A volatolomic approach using cerumen as biofluid to diagnose bovine intoxication by Stryphnodendron rotundifolium

An innovative volatolomic approach employs the detection of biomarkers present in cerumen (earwax) to identify cattle intoxication by Stryphnodendron rotundifolium Mart., Fabaceae (popularly known as barbatimão). S. rotundifolium is a poisonous plant with the toxic compound undefined and widely distributed throughout the Brazilian territory. Cerumen samples from cattle of two local Brazilian breeds (‘Curraleiro Pé-Duro’ and ‘Pantaneiro’) were collected during an experimental intoxication protocol and analyzed using headspace (HS)/GC–MS followed by multivariate analysis (genetic algorithm for a partial least squares, cluster analysis, and classification and regression trees). A total of 106 volatile organic metabolites were identified in the cerumen samples of bovines. The intoxication by S. rotundifolium influenced the cerumen volatolomic profile of the bovines throughout the intoxication protocol. In this way, it was possible to detect biomarkers for cattle intoxication. Among the biomarkers, 2-octyldecanol and 9-tetradecen-1-ol were able to discriminate all samples between intoxicated and nonintoxicated bovines. The cattle intoxication diagnosis by S. rotundifolium was accomplished by applying the cerumen analysis using HS/GC–MS, in an easy, accurate, and noninvasive way. Thus, the proposed bioanalytical chromatography protocol is a useful tool in veterinary applications to determine this kind of intoxication.     

Synthesis and structural characterization of (η5-Dp)Ru(PPh3)2H (Dp = C8H9−, 1,2-dihydropentalenyl)

Transition Metal Chemistry - (η5-Dp)Ru(PPh3)2H (Dp?=?C8H9?, 1,2-dihydropentalenyl) was synthesized in 90% yield by reaction of (η5-Dp)Ru(PPh3)2Cl with sodium formate....     

Influence of the sulfonate countercation on the thermal stability of nafion perfluorosulfonate membranes

We report a strong dependence of the thermal stability of Nafion® perfluorosulfonate ionomer on the nature of the counterion associated with the fixed sulfonate site. These results were obtained using thermal gravimetric analysis on a series of alkali metal and alkyl ammonium cation-exchanged Nafion films. We have found that the temperature of decomposition of Nafion is inversely dependent on the size of the exchanged cation; i.e., Nafion films show improved thermal stability as the size of the counter cation decreases. We attribute this inverse relationship of thermal stability with counterion size to an initial decomposition reaction which is strongly influenced by the strength of the sulfonate-coun-terion interaction. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Products of mixed covering arrays of strength two

A covering array CA(N;t,k, v is an N × k array such that every N × t subarray contains all t‐tuples from v symbols at least once, where t is the strength of the array. Covering arrays are used to generate software test suites to cover all t‐sets of component interactions. The particular case when t = 2 (pairwise coverage) has been extensively studied, both to develop combinatorial constructions and to provide effective algorithmic search techniques. In this paper, a simple “cut‐and‐paste” construction is extended to covering arrays in which different columns (factors) admit different numbers of symbols (values); in the process an improved recursive construction for covering arrays with t = 2 is derived. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 14: 124–138, 2006     

On the Computational Complexity of the Rooted Subtree Prune and Regraft Distance

The graph-theoretic operation of rooted subtree prune and regraft is increasingly being used as a tool for understanding and modelling reticulation events in evolutionary biology. In this paper, we show that computing the rooted subtree prune and regraft distance between two rooted binary phylogenetic trees on the same label set is NP-hard. This resolves a longstanding open problem. Furthermore, we show that this distance is fixed parameter tractable when parameterised by the distance between the two trees.Received March 16, 2004     

Admissible slopes for monotone and convex interpolation

Summary In many applications, interpolation of experimental data exhibiting some geometric property such as nonnegativity, monotonicity or convexity is unacceptable unless the interpolant reflects these characteristics. This paper identifies admissible slopes at data points of variousC ¹ interpolants which ensure a desirable shape. We discuss this question, in turn for the following function classes commonly used for shape preserving interpolations: monotone polynomials,C ¹ monotone piecewise polynomials, convex polynomials, parametric cubic curves and rational functions.