Metal oxide in aqueous organic solution promoted chemoselective N-sulfonylation of hydrophilic amino alcohols

The reaction of hydrophilic amino alcohols with sulfonyl chlorides in the presence of metal oxide (MgO, CuO, Ag₂O) in aqueous organic solution cleanly provided alkanolsulfonamide. Advantages of this method were mild, neutral reaction conditions, chemoselectivity and easy isolation of the final product.     

Environmental radiation monitoring in Korea

Environmental radiation monitoring in Korea can be categorized as (1) nationwide monitoring program and (2) monitoring program for nuclear facilities. The former is designed to quickly detect any abnormal situation in environmental radioactivity levels. The latter has the objective of evaluating environmental radioactivity levels resulting from the operation of nuclear facilities. This paper describes the two monitoring programs, how they are implemented, items of being measured, analytical techniques, quality control programs and R&D activities associated with the monitoring. Also, some of the latest data obtained by the monitoring programs are introduced.     

Chiral hyperbags

We construct and studySU (3) chiral bags (called chiral hyperbags) in the scheme of collective-coordinate quantization with chiral symmetry breaking treated as perturbation. We show how the Wess-Zumino constraint arises from the quark-bag sector, complementing the soliton sector, in a manner analogous to what happens in (1+1) dimensional chiral bags. Due to the Wess-Zumino term, all the quantum numbers — baryon charge, isopin, angular momentum, hypercharge etc. are fractionized in a prescribed manner. One notable aspect of the fractionization is that for all ranges of bag radius, there is alwaysmore angular momentum lodged in the soliton sector than in the quark sector. It is shown thatwithin the scheme we have adopted, the symmetry breaking termobstructs the Cheshire Cat principle and that consequently when strange quarks are present, the baryons (i.e. hyperons) favor a bigger bag (say R ? 1 fm) than non-strange baryons; this confirms a phenomenological argument put forward some time ago by Brown, Klimpt, Rho and Weise (at least in the collective-coordinate scheme). Our approach allows us to calculate the strangeness content of the proton — a highly topical issue — and we find that while a perturbative treatment of the symmetry breaking term can be made to work (for a big bag) for hyperon spectroscopy, the strangeness content of the proton is insensitive to the bag radius; for relevant ranges of bag radius, the ¯ss admixture stays significant, say, ?19%. This result is in stark contrast to the Callan-Klebanov Skyrmion — a remarkably successful model for hyperons — which predicts only about 3%. A subtle role of the Wess-Zumino term is suggested.     

New farnesylhydroquinone glycosides from the gorgonian Euplexaura anastomosans

Euplexides F (3) and G (4), novel farnesylhydroquinone glycosides, have been isolated as minor constituents of the gorgonian Euplexaura anastomosans. The structures of these compounds have been determined by combined spectroscopic methods. These compounds exhibited moderate cytotoxicity and inhibitory activity against PLA2.     

Observation of room temperature photoluminescence in proton irradiated SrTiO3 single crystal

We have irradiated SrTiO₃ single crystal with 3 MeV-proton (H⁺) beam and found that blue -, green - and infrared - frequency photoluminescence (PL) are induced simultaneously at room temperature. TEM and EELS analyses show that an oxygen-deficient amorphous layer is formed at the crystal surface by the proton irradiation. Possible origin of the PL-effect is discussed.     

The energy levels of the heavy flavour baryons in the topological soliton model

The energy levels of the charm and bottom as well as the mixed flavour hyperons are calculated with the model in which the hyperons are described as bound states of a topologicalSU (2) soliton andK-, D- andB-mesons. The spectra are obtained in a modified version of the Skyrme model where the chiral symmetry breaking term in the Lagrangian density is modified so as to incorporate the different values of the decay constants of the mesons of different flavour. The predicted strange and charmed hyperon spectra are in very good agreement with the empirical values, while the bottom hyperon energies that are more sensitive to the short range dynamics are somewhat below the empirical values. The predicted hyperfine spectra are remarkably close to those obtained with the constituent quark model, more or less independently of the short-distance properties of the effective Lagrangian. We suggest that this feature reflects the presence of an induced nonabelian gauge potential generated by the interplay between “fast” and “slow” degrees of freedom in the meson-soliton system.     

Golmaenone, a new diketopiperazine alkaloid from the marine-derived fungus Aspergillus sp

A new diketopiperazine alkaloid, golmaenone (1). and related alkaloids, neoechinulin A (2). and L-alanyl-L-tryptophan anhydride (3). have been isolated from the culture broth of the marine-derived fungus Aspergillus sp. The structure and absolute stereochemistry of the new compound (1). was assigned by spectroscopic methods and the advanced Marfey's method. Compounds 1 and 2 exhibited a significant radical scavenging activity against 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) with IC(50) values of 20 and 24 microM, respectively, which are similar to the positive control, ascorbic acid (IC(50), 20 microM). Compounds 1 and 2 also showed an ultraviolet-A (UV-A) (320--390 nm) protecting activity with ED(50) values of 90 and 170 microM, respectively, which are more active than oxybenzone (ED(50), 350 microM) currently being used as sunscreen.