E1 and E2 Viral Proteins as Therapeutic Targets for Development of Antiviral Agents

The importance of studying the human papillomavirus (HPV) is because it is a disease that relies on 14 HPV types classified as carcinogenic high risk and that contributes to cervical cancers affecting approximately 527,600 women yearly and causing 265,387 deaths yearly, being the second mortality cause for women globally. In Mexico, 13.9% of demises are due to cervical uterine cancer (CUCA). The challenges for a vaccine that may prevent HPV occurrence are an active field for scientists with significant advances but still undergoing for a full cure to this disease. In this work, latest research trends to treat HPV are analyzed, and by means of molecular coupling analysis, a modeling and simulation process to predict interactions of leader molecules with the target for synthetic elaboration of a possible therapeutic treatment is developed. One of the main topics discussed in this chapter relates to new drug design for HPV treatment, which is related to the inhibitors of protein-protein interactions and in the protein drugs. Regarding HPV therapy development, a group of small molecules has been identified using high-performance sieving capable of interrupting HPV16 E1-E2 interaction, which helps avoid viral replication. Some of these compounds displayed nanomolar affinities and high specificity

Radiative Transference Equation Algorithm as an ANSYS® User-Defined Function for Solar Technology Applications

Heat effects in photocatalytic reactor applications are discussed and a case study is analyzed where sunlight is used to activate a chemical reaction to degrade water pollutants. Heat is produced in the light-capturing process, and heat effects need to be better understood during the device design process. Radiative transfer equation (RTE) is the guiding equation used to calculate radiation proliferation in participating media, and it is used to describe the balance of radiative energy transport in the participating media including the interactions caused by different processes such as absorption, scattering, and emission, which also are subject to additional phenomena like weakening and magnification. This equation plays an important role in the design process since it may be included in the simulation process to represent the sunlight heat effects in the different photocatalytic reactor components. In this chapter, it is explained how to build a simplified algorithm to incorporate the RTE in a numerical calculation during the design of a photocatalytic reactor using the commercial software ANSYS®. In addition, simplifications are explained that enable the program to coordinate some coefficients such as absorption and dispersion so their effects are included within the numerical calculation. A user-defined function is presented in the end of the chapter as a usable algorithm in ANSYS® program with acceptable results for photocatalytic reactors

Hydrodynamic Analysis on a Photocatalytic Reactor Using ANSYS Fluent^®

Solar technology includes a wide variety of developments in environmental applications that include photovoltaic cells and photocatalytic devices, among others. Sunlight usage as a clean energy source is highly desirable in technology applications. The main interest of this proposal is to carry on with hydrodynamic analysis in photocatalytic reactors applications where sunlight is used to activate a chemical reaction to degrade water pollutants and calculations are based in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using ANSYS®. The different steps, geometric domain, preprocessing steps, setup, and postprocessing steps, are described to display an analysis of a numerical calculation during the design of a photocatalytic reactor using the commercial software ANSYS Fluent®. This work may help as a guide for chemical reactor design and includes a numerical solution of one case for a photocatalytic reactor during its design process. In addition, simplifications are explained which enable the designer to make an efficient process of the numerical calculation. Calculations and analysis are carried over in ANSYS Fluent® a powerful multi-physics program suite to develop photocatalytic reactors

Solvent Effects on Dye Sensitizers Derived from Anthocyanidins for Applications in Photocatalysis

Anthocyanidins under the effects of solvents water, ethanol, n-hexane, and methanol are interesting due to their suitability as natural dyes for photocatalytic applications. In this chapter, DFT and TDDFT methodologies are used to study their electronic structure. The results displayed include HOMO, LUMO, HOMO-LUMO gap, chemical properties, and reorganization energies for the ground states, and excited state data are also displayed. Malvidin in gas phase has lower gap energy. After addition of solvents, gap energy increases in all cases but malvidin with n-hexane presents narrower gap. Conceptual DFT results show that cyanidin and malvidin may have good charge transfer. Cyanidin presented lower electron reorganization energy (λe) using solvent water; however, ethanol and methanol had similar values. TDDFT is used to calculate excited states, and absorption data show wavelength main peak between 479.1 and 536.4 nm. UV-Vis absorption spectra were generated and solvent effects on each molecule is discussed. Anthocyanidins work well in the visible region with the stronger peak at the green region. These pigments are good options for photocatalysis application and cyanidin and malvidin, in this order, may be the best choices for dye sensitization applications

A CFD Porous Materials Model to Test Soil Enriched with Nanostructured Zeolite Using ANSYS-Fluent⁽™⁾

Soil health is a great concern worldwide due to the huge variety of pollutants and human activities that may cause damage. There are different ways to remediate and make a better use of soil and a choice may be using zeolite in activities like gardening, farming, environment amending, among others. In this work is proposed a model to simulate how mixing zeolite with soil may be beneficial in different ways, we are especially interested in interactions of mixed soil-zeolite with water. This model is based in different flow regimes where water interacts with two layers formed by nanostructured zeolite and soil in a vertical arrangement. The analysis is approached as a bi-layer porous material model resolved by using the mathematical model implemented in ANSYS-Fluent. Such model uses a multi-fluid granular model to describe the flow behavior of a fluid–solid mixture where all the available interphase exchange coefficient models are empirically based. Despite the great capabilities of numerical simulation tools, it is known that at present time, the literature lacks a generalized formulation specific to resolve this kind of phenomena where a porous media is analyzed. This model is developed to obtain a systematic methodology to test nanomaterials with porous features produced in our laboratory which is the next step for near future work within our research group