The mechanisms of general anesthesia in the central nervous system are finally yielding to molecular examination. As a result of research during the past several decades, a group of ligand-gated ion channels have emerged as plausible targets for general anesthetics. Molecular biology techniques have greatly accelerated attempts to classify ligand-gated ion channel sensitivity to general anesthe...

The formation of (40)Ca(2)(+) molecular ions is observed in a hybrid (40)Ca magneto-optical and ion trap system. The molecular ion formation process is determined to be photo-associative ionization of ultracold (40)Ca atoms. A lower bound for the two-body rate constant is found to be beta ≥ 2 ± 1 × 10(-15) cm(3) Hz. Ab initio molecular potential curves are calculated for the neutral Ca(2) and i...

Molecular imprinting techniques have reached tremendous importance in the research of new artificial recognition systems. The investigation reports the preparation of Cu (II) ion selective polymer with high specificity and selectivity by molecular imprinting approach. For this 4-vinyl pyridine was chosen as the functional monomer and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as the crosslinking ag...

Multipole radiofrequency ion traps are a highly versatile tool to study molecular ions and their interactions in a well-controllable environment. In particular the cryogenic 22-pole ion trap configuration is used to study ion-molecule reactions and complex molecular spectroscopy at temperatures between few Kelvin and room temperatures. This article presents a tutorial on radiofrequency ion trap...

Impacts of massive, highly charged glycerol clusters (≳10(6) Da, ≳ ± 100 charges) have been used to eject intact charged molecules of peptides, lipids, and small proteins from pure solid samples, enabling imaging using these ion species in a time-of-flight secondary ion microscope with few-micrometer spatial resolution. Here, we report mass spectra and useful ion yields (ratio of intact charged...

High resolution imaging mass spectrometry could become a valuable tool for cell and developmental biology, but both, high spatial and mass spectral resolution are needed to enable this. In this report, we employed Bi3 bombardment time-of-flight (Bi3 ToF-SIMS) and C60 bombardment Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance secondary ion mass spectrometry (C60 FTICR-SIMS) to image Dictyostelium dis...

A buckminsterfullerene ion source is employed to characterize peptide-doped trehalose thin films. The experiments are designed to utilize the unique sputtering properties of cluster ion beams for molecular depth profiling. The results show that trehalose films with high uniformity can be prepared on Si by a spin-coating technique. Bombardment of the film with C60+ results in high quality time-o...

Specific ion effects are ubiquitous in biological and colloidal systems. The addition of electrolytes to ionic surfactant solutions has pronounced effects on micellar properties, such as critical micelle concentration (cmc), micellar size, and shape. Ions play an important role in colloid stability and aggregation behavior of ionic surfactant solutions. Despite extensive experimental data, ther...