Determination of the distributions of degrees of acetylation of chitosan.

Chitosan is often characterized by its average degree of acetylation. To increase chitosan's use in various industries, a more thorough characterization is necessary as the acetylation of chitosan affects properties such as dissolution and mechanical properties of chitosan films. Despite the poor solubility of chitosan, free solution capillary electrophoresis (CE) allows a robust separation of chitosan by the degree of acetylation.

Quantification of sugars in breakfast cereals using capillary electrophoresis.

About 80% of the Australian population consumes breakfast cereal (BC) at least five days a week. With high prevalence rates of obesity and other diet-related diseases, improved methods for monitoring sugar levels in breakfast cereals would be useful in nutrition research. The heterogeneity of the complex matrix of BCs can make carbohydrate analysis challenging or necessitate tedious sample preparation leading to potential sugar loss or starch degradation into sugars.

A velocity map ion imaging study of difluorobenzene-water complexes: binding energies and recoil distributions.

The binding energies of the p-, m-, and o-difluorobenzene-H(2)O complexes have been measured by velocity map ion imaging to be 922+/-10, 945+/-10, and 891+/-4 cm(-1), respectively. The lack of variation provides circumstantial evidence for water binding to the three isomers via the same interaction, viz. an in-plane O-H.