Using Molinspiration as a didactic complement into teaching subjects of Medicinal Chemistry

Medicinal Chemistry has high rates of failure and abandonment at the beginning of the courses where this disciplines are taught, as occurs in pharmaceutical sciences. In University of Algarve (UAlg), there has been an effort to avoid school failure in these topics by increasing student motivation, a very important issue for the students get success. For this has been used in teaching Medicinal Chemistry, the web application called Molinspiration. This website/tool allows one to input a chemical structure and then after, view predicted properties of structure and its bioactivity against six different common drug targets. Using this application, students are transported to a virtual laboratory which making easier to understand and practice the basic scientific knowledge that has been previously explained in theoretical classes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Four-nucleon scattering: a new numerical approach

The AGS equations are solved for $n{}^3\mathrm{H}$ and $p{}^3\mathrm{He}$ scattering including the Coulomb interaction. Comparison with previous work confirms the accuracy of the calculation and helps clarify a number of issues related to the $n{}^3\mathrm{H}$ total cross section at the peak of the resonance region, as well as an $A_y$ deficiency in $p{}^3\mathrm{He}$. Calculations are fully converged in terms of $NN$ partial waves and involve no uncontrolled approximations.Comment: To be published in proceedings of the 18th International IUPAP Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Santos, 21-26 August 200

Efimov Effect Revisited with Inclusion of Distortions

An elementary proof of the 3-body Efimov effect is provided in the case of a separable 2-body potential which binds at zero energy a light particle to a heavy one. The proof proceeds by two steps, namely {\it i)} a projection of the Hamiltonian in a subspace and the observation that the projected Hamiltonian generates an arbitrarily large number of bound states, and {\it ii)} a use of the Hylleraas-Undheim theorem to recover the unprojected Hamiltonian. The definition of the projectors we use can include mean field distortions.Comment: 17 pages, TeX Email contact= [email protected]

On the chirality of the SM and the fermion content of GUTs

The Standard Model (SM) is a chiral theory, where right- and left-handed fermion fields transform differently under the gauge group. Extra fermions, if they do exist, need to be heavy otherwise they would have already been observed. With no complex mechanisms at work, such as confining interactions or extra-dimensions, this can only be achieved if every extra right-handed fermion comes paired with a left-handed one transforming in the same way under the Standard Model gauge group, otherwise the new states would only get a mass after electroweak symmetry breaking, which would necessarily be small ($\sim100\textrm{ GeV}$). Such a simple requirement severely constrains the fermion content of Grand Unified Theories (GUTs). It is known for example that three copies of the representations $\mathbf{\overline{5}}+\mathbf{10}$ of $SU(5)$ or three copies of the $\mathbf{16}$ of $SO(10)$ can reproduce the Standard Model's chirality, but how unique are these arrangements? In a systematic way, this paper looks at the possibility of having non-standard mixtures of fermion GUT representations yielding the correct Standard Model chirality. Family unification is possible with large special unitary groups --- for example, the $\mathbf{171}$ representation of $SU(19)$ may decompose as $3\left(\mathbf{16}\right)+\mathbf{120}+3\left(\mathbf{1}\right)$ under $SO(10)$.Comment: Minor changes; matches publication in Nuclear Physics