Enhancement of enantioselectivity in chiral capillary electrophoresis using hydroxypropyl‐beta‐cyclodextrin as chiral selector under molecular crowding conditions induced by dextran or dextrin

Molecular crowding is a new approach to enhance the retention properties and selectivity of molecularly imprinted polymers. In this work, this concept was first applied to chiral CE to enhance its enantioselectivity. A model system, enantioseparation of salbutamol using hydroxypropyl‐beta‐cyclodextrin as chiral selector in the presence of dextran or dextrin as crowding‐inducing agents, was chosen to demonstrate its potency. Some parameters, especially the concentration of crowding‐inducing agents and cyclodextrins were investigated intensively. Moreover, based on fluorescence spectroscopy and affinity CE, it was found that the presence of crowding‐inducing agents could promote the association of enantiomers with cyclodextrins and intensify the interacting differences of two enantiomers with cyclodextrins. As a result, the essential concentration of cyclodextrins to make the enantiomers reach baseline separation was significantly decreased with the aid of molecular crowding. This study shows that molecular crowding is an effective strategy to enhance the enantioselectivity of cyclodextrin in chiral CE.     

Solving a concrete sleepers production scheduling by genetic algorithms

PRECON S.A. is a manufacturing company devoted to produce prefabricated concrete parts for several industries as railway transportation and agricultural industries. Recently, PRECON S.A. signed a contract with RENFE, the Spanish National Railway Company, to manufacture pre-stressed concrete sleepers for the sidings of the new railways of the high speed train (AVE). The scheduling problem associated with the manufacturing process of the sleepers is very complex, since this involves several constraints and objectives. These constraints are related to production capacity, the quantity of available moulds, demand satisfaction and other operational constraints. The two main objectives are related to the way to maximize the utilization of manufacturing resources and minimize mould movements. We developed a deterministic crowding genetic algorithm for this multiobjective problem. The algorithm has proved to be a powerful and flexible tool to solve large-scale instances of this real and complex scheduling problem.     

推广的EZ模型中的普适性行为

探讨了推广EZ模型的可能性,并给出了相应的模型中人群大小分布函数的形式解.研究表明金融市场中不同大小的人群数目的交易人的数目在重新标度后将具有最广泛的普适性行为 关键词： 金融物理 人群效应 主方程     

Excluded‐Volume Effects in Living Cells

Biomolecules evolve and function in densely crowded and highly heterogeneous cellular environments. Such conditions are often mimicked in the test tube by the addition of artificial macromolecular crowding agents. Still, it is unclear if such cosolutes indeed reflect the physicochemical properties of the cellular environment as the in‐cell crowding effect has not yet been quantified. We have developed a macromolecular crowding sensor based on a FRET‐labeled polymer to probe the macromolecular crowding effect inside single living cells. Surprisingly, we find that excluded‐volume effects, although observed in the presence of artificial crowding agents, do not lead to a compression of the sensor in the cell. The average conformation of the sensor is similar to that in aqueous buffer solution and cell lysate. However, the in‐cell crowding effect is distributed heterogeneously and changes significantly upon cell stress. We present a tool to systematically study the in‐cell crowding effect as a modulator of biomolecular reactions.     

电极形状对GaN基发光二极管芯片性能的影响

采用Crosslight APSYS这一行业专业软件对p-GaN,InGaN/InGaN多量子阱,n-GaN和蓝宝石的芯片结构研究了不同电极形状与器件的光电性能之间的关系.优化设计了普通指形电极、对称型指形电极、h形指形电极、旋转形电极、中心环绕形电极、树形电极等6种电极结构.通过电极优化设计,电流分布更加均匀,减小了电流的聚集效应.优化后的电极结构结果表明:芯片的电特性得到了提高,芯片的光特性得到了明显改善,芯片的出光效率大幅度提高,芯片的转化效率得到了提升.     

城市地铁专用车厢模型建立及拥挤敏感性分析

处于城市化进程中的我国城市,交通拥堵问题日益严重.作为社会弱势群体的老幼孕人群,对公共交通的安全性与舒适性要求相对更高,但是这类人群中相当一部分需要在上下班高峰期与通勤人群一起出行.如果能够依据城市的具体情况设立专用车厢,把这一部分出行者引导到公共交通中,可以减少部分交通流,缓解交通拥堵.对建立专用车厢的可行性进行了分析,并建立了数学模型.     

Modeling the Electrostatics and Size Effect within a Crowded Bioenvironment

Biological fluids typically contain a large number of macromolecules occupying up to 40% of the total volume. Current understanding of the effect of high concentration, or ‘macromolecular crowding’, on cellular processes is primarily based on the excluded-volume considerations in which all intermolecular interactions beyond the short-ranged repulsion are neglected. In this work, a density functional theory (DFT) accompanied by Monte Carlo simulations is employed to investigate the structural and thermodynamic properties of a crowded cellular environment within the primitive model where biomacromolecules are represented by neutral and charged hard spheres and the solvent by a continuous dielectric medium. The performance of the DFT has been tested with extensive results from Monte Carlo (MC) simulations for the pair correlation functions (PCFs), excess internal energies, and osmotic coefficients under a variety of solution conditions.     

Volume exclusion influences in spectral characteristics of DNA-amino acids complexes

Living cells contain a variety of bio molecules including nucleic acids, proteins, polysaccharides, and metabolites as well as other soluble and insoluble components. These bio molecules occupy a significant fraction (20–40%) of the cellular volume. The total concentration of biomolecules reaches 400 g l⁻¹, leading to a crowded intracellular environment referred to as molecular crowding. This causes changes in chemical potential strongly affecting the physicochemical properties in the cell environment. Hence understanding the effects of molecular crowding conditions on biomolecules and biomolecular complexes is of utmost importance. In the present study, interaction of DNA with various amino acids has been observed under the influence of molecular crowding agents of various molecular sizes to understand the changes in DNA characteristics with reference to binding parameters to various amino acids using fluorescence and FTIR spectra. These studies are expected to indicate the changes in the DNA-amino acid complexes with particular significance of effects of molecular crowding in response to volume exclusion effects.