Dependence of the Properties of Moving Striations in the Plasma of the Positive Column on Some External and Internal Parameters
Dependence of the Properties of Moving Striations in the Plasma of the Positive Column on Some External and Internal Parameters
Oscillatory Phenomena in Direct Current Glow Discharges
In glow discharges having a positive column with a constant emf and a series resistance, oscillations usually are observed in tube voltage, current, and light intensity. While current and voltage oscillations represent a modulation of only a few percent, the intensity decreases to zero between maxima in the positive column, but there is an appreciable steady component near the cathode. The intensity maxima move as positive striations toward the cathode, or as negative striations with a much higher speed toward the anode. Where positive and negative striations meet they stop for times up to 100 \ensuremath{\mu}sec.
New method for analysis of enzymatic reactions: Thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of aspartame precursor
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which is 200 times sweeter than sucrose. A precursor of aspartame, N-(benzyloxycarbonyl)-l-aspartyl-l-phenylalanine methyl ester (Z-APM) was synthesized and hydrolyzed with thermolysin in an aqueous monophasic system. Graphical plotting methods and/or nonlinear regression have been used to analyze enzymatic reactions because of the nonlinearity of enzymatic rate equations. There are, however, problems: the former require accurate measurement of the initial reaction rate and the latter gives no analytical information. The authors proposed a method to solve the nonlinear enzymatic rate equations with respect to the concentration of a product with the Taylor expansion, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism (Murakami, Y., Hirata, M., and Hirata, A., J. Ferment. Bioeng., 82, 246–252, 1996). This solution, however, is complex for practical use. In this paper, a simpler solution to explain the thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of Z-APM is obtained. New methods to determine the kinetic parameters, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism, based on the approximated solution are proposed. The results calculated using the obtained kinetic parameters can satisfactorily explain the experimental results, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed analysis. We must know the relation between the concentrations of substrates and a product, and accurately evaluate of the result obtained using Taylor expansion when we determine the kinetic parameters using our newly developed methods. The methods to determine the kinetic parameters of the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism described in this paper is, however, expected to be applied to general enzymatic reactions.