Highly selective lipophilic diboronic acid that transports fructose as the trisdentate 2,3,6-β-d-fructofuranose ester

The transport of fructose and glucose through supported liquid membranes promoted by a tetrahedral shaped lipophilic monoboronic acid and diboronic acid, both based on a pentaerythritol core, has been studied. The diboronic acid gave a high fructose/glucose selectivity (7.7:1.0). The results of molecular modelling studies and ¹³C NMR experiments with uniformly labelled ¹³C-d-fructose suggest that the enhanced selectivity results from the formation of a trisdentate 2,3,6-β-d-fructofuranose diester within the membrane. Experimental evidence for a previously proposed macrocyclic d-fructopyranose diester formed with an o-phenylene linked diboronic acid has also been found.     

A reinforcement learning approach for the scheduling of live migration from under utilised hosts

Live virtual machine migration can have a major impact on how a cloud system performs, as it consumes significant amount of network resources, such as bandwidth. A virtual machine migration occurs when a host becomes over-utilised or under-utilised. In this paper, we propose a network aware live migration strategy that monitors the current demand level of bandwidth when network congestion occurs and performs appropriate actions based on what it is experiencing. The Artificial Intelligence technique that is based on Reinforcement Learning acts as a decision support system, enabling an agent to learn an optimal time to schedule a virtual machine migration depending on the current bandwidth usage in a data centre. We show from our results that an autonomous agent can learn to utilise available network resources such as bandwidth when network saturation occurs at peak times.     

Molecularly imprinted polymers for corticosteroids: impact of polymer format on recognition behaviour

Microchimica Acta - A comparative study was performed on different polymeric formats for targeting corticosteroids, focusing on the use of bulk monolith and precipitation polymerisation strategies....     

Trace element analysis by accelerator mass spectrometry

An Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) facility has been assembled at the University of North Texas (UNT) in collaboration with Texas Instruments, Inc. The UNT AMS facility is used primarily for the high sensitivity determination of trace elements of stable isotopes in materials. Particle accelerators, in conjunction with magnetic (momentum/charge) and electrostatic (energy/charge) spectrometers and particle energy detectors, may be used to measure rare isotopes at concentrations as low as one part in 10¹² or 10¹⁰ atoms/cm³.     

Diels-alder reactions with 2-(Arylsulfinyl)-1,4-benzoquinones: effect of aryl substitution on reactivity, chemoselectivity, and pi-facial diastereoselectivity

Diels-Alder reactions of (SS)-2-(2'-methoxynaphthylsulfinyl)-1, 4-benzoquinone (1b), 2-(p-methoxyphenylsulfinyl)-1,4-benzoquinone (1c), and 2-(p-nitrophenylsulfinyl)-1,4-benzoquinone (1d) with cyclopentadiene are reported. These cycloadditions allowed the highly chemo- and stereoselective formation of both diastereoisomeric endo-adducts resulting from reaction on the unsubstituted double bond C(5)-C(6) of quinones working under thermal and Eu(fod)(3)- or BF(3).OEt(2)-catalyzed conditions. The synthesis of endo-adduct [4aS,5S,8R,8aR,SS]-9d resulting from cycloaddition on the substituted C(2)-C(3) double bond was achieved in a chemo- and diastereoselective way from quinone 1d in the presence of ZnBr(2). The reactivity and selectivity of the process proved to be dependent on the electron density of the arylsulfinyl group.     

High stereocontrol in aldol reaction with ketones: enantioselective synthesis of beta-hydroxy gamma-ketoesters by ester enolate aldol reactions with 2-acyl-2-alkyl-1,3-dithiane 1-oxides

The asymmetric aldol reaction of 1,2-diketones, masked as nonracemic 2-acyl dithiane oxides, with lithium enolates derived from several esters and lactones, proceeds with a high degree of stereocontrol at both carbonyl and enolate prochiral centers, the stereocontrol mainly determined by the configuration of the sulfoxide sulfur atom. The sense of induced stereochemistry observed for ester enolates is different from that seen for lactone enolates. Hydrolysis of the dithiane oxide units of the major diastereoisomerically pure aldol products affords enantiomerically pure tertiary alpha-substituted beta-hydroxy-gamma-ketoesters.