A brittle material with tunable elasticity: Crêpe paper

We study the mechanical response, and tearing features of crêpe paper, a two-dimensional, very anisotropic material, with one direction much less stiff than the other one. Depending on how the soft direction has been pre-stretched or not, the apparent Young modulus of the material can be varied over a broad range, while its fracture energy remains unaltered. The classical tearing concertina problem shows that a macroscopic measurement (the shape of the teared region) provides a direct access to the fracture properties of the material (effective Young's modulus, and fracture energy). The overall discussion is conducted in the frame of Griffith's theory of fracture.     

Paper strengthening by polyaminoalkylalkoxysilane copolymer networks applied by spray or immersion: a model study

Two di-alkoxysilanes, with (AMDES, aminopropylmethyldiethoxysilane) or without (DMDES, dimethyldiethoxysilane) an amine function, and a tri-alkoxy aminosilane (APTES, aminopropyltriethoxysilane) as well as their mixtures were introduced in paper as fiber strengthening agents. The polymerization and copolymerization of these polysiloxanes in the paper were investigated. In all the cases where APTES was present, the formation of networks was established by measuring the soluble fraction amount extracted from the treated papers. A slight decrease of the opacity of the paper sheets when AMDES was part of the treatment was noted. The presence of APTES reduced this opacity loss. The study of the physicochemical properties of the treated paper (mechanical strength and alkalinity) demonstrated that, besides the required deacidification feature, the different treatments allowed an efficient strengthening of the cellulose fibers to various extents. Contact angle measurements indicated a decrease of the hydrophilic character of papers treated with the mixture APTES/AMDES and the occurrence of a hydrophobic character of the papers treated with APTES alone. These results were consistently obtained for both spray and immersion treatment processes.     

A new class of conformable spectral observers for signal reconstruction

In this work, the design of spectral observers for signal reconstruction based on Kalman filters is performed and evaluated. The conformable derivative and the beta‐derivative were used to design the Kalman filters. Both derivatives satisfy the same formulas of the classical derivation, eg, the chain rule. The derivative order, the Ricatti equation parameters, and the observers tuning parameters were optimized using an optimization algorithm based on the bat's echolocation behavior (Bat algorithm). The simulation results showed the advantages of using the proposed observers for the signal reconstruction.     

An HPTLC-Densitometry Method for the Quantification of Pharmacologically Active Alkaloids in Sceletium tortuosum Raw Material and Products

JPC – Journal of Planar Chromatography – Modern TLC - Mesembrine-type alkaloids are reported to be responsible for the psychoactive properties of Sceletium tortuosum. The aim of the...     

Multidimensional Scaling With Very Large Datasets

Multidimensional scaling has a wide range of applications when observations are not continuous but it is possible to define a distance (or dissimilarity) among them. However, standard implementations are limited when analyzing very large datasets because they rely on eigendecomposition of the full distance matrix and require very long computing times and large quantities of memory. Here, a new approach is developed based on projection of the observations in a space defined by a subset of the full dataset. The method is easily implemented. A simulation study showed that its performance are satisfactory in different situations and can be run in a short time when the standard method takes a very long time or cannot be run because of memory requirements.     

Direct Trifluoromethylation of Alcohols Using a Hypervalent Iodosulfoximine Reagent

The direct trifluoromethylation of a variety of aliphatic alcohols using a hypervalent iodosulfoximine reagent afforded the corresponding ethers in moderate to good yields (14–72 %). Primary, secondary, and even tertiary alcohols, including examples derived from natural products, underwent this transformation in the presence of catalytic amounts of zinc bis(triflimide). Typical reaction conditions involved a neat mixture of 6.0 equivalents of the alcohol with 1.0 equivalent of the reagent, with the majority of reactions complete within 2 h with 2.5 mol % of the Lewis acid catalyst. Furthermore, experimental evidence was provided that the C−O bond-forming process occurred via the coordination of the alcohol to the iodine atom and subsequent reductive elimination.     

Optimization of the HPLC enantioseparation of 3,3′‐dibromo‐5,5′‐disubstituted‐4,4′‐bipyridines using immobilized polysaccharide‐based chiral stationary phases

The HPLC enantioseparation of nine atropisomeric 3,3′,5,5′‐tetrasubstituted‐4,4′‐bipyridines was performed in normal and polar organic (PO) phase modes using two immobilized polysaccharide‐based chiral columns, namely, Chiralpak IA and Chiralpak IC. The separation of all racemic analytes, the effect of the chiral selector, and mobile phase (MP) composition on enantioseparation and the enantiomer elution order (EEO) were studied. The beneficial effect of nonstandard solvents, such as tetrahydrofuran (THF), dichloromethane (DCM), and methyl t‐butyl ether on enantioseparation was investigated. All selected 4,4′‐bipyridines were successfully enantioseparated on Chiralpak IA under normal or PO MPs with separation factors from 1.14 to 1.70 and resolutions from 1.3 to 6.5. Two bipyridines were enantioseparated at the multimilligram level on Chiralpak IA. Differently, Chiralpak IC was less versatile toward the considered class of compounds and only five bipyridines out of nine could be efficiently separated. In particular, on these columns, the ternary mixture n‐heptane/THF/DCM (90:5:5) as MP had a positive effect on enantioseparation. An interesting phenomenon of reversal of the EEO depending on the composition of the MP for the 3,3′‐dibromo‐5,5′‐bis‐(E)‐phenylethenyl‐4,4′‐bipyridine along with an exceptional enantioseparation for the 3,3′‐dibromo‐5,5′‐bis‐ferrocenylethynyl‐4,4′‐bipyridine (α = 8.33, R_s = 30.6) were observed on Chiralpak IC.