Synthesis of Diaryl Ethers Through the Copper-Catalyzed Arylation of Phenols with Aryl Iodides Using KF/Al2O3

An efficient synthesis of diaryl ethers by the copper-catalyzed arylation of phenols with a variety of aryl iodide susing KF/Al₂O₃ as a suitable base and CuI and 1,3 diphenyl-1,3 propandione as the catalyst is described.     

CFD Simulation of Rheological Model Effect on Cuttings Transport

Foam, as a non-Newtonian fluid, plays an important role in the underbalanced drilling technique in oil field development. The rheological properties of drilling fluids, such as foam, have a direct effect on flow characteristics and hydraulic performance. Two rheological models—the Herschel–Bulkley model and power law—were fitted to two foam systems in this study. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to simulate the effect of the rheological models on solid–liquid (cuttings transport) hydraulics in concentric and eccentric annulus during the foam drilling operation. The simulation results are compared to the experimental data from previous studies. The results of CFD using the power law model are in good agreement with experimental results in horizontal annulus with respect to the Herschel–Bulkley model with relative error less than 8%. Thus, for CFD cuttings transport for simulations in inclined and horizontal annulus, it is best to use the power law's rheological model parameters.     

Sedimentation rate in the Sungai Linggi estuary using excess 210Pb and 137Cs

The purpose of this study was to estimate the sedimentation rate in the Sungai Linggi estuary using the constant initial concentration of unsupported or excess ²¹⁰Pb model and verified with ¹³⁷Cs method. Five sediment cores were collected on 25 January 2011 using gravity corer with the inner tube of 50 cm length and 7.5 cm diameter. The total ²¹⁰Pb activities in the sediment cores profile at all sampling stations were varied and upper than those obtained for supported ²¹⁰Pb i.e. ²²⁶Ra, indicated disequilibrium among ²¹⁰Pb and its grandparents in the ²³⁸U decay series. Meanwhile, the lower ¹³⁷Cs activities were observed at all sampling stations due to no significant sources of ¹³⁷Cs releases were transferred into Malaysian marine. The estimation of sedimentation rate indicated the agreement of ²¹⁰Pb and ¹³⁷Cs method with a general presence of deep mixing in the Sungai Linggi estuary. Therefore, the apparent sedimentation rates calculated from ²¹⁰Pb profiles generally reflect the true value with the range from 0.70 to 1.97 cmyr^?1. High sedimentation rate was observed at some sampling stations which are located in river channel, estuary and closer to mainland. This suggested that land-use development, agriculture activities, channelization etc. introduced a large amount of sediment loaded into those areas.     

Synthesis of attapulgite-MnO2 nanocomposite from manganese complex by ultrasound for hydrogen storage

The research included the synthesis of a new complex of manganese with 3,4,5-tri-methoxybenzoic acid in the presence of triethylamine as a base to which gives the complex with formula [Mn (TMB)₂].2H₂O. This complex was characterized by FTIR, CHN, magnetic susceptibility and thermal analysis. Furthermore, this complex was used as a novel precursor of manganese in preparing the attapulgite-MnO₂ nanocomposite by one-pot addition method using ultrasound. The resulting nanocomposite was characterized by X-ray diffraction and TEM and the results prove that this composite was found as nanochannel of the diameter 45 nm decorated with 26–41 nm of MnO₂ nanoparticles. The attapulgite-MnO₂ nanocomposite was used in the application of hydrogen storage, and the results proved that attapulgite-MnO₂ nanocomposite has the ability to store 3.55 wt% of hydrogen under a pressure of 90 bar and a temperature of 77 K. Furthermore, the measurement demonstrated that increasing the pressure increased the stored hydrogen, implying that the stored gas will be liberated by altering the pressure, implying that the storage will be of the physical kind.     

Malformin-A1 (MA1) Sensitizes Chemoresistant Ovarian Cancer Cells to Cisplatin-Induced Apoptosis

High-grade epithelial ovarian cancer is a fatal disease in women frequently associated with drug resistance and poor outcomes. We previously demonstrated that a marine-derived compound MalforminA1 (MA1) was cytotoxic for the breast cancer cell line MCF-7. In this study, we aimed to examine the effect of MA1 on human ovarian cancer cells. The potential cytotoxicity of MA1was tested on cisplatin-sensitive (A2780S) and cisplatin-resistant (A2780CP) ovarian cancer cell lines using AlamarBlue assay, Hoechst dye, flow cytometry, Western blot, and RT-qPCR. MA1 had higher cytotoxic activity on A2780S (IC50 = 0.23 µM) and A2780CP (IC50 = 0.34 µM) cell lines when compared to cisplatin (IC50 = 31.4 µM and 76.9 µM, respectively). Flow cytometry analysis confirmed the cytotoxic effect of MA1. The synergistic effect of the two drugs was obvious, since only 13% of A2780S and 7% of A2780CP cells remained alive after 24 h of treatment with both MA1 and cisplatin. Moreover, we examined the expression of bcl2, p53, caspase3/9 genes at RNA and protein levels using RT-qPCR and Western blot, respectively, to figure out the cell death mechanism induced by MA1. A significant down-regulation in bcl2 and p53 genes was observed in treated cells compared to non-treated cells (p < 0.05), suggesting that MA1 may not follow the canonical pathway to induce apoptosis in ovarian cancer cell lines. MalforminA1 showed promising anticancer activity by inducing cytotoxicity in cisplatin-sensitive and cisplatin-resistant cancer cell lines. Interestingly, a synergistic effect was observed when MA1 was combined with cisplatin, leading to it overcoming its resistance to cisplatin.     

Rician noise reduction in magnetic resonance images using adaptive non-local mean and guided image filtering

This paper proposes a Rician noise reduction method for magnetic resonance (MR) images. The proposed method is based on adaptive non-local mean and guided image filtering techniques. In the first phase, a guidance image is obtained from the noisy image through an adaptive non-local mean filter. Sobel operators are applied to compute the strength of edges which is further used to control the spread of the kernel in non-local mean filtering. In the second phase, the noisy and the guidance images are provided to the guided image filter as input to restore the noise-free image. The improved performance of the proposed method is investigated using the simulated and real data sets of MR images. Its performance is also compared with the previously proposed state-of-the art methods. Comparative analysis demonstrates the superiority of the proposed scheme over the existing approaches.     

Synthesis of Fe3O4-supported Schiff base Cu (II) complex: a novel efficient and recyclable magnetic nanocatalyst for one-pot three-component synthesis of quinolin-5-one,chromene-3-carbonitrile and phthalazine-5,10-dione derivatives

Research on Chemical Intermediates - In this research, synthesis and characterization of a novel Schiff base Cu (II) complex immobilized on Fe3O4@SiO2 nanoparticles are reported. Then, the...     

New Polydentate Trimethylsilyl Chalcogenide Reagents for the Assembly of Polyferrocenyl Architectures

A series of polychalcogenotrimethylsilane complexes Ar(CH₂ESiMe₃)_n, (Ar=aryl; E=S, Se; n=2, 3, and 4) can be prepared from the corresponding polyorganobromide and M[ESiMe₃] (M=Na, Li). These represent the first examples of the incorporation of such a large number of reactive ?ESiMe₃ moieties onto an organic molecular framework. They are shown to be convenient reagents for the preparation of the polyferrocenylseleno‐ and thioesters from ferrocenoyl chloride. The synthesis, structures, and spectroscopic properties of the new silyl chalcogen complexes 1,4‐(Me₃SiECH₂)₂(C₆Me₄) (E=S, 1 ; E=Se, 2 ), 1,3,5‐(Me₃SiECH₂)₃(C₆Me₃) (E=S, 3 ; E=Se, 4 ) and 1,2,4,5‐(Me₃SiECH₂)₄(C₆H₂) (E=S, 5 ; E=Se, 6 ) and the polyferrocenyl chalcogenoesters [1,4‐{FcC(O)ECH₂}₂(C₆Me₄)] (E=S, 7 ; E=Se, 8 ), [1,3,5‐{FcC(O)ECH₂}₃(C₆Me₃)] (E=S, 9 ; E=Se, 10 ) and [1,2,4,5‐{FcC(O)ECH₂}₄(C₆H₂)] (E=S, 11 illustrated; E=Se, 12 ) are reported. The new polysilylated reagents and polyferrocenyl chalcogenoesters have been characterized by multinuclear NMR spectroscopy (¹H, ¹³C, ⁷⁷Se), electrospray ionization mass spectrometry and, for complexes 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 7 , 8 , and 11 , single‐crystal X‐ray diffraction. The cyclic voltammograms of complexes 7 – 11 are presented.