Synthesis and structure of two tetranuclear osmium carbonyl isotopomers: a crystallographic isotope effect

A synthetic route to [Os4(mu-H)(mu-OH)(mu-CO)(CO)12] ( 1) has been devised through the activation of [Os4(CO)14] with Me3NO. The pyrolysis and photolysis of the reactant in the presence of a trace amount of water produces 1 in low yield. The solid-state structure of [Os4(mu-H)(mu-OH)(mu-CO)(CO)12 x H2O] (1 x H2O) reveals a butterfly Os4 skeleton with bridging H, OH and CO ligands as well as hydrogen-bonded molecules of water in the crystal lattice. A low-temperature 13C{1H} NMR spectroscopic study revealed a merry-go-round exchange of CO ligands around the Os3 plane containing the asymmetric bridging CO. The exposure of 1 x H2O to D2O yielded [Os4(mu-H)(mu-OD)(mu-CO)(CO)12]2. Although the solid-state, intramolecular structure of 2 closely matched that of 1 x H2O, the intermolecular structure did not: its crystal lattice contained no water of crystallization, a previously unreported crystallographic isotope effect.     

Precise mass measurement of a double-stranded 500 base-pair (309 kDa) polymerase chain reaction product by negative ion electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry

Electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (ESI-FTICRMS) has been used to determine the mass of a double-stranded 500 base-pair (bp) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) product with an average theoretical mass of the blunt-ended (i.e. unadenylated) species of 308 859.35 Da. The PCR product was generated from the linearized bacteriophage Lambda genome which is a double-stranded template. Utilization of ethanol precipitation in tandem with a rapid microdialysis step to purify and desalt the PCR product was crucial to obtain a precise mass measurement. The PCR product (0.8 pmol/μL) was electrosprayed from a solution containing 75% acetonitrile, 25 mM piperidine, and 25 mM imidazole and was infused at a rate of 200 nL/min. The average molecular mass and the corresponding precision were determined using the charge-states ranging from 172 to 235 net negative charges. The experimental mass and corresponding precision (reported as the 95% confidence interval of the mean) was 309 406 +/- 27 Da (87 ppm). The mass accuracy was compromised due to the fact that the PCR generates multiple products when using Taq polymerase due to the non-template directed 3'-adenylation. This results in a mixture of three PCR products with nearly identical mass (i.e. blunt-ended, mono-adenylated and di-adenylated) with unknown relative abundances that were not resolved in the spectrum. Thus, the experimental mass will be a weighted average of the three species which, under our experimental conditions, reflects a nearly equal concentration of the mono- and di-adenylated species. This report demonstrates that precise mass measurements of PCR products up to 309 kDa (500 bp) can be routinely obtained by ESI-FTICR requiring low femtomole amounts. Copyright 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An alternating direction scheme on a nonuniform mesh for reaction-diffusion parabolic problems

In this paper we develop a numerical method for two-dimensionaltime-dependent reaction-diffusion problems. This method, whichcan immediately be generalized to higher dimensions, is shownto be uniformly convergent with respect to the diffusion problems.This method, which can immediately be generalized to higherdimensions, is shown to be uniformly convergent with respectto the diffusion parameter.     

The 3C/3D line ratio in Ni XIX: New Ab Initio theory and experimental results

We report a fully relativistic close-coupling calculation of the electron impact excitation of Ni xix to derive the 3C/3D line intensity ratio, with an uncertainty of 5%. Convergence of the calculation with respect to both channel coupling effects and the many interacting Rydberg series of resonances has been achieved. New measurements in an electron beam ion trap agree with our calculation. We show that the 3C/3D x-ray line ratio depends sensitively on both electron energy and beamwidth in an optically thin plasma. Accounting for this dependence improves the accuracy of the Ni abundance determination in astrophysical sources.