A simple and highly sensitive spectrophotometric determination of Cr(VI) in food samples by using 3,4-dihydroxybenzaldehydeisonicotinoylhydrazone (3,4-DHBINH)

A simple, rapid, sensitive and inexpensive method has been developed for the determination of trace amounts of chromium(VI) using 3,4-dihydroxybenzaldehydeisonicotinoylhydrazone (3,4-DHBINH). The metal ion gives a yellow coloured complex with 3,4-DHBINH in acetate buffer of pH 5.5 with 1:1 (metal:ligand) composition. The complex shows a maximum absorption at 400 nm. Beer’s law is obeyed in the range 0.5–7.7 ppm of Cr(VI). The molar absorptivity, Sandell’s sensitivity and detection limit were found to be 1.35 × 10⁴ L mol⁻¹ cm⁻¹, 0.0075 μg cm⁻² and 0.0045 μg mL⁻¹, respectively. The correlation co-efficient and regression co-efficient of the Cr(VI)–3,4-DHBINH complex were 0.99 and 0.12, respectively. Major cations and anions did not show any interference. The developed method has been successfully applied for the analysis of Cr(VI) in food samples (leafy vegetables), comparing the results simultaneously with those obtained using an Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, whereby the validity of the method has been tested.     

How important is the interfacial chemical bond for electron transport through alkyl chain monolayers?

We show that the electrode/molecule chemical bond does not change the tunneling barrier for charge transport through alkyl chain monolayers sandwiched between Si and Hg electrodes. This observation can be understood if the interfacial bond mainly governs the monolayer's structure, while the electronic states due to molecule-electrode bonding do not contribute significantly to tunneling. Yet, the nature of the bond affects the Schottky barrier inside the semiconductor due to changes in the interface dipole.     

Thermodynamic factors in partitioning and rejection of organic compounds by polyamide composite membranes

The paper analyzes the mechanism of partitioning and rejection of organic solutes by polyamide membranes for reverse osmosis and nanofiltration. The partitioning of homologous series of alcohols and polyols, in which polarity changes with size in opposite ways, was measured using attenuated total reflection IR spectroscopy. The results show that the partitioning of polyols monotonously decreases with size, whereas for alcohols it is not monotonous and slightly decreases for small C1-C3 alcohols followed by a sharp increase for larger alcohols. These results may be explained by assuming a heterogeneous structure of polyamide comprising a hydrophobic polyamide matrix and a polar internal aqueous phase. The partitioning data could consistently explain the results of rejection in standard filtration experiments. They clearly demonstrate that high/low partitioning may play a significant role in achieving a low/high rejection of organics. In particular, this points to the need to account for the partitioning effect while using molecular probes such as polyols or sugars for estimating the effective "pore" size or molecular weight cutoff of a membrane and for choosing/developing organic-rejecting membranes.     

Efficient Cache Attacks on AES, and Countermeasures

We describe several software side-channel attacks based on inter-process leakage through the state of the CPU’s memory cache. This leakage reveals memory access patterns, which can be used for cryptanalysis of cryptographic primitives that employ data-dependent table lookups. The attacks allow an unprivileged process to attack other processes running in parallel on the same processor, despite partitioning methods such as memory protection, sandboxing, and virtualization. Some of our methods require only the ability to trigger services that perform encryption or MAC using the unknown key, such as encrypted disk partitions or secure network links. Moreover, we demonstrate an extremely strong type of attack, which requires knowledge of neither the specific plaintexts nor ciphertexts and works by merely monitoring the effect of the cryptographic process on the cache. We discuss in detail several attacks on AES and experimentally demonstrate their applicability to real systems, such as OpenSSL and Linux’s dm-crypt encrypted partitions (in the latter case, the full key was recovered after just 800 writes to the partition, taking 65 milliseconds). Finally, we discuss a variety of countermeasures which can be used to mitigate such attacks.     

Nanocomposite Hydrogels as Platform for Cells Growth,Proliferation, and Chemotaxis

The challenge of mimicking the extracellular matrix with artificial scaffolds that are able to reduce immunoresponse is still unmet. Recent findings have shown that mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) infiltrating into the implanted scaffold have effects on the implant integration by improving the healing process. Toward this aim, a novel polyamidoamine‐based nanocomposite hydrogel is synthesized, cross‐linked with porous nanomaterials (i.e., mesoporous silica nanoparticles), able to release chemokine proteins. A comprehensive viscoelasticity study confirms that the hydrogel provides optimal structural support for MSC infiltration and proliferation. The efficiency of this hydrogel, containing the chemoattractant stromal cell‐derived factor 1α (SDF‐1α), in promoting MSC migration in vitro is demonstrated. Finally, subcutaneous implantation of SDF‐1α‐releasing hydrogels in mice results in a modulation of the inflammatory reaction. Overall, the proposed SDF‐1α‐nanocomposite hydrogel proves to have potential for applications in tissue engineering.     

An adaptive image watermarking algorithm based on perceptual model

An adaptive image watermarking algorithm based on Watson＇s perceptual model is proposed in this paper. The proposed watermarking algorithm fully considers image regional characteristic. First, the cover image is divided into different smooth regions according to its gray value. Then watermark adjustment factors of those different regions are calculated respectively based on Watson＇s perceptual model. The watermark is embedded by the adjustment factors at last. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm has excellent imperceptibility and has little influence upon the eigenvalue of the cover image.     

On the Discrete Maximum Principle for the Beltrami Color Flow

We analyze the discrete maximum principle for the Beltrami color flow. The Beltrami flow can display linear as well as nonlinear behavior according to the values of a parameter β, which represents the ratio between spatial and color distances. In general, the standard schemes fail to satisfy the discrete maximum principle. In this work we show that a nonnegative second order difference scheme can be built for this flow only for small β, i.e. linear-like diffusion. Since this limitation is too severe, we construct a novel finite difference scheme, which is not nonnegative and satisfies the discrete maximum principle for all values of β. Numerical results support the analysis.