Strigolactones: Plant Hormones with Promising Features

Almost 80 years after the discovery of the first plant hormone, auxin, a few years ago a new class of plant hormones, the strigolactones, was discovered. These molecules have unprecedented biological activity in a number of highly important biological processes in plants but also outside the plant in the rhizosphere, the layer of soil surrounding the roots of plants and teeming with life. The exploitation of this amazing biological activity is not without challenges: the synthesis of strigolactones is complicated and designing the desired activity a difficult task. This minireview describes the current state of knowledge about the strigolactones and how synthetic analogs can be developed that can potentially contribute to the development of a sustainable agriculture

Synthesis by High-Efficiency Liquid-Phase (HELP) Method of Oligonucleotides Conjugated with High-Molecular Weight Polyethylene Glycols (PEGs)

The chemical modification of synthetic oligonucleotides has recently been investigated to improve their pharmacological utilization. In addition to chemical alterations of the backbone and of the heterocyclic bases, their conjugation with amphiphylic moieties, such as the polyethylene glycol has been proposed. The large scale production of these molecules as demanded for commercial purposes is hampered by the heterogeneity of the solid-phase processes and by the low reactivity of high-molecular weight PEGs in solution. A new synthetic procedure based on the recently developed liquid-phase method (HELP), has been set up to overcome these limitations

Improving the energy performance of residential buildings: a literature review

Promoting energy efficiency improvements of residential buildings is considered to play an important role in achieving the Kyoto targets. That is because it allows us to reduce energy consumption without curtailing social welfare. It is worth noting that there is an increasing amount of literature on this topic that has been published in recent years. This paper therefore provides an updated review of the literature on improving the energy performance of residential buildings. The set of materials obtained has been examined according to the following topics: area of application and design variables, objectives and performance measures, type of analysis, solution methodology, software tools, case study location and type of building. Apart from trends related to the different topics, opportunities for future research are also presented.nrpages: 32status: publishe

Laser-induced photoelectrochemical transients at a dye solution-SnO2 interface

SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe