Naphthalenebisimides as photofunctional surfactants for SWCNTs – towards water-soluble electron donor–acceptor hybrids

A water soluble naphthalenebisimide derivative (NBI) was synthesized and probed to individualize, suspend, and stabilize single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). Besides a comprehensive photophysical and electrochemical characterization of NBI, stable suspensions of SWCNTs were realized in buffered D₂O. Overall, the dispersion efficiency of the NBI surfactant was determined by comparison with naphthalene based references. Successful individualization of SWCNTs was corroborated in several microscopic assays. In addition, emission spectroscopy points to the strong quenching of SWCNT centered band gap emission, when NBIs are immobilized onto SWCNTs. The origin of the quenching was found to be strong electronic communication, which leads to charge separation between NBIs and photoexcited SWCNTs, and, which yields reduced NBIs as well oxidized SWCNTs. Notably, electrochemical considerations revealed that the energy content of these charge separated states is one of the highest reported for SWCNT based electron donor–acceptor hybrids so far.     

Hydrophilic sulfonated bis-1,2,4-triazine ligands are highly effective reagents for separating actinides(iii) from lanthanides(iii) via selective formation of aqueous actinide complexes

We report the first examples of hydrophilic 6,6′-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-2,2′-bipyridine (BTBP) and 2,9-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-1,10-phenanthroline (BTPhen) ligands, and their applications as actinide(iii) selective aqueous complexing agents. The combination of a hydrophobic diamide ligand in the organic phase and a hydrophilic tetrasulfonated bis-triazine ligand in the aqueous phase is able to separate Am(iii) from Eu(iii) by selective Am(iii) complex formation across a range of nitric acid concentrations with very high selectivities, and without the use of buffers. In contrast, disulfonated bis-triazine ligands are unable to separate Am(iii) from Eu(iii) in this system. The greater ability of the tetrasulfonated ligands to retain Am(iii) selectively in the aqueous phase than the corresponding disulfonated ligands appears to be due to the higher aqueous solubilities of the complexes of the tetrasulfonated ligands with Am(iii). The selectivities for Am(iii) complexation observed with hydrophilic tetrasulfonated bis-triazine ligands are in many cases far higher than those found with the polyaminocarboxylate ligands previously used as actinide-selective complexing agents, and are comparable to those found with the parent hydrophobic bis-triazine ligands. Thus we demonstrate a feasible alternative method to separate actinides from lanthanides than the widely studied approach of selective actinide extraction with hydrophobic bis-1,2,4-triazine ligands such as CyMe₄-BTBP and CyMe₄-BTPhen.     

Efficient Regioselective Ring Opening of Activated Aziridine-2-Carboxylates with [18F]Fluoride

Aziridines can undergo a range of ring-opening reactions with nucleophiles. The regio- and stereochemistry of the products depend on the substituents on the aziridine. Aziridine ring-opening reactions have rarely been used in radiosynthesis. Herein we report the ring opening of activated aziridine-2-carboxylates with [¹⁸F]fluoride. The aziridine was activated for nucleophilic attack by substitution of various groups on the aziridine nitrogen atom. Fluorine-18 radiolabelling was followed by ester hydrolysis and removal of the activation group. Totally regioselective ring opening and subsequent deprotection was achieved with tert-butyloxycarbonyl- and carboxybenzyl-activated aziridines to give α-[¹⁸F]fluoro-β-alanine in good radiochemical yield.     

Compressing strongly connected subgroups in social networks: An entropy-based approach

To detect and study cohesive subgroups of actors is a main objective in social network analysis. What are the respective relations inside such groups and what separates them from the outside. Entropy-based analysis of network structures is an up-and-coming approach. It turns out to be a powerful instrument to detect certain forms of cohesive subgroups and to compress them to superactors without loss of information about their embeddedness in the net: Compressing strongly connected subgroups leaves the whole net’s and the (super-)actors’ information theoretical indices unchanged; i.e., such compression is information-invariant. The actual article relates on the reduction of networks with hundreds of actors. All entropy-based calculations are realized in an expert system shell.     

What Is Variable Bandwidth?

We propose a new notion of variable bandwidth that is based on the spectral subspaces of an elliptic operator where p > 0 is a strictly positive function. Denote by the orthogonal projection of A_p corresponding to the spectrum of A_p in ; the range of this projection is the space of functions of variable bandwidth with spectral set in Λ. We will develop the basic theory of these function spaces. First, we derive (nonuniform) sampling theorems; second, we prove necessary density conditions in the style of Landau. Roughly, for a spectrum the main results say that, in a neighborhood of , a function of variable bandwidth behaves like a band‐limited function with local bandwidth . Although the formulation of the results is deceptively similar to the corresponding results for classical band‐limited functions, the methods of proof are much more involved. On the one hand, we use the oscillation method from sampling theory and frame‐theoretic methods; on the other hand, we need the precise spectral theory of Sturm‐Liouville operators and the scattering theory of one‐dimensional Schrödinger operators. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Cardinal characteristics at κ in a small u(κ) model

We provide a model where $\mathfrak{u}(\kappa )<2^{\kappa }$ for a supercompact cardinal κ. [10] provides a sketch of how to obtain such a model by modifying the construction in [6]. We provide here a complete proof using a different modification of [6] and further study the values of other natural generalizations of classical cardinal characteristics in our model. For this purpose we generalize some standard facts that hold in the countable case as well as some classical forcing notions and their properties.     

Remarks on the Born approximation and the Factorization Method

In this paper, we compare the far-field operators for the full nonlinear inverse scattering problem with the Born approximation as its linearization. The Factorization Method shows that both operators share the same behavior with respect to illposedness of the inverse problem. The results are derived for acoustic and electromagnetic scattering problems and the corresponding problem in electrical impedance tomography.