Comparison of selectivity and sensitivity of various ferric selective electrodes prepared using N-((bis(dimethyl amino)methylene)carbamothioyl)benzamide.

N-((Bis(dimethyl amino)methylene)carbamothioyl)benzamide (NBMCB) was synthesized, characterized, and used as an ionophore for producing three novel ion-selective potentiometric sensors for Fe(III) determination. Firstly, using the molecular mechanic-based MMFF94 method, the most stable NBMCB's conformer and its isosteric complexes with various cations were determined. According to the Gibbs free energy results of the reaction, the thermodynamic complexation reactivity of Fe(III) and the ligand was acceptable. These results were obtained using the B3LYP approach and the 6-31G(d,p) basis set that was substituted for heavy metals by the LanL2DZ basis set. We used UV-visible spectrophotometry to confirm the tendency of NBMCB to react with Fe(III). Generally, three diverse liquid membrane ferric selective electrodes were obtained by the use of the specified ligand: classic with a liquid internal electrolyte-ferric selective electrode (LIE-FSE), solid state-FSE (SS-FSE), and coated wire-FSE (CW-FSE). The reactions exhibited Nernstian behavior across all electrodes. The limit of detection was enhanced for the SS-FSE (3 × 10-9 M) and the CW-FSE (3 × 10-7 M) in comparison with that of the LIE-FSE (7 × 10-7 M). The lifetime of the LIE-FSE was 8 weeks, while it was 10 weeks for the SS-FSE and the CW-FSE. Elimination of the internal solution reduced the limit of detection and prolonged the lifespan of the sensors. Also, the three electrodes all had a short response time of around 5-7 s. The sensors were utilized as indicator electrodes during the potentiometric titration of Fe(III) using ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid.

On the possibility of oscillating in the Ebola virus dynamics and investigating the effect of the lifetime of T lymphocytes.

Ebola virus (EBOV) targets immune cells and tries to inactivate dendritic cells and interferon molecules to continue its replication process. Since EBOV detailed mechanism has not been identified so far, it would be useful to understand the growth and spread of EBOV dynamics based on mathematical methods and simulation approaches. Computational approaches such as Cellular Automata (CA) have the advantage of simplicity over solving complicated differential equations. The spread of Ebola virus in lymph nodes is studied using a simplified Cellular Automata model with only four parameters. In addition to considering healthy and infected cells, this paper also considers T lymphocytes as well as cell movement ability during the simulation in order to investigate different scenarios in the dynamics of an EBOV system. It is shown that the value of the probability of death of T cells affects the number of infected cells significantly in the steady-state. For a special case of parameters set, the system shows oscillating dynamics. The results were in good agreement with an ordinary differential equation-based model which indicated CA method in combination with experimental discoveries could help biologists find out more about the EBOV mechanism and hopefully to control the disease.

Calculation of the shift exponent for the two-layer three-state Potts model using the transfer matrix method.

A finite-size scaling approach based on the transfer matrix method is developed to calculate the critical temperature and critical exponent of the symmetric and the asymmetric two-layer three-state Potts models. For similar intralayer interactions our calculation of the shift exponent phi confirm some scaling arguments which predict phi = gamma, where gamma is the susceptibility exponent. For unequal intralayer interactions we have obtained phi = 0.5 which differ from the prediction phi = gamma/2 of a generalized mean-field theory.