furthermore, we use branching rules to prove that the quantization of every complex line bundle over M is given by a SU(n+m)-equivariant truncation of the space of its L ²-sections.     

Homoclinic tangle of the primary separatrix in the compact and closed versus open and unbounded magnetic topologies for divertor tokamaks

The simple map and the symmetric quartic map are the generic representation of the open-unbounded and closed-compact magnetic topologies for single-null divertor tokamaks, respectively. The map parameter represents the magnetic asymmetries. The two maps are used to calculate the homoclinic tangles in the two topologies in divertor tokamaks. It is found that as the magnetic asymmetries become larger, the homoclinic tangle of the simple map becomes extremely elongated radially as opposed to the homoclinic tangle of the symmetric quartic map which becomes wider poloidally.