Supervision of Ethylene Propylene Diene M-Class (EPDM) Rubber Vulcanization and Recovery Processes Using Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR FT-IR) Spectroscopy and Multivariate Analysis.

Ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) rubber is widely used in a diverse type of applications, such as the automotive, industrial and construction sectors among others. Due to its appealing features, the consumption of vulcanized EPDM rubber is growing significantly. However, environmental issues are forcing the application of devulcanization processes to facilitate recovery, which has led rubber manufacturers to implement strict quality controls. Consequently, it is important to develop methods for supervising the vulcanizing and recovery processes of such products. This paper deals with the supervision process of EPDM compounds by means of Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and suitable multivariate statistical methods. An expedited and nondestructive classification approach was applied to a sufficient number of EPDM samples with different applied processes, that is, with and without application of vulcanizing agents, vulcanized samples, and microwave treated samples. First the FT-IR spectra of the samples is acquired and next it is processed by applying suitable feature extraction methods, i.e., principal component analysis and canonical variate analysis to obtain the latent variables to be used for classifying test EPDM samples. Finally, the k nearest neighbor algorithm was used in the classification stage. Experimental results prove the accuracy of the proposed method and the potential of FT-IR spectroscopy in this area, since the classification accuracy can be as high as 100%.

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Fire and bones: Bronze Age III in the North-Eastern Iberian Peninsula.

Between the third millennium BP and the fifth century AD, there are numerous necropolises that house urns in the Iberian Peninsula. One example is the "Pi de la Lliura" (Vidreres, Girona). However, there is a dearth of research concerning these structures. The "Pi de la Lliura" housed 43 structures, which contained a total of 47 vessels with human remains. Of these 43 structures, 22 were totally or partially excavated at the laboratory. The evidence from the fragments indicates cremation at a temperature of 650-700 degrees C. Part of the cremated corpse was then deposited in an urn. One of the most unique characteristics of the necropolis is the high frequency of individuals younger than 20 years old. The mortality of sub-adults is high in any prehistoric necropolis, but it is even higher in a cremation necropolis. "Pi de la Lliura" is a very small necropolis, where corpses were treated similarly over a short period.

Development and validation of a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry assay for the quantitation of IPTG in E. Coli fed-batch cultures.

IPTG (Isopropyl-beta-d-1-thiolgalactopyranoside) is a gratuitous inducer commonly used for the overexpression of heterologous recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli. A reliable method has been developed for the determination of IPTG in E.coli fed-batch fermentation samples with a minimal sample treatment. Analysis was performed in single ion monitoring positive mode using ESI source. The extracted ion was 261 m/z and the retention time of IPTG was 12.4 min with a total run time in samples of 30 min. The flow was directed to mass spectrometer 11 min after the start of the run and diverted from mass spectrometer after 14.5 min in order to avoid interference of salts and other metabolites. The assay was validated for medium and intracellular matrices and linear calibration curves of 3 orders of magnitude were obtained (R(2) >or= 0.99). Quality control samples were analyzed and showed precision and accuracy within the limits according to FDA Guidelines for analytical method validation. Recovery for both matrices was between 95.8 and 113.5%. The limit of detection (LOD) was set at 0.02 microM being the 0.1% of the lowest IPTG concentration used for induction of recombinant protein overexpression. The developed procedure has been applied to determine the IPTG distribution profiles in medium and intracellular samples in high cell density induced cultures for the production of the recombinant protein rhamnulose-1-phosphate aldolase (RhuA).

A study on intrabody communication for personal healthcare monitoring system.

In this paper we propose the use of intrabody communication (IBC) for a personal health monitoring system employing inexpensive, lightweight, miniature sensor platforms. Body area networks (BANs) with physiological sensors could improve current healthcare services and at the same time significantly reduce costs to public health systems. We are primarily looking to reduce the transmission power consumption of the wireless communication links by using very low power IBC to connect the BAN sensors, a change that has also been shown to increase the durability of the sensors. There has been no specific study carried out to date on the optimal modulation scheme for such IBC. For this reason, we investigated the transmission characteristics of the human body as a conductor of signal up to 2.4 GHz by considering different transmitter power consumption and data transmission rates. We believe that an optimal modulation scheme for IBC would allow an increase of the data transmission bit rate in our personal health monitoring system model. Therefore, we evaluated the performance of two different modulation schemes, QPSK and BPSK. Our experiment is conducted with point-to-point communication between an electrocardiogram sensor located in the chest region and a central hub located on the left wrist.

Discovery of 5-HT6 receptor ligands based on virtual HTS.

Based on a pharmacophore alignment on a 5-HT(6) ligand applying 4SCan technology, a new lead series was identified and further structurally investigated. K(i)s down to 8 nM were achieved.