Starvation kinetics.

Reactions that take place in shock waves are slow compared to the energy present in the translational degrees of freedom. One explanation for the slow burning in a detonation is that successive surface layers of the solid or liquid must react sequentially. Another mechanism, which can also account for the slowness of reactions in shock waves in gases, is the basis for starvation kinetics: the bond that is breaking must draw its activation energy from a vibrational reservoir in disequilibrium with the translational degrees of freedom of the reacting molecule.

Pressure-anesthetic antagonism on the phase separation of non-ionic surfactant micelles.

An aqueous solution of non-ionic surfactants becomes suddenly turbid when heated to a critical temperature, known as the cloud point, and concomitantly expands the volume. The volume expansion is caused by release of structured water molecules from the hydrophilic polyoxyethyelene moieties. Inhalation anesthetics decreased the cloud-point temperature of hexaoxyethylene dodecyl ether micelles. The concentrations of methoxyflurane, halothane and enflurane causing a 1 degree C depression of the cloud-point temperature were 0.51, 0.71 and 0.78 mmolal, respectively. Hydrostatic pressure increased the cloud-point temperature in the absence and presence of the anesthetics. The change of the apparent molal volume at the cloud point was estimated to be 2.2 cm3/mol in the absence of anesthetics. This value decreased in the presence of the anesthetics, dose dependently. The results indicate that the anesthetics favor dehydration of the hydrophilic surface of the non-ionic surfactant micelles.

A conformational basis for the antiviral inactivity of tetrazole ribonucleosides.

The antiviral activity of ribavirin has been associated with its inhibition of the enzyme, IMP dehydrogenase. The ability of ribavirin to inhibit this enzyme has previously been shown to be related to its stability in the high anti glycosidic conformation. The antiviral effectiveness of several analogs of ribavirin have been investigated recently. The evidence indicates their antiviral effectiveness is related to their stability in the high anti conformation. Recently the disposition of purine analogs that pass through the inosine monophosphate branch point has been investigated. The results of these studies are consistent with the concept that the conversion of IMP to XMP requires the high anti conformation and that the conversion of IMP to adenylosuccinate requires some other conformation, possibly the anti conformation.

Antagonism between high pressure and anesthetics in the thermal phase-transition of dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine bilayer.

The antagonizing action of hydrostatic pressure against anesthesia is well known. The present study was undertaken to quantitate the effects of hydrostatic pressure and anesthetics upon the phase-transition temperature of dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine vesicles. The drugs used to anesthetize the phospholipid vesicles included an inhalation anesthetic, halothane, a dissociable local anesthetic, lidocaine and an undissociable local anesthetic, benzyl alcohol. All anesthetics decreased the phase-transition temperature dose-dependently. In the case of lidocaine, the depression was pH dependent and only uncharged molecules were effective. The application of hydrostatic pressure increased the phase-transition temperature both in the presence and the absence of anesthetics. The temperature-pressure relationship was linear over the entire pressure range studied up to 340 bars. Through the use of Clapeyron-Clausius equation, the volume change accompanying the phase-transition of the membrane was calculated to be 27.0 cm3/mol. Although the anesthetics decreased the phase-transition temperature, the molar volume change accompanying the phase-transition was not altered. The anesthetics displaced the temperature-pressure lines parallel to each other. The mole fraction of the anesthetics in the liquid crystalline membrane, calculated from the van't Hoff equation, was independent of pressure. This implies that pressure does not displace the anesthetics from the liquid membrane, and the partition of these agents remains constant. The volume change of the anesthetized phospholipid membranes is entirely dependent upon the phase-transition and not on the space occupied by the anesthetics.

Surface activities of tertiary amine local anesthetics at air/water interface in the presence and absence of phospholipid monolayers.

Adsorption of procaine and tetracaine to the dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine monolayers at the air/water interface is analyzed in terms of two types of interaction: (1) between the phospholipid molecules and the ligand molecules, and (2) among the ligand molecules themselves. The presence of the phospholipid monolayer increases the surface concentration of the anesthetics. The interaction energy, omega AB, between the phospholipid molecules and the anesthetic molecules at the interface accounts for this excess adsorption. The values were --2.95 kT for procaine and --2.99 kT for tetracaine where k is the Boltzmann constant and T = 298 K. The adsorption of the local anesthetics to the interface was cooperative. The interaction energy, omega AA, between the anesthetics molecules on the surface determines the cooperativity. The values were --0.056 kT for procaine and --0.397 kT for tetracaine, where T = 298 K. This parameter determines the slope of the curve plotted relating the surface concentration (gamma) and the logarithm of the bulk concentration (log C). When (omega AA/kT) greater than or equal to 1, the adsorption follows the phase-transition. A parameter KA, which is related to the difference of the free energy of anesthetics between the surface and the bulk molecules, locates the take-off point of the adsorption curve at the log C axis. The values were 2.15 x 10(3) for procaine and 7.00 x 10(3) for tetracaine. In spite of the general assumption that the difference in the clinical potency among local anesthetics are attributable to their lipid solubility, the present results showed that the phospholipid-anesthetic interaction energies for procaine and tetracaine were similar. The larger surface concentration of tetracaine than procaine at the same bulk concentration was due to the combined effect of KA and omega AA. KA represents the tendency of the anesthetic molecules to escape from the hydrogen-bonded water phase, and omega AA determines the cooperativity factor causing these molecules to aggregate at the interface. It was also observed that the charged forms of the anesthetics have non-zero surface activities.

Biochemical and biophysical approaches to improving the anticancer effectiveness of Ara-adenine.

Ara-C at very low dosage has been reported to decrease the host toxicity of ara-AMP or ara-A in combination with 2'-deoxycoformycin, a potent adenosine deaminase inhibitor, while increasing the toxicity to intracerebral L1210 leukemia. The possibility of increasing the selectivity of ara-A by prior administration of ara-C is explored. The importance of deoxynucleoside kinases, some of which may be cancer-induced, in obtaining selective anticancer effects is discussed. The possibility of a conformational basis for the differing degrees of selectivity and activity of various novel arabinosyl nucleosides is evaluated. The levels of cyclic nucleotides, which have opposing effects on leukemia, may possibly be manipulated to interfere with the growth of cancer cells. Approaches to minimizing major metabolic distortions, such as the progressive accumulation of dATP associated with the use of potent adenosine deaminase inhibitors and which limit the therapeutic effects of ara-A, are proposed.

Hydrogen ion concentration versus pH.

There appears to be a tendency to convert pH values into "hydrogen ion concentrations" using the antilog of negative pH values. The present communication describes the thermodynamic basis of pH to explain that the above procedure is erroneous and that pH values should be treated as primary variables. Acidity expressed by the hydrogen ion concentrations measured by titrations (base excess or base deficit) has no bearing with the "hydrogen ion concentrations" derived by the antilog of negative pH.

Fall-off from extrapolated values of all chemical reactions at very high temperatures.

At high temperatures the breaking of chemical bonds becomes relatively easy and the slow step in a chemical reaction shifts to the rate at which energy can seep into the bond that is to break. This has been observed by various investigators. A new general theory of reactions is developed here to explain this limiting rate at high temperatures. In the case of cyclopropane and cyclobutane the theory leads to the conclusion that 20 degrees of freedom form a heat reservoir which feeds the energy into the carbon bond that is to break and that this rate becomes controlling above about 1200 degrees K. This would correspond to 20 of the 21 vibrational bonds of cyclopropane feeding energy into the carbon bond that is to break, and there would be no noticeable rise in the number of bonds for cyclobutane. This theory is especially important for shock tubes and detonations, where this falling-off from the extrapolated low temperature rate becomes glaringly obvious.

The significant structure theory applied to a mesophase system.

The significant structure theory of liquids is extended to the mesophase system with p-azoxyanisole as an example. This compound has two different structures, a nematic phase and an isotropic phase, in its liquid state. In this study the nematic phase is treated as subject to a second volume and temperature-dependent degeneracy formally like that due to melting. The isotropic phase is treated as a normal liquid. The specific heat, thermal expansion coefficient, compressibility, volume, entropy of transitions, and heat of transitions are calculated and compared to the observed values. This analysis differs from previous ones in including the volume dependence as well as the temperature dependence in one explicit expression for the Helmholtz free energy.

Collisional energy transfer and quenching of electronic excitation.

The purpose of this paper has been to explore in a preliminary way the nature and mechanism of collisional energy transfer and quenching of electronic excitation. For this purpose, the Born approximation has been used, and the triplet-triplet and singlet-singlet transfer, and the triplet-triplet and singlet-singlet quenching have been studied. It has been shown theoretically that (i) the singlet-singlet transfer constants (or cross sections) are always larger than the triplet-triplet transfer constants (or cross sections) for the same system of donor and acceptor; (ii) for the singlet-singlet transfer, the observed cross section varies linearly with respect to the spectral overlap between the donor emission and the acceptor absorption; (iii) the reason that the quenching constants (or cross sections) are always smaller than the energy transfer constants (or cross sections) is due to the fact that for the quenching the vibration of the acceptor hardly participates in accepting the electronic excitation and for the energy transfer only part of the excited electron energy of the donor is converted into the energy of nuclear motion; and (iv) the polar acceptor molecules are better quenchers than nonpolar acceptor molecules.

Molecular mechanism of inhibition of firefly luminescence by local anesthetics.

The kinetics of the action of local anesthetics upon firefly luciferin and luciferase systems is presented. Clinical concentrations of local anesthetics inhibited this ATP-induced luminescence in a dose-dependent manner. From the effects of temperature and pH upon the inhibitory action of the local anesthetics, it is concluded that hydrophobic ligand-enzyme interaction is the predominant cause of the inhibition, but hydrophilic interaction also contributes to the inhibition to a lesser degree. A molecular theory of anesthesia is outlined which postulates that release of electrostricted water molecules from the hydrophilic parts of the enzyme due to the protein conformational changes induced by anesthetics is the cause of the decreased luminescence. A similar mechanism is expected to occur at the cell membrane, which probably dehydrates the sodium channel and suppresses the conductance of this ion across the membrane. These events lead to a volume expansion of the total system, and the system becomes reactive to a pressure which reverses the anesthesia by shifting the equilibrium to the nonanesthetized original volume. The pressure antagonism of anesthesia can be explained by this overall volume expansion and not by a mere swelling of the cell membrane.

On the density matrix approach of intramolecular relaxation processes.

In this paper we derive the generalized master equations for the S(1) system coupled with the S(2) system, with the S(1) and S(2) systems embedded in a heat bath. This formalism can be applied to a number of problems like vibrational redistribution, dynamic effect of vibrational relaxation on electronic relaxation in condensed media, etc. In this paper the importance of the memory function associated with a relaxation process is emphasized.

Derivation of a formula for the resonance integral for a nonorthogonal basis set.

In a self-consistent field calculation, a formula for the off-diagonal matrix elements of the core Hamiltonian is derived for a nonorthogonal basis set by a polyatomic approach. A set of parameters is then introduced for the repulsion integral formula of Mataga-Nishimoto to fit the experimental data. The matrix elements computed for the nonorthogonal basis set in the pi-electron approximation are transformed to those for an orthogonal basis set by the Löwdin symmetrical orthogonalization.

Elementary transition state theory of the Soret and Dufour effects.

The elementary transition state approach has been used to obtain a simple model theory for the Soret effect (thermal diffusion) and the Dufour effect. The flow of heat in the Dufour effect is identified as the transport of the enthalpy change of activation as molecules diffuse. The theory as now formulated applies only to thermodynamically ideal mixtures of substances with molecules of nearly equal size. The results of the theory conform to the Onsager reciprocal relationship. When the results were fit to data on thermal diffusion for two liquid systems, a close fit was obtained and yielded reasonable values of between 2 and 3 kcal mol(-1) for enthalpy changes of activation and differences between the entropy changes of activation for the two components of between 0 and 1 cal K(-1) mol(-1).

Thermodynamic properties of solid CH(4).

The significant structures procedure of liquids has been used to calculate the thermodynamic properties of solid C(2)H(4). Two degeneracy terms were used to describe the behavior in the vicinities of the two phase transitions. The calculated entropy and specific heat agree well with experimental results from a few kelvins to the melting point. Less satisfactory agreement is obtained for compressibility and thermal expansion coefficients. This simple model represents surprisingly well the phase transitions in the solid state.

Density matrix method for orbital localization.

A method is presented for localizing molecular orbitals, based on diagonalizing subunits of the density matrix. First, nonbonding orbitals are found by diagonalizing the monatomic subunits; then, diatomic sigma or pi bonding and antibonding orbitals are obtained from the diatomic subunits for all bonded pairs of atoms; finally, the delocalized pi-orbitals for particular chromophores are found by projecting the first set out of the self-consistent field (SCF) Hamiltonian. The results show good general agreement with other localization methods, with advantages in the ability to display group orbitals in complex molecules which most closely resemble the SCF orbitals for simple prototypes.