Detecting hidden explosive devices in war zones and transportation hubs is a pressing concern. Current efforts have focused on sensing three commonly used powerful explosives: 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazinane (RDX) and pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) (Chart 1). The need for ultratrace detection of these low-volatility compounds has resulted in an intense interest...

Anti-ischemic therapy with organic nitrates is complicated by tolerance. Induction of tolerance is incompletely understood and likely multifactorial. Recently, increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) has been investigated, but it has not been clear if this is a direct consequence of the organic nitrate on the vessel or an in vivo adaptation to the drugs. To examine the possibility...

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) is a common secondary explosive and has been used extensively to study shock initiation and energy propagation in energetic materials. We report 2D IR measurements of PETN thin films that resolve vibrational energy transfer and relaxation mechanisms. Ultrafast anisotropy measurements reveal a sub-500 fs reorientation of transition dipoles in thin films of vap...

Recent animal data suggest that reduced lipoic acid (LA) prevents oxidative inhibition of the nitrate bioactivating enzyme, the mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH-2), and that pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) does not induce nitrate tolerance because of its intrinsic antioxidative properties, thereby preserving ALDH-2 activity. We sought to determine whether ALDH-2 activity in circul...

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) reductase of Enterobacter cloacae PB2, a flavoprotein involved in the biodegradation of the explosive PETN, ethylene glycol dinitrate (EGDN) and glycerol trinitrate (GTN), was purified from an overexpressing strain of E. coli and crystallized at 293 K using the sitting-drop vapour-diffusion method. Diffraction data can be seen at 1.8 A. The primitive orthorho...

We report the results of a comparative study of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) at high compression using classical reactive interatomic potential ReaxFF and first-principles density functional theory (DFT). Lattice parameters of PETN I, the ground state structure at ambient conditions, is obtained by ReaxFF and two different density functional methods (plane wave and LCAO pseudopotential m...

First-principles density functional theory DFT calculations have been used to obtain the constitutive relationships of pentaerythritol tetranitrate PETN-I , a crystalline energetic material. The isotropic equation of state EOS for hydrostatic compression has been extended to include uniaxial compressions in the 100 , 010 , 001 , 110 , 101 , 011 , and 111 crystallographic directions up to a comp...

New polynitramino compounds were synthesized and fully characterized using IR and multinuclear ((1)H, (13)C, (15)N) NMR spectroscopy, and elemental analysis as well as single-crystal X-ray diffraction.

Previous studies on LPS from Neisseria meningitidis strains M992B, the immunotype L6 strain, NMB, the type strain, a candidate LPS vaccine strain 6275z, and an extensively used clinical strain M986 had suggested that the location of the phosphoethanolamine (PEtn) residue was the 7-position of the distal heptose residue (HepII) of the inner-core oligosaccharide (OS). In all cases, this was only ...

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) reductase of Enterobacter cloacae PB2, a ̄avoprotein involved in the biodegradation of the explosive PETN, ethylene glycol dinitrate (EGDN) and glycerol trinitrate (GTN), was puri®ed from an overexpressing strain of E. coli and crystallized at 293 K using the sitting-drop vapour-diffusion method. Diffraction data can be seen at 1.8 AÊ . The primitive orthorho...