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Formaldehyde has an important role in the chemical industry and in biological sciences. In dilute aqueous solutions of formaldehyde only traces of the molecular formaldehyde are present and the predominant species are methylene glycol and in lower concentrations, dimethylene glycol. The chemical equilibria and reaction rates of the hydration of formaldehyde in H2O and D2O solutions at low concentrations were studied by (1)H and (13)C NMR at various conditions of pH (1.8-7.8) and temperature (278-333 K). These measurements became possible by direct detection of formaldehyde (13)C and (1)H peaks. The equilibrium and rate constants of the dimerization reaction of methylene glycol were also measured. The rate constants for both the hydration and the dimerization reactions were measured by a new version of the conventional selective inversion transfer method. This study, together with previous published work, completes the description of dynamics and equilibria of all the processes occurring in dilute aqueous formaldehyde solutions.

A technique is described for displaying distinct tissue layers of large blood vessel walls as well as measuring their mechanical strain. The technique is based on deuterium double-quantum-filtered (DQF) spectroscopic imaging. The effectiveness of the double-quantum filtration in suppressing the signal of bulk water is demonstrated on a phantom consisting of rat tail tendon fibers. Only intrafibrillar water is displayed, excluding all other signals of water molecules that reorient isotropically. One- and two-dimensional spectroscopic imaging of bovine aorta and coronary arteries show the characteristic DQF spectrum of each of the tissue layers. This property is used to obtain separate images of the outer layer, the tunica adventitia, or the intermediate layer, the tunica media, or both. To visualize the effect of elongation, the average residual quadrupole splitting is calculated for each pixel. Two-dimensional deuterium quadrupolar splitting images are obtained for a fully relaxed and a 55% elongated sample of bovine coronary artery. These images indicate that the strong effect of strain is associated with water molecules in the tunica adventitia whereas the DQF NMR signal of water in the tunica media is apparently strain-insensitive. After appropriate calibration, these average quadrupolar splitting images can be interpreted as strain maps.

Na-23 double and triple quantum filtered NMR spectra of intact dog and human red blood cells were measured with the pulse sequence 90 degrees-tau/2-180 degrees-tau/2-theta degrees-t1-theta degrees-t2(Acq). For theta = 90 degrees the triple quantum filtered spectra exhibited the typical multiple quantum filtered lineshape, characteristic of isotropic media, while the double quantum filtered ones presented a superposition of two signals, whose proportion depended on the creation time tau. This effect is due to the formation of both second and third rank tensors. The formation of the second rank tensor, T21 results from non-zero residual quadrupolar interaction and is related to the anisotropic motion of sodium ions. Measurements of the double quantum filtered spectra with theta = 54.7 degrees enabled the detection of the contribution of T21 exclusively. No residual quadrupolar interaction was detected for sodium in the cytoplasm, while unsealed ghosts displayed the double quantum filtered spectral pattern, similar to that of intact cells. The anisotropy of motion of the sodium at the plasma membrane of mammalian erythrocytes depended on the integrity of the cytoskeleton network. Theoretical analysis of the double quantum filtered spectra gave a value of residual quadrupolar splitting of approximately 20 Hz for intact unsealed ghosts. The data presented prove that double quantum filtering is a sensitive technique for detection of motional anisotropies in biological systems.