Thermal,morphostructural and spectrometric characterization of an antibacterial kaolinite-based filter modified with silver for water treatment

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - The aim of this work is to synthesize and characterize a new structured silver–clay dried, calcined or sintered at different temperatures...     

Structural studies of apoptosis and ion transport regulatory proteins in membranes

Solid-state NMR spectroscopy is being used to determine the structures of membrane proteins involved in the regulation of apoptosis and ion transport. The Bcl-2 family includes pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins that play a major regulatory role in mitochondrion-dependent apoptosis or programmed cell death. The NMR data obtained for (15)N-labeled anti-apoptotic Bcl-xL in lipid bilayers are consistent with membrane association through insertion of the two central hydrophobic alpha-helices that are also required for channel formation and cytoprotective activity. The FXYD family proteins regulate ion flux across membranes, through interaction with the Na(+), K(+)-ATPase, in tissues that perform fluid and solute transport or that are electrically excitable. We have expressed and purified three FXYD family members, Mat8 (mammary tumor protein), CHIF (channel-inducing factor) and PLM (phospholemman), for structure determination by NMR in lipids. The solid-state NMR spectra of Bcl-2 and FXYD proteins, in uniaxially oriented lipid bilayers, give the first view of their membrane-associated architectures.     

Membrane orientation of the Na,K-ATPase regulatory membrane protein CHIF determined by solid-state NMR

Corticosteroid hormone-induced factor (CHIF) is a major regulatory subunit of the Na,K-ATPase, and a member of an evolutionarily conserved family of membrane proteins that regulate the function of the enzyme complex in a tissue-specific and physiological-state-specific manner. Here we present the structure of CHIF oriented in the membrane, determined by solid-state NMR orientation-dependent restraints. Because CHIF adopts a similar structure in lipid micelles and bilayers, it is possible to assign the solid-state NMR spectrum measured for (15)N-labeled CHIF in oriented bilayers from the structure determined in micelles, to obtain the global orientation of the protein in the membrane.     

A Solution-Generating Method in Einstein-Scalar Gravity

We present a method to generate static, spherically symmetric, solutions of Einstein gravity in \(d+2\) dimensions minimally coupled to a real scalar field with a self-interacting potential. The solutions can be fully parametrised by a single function, whose behaviour encodes all the information about the local and global behaviour of the spacetime. We give several explicit applications of our solution-generating method that describe black holes, naked singularities and solitonic configurations.

     

Hysteresis in $$\eta /s$$ for QFTs dual to spherical black holes

We define and compute the (analog) shear viscosity to entropy density ratio \(\tilde{\eta }/s\) for the QFTs dual to spherical AdS black holes both in Einstein and Gauss–Bonnet gravity in five spacetime dimensions. Although in this case, owing to the lack of translational symmetry of the background, \(\tilde{\eta }\) does not have the usual hydrodynamic meaning, it can be still interpreted as the rate of entropy production due to a strain. At large and small temperatures it is found that \(\tilde{\eta }/s\) is a monotonic increasing function of the temperature. In particular, at large temperatures it approaches a constant value, whereas at small temperatures, when the black hole has a regular, stable extremal limit, \(\tilde{\eta }/s\) goes to zero with scaling law behavior. Whenever the phase diagram of the black hole has a Van der Waals-like behavior, i.e. it is characterized by the presence of two stable states (small and large black holes), connected by a meta-stable region (intermediate black holes), the system evolution must occur through the meta-stable region- and temperature-dependent hysteresis of \(\tilde{\eta }/s\) is generated by non-equilibrium thermodynamics.     

2H NMR and polyelectrolyte-induced domains in lipid bilayers

2H NMR studies of polyelectrolyte-induced domain formation in lipid bilayer membranes are reviewed. The 2H NMR spectrum of choline-deuterated phosphatidylcholine (PC) reports on any and all sources of lipid bilayer surface charge, since these produce a conformation change in the choline head group of PC, manifest as a change in the 2H NMR quadrupolar splitting. In addition, homogeneous and inhomogeneous surface charge distributions are differentiated. Adding polyelectrolytes to lipid bilayers consisting of mixtures of oppositely charged and zwitterionic lipids produces 2H NMR spectra which are superpositions of two Pake sub-spectra: one corresponding to a polyelectrolyte-bound lipid population and the other to a polyelectrolyte-free lipid population. Quantitative analysis of the quadrupolar splittings and spectral intensities of the two sub-spectra indicate that the polyelectrolyte-bound populations is enriched with oppositely charged lipid, while the polyelectrolyte-free lipid population is correspondingly depleted. The same domain-segregation effect is produced whether cationic polyelectrolytes are added to anionic lipid bilayers or anionic polyelectrolytes are added to cationic lipid bilayers. The 2H NMR spectra permit a complete characterization of domain composition and size. The anion:cation ratio within the domains is always stoichiometric, as expected for a process driven by Coulombic interactions. The zwitterionic lipid content of the domains is always statistical, reflecting the systems tendency to minimize the entropic cost of demixing charged lipids into domains. Domain formation is observed even with rather short polyelectrolytes, suggesting that individual polyelectrolyte chains aggregate at the surface to form "superdomains". Overall, the polyelectrolyte bound at the lipid bilayer surface appears to lie flat along the surface and to be essentially immobilized through its multiple electrostatic contacts.     

Effect of transformations of numerical parameters in automatic algorithm configuration

We study the impact of altering the sampling space of parameters in automatic algorithm configurators. We show that a proper transformation can strongly improve the convergence towards better configurations; at the same time, biases about good parameter values, possibly based on misleading prior knowledge, may lead to wrong choices in the transformations and be detrimental for the configuration process. To emphasize the impact of the transformations, we initially study their effect on configuration tasks with a single parameter in different experimental settings. We also propose a mechanism for how to adapt towards an appropriate transformation and give exemplary experimental results of that scheme.