The design and characterization of an open eight-stranded beta-sheet in a synthetic, 2-fold symmetric 70-residue peptide is described. The design strategy involves the generation of a 35-residue four-stranded beta-sheet peptide in which successive hairpins are nucleated by appropriately positioned (D)Pro-Xxx sequences. Oxidative dimerization using a single Cys residue positioned at the center o...

This paper described the optical properties of CdSe and CdSe/CdS nanoparticles, synthesized by the microemulsion method followed by refluxing in toluene/methanol (60:1). Both optical spectroscopy and structural characterization (XPS, XRD, and HRTEM) suggested the core/shell structure of CdSe/CdS samples. Most notable in this work was that capping CdSe nanoparticles with CdS materials yielded a ...

The increasing miniaturization of devices creates the need for adequate power sources and direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) are a strong option in the various possibilities under current development. DMFC catalysts are mostly based on platinum, for its outperformance in three key areas (activity, selectivity and stability) within methanol oxidation framework. However, platinum poisoning with pr...

A quasichemical method that combines ab initio treatment of explicit solvent with dielectric continuum models has been used to study the origin of a strong effect of methanol on the extent of iron(III) [tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)]porphyrin chloride dissociation in acetonitrile-methanol solutions. It is shown that the dissociation is energetically more favorable in methanol than in acetonitrile...

We present detections of the absorption band at 3.53 μm due to solid methanol toward three low-mass young stellar objects located in the Serpens and Chameleon molecular cloud complexes. The sources were observed as part of a large spectroscopic survey of ≈40 protostars. This is the first detection of solid methanol in the vicinity of low mass (M <∼ 1 M ) young stars and shows that the formation...

Two modifications to a reference direct methanol fuel-cell (DMFC) system are considered to improve methanol fuel utilisation. Fuel utilisation can be optimised by minimising the parasitic methanol crossover by manipulating methanol concentration in the fuel cells. Simulations of the two systems indicate that there is considerable potential to increase fuel utilisation for dynamic concentration ...

Role of free radicals in methanol toxicity was evaluated in methanol treated albino rats. Methanol intoxication increased lipid peroxidation and depleted the free radical scavenging enzyme systems. The free radical quenching effect of vitamin E protected the animals from methanol induced free radical damage.