Dinickel Complexes Bridged by Unusual (N,O,O′)-Coordinated α-Amino Acids: Syntheses,Structural Characterization and Magnetic Properties

Four novel dinickel complexes, coordinated by mixed ligands of tren and racemic amino acids, namely [Ni₂(tren)₂(dl-alaninato)(H₂O)]I₃·2H₂O (1), [Ni₂(tren)₂(dl-leucinato)(H₂O)]I₃·2.5H₂O (2), [Ni₂(tren)₂(dl-phenylalaninato)(H₂O)]I₃·H₂O (3), and {[Ni₂(tren)₂(dl-histinato)](ClO₄)₃·1.5H₂O} _n (4), have been synthesized and structurally characterized by X-ray crystallography, FTIR, u.v. and e.s. spectra. They represent the first series of dinickel(II) complexes bridged by the unusual (N,O,O)-coordinated -amino acids. In complexes (1–3), one of the nickel(II) centers is coordinated by four N-atoms of the tren ligand, one O-atom of the carboxylate group of the amino acidato ligand and one H₂O molecule. The other nickel(II) center is also coordinated by the four N-atoms of the tren ligand, one carboxylic O-atom and the amino N-atom of the amino acidato ligand, resulting in an asymmetric dinuclear core with chromophores of NiN₄O₂ and NiN₅O. In the polymeric {[Ni₂(tren)₂(dl-histinato)](ClO₄)₃·1.5H₂O} _n (4), the imidazole N-atom is also involved in ligation with nickel(II) and both nickel(II) centers have the same chromophore described as NiN₅O. The Ni...Ni distances are in the 5.5199(10)–5.5807(15)Å range. Analyses of the magnetic properties of complexes (1), (3) and (4) show that a weak ferromagnetic interaction exists between the two nickel(II) centers.     

Mo2C/Reduced Graphene Oxide Composites with Enhanced Electrocatalytic Activity and Biocompatibility for Microbial Fuel Cells

A simple, cost-effective strategy was developed to effectively improve the electron transfer efficiency as well as the power output of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) by decorating the commercial carbon paper (CP) anode with an advanced Mo₂C/reduced graphene oxide (Mo₂C/RGO) composite. Benefiting from the synergistic effects of the superior electrocatalytic activity of Mo₂C, the high surface area, and prominent conductivity of RGO, the MFC equipped with this Mo₂C/RGO composite yielded a remarkable output power density of 1747±37.6 mW m⁻², which was considerably higher than that of CP-MFC (926.8±6.3 mW m⁻²). Importantly, the composite also facilitated the formation of 3D hybrid biofilm and could effectively improve the bacteria–electrode interaction. These features resulted in an enhanced coulombic efficiency up 13.2 %, nearly one order of magnitude higher than that of the CP (1.2 %).     

Improved measurement of electron antineutrinodisappearance at Daya Bay

We report an improved measurement of the neutrino mixing angle θ₁₃ from the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. We exclude a zero value for sin² θ₁₃ with a significance of 7.7 standard deviations. Electron antineutrinos from six reactors of 2.9 GW_th were detected in six antineutrino detectors deployed in two near （flux-weighted baselines of 470 m and 576 m） and one far （1648 m） underground experimental halls. Using 139 days of data, 28909 （205308） electron antineutrino candidates were detected at the far hall （near halls）. The ratio of the observed to the expected number of antineutrinos assuming no oscillations at the far hall is 0.944±0.007（stat.）±0.003（syst.）. An analysis of the relative rates in six detectors finds sin² θ₁₃ =0.089±0.010（stat.）±0.005（syst.） in a three-neutrino framework.     

实验室安全环保意识的调查与分析——以中山大学化学类专业学生为例

A survey about students' laboratory safety and environmental protection consciousness was performed in the freshmen majored in chemistry at Sun Yat-Sen University. Results showed that laboratory safety and environmental protection consciousness of most students' are weak. After analyzing the reasons, we put forward some suggestions. Cultivating students' laboratory safety and environmental protection consciousness should be carried out from several aspects such as emphasizing and regulating from school level, training in laboratory teaching, maintaining good cultural atmosphere of laboratory, as well as providing perfect laboratory safety and environmental protection facilities. We should guide students to actively learn knowledge and skills of laboratory safety and environmental protection in order to develop their good behavior and raise their consciousness.     

A fast wavelet block Jacobi method

In this paper, we develop a fast block Jacobi method for linear systems based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT). Traditional wavelet-based methods for linear systems do not fully utilize the sparsity and the multi-level block structure of the transformed matrix after DWT. For the sake of numerical efficiency, we truncate the transformed matrix to be a sparse matrix by letting the small values be zero. To combine the advantages of the direct method and the iterative method, we solve the sub-systems appropriately based on the multi-level block structure of the transformed matrix after DWT. Numerical examples show that the proposed method is very numerically effective.     

Hybrid Proximal Point Algorithm and Applications to Equilibrium Problems and Convex Programming

The problem of finding minima of weakly sequentially lower semicontinuous functions on reflexive Banach spaces is studied by means of convex and nonconvex subdifferentials. Finding a descent direction for a non-stationary point is a question of importance for many optimization algorithms. The existence or non-existence of such a direction is clarified through several theorems and a series of selective examples. For the general problem, a notion called radius of descent is proposed and shown to be useful for the analysis related to descent directions.     

Hydrophilic microsphere based mesoscopic-lens microscope (MMM)

By increasing the hydrophilicity of microsphere, the evaporation of liquid around the microsphere will be evidently eliminated, so that the droplet can remain stable, and it is more feasible to introduce the liquid immersed MMM system in practical utilizations that require long-time observation. Compared with the non-immersed one, the liquid immersed MMM system performs better in various aspects, and it is convenient to choose microspheres on a wider scale.     

Structure-Directing Roles of Organic Molecules in the Formation of Aluminosilicate and Aluminophosphate Molecular Sieves Revealed by 2D 1H DQ-SQ NMR Spectroscopy

Understanding of crystallization mechanisms of molecular sieves is driven by the broad range of usefulness and unique properties they possess. It is still difficult to obtain information related to the crystallization mechanism of molecular sieves, partly because the materials are generally prepared under hydrothermal conditions and the whole reaction happens in the “black box” autoclave. In this work, 2D ¹H DQ-SQ NMR results clearly demonstrate that it is not only the electrostatic interactions between organic structure-directing agents (OSDAs) and the framework, but also the correlation among OSDAs playing the dominant structural directing roles during the crystallization process. Our fundamental understanding of the crystallization mechanism of molecular sieves could be of great value to design and synthesize new molecular sieves with desirable structural properties.     

Analytical time-dependent distributions for two common signaling systems

The chemical master equation (CME) in principle provides a method for quantifying the probabilistic behavior of any reaction network including signaling networks with time-varying reaction rates, but solving this equation is a great challenge. Here, we apply the Doi–Peliti formalism combined with both the Wei–Norman method and Lie algebra to analytically solve the CME. When this method is applied to two common signaling modules with time-varying reaction rates: a reversible binding motif and an irreversible modification motif, we successfully derive the analytical transient distribution for each motif, including the time-dependent joint and marginal distributions for all the reactive species. The stochastic simulations confirm the correctness of our analytical results. The method proposed here has broad applications in finding the time-evolutional distributions of biochemical networks with time-varying reaction rates.