The catabolism of phthalideisoquinoline alkaloids

Fumariflorine ($\text{1a}$, the only known alkaloidal $\text{o}$-(β-dimethylaminoethyl)benzoic acid, has been isolated as its ethyl ester $\text{1}$ from $\text{Fumaria}$$\text{parviflora}$ Lam. (Fumariaceae). Since alkaloids $\text{2}$–$\text{6}$ are also present in the plant, it is probable that the biogenetic sequence for the catabolism of the lactonic phthalideisoquinolines involves initial quatermination to an N-metho salt, Hofmann elimination, and oxidative cleavage of the resulting olefin to supply a substituted $\text{o}$-(β-dimethylaminoethyl)benzoic acid.     

Removal of rain in video based on motion and shape characteristics of raindrops

Rain degrades the performance of the outdoor computer vision system, which adversely impacts tracking, object detection and recognition. To solve this problem, a novel rain detection and removal method is proposed in this paper. Firstly, raindrops are considered as the motion component and extracted by FastICA algorithm. Secondly, raindrops are identified based on its properties of area, direction and width. Finally, a two-step removal method is proposed to replace pixels covered by rain with estimated background pixels. Experimental results show that the algorithm can effectively remove the raindrops in various videos. Compared with traditional rain removal methods, it does not require any parameters about rain, camera and scenes, and only needs three successive frames to recover a raindrops free video.     

Generation and Control of Bipartite Entanglement in a Correlated Spontaneous-Emission Laser

Journal of Russian Laser Research - Bipartite quantum entanglement has numerous practical applications in quantum computation and communication. Here, we study the temporal evolution of bipartite...     

Optimization of Adventitious Root Culture for Production of Biomass and Secondary Metabolites in Prunella vulgaris L.

Adventitious root cultures of Prunella vulgaris L. were established in shaking flask system for the production of biomass and secondary metabolites. Adventitious root cultures were induced from callus cultures obtained from leaf explants on solid Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium containing combination of 6-benzyladenine (BA; 1.0 mg l^?1) and naphthalene acetic acid (NAA; 1.5 mg l^?1). Thereafter, 0.49 g inoculum was transferred to liquid MS medium supplemented with different concentrations of NAA (0.5–2.0 mg l^?1). Growth kinetics of adventitious roots was recorded with an interval of 7 days for 49 days period. Highest biomass accumulation (2.13 g/l) was observed in liquid medium containing 1.0 mg l^?1 NAA after 21 days of inoculation. However, other concentrations of NAA also showed similar accumulation pattern but the biomass gradually decreases after 49 days of inoculation. Adventitious roots were collected and dried for investigation of total phenolics (TP), total flavonoids (TF), and antioxidant activities. Higher TPC (0.995 GAE mg/g-DRB) and TFC (6.615 RE mg/g-DRB) were observed in 0.5 mg l^?1 NAA treated cultures. In contrast, higher antioxidant activity (83.53 %) was observed 1.5 mg l^?1 NAA treated cultures. These results are helpful in up scaling of root cultures into bioreactor for secondary metabolites production.     

Fiber coupler for generating orbital angular momentum modes

We propose a fiber coupler consisting of a central ring and four external cores to generate up to ten orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes. Four coherent input lights are launched into the external cores and then coupled into the central ring waveguide to generate OAM modes. By changing the size of the external cores, one can selectively excite a high-order OAM mode. The quality of the generated OAM modes can be enhanced by adjusting the polarization state and the phase of input lights. We show the generation of OAM modes with odd charge numbers of -9 to +9 (i.e., 10 modes totally) with mode purity of >99% using <2?mm long fiber. This fiber coupler design can be extended to enable all-fiber spatial-mode (de)multiplexing.     

Scattering of electromagnetic wave by perfect electromagnetic conductor (PEMC) sphere placed in chiral media

A theoretical investigation has been carried out for electromagnetic waves scattering from a perfect electromagnetic conductor (PEMC) sphere which is placed in chiral media. The formulation of the problem is realized by expanding the incident as well as the scattered electromagnetic fields in terms of left circularly polarized (LCP) and right circularly polarized (RCP) waves. By applying the boundary conditions at the chiral-PEMC interface, eight simultaneous equations are generated, which yield the scattering coefficients associated with the Left and Right electromagnetic waves. The relative contribution of Co-polarized and Cross-polarized components of fields to the calculations of scattering cross-section is presented. The effect of admittance parameter and the effect of chirality parameter in cases of lossless, lossy permittivity and lossy permeability on Co and Cross components of scattering cross sections are observed. The results are also compared with available published literatures which are in good agreement.     

Recent progress in EPR study of spin labeled polymers and spin probed polymer systems

The EPR technique is commonly used for the detection and characterization of paramagnetic centers in chemical science. This method can provides a lot of information, such as identity, structure, dynamics, interaction, orientation, glass transition temperature, adsorption behavior, functionality, phase behavior, nano-inhomogeneities, and conformation of the free-radical portion of the polymer chain. Most polymers intrinsically possess diamagnetic properties, so in order to study polymers with EPR, paramagnetic centers need to be incorporated into the polymer systems. Spin labeling and spin probing are main methods of covalently attaching paramagnetic centers to polymer chains or embedding them in polymer matrices through non-covalent interactions, respectively. Spin labeling and spin probing techniques for polymers and polymer systems (especially with nitroxide radicals) have also been studied, which have a profound impact on polymer science. This review focuses on the continuous wave EPR technique and introduces the recent advances in spin labeled polymers and spin probed polymer systems in EPR research.     

Integrating ultra-wideband and free space optical communication for realizing a secure and high-throughput body area network architecture based on optical code division multiple access

Optical Review - Nodes in a body area network (BAN) are miniature wearable or implantable battery-powered wireless sensors which continuously transmit real-time vital physiological data of a...