The Reaction of (N‐Isocyanimino)triphenylphosphorane with Biacetyl in the Presence of Aromatic Carboxylic Acids: Efficient One‐Pot Three‐Component Reaction for the Synthesis of 3‐(5‐Aryl‐1,3,4‐oxadiazol‐2‐yl)‐3‐hydroxybutan‐2‐one Derivatives

Reactions of biacetyl (=butane‐2,3‐dione) with (N‐isocyanimino)triphenylphosphorane in the presence of aromatic carboxylic acids proceed smoothly at room temperature and under neutral conditions to afford 3‐(5‐aryl‐1,3,4‐oxadiazol‐2‐yl)‐3‐hydroxybutan‐2‐one derivatives in high yields.     

A helix-forming αβγ-chimeric peptide with catalytic activity: a hybrid peptide ligase

We describe the catalytic activity of the first chimeric ligase containing a foldameric sequence of β- and γ-amino acids. The chimeric backbone provides for the spatial arrangement of all functional groups involved in the formation of the catalytic site to allow efficient catalysis to take place. Our finding indicates significant progress in the field of functionally active artificial motifs.     

Infrared spectrum of the CS2 trimer: observation of a structure with D3 symmetry

Infrared spectra of a carbon disulfide trimer formed in a pulsed supersonic slit-jet expansion are obtained via direct absorption of a tuneable diode laser in the region of the CS(2)ν(3) fundamental (～1535 cm(-1)). This is the first high-resolution spectroscopic observation of (CS(2))(3). Two bands sharing the same lower state are assigned to ((12)C(32)S(2))(3). These correspond to the two infrared active trimer vibrations (a parallel and a perpendicular band) of the constituent CS(2) monomer asymmetric stretches. The weaker perpendicular band is centered at 1524.613 cm(-1), shifted by -10.74 cm(-1) with respect to the free CS(2) monomer. The parallel band is centered at 1545.669 cm(-1), a vibrational shift of +10.31 cm(-1). Transitions with K≠ 3n and those with K = 0, J = odd in the ground state are absent, establishing that this trimer has D(3) symmetry. The two parameters required to define this structure are determined to be 3.811 ? for the C-C bond distance and 61.8° for the angle between a monomer axis and the plane containing the C atoms. In addition, a parallel band arising from trimers with a single (34)S substitution is observed around 1544.46 cm(-1). Together with the recently observed cross-shaped CS(2) dimer, these results indicate a tendency for CS(2) to form highly symmetric clusters.     

The Effect of Reservoir Wettability on the Production Characteristics of the VAPEX Process: An Experimental Study

The impact of fractional wettability on the production characteristics of a VAPEX process at the macroscale was investigated. Conventional VAPEX experiments were conducted in a 220 Darcy random packing of glass beads in a rectangular physical model and n-pentane was used to recover the Cold Lake bitumen from the oil-saturated model in the absence of connate water. The composition of oil-wet beads in the packed bed was altered from completely water-wet beads to completely oil-wet beads at different proportions of oil-wet beads mixed with water-wet beads. A substantial increase (about 40%) in the production rate of live oil was observed during the VAPEX process when the wettability of the porous packing was entirely oil-wet beads. A critical oil-wet fraction of 0.66 was found for the heterogeneous packing of water-wet and oil-wet beads of similar size distribution. Above this critical composition, the live oil production rate was not affected by further increase in the proportion of the oil-wet beads. It is believed that above this critical composition of the oil-wet beads, the crevice flow process is dominated by the continuity of higher conductivity live oil films between particles through the oil-wet regions. Below this critical composition, the live oil production rate increased linearly with the fraction of the oil-wet beads in the packing. The oil-wet regions favor the live oil drainage compared to that of the water-wet regions as they enhance the rate of imbibition of the live oil from the oil-filled pores to the vacated pores near the nominal VAPEX interface. These two factors enhance the live oil production rate during the VAPEX process. The solvent content of the live oil, the solvent-to-oil ratio (SOR), and the residual oil saturation did not correlate strongly with the proportion of the oil-wet beads in the packing. The average solvent content of the live oil and the residual oil saturation were measured to be 48% by weight and 7% by volume respectively.     

Newtonian and Shear-thinning Taylor flow heat transfer in wavy micro-tubes: a numerical study

Meccanica - In the present study, the two-phase gas–liquid convective heat transfer is numerically studied inside uniformly heated wavy micro-tubes in the Taylor flow regime. Both Newtonian...     

Rock Porous Structure Characterization: A Critical Assessment of Various State-of-the-Art Techniques

Transport in Porous Media - The porous structure of geomaterials is of utmost importance for various industrial and natural processes. In this study, various conventional porous structure...     

A cone programming approach to the bilinear matrix inequality problem and its geometry

We discuss an approach for solving the Bilinear Matrix Inequality (BMI) based on its connections with certain problems defined over matrix cones. These problems are, among others, the cone generalization of the linear programming (LP) and the linear complementarity problem (LCP) (referred to as the Cone-LP and the Cone-LCP, respectively). Specifically, we show that solving a given BMI is equivalent to examining the solution set of a suitably constructed Cone-LP or Cone-LCP. This approach facilitates our understanding of the geometry of the BMI and opens up new avenues for the development of the computational procedures for its solution. Research supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant CCR-9222734.     

Thermodynamic study of CN~- ion inhibition of Jack bean urease using the extended solvation theory

Cyanide ion was studied as an inhibitor of Jack bean urease at 300 K in 30 mmol/L tris buffer,pH 7.The inhibition was investigated by isothermal titration calorimetry(ITC).The extended solvation model was used for CN~- + JBU interaction over the whole range of CN~- concentrations.The binding parameters recovered from the solvation model were attributed to the cyanide ion interaction.It was found that cyanide ion acted as a non-cooperative inhibitor of urease,and there is a set of 12±0.12 identical and in...