Search results for "Potential"
showing 10 items of 3348 documents
Parity violation energy of biomolecules - III: RNA
2006
The energy of parity-violation associated with a typical DNA double helix is estimated with ab initio techniques. It is shown that weak-nuclear interactions do not favor the formation of the double helices found in nature. Possible implications regarding the potential effect of parity-violation interactions on the evolution of biological homochirality are discussed.
Ion size effects on the current efficiency of narrow charged pores
2001
Abstract The effects of ion size on the current efficiency (CE) of charged membranes with narrow pores are studied theoretically. The CE is a measure of the membrane permselectivity defined as the ratio between the counterion flux and the sum of the counterion and coion fluxes when an electric potential difference is applied between the two solutions bathing the membrane. It is studied here as a function of two relevant experimental parameters: the ratio between the ionic radius and the pore radius, and the ratio between the external salt concentration and the membrane fixed charge concentration. The ratio of the CE values corresponding to the point and finite size ions is also calculated a…
Composite soy lecithin–decylpolyglucoside vesicles: A theoretical and experimental study
2008
In the present work, vesicles made with soy lecithin and a commercial mixture of alkyl polyglucosides were prepared and characterized. Vesicles with a constant amount of soy lecithin and an increasing amount of a decylpolyglucoside surfactant, (OrNS10), were formulated and their physicochemical properties were studied with the aim to design a drug delivery system suitable for different applications. To this purpose, morphology, size distribution, ζ-potential and apparent viscosity of the prepared vesicles were studied. Vesicles were also characterized by using optical and light polarized microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and photon correlation spectroscopy. A stability study was …
Simulation of first- and second-order transitions in asymmetric polymer mixtures
1993
The critical properties of dense asymmetric binary polymer mixtures are studied by grand canonical simulations within the framework of the 3-dimensional bond fluctuation lattice model. The monomers interact with each other via a potential ranging over the entire first peak of the pair distribution. An asymmetry is realized by giving the ratio of interactions λ = ∈AA/∈BB between monomers of the A-species and of the B-species a value different from 1. Using multiple histogram extrapolation techniques for the data analysis, the two phase region, which is a line of first-order transitions driven by the chemical potential difference, and the critical point are determined for a mixture of chains …
Membrane oligo- and polysialic acids
2011
AbstractPolysialic acid (polySia) and oligosialic acid (oligoSia) chains are linear polysaccharides composed of sialic acid monomers. The majority of biological poly/oligoSia chains are bound to membranes. There is a large diversity of membrane poly/oligoSia in terms of chain length, occurrence, biological function, and the mode of membrane attachment. Poly/oligoSia can be anchored to a membrane via a phospholipid (polySia in bacteria), a glycosphingolipid (oligoSia in gangliosides), an integral membrane glycoprotein, or a glycoprotein attached to a membrane via glycosylphosphatidylinositol. In eukaryotic cells, the attachment of a poly/oligoSia chain to the membrane anchor is usually throu…
Interactions between polymer brush-coated spherical nanoparticles: the good solvent case.
2011
The interaction between two spherical polymer brushes is studied by molecular dynamics simulation varying both the radius of the spherical particles and their distance, as well as the grafting density and the chain length of the end-grafted flexible polymer chains. A coarse-grained bead-spring model is used to describe the macromolecules, and purely repulsive monomer-monomer interactions are taken throughout, restricting the study to the good solvent limit. Both the potential of mean force between the particles as a function of their distance is computed, for various choices of the parameters mentioned above, and the structural characteristics are discussed (density profiles, average end-to…
Monte carlo simulation of the glass transition of polymer melts
2007
The bond fluctuation model of polymer melts is presented as a reasonable compromise between simulation efficiency and realistic chemical detail. It is shown that inclusion of a potential energy that depends on the length of the effective bonds connecting the effective monomers easily creates a conflict between configurational entropy of dense packing and the energetic tendency of the bonds to stretch. This competition leads to a glass transition of the model, which very well describes many features of real systems.
Interaction Between Polymer Brush-Coated Spherical Nanoparticles: Effect of Solvent Quality
2012
The interaction between two spherical polymer brushes in solvents of variable quality is studied by molecular dynamics simulation and by self-consistent field theory, varying both the radius of the spherical particles and their distance, as well as the grafting density and the chain length of the end-grafted flexible polymer chains. Both the potential of mean force between the particles as a function of their distance is computed, for various choices of the parameters mentioned above, and the structural characteristics are discussed (density profiles, average end-to-end distance of grafted chains, etc.) It is found that for rather short chain lengths and not too large grafting densities, is…
Entropy theory and glass transition: A test by Monte Carlo simulation
1997
This article reviews the results of a test of the Gibbs-DiMarzio theory by Monte Carlo Simulation. The simulation employed the bond-fluctuation model on a simple cubic lattice. This model incorporates two kinds of interactions: the excluded volume interaction among all monomers of the melt and an internal energy of the chains, which favors large bonds and makes the chains stiffen with decreasing temperature. The stiffening of the chains leads to an increase of their volume requirements, which competes with the packing constraints at low temperatures. This competition strongly slows down the structural relaxation of the melt and induces the glassy behavior. The model therefore takes into acc…
Dispersion of titanate nanotubes for nanomedicine: comparison of PEI and PEG nanohybrids.
2014
In the present study, we report the dispersion of titanate nanotubes (TiONts) via polymer grafting (PolyEthylene Glycol, PEG) or polymer adsorption (polyethylene imine, PEI) where different TiONts/polymer ratios have been investigated. The TiONts/PEI and TiONts/PEG nanohybrids were characterized by scanning and transmission electron microscopy as well as by zeta potential measurements in order to determine both their dispersion state and stability in water (at different pH for zetametry). The nature of the chemical bonds at the surface of these nanohybrids was investigated by Fourier-transformed infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy while the grafting densities of PEG on the nanotubes were quantifie…