Fatal sarin poisoning in Syria 2013: forensic verification within an international laboratory network.

During the United Nations fact-finding mission to investigate the alleged use of chemical warfare agents in the Syrian Arab Republic in 2013, numerous tissues from a deceased female victim, who had displayed symptoms of cholinergic crisis, were collected. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) authorized two specialized laboratories in the Netherlands and Germany for forensic analysis of these samples. Diverse modern mass spectrometry (MS)-based procedures in combination with either liquid chromatography (LC) or gas chromatography (GC) separation were applied.

Magnetic fields in non-convective regions of stars.

We review the current state of knowledge of magnetic fields inside stars, concentrating on recent developments concerning magnetic fields in stably stratified (zones of) stars, leaving out convective dynamo theories and observations of convective envelopes. We include the observational properties of A, B and O-type main-sequence stars, which have radiative envelopes, and the fossil field model which is normally invoked to explain the strong fields sometimes seen in these stars. Observations seem to show that Ap-type stable fields are excluded in stars with convective envelopes.

Elimination kinetics and molecular reaction mechanisms of cyclosarin (GF) by an oxime substituted β-cyclodextrin derivative in vitro.

Detoxification mechanisms of the chemical warfare agent cyclosarin (GF) in presence of 6-OxP-CD were investigated in detail in in vitro model systems. Most important finding was the preference of 6-Ox-P-CD to eliminate the more toxic (-)-GF. However, elimination of GF enantiomers was dependent on the 6-OxP-CD:GF ratios showing decreasing stereoselectivity and speed of the reaction with increasing GF concentrations.

Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth's climate.

Variations in the Sun's total energy output (luminosity) are caused by changing dark (sunspot) and bright structures on the solar disk during the 11-year sunspot cycle. The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years. In this Review, we show that detailed analysis of these small output variations has greatly advanced our understanding of solar luminosity change, and this new understanding indicates that brightening of the Sun is unlikely to have had a significant influence on global warming since the seventeenth century.

A fossil origin for the magnetic field in A stars and white dwarfs.

Some main-sequence stars of spectral type A are observed to have a strong (0.03-3 tesla), static, large-scale magnetic field, of a chiefly dipolar shape: they are known as 'Ap stars', such as Alioth, the fifth star in the Big Dipper. Following the discovery of these fields, it was proposed that they are remnants of the star's formation, a 'fossil' field.