Nano electrospray differential mobility analysis based size-selection of liposomes and very-low density lipoprotein particles for offline hyphenation to MALDI mass spectrometry
JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL AND BIOMEDICAL ANALYSIS
Authors: Weiss, Victor U.; Balantic, Katja; Pittenauer, Ernst; Tripisciano, Carla; Friedbacher, Gernot; Weber, Viktoria; Marchetti-Deschmann, Martina; Allmaier, Guenter
Abstract
Gas-phase electrophoresis of single-charged analytes (nanoparticles) enables their separation according to the surface-dry particle size (Electrophoretic Mobility Diameter, EMD), which corresponds to the diameter of spherical shaped particles. Employing a nano Electrospray Differential Mobility Analyzer (nES DMA), also known as nES Gas-phase Electrophoretic Mobility Molecular Analyzer (nES GEMMA), allows sizing/size-separation and determination of particle-number concentrations. Separations are based on a constant high laminar sheath flow and a tunable, orthogonal electric field enabling scanning of EMDs in the nanometer size range. Additionally, keeping the voltage constant, only nanoparticles of a given EMD pass the instrument and can be collected on corresponding supporting materials for subsequent nanoparticle analyses applying e.g. microscopic, immunologic or spectroscopic techniques. In our proof-of-concept study we now focus for the first time on mass spectrometric (MS) characterization of DMA size-selected material. We carried out size-selection of liposomes, vesicles consisting of a lipid bilayer and an aqueous lumen employed as carriers in e.g. pharmaceutic, cosmetic or nutritional applications. Particles of 85 nm EMD were collected on gold-coated silicon wafers. Subsequently, matrix was applied and Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption / Ionization (MALDI) MS carried out. However, we not only focused on plain liposomes but also demonstrated the applicability of our approach for very heterogeneous low density lipoprotein (VLDL) particles, a transporter of lipid metabolism. Our novel offline hyphenation of gas-phase electrophoresis (termed nES DMA or nES GEMMA) and MALDI-MS opens the avenue to the molecular characterization of size-select nanoparticles of complex nature. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Application of Empirical Mode Decomposition Method to Synthesize Flow Data: A Case Study of Hushan Reservoir in Taiwan
WATER
Authors: Chu, Tai-Yi; Huang, Wen-Cheng
Abstract
Although empirical mode decomposition (EMD) was developed to analyze nonlinear and non-stationary data in the beginning, the purpose of this study is to propose a new method based on EMD to synthesize and generate data which be interfered with the non-stationary problems. While using EMD to decompose flow record, the intrinsic mode functions and residue of a given record can be re-arranged and re-combined to generate synthetic time series with the same period. Next, the new synthetic and historical flow data will be used to simulate the water supply system of Hushan reservoir, and explore the difference between the newly synthetic and historical flow data for each goal in the water supply system of Hushan reservoir. Compared the historical flow with the synthetic data generated by EMD, the synthetic data is similar to the historical flow distribution overall. The flow during dry season changes in significantly (0.78 m(3)/s); however, the flow distribution during wet season varies significantly (0.63 m(3)/s). There are two analytic scenarios for demand. For Scenario I, without supporting industrial demand, the simulation results of the generation data of Method I and II show that both are more severe than the current condition, the shortage index of each method is between 0.67-1.96 but are acceptable. For Scenario II, no matter in which way the synthesis flow is simulated, supporting industrial demand will seriously affect the equity of domestic demand, the shortage index of each method is between 1.203 and 2.12.