MCFA Annals

 

Volume IV - CONTENTS


CHEMISTRY

Editorial

Paulo Figueiredo

For the fourth year, the Annals received contributions that reflect the breadth and width of Chemistry in our days. This year, we are able to publish four papers, one on new materials, a second about fluorous solvents, a third concerning innovative chromatographic techniques and a fourth studying the interactions between DNA and metal complexes.

Urška Lavrenčič Štangar and Nicola Hüsing present a paper titled “Formation of mesostructured SiO2 films in the presence of sugar-based surfactants” that reports the formation of thin silica films by carbohydrate based surfactants, which have the advantages of being biodegradable, non-toxic and easily modified, among others. These surfactants intend to be the basis for the synthesis of molecularly imprinted materials.

In “Fluorous alcohols: a tool for clean oxidation processes and a route to antimalarial peroxides”, Jernej Iskra presents us a family of solvents immiscible in both aqueous and organic phases. Fluorous alcohols can be used to activate hydrogen peroxide, one of the most promising oxidant substances, and can be classified as environmentally safe. Moreover, the author describes the use of fluorous alcohols as important tools in the synthesis of efficient antimalarial drugs.

The contribution of Samuel Carda-Broch and Alain Berthod, “Countercurrent chromatography: a worthy technique for the direct measurement of liquid-liquid partition coefficients” reports the use of an ionic liquid, for the first time, in countercurrent chromatography to estimate liquid-liquid distribution constants of solutes in biphasic liquid systems. These values are of importance for the study of structure-activity relationships in biological, pharmaceutical and environmental fields.

Antonella Di Trapani studies the binding properties of different chromium complexes with DNA. In her paper “A study of the interactions of chromium (III) polypyridyl complexes and DNA” she demonstrates the importance of these molecules as structural probes in biological systems.

Wishing you a fruitful reading of the present volume, I welcome you to submit papers on the results of your own research to the forthcoming fifth edition, in order to keep the pace or even improve the quality of these Annals of the MCF.

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Countercurrent chromatography: a worthy technique for the direct measurement of liquid-liquid partition coefficients

A. Berthod, S. Carda-Broch

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Fluorous Alcohols: a Tool for Clean Oxidation Processes and a Route to Antimalarial Peroxides

Jernej Iskra

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Formation of Mesostructured SiO2 Films in the Presence of Sugar-Based Surfactants

Urška Lavrenčič Štangar and Nicola Hüsing

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A study of the interactions of chromium (III) polypyridyl complexes and DNA

Antonella Di Trapani

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ECONOMICS

Analysis and Evaluation of Ecosystems' Resilience: an Economic Perspective


Lucia Vergano, Paulo A.L.D. Nunes

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ENGINEERING

Masonries deterioration. Petrographic and physical characterization
of combination of building materials

Giuseppe Cultrone

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Reliability-Based Design Optimization for Aerospace and Automotive Structures

Roberto d'Ippolito, Stijn Donders, Luc Hermans, Herman Van der Auweraer, Dirk Vandepitte

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LIFE SCIENCES

Editorial

Stefan Clemens and Ana M. Cerdeño-Tárraga

As life sciences research grows increasingly technical and multi-disciplinary, they have become a major discipline that shapes the world today and in the future. Their incredible power derives from a combination of behavioural, cell and molecular biology studies, and more significantly their applications in the biomedical, and agro-biotechnology fields. For this year’s Life Science section of the Annals, and to reflect the breadth of the field, we accepted three contributions that extend from a behavioural analysis of solitary wasps, over the biochemistry of agriculturally important truffles, to the underlying genetic pathways that control the onset of flowering in a plant model.

First, Manuela Giovanetti addresses the social behaviour of solitary wasps, such as sand or digger wasps. The study focuses on biotic and abiotic factors possibly involved in the choice of female wasps to form nesting aggregates with other, potentially aggressive neighbours. A possible conclusion of M. Giovanetti’s work is that nesting aggregates, while also dependent upon micro-climatic factors such as air temperature and soil hardness, might be more successful for the upbringing of the progeny, and it highlights the need for more comparative studies to uncover the cues that help these animals switch from a pure solitary to a semi-gregarious behaviour.

Next, Manuela Perez-Gilabert analyzes two enzymes present in desert truffles that are involved in the quality of these commercially-important fungi. These two enzymes, lipoxygenase and tyrosinase, are involved in oxidative and reductive processes that can affect flavour, colour and texture of these truffles. In her work, M. Perez-Gilabert develops assays to purify, characterize, and histochemically localize these enzymes and thus provide important basic information that will help to improve the understanding of theses truffles for agroforestry and commercial purposes.

In the third contribution, Federico Valverde, using DNA and RNA techniques, sheds light on the control of the photoperiod pathways in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which govern the transition from the vegetative (non-flowering) state to the reproductive (flowering) phase. Valverde’s model now explains how the complex gene pathways and subsequent biochemical pathways that are part of the photoperiod pathway help plants to detect the different seasons and thus supply the necessary information on the best time to flower.


We hope that the contributions published in this volume entice you to submit your own papers to the Annals, and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

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Living in aggregations: theories and facts in the life of Hymenoptera

Manuela Giovanetti, Josep Daniel Asís, José Tormoss

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Purfication and Characterization of Two Enzymes Involved in the
Quality of Desert Truffles: Tyrosinase and Lipoxygenase

M. Pérez-Gilabert, A. Morteb, M. Honrubiab, F. García-Carmona

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Time to Flower, the control of flowering time by photoperiod

Federico Valverde

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MATHEMATICS

On Automorphisms of Some K3 Surfaces with Picard Number Two

Gilberto Bini

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Precise Orbit Determination for Low Earth Orbit Satellites

David Hobbs, Preben Bohn

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Inequalities from Multivariate Polynomials

Szilárd Gy. Révész

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Noncommutativity vs Gauge Symmetry

Ioannis P. Zois

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PHYSICS

Editorial

Vassilis Charmandaris

The year 2005 was a special one for the Physics community. It was declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Physics since it marks the 100th  anniversary of physicist Albert Einstein's annus mirabilis, - the miraculous year - in which the future Nobel laureate published four of his most famous scientific papers, while working as a patent examiner in Bern, Switzerland. The topics addressed by these papers were:

The Photoelectric effect - submitted 18 March 1905 - "On a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light", Annalen der Physik, 17, 132-148.
The Brownian motion - submitted 11 May 1905 - " On the Motion—Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid ", Annalen der Physik, 17, 549-560.
Special Relativity- submitted 30 June 1905 - "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies", Annalen der Physik, 17, 891-921.
The by now famous E = mc2 formula - submitted 27 September 1905 - "Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?", Annalen der Physik, 18, 639-641.

A fifth paper calculating Avogadro’s number and the size of molecules was submitted as his Doctoral dissertation on 30 April 1905, but not published until January 1906.
A sixth, extending the Brownian motion theory was submitted on 19 December 1905 and published in February 1906.

Even though Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for “...his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”, he would be remembered most by the public for the E = mc2 formula, capturing the essence of the equivalence between matter and energy. Many physicists, both theorists and experimentalists, blessed with sharp minds, unique intuition, and hard work ethics, have contributed greatly to improving modern physics and our understanding of the world surrounding us. It is widely accepted though that none was as influential in radically changing our way of thinking as Einstein.

What can we expect from Physics in the new millennium? If past serves us a guide, we should expect quite a lot! At the end of the nineteenth century there was a general feeling that with Maxwell’s and Newton’s equations firmly established, everything else would be merely a matter of detail, a question of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of science. Before the end of the first quarter of the 20th century though, the development of quantum mechanics and relativity opened a bright new world explaining puzzles of the past and proposing new tests and physical phenomena which could be observed.  It is thus quite probable that several of the science issues addressed in this Physics section of the MCFA Annals will be seen from a completely new perspective before the end of our lifetime.

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Behaviour of complex fluids between highly deformable surfaces:
isoviscous elastohydrodynamic lubrication

Juan de Vicente

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Early Optical Follow-up Observations of Gamma Ray Bursts with the Robotic Liverpool Telescope

A. Gomboc, C. Guidorzi,A. Monfardini, C.G. Mundell, M.F. Bode, D. Carter, S.N. Fraser, C.J. Mottram, R.J. Smith, I.A. Steele

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Noncollinear Magnetism

David Hobbs, Jürgen Hafner

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The XY Model and the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Phase Transition

Ralph Kenna

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Growth of Primeval H2 and HD Inhomogeneities in the Early Universe

Denis Puy, Daniel Pfenniger

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SOCIAL SCIENCES

Editorial

Timo Lajunen and Jaro Stacul

The social science section of the MCFA Annals covers a wide range of disciplines and research topics. The two articles included in the present issue of Annals show that social science studies conducted by Marie Curie Fellows address relevant social issues, which affect the lives of all European citizens.

The topic explored by Silvia Ciairano’s study is adolescent substance use and precocious and/or not protected sexual behaviour. The study used a cross-national design comparing Dutch and Italian adolescents.The findings of her research showed that risk factors in an adolescent’s life are directly related to risk behaviours, and that protective factors may buffer the effect of vulnerabilities. The study suggests that implementing prevention programmes designed to enhance adolescents’ resources, such as school success and expectations, may be a more effective strategy than reducing the amount of risk factors in their life context.

Almudena Moreno's study investigates the persistence of male breadwinner model in Southern European countries, and the extent to which this is related to employment, family policies, and other factors. The conclusion drawn from the comparative analysis of European data shows that in the Southern European countries labour and family policies partly account for the continuity of low fertility, women’s economic and family dependence, and ultimately the persistence of the traditional family based on the male breadwinner model.

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The persistence of male breadwinner model in southern European countries
in a compared perspective: Familism, employment and family policies

Almudena Moreno

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The direct and indirect effects of individual and environmental resources
in moderating the risk during adolescence


Silvia Ciairano

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