To be or not to be – nematic liquid crystals from shape-persistent V-shaped nematogens with the ‘magic angle’

The tetrahedral bending angle in V-shaped nematogens was claimed to be the optimum for finding a biaxial nematic liquid crystal phase. The benzo[1,2-b:4,3-b’]dithiophene core, recently successfully applied as a tetrahedral bending unit in mesogens with lateral flexible chains, is here embedded in a scaffold with only terminal chains, which conventionally promotes the formation of nematic phases at low temperature. A series of new mesogens has been successfully prepared, realising hockey-stick, hockey-stick dimer and V-shaped molecular topologies. Only the hockey-stick mesogens assemble in uniaxial nematic phases over a broad temperature range. Single crystal structure analysis of a hockey-stick and V-shaped compound reveal remarkable similarities with the benzodithiophene core wrapped by aliphatic chains. A model explaining the absence of nematic mesophases in the family of V-shaped, shape-persistent mesogens with terminal aliphatic chains is presented and results in the proposal of a new design for biaxial nematogens.     

Atmospheric deposition of heavy metals in Romania studied by the moss biomonitoring technique employing nuclear and related analytical techniques and GIS technology

This is the first systematic study of air pollution from heavy metals and other trace elements throughout several industrialized areas and national parks of Eastern Romanian Carpathians using the moss biomonitoring technique. Samples ofHylocomium splendens collected at 120 sites were analyzed by epithermal neutron activation analysis at the pulsed fast reactor IBR-2 at JINR, Dubna, for a wide range of elements including heavy metals and rare earths (Na, Mg, Al, Cl,K, Ca, Sc, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni (by (n,p) reaction), Cu, Zn, As, Se, Br, Rb, Sr, Zr, Mo, Ag, Sn, Sb, I, Cs, Ba, La, Ce, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Yb, Hf, Ta, W, Au, Th, and U). Copper, lead and cadmium were determined by AAS. Certified Reference Standards of mosses produced for interlaboratory comparisons in the European moss-survey 1995 were used to ensure the quality of the measurements. To present results in the form of coloured contour maps the geographical information system GIS-INTEGRO was used. The regional extent of pollution with specific metals was determined. Results reported are well consistent with those obtained in numerous recent projects carried out in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Bulgaria and other countries.     

Electrowetting-induced oil film entrapment and instability

We investigate the spreading at variable rate of a water drop on a smooth hydrophobic substrate in an ambient oil bath driven by electrowetting. We find that a thin film of oil is entrapped under the drop. Its thickness is described by an extension of the Landau-Levich law of dip coating that includes the electrostatic pressure contribution. Once trapped, the thin film becomes unstable under the competing effects of the electrostatic pressure and surface tension and dewets into microscopic droplets, in agreement with a linear stability analysis. Our results recommend electrowetting as an efficient experimental approach to the fundamental problem of dynamic wetting in the presence of a tunable substrate-liquid interaction.     

Modified Kantorovich operators with better approximation properties

Numerical Algorithms - In the present paper, we study a new kind of Bernstein-Kantorovich-type operators. Here, we discuss a uniform convergence estimate for this modified form. Also, some direct...     

Multiple solutions for strongly resonant periodic systems

We considered a semilinear, second order periodic system. We assumed that the differential operator x→−x^″−Ax$x\to -x^{″}-Ax$ has zero as an eigenvalue and has no negative eigenvalues. Also we imposed a strong resonance condition (with respect to the zero eigenvalue) on the potential function F(t,x)$F(t,x)$. Using the second deformation theorem, we established the existence of at least two nontrivial solutions. To do this we needed to conduct a detailed analysis of the Cerami compactness condition, which is actually of independent interest.     

S1(1A1)<--S0(1A1) transition of benzo[g,h,i]perylene in supersonic jets and rare gas matrices

The study of the S1(1A1)<--S0(1A1) transition of benzo[g,h,i]perylene (BghiP, C22H12) in supersonic jets and solid rare gas matrices is reported. In the jet-cooled spectrum, the origin band position is located at 25,027.1+/-0.2 cm-1, the assignment being supported by the analysis of vibrational shifts and rotational band contours. Except for the origin band, which is weak, all bands are attributed to the fundamental excitation of nontotally symmetric b1 vibrational modes of S1. The intensity pattern is interpreted as a consequence of the weak oscillator strength of the electronic transition combined with intensity-borrowing through vibronic interaction between the S1(1A1) and S2(1B1) states. The spectra of the S1(1A1)<--S0(1A1) and S2(1B1)<--S0(1A1) transitions have also been measured for BghiP in solid neon and argon matrices. The comparison of the redshifts determined for either transition reveals that the polarizability of BghiP is larger in its S2 than in its S1 state. Bandwidths of 2.7 cm-1 measured in supersonic jets, which provide conditions relevant for astrophysics, are similar to those of most diffuse interstellar bands. The electronic transitions of BghiP are found to lie outside the ranges covered by present databases. From the comparison between experimental spectra and theoretical computations, it is concluded that the accuracy of empirical and ab initio approaches in predicting electronic energies is still not sufficient to identify astrophysically interesting candidates for spectroscopic laboratory studies.