2,4-dinitrophenyl ether-containing chemodosimeters for the selective and sensitive 'in vitro' and 'in vivo' detection of hydrogen sulfide

[EN] Four probes (i.e. D1¿D4) for the selective and sensitive fluorogenic detection of HS2 have been prepared and characterised. HEPES (10 mM, pH 7.4)¿DMSO 99:1 v/v solutions of D1¿D4 are essentially non-fluorescent. Changes in the emission using D1¿D4 in the presence of anions (F2, Cl2, Br2, I2, N2 3 , CN2, SCN2, AcO2, CO22 3 , PO22 4 , SO22 4 , HS2 and OH2), biothiols (GSH, Cys, Hcy, Me ¿Cys and lipoic acid), reducing agents (SO22 3 and S2O22 3 ) and oxidants (H2O2) demonstrated that only HS2 is able to induce the appearance of intense emission bands in the 400¿ 520 nm range in the four probes. The selectivity observed was ascribed to a unique hydrogen sulfide-induced hydrolysis of the 2,4-dinitrophenyl ether moiety that yielded the corresponding free highly fluorescent alcohols. The potential detection of intracellular HS2 was also studied.Financial support from the Spanish Government (Project MAT2012-38429-C04-01) and the Generalitat Valencia (Project PROMETEO/2009/016) is gratefully acknowledged. S.E. is grateful to the Generalitat Valenciana for his Santiago Grisolia fellow. L.E.S.F. also thanks the Carolina Foundation and UPNFM-Honduras for his doctoral grant.El Sayed Shehata Nasr, S.; De La Torre, C.; Santos Figueroa, LE.; Martínez-Máñez, R.; Sancenón Galarza, F.; Orzáez, M.; Costero, AM.... (2015). 2,4-dinitrophenyl ether-containing chemodosimeters for the selective and sensitive 'in vitro' and 'in vivo' detection of hydrogen sulfide. Supramolecular Chemistry. 27(4):244-254. https://doi.org/10.1080/10610278.2014.977286S24425427

A Low-Complexity, Full-Rate, Full-Diversity 2 X 2 STBC with Golden Code's Coding Gain

This paper presents a low-ML-decoding-complexity, full-rate, full-diversity space-time block code (STBC) for a 2 transmit antenna, 2 receive antenna multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, with coding gain equal to that of the best and well known Golden code for any QAM constellation. Recently, two codes have been proposed (by Paredes, Gershman and Alkhansari and by Sezginer and Sari), which enjoy a lower decoding complexity relative to the Golden code, but have lesser coding gain. The $2\times 2$ STBC presented in this paper has lesser decoding complexity for non-square QAM constellations, compared with that of the Golden code, while having the same decoding complexity for square QAM constellations. Compared with the Paredes-Gershman-Alkhansari and Sezginer-Sari codes, the proposed code has the same decoding complexity for non-rectangular QAM constellations. Simulation results, which compare the codeword error rate (CER) performance, are presented.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Globecom - 2008. 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Framing effectiveness in impact assessment: Discourse accommodation in controversial infrastructure development

There is ongoing debate about the effectiveness of impact assessment tools, which matters both because of the threat to future practice of the tools which are frequently perceived to be ineffective, and because of the disillusionment that can ensue, and controversy generated, amongst stakeholders in a decision context where opportunities for meaningful debate have not been provided. In this article we regard debate about the meaning of effectiveness in impact assessment as an inevitable consequence of increased participation in environmental decision-making, and therefore frame effectiveness based on an inclusive democracy role to mean the extent to which impact assessment can accommodate civil society discourse. Our aim is to investigate effectiveness based on this framing by looking at one type of impact assessment - environmental impact assessment (EIA) - in two controversial project proposals: the HS2 rail network in England; and the A4DS motorway in the Netherlands. Documentary analysis and interviews held with key civil society stakeholders have been deployed to identify discourses that were mobilised in the cases. EIA was found to be able to accommodate only one out of four discourses that were identified; for the other three it did not provide the space for the arguments that characterised opposition. The conclusion in relation to debate on framings of effectiveness is that EIA will not be considered effective by the majority of stakeholders. EIA was established to support decision-making through a better understanding of impacts, so its ineffectiveness is unsurprising when its role is perceived to be broader. However, there remains a need to map discourses in different decision contexts and to analyse the extent to which the range of discourses are accommodated throughout the decision process, and the role of impact assessment in those processes, before recommendations can be made to either improve impact assessment effectiveness, or whether it is simply perceptions of effectiveness that need to be improved

Subspace local quantum channels

A special class of quantum channels, named subspace local (SL), are defined and investigated. The proposed definition of subspace locality of quantum channels is an attempt to answer the question of what kind of restriction should be put on a channel, if it is to act `locally' with respect to two `locations', when these naturally correspond to a separation of the total Hilbert space in an orthogonal sum of subspaces, rather than a tensor product decomposition. It is shown that the set of SL channels decomposes into four disjoint families of channels. Explicit expressions to generate all channels in each family is presented. It is shown that one of these four families, the local subspace preserving (LSP) channels, is precisely the intersection between the set of subspace preserving channels and the SL channels. For a subclass of the LSP channels, a special type of unitary representation using ancilla systems is presented.Comment: References adde