The microrheology of cationic micellar solutions has been investigated as a function of added organic salts using quasielastic light scattering (QELS). Two organic salts, sodium p-toluene sulfonate and sodium salicylate, were used to induce microstructural changes in cetyl trimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) micelles. The mean-squared displacement (MSD) of polystyrene probe particles embedded in C...

Carbohydrate-protein recognition has been studied by electronic structure calculations of complexes of fucose and glucose with toluene, p-hydroxytoluene and 3-methylindole, the latter aromatic molecules being analogues of phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan, respectively. We use mainly a density functional theory model with empirical corrections for the dispersion interactions (DFT-D), this ...

The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of substrate interactions on the biotransformation rates and mineralization potentials of gasoline monoaromatics and methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), compounds that commonly co-exist in groundwater contaminant plumes. A mixed culture was derived from gasoline-contaminated aquifer material using toluene as the enrichment substrate. Tw...

Toluene abuse during pregnancy results in newborns with fetal solvent syndrome. N-Methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor has been identified as a target site for toluene. Since the normal function of NMDA receptor is critical for synaptogenesis, the long-term effects of toluene exposure during synaptogenesis on the neurobehavioral function and the expression of NMDA receptor subunits (NR1, NR2A, an...

The electrochemical properties of conducting polymers are highly dependent on the microstructure. We report a method to produce specific microstructures of polypyrrole through electro-polymerization in the presence of the amphiphile N-{11-(2hydroxyethyldimethylammonium)undecanoyl}-N,N′-dioctyl-l-glutamate, bromide, which forms supramolecular hydrogels with pyrrole in aqueous solution. These hyd...

A toluene-degrading denitrifier, Azoarcus tolulyticus Tol-4, was one of eight similar strains isolated from three petroleum-contaminated aquifer sediments. When the strain was grown anaerobically on toluene, 68% of the carbon from toluene was found as CO2 and 30% was found as biomass. Strain Tol-4 had a doubling time of 4.3 h, a Vmax of 50 micromol x min-1 x g of protein-1, and a cellular yield...

For decades, dimethyl sulfate (DMS) mapping has informed manual modeling of RNA structure in vitro and in vivo. Here, we incorporate DMS data into automated secondary structure inference using an energy minimization framework developed for 2'-OH acylation (SHAPE) mapping. On six noncoding RNAs with crystallographic models, DMS-guided modeling achieves overall false negative and false discovery ...

AIM To compare levels of combined exposure to white spirit, toluene, butyl acetate, ethyl acetate, and xylene in the manufacturing of paint, cartridge, drying, and top-coat sections of paint and lacquer industry, and peripheral nerve conduction parameters in the exposed workers. METHODS The exposed group comprised 120 workers while the control group included 110 workers who had never been exp...