BACKGROUND Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) plays a central role in cardiovascular disease (CVD) development. In LDL chromatographically resolved according to charge, the most electronegative subfraction-L5-is the only subfraction that induces atherogenic responses in cultured vascular cells. Furthermore, increasing evidence has shown that plasma L5 levels are elevated in individuals with high car...

This study presents an alternative of the Electronegativity Equalization Method (EEM), where the usual Coulomb kernel has been transformed into a smooth function. The new framework, as the classical EEM, permits fast calculations of atomic charges in a given molecule for a small computational cost. The original EEM procedure needs to previously calibrate the different implied atomic hardness an...

Two types of instabilities were previously identified in inductive discharges having an expanding chamber when negative ions are present: i the source instability, occurring in the neighborhood of the capacitive-to-inductive E to H transition, and ii the downstream instability, which was shown to be the periodic formation and propagation of double layers. These unstable double layers were found...

It is well-documented that certain oxides (such as Re2O7, B2O3, MoO3, V2O5, etc.) can provide friction coefficients of 0.1-0.3 to sliding surfaces at elevated temperatures and thus they are often referred to as lubricious oxides in the tribology literature. In a recently proposed crystal chemical model, Erdemir was able to establish a close correlation between the reported friction coefficients...