Palumbo, Fabrizio | Search NASA

DOE OSTI2018

Collective Modes in BCS-Like Models

The Hamiltonian of the gapped modes in the BCS model of superconductivity is derived using the nilpotency expansion. It has the form of the Bogoliubov Hamiltonian of a boson superfluid. The gapped modes have a quadratic dispersion law. The smallest energy gap is smaller than twice the fermionic energy gap. The nilpotency expansion respects all the symmetries and it has been previously applied to nuclear physics and relativistic field theories including QCD. In particular, it reproduces exactly the bosonization occurring in a relativistic 4-fermion interaction model.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2016

Enhanced photo(geno)toxicity of demethylated chlorpromazine metabolites

Chlorpromazine (CPZ) is an anti-psychotic drug widely used to treat disorders such as schizophrenia or manic-depression. Unfortunately, CPZ exhibits undesirable side effects such as phototoxic and photoallergic reactions in humans. In general, the influence of drug metabolism on this type of reactions has not been previously considered in photosafety testing. Thus, the present work aims to investigate the possible photo(geno)toxic potential of drug metabolites, using CPZ as an established reference compound. In this case, the metabolites selected for the study are demethylchlorpromazine (DMCPZ), didemethylchlorpromazine (DDMCPZ) and chlorpromazine sulfoxide (CPZSO). The demethylated CPZ metabolites DMCPZ and DDMCPZ maintain identical chromophore to the parent drug. In this work, it has been found that the nature of the aminoalkyl side chain modulates the hydrophobicity and the photochemical properties (for instance, the excited state lifetimes), but it does not change the photoreactivity pattern, which is characterized by reductive photodehalogenation, triggered by homolytic carbon-chlorine bond cleavage with formation of highly reactive aryl radical intermediates. Accordingly, these metabolites are phototoxic to cells, as revealed by the 3T3 NRU assay; their photo-irritation factors are even higher than that of CPZ. The same trend is observed in photogenotoxicity studies, both with isolated and with cellular DNA, where DMCPZ and DDMCPZ are more active than CPZ itself. In summary, side-chain demethylation of CPZ, as a consequence of Phase I biotransformation, does not result a photodetoxification. Instead, it leads to metabolites that exhibit in an even enhanced photo(geno)toxicity. - Highlights: • Demethylated CPZ metabolites are phototoxic to cells, as revealed by the NRU assay. • Single cell electrophoresis (Comet Assay) confirms the photodamage to cellular DNA. • DNA single strand breaks formation is observed on agarose gel electrophoresis. • Photochemical and EPR studies support generation of aryl radicals by C-Cl cleavage. • The aminoalkyl side chain of metabolites modulates the photo(geno)toxic potential.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2011

Scissors modes: The first overtone

Scissors modes were predicted in the framework of the two-rotor model. This model has an intrinsic harmonic spectrum, so that the level above the scissors mode, the first overtone, has excitation energy twice that of the scissors mode. Because the latter is of the order of 3 MeV in the rare-earth region, the energy of the overtone is below threshold for nucleon emission, and its width should remain small enough for the overtone to be observable. We find that B(E2){up_arrow}{sub overtone}=(1/64 {theta}{sub 0}{sup 2})B(E2){up_arrow}{sub scissors}, where {theta}{sub 0} is the zero-point oscillation amplitude, which in the rare-earth region is of order 10{sup -1}.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗