Catalyst-free aza-Michael addition of azole to β,γ-unsaturated-α-keto ester: an efficient access to C–N bond formation

An efficient aza-Michael addition of azoles to β,γ-unsaturated-α-keto esters under room temperature conditions has been developed. In this conjugate addition, no additional catalyst is employed. Azole reacts with β,γ-unsaturated-α-keto ester smoothly to afford new C–N bond adducts in good to excellent yields (up to 96%).     

Improved FPT algorithms for weighted independent set in bull-free graphs

Very recently, Thomassé et al. (2017) have given an FPT algorithm for Weighted Independent Set in bull-free graphs parameterized by the weight of the solution, running in time $2^{O\left(k^5\right)}?n^9$. In this article we improve this running time to $2^{O\left(k^2\right)}?n^7$. As a byproduct, we also improve the previous Turing-kernel for this problem from $O\left(k^5\right)$ to $O\left(k^2\right)$. Furthermore, for the subclass of bull-free graphs without holes of length at most $2p?1$ for $p\ge 3$, we speed up the running time to $2^{O(k?k^{\frac{1}{p?1}})}?n^7$. As $p$ grows, this running time is asymptotically tight in terms of $k$, since we prove that for each integer $p\ge 3$, Weighted Independent Set cannot be solved in time $2^{o\left(k\right)}?n^{O\left(1\right)}$ in the class of $\{\text{bull},C_4,\dots ,C_{2p?1}\}$-free graphs unless the ETH fails.     

Nested Cartesian grid method in incompressible viscous fluid flow

In this work, the local grid refinement procedure is focused by using a nested Cartesian grid formulation. The method is developed for simulating unsteady viscous incompressible flows with complex immersed boundaries. A finite-volume formulation based on globally second-order accurate central-difference schemes is adopted here in conjunction with a two-step fractional-step procedure. The key aspects that needed to be considered in developing such a nested grid solver are proper imposition of interface conditions on the nested-block boundaries, and accurate discretization of the governing equations in cells that are with block-interface as a control-surface. The interpolation procedure adopted in the study allows systematic development of a discretization scheme that preserves global second-order spatial accuracy of the underlying solver, and as a result high efficiency/accuracy nested grid discretization method is developed. Herein the proposed nested grid method has been widely tested through effective simulation of four different classes of unsteady incompressible viscous flows, thereby demonstrating its performance in the solution of various complex flow–structure interactions. The numerical examples include a lid-driven cavity flow and Pearson vortex problems, flow past a circular cylinder symmetrically installed in a channel, flow past an elliptic cylinder at an angle of attack, and flow past two tandem circular cylinders of unequal diameters. For the numerical simulations of flows past bluff bodies an immersed boundary (IB) method has been implemented in which the solid object is represented by a distributed body force in the Navier–Stokes equations. The main advantages of the implemented immersed boundary method are that the simulations could be performed on a regular Cartesian grid and applied to multiple nested-block (Cartesian) structured grids without any difficulty. Through the numerical experiments the strength of the solver in effectively/accurately simulating various complex flows past different forms of immersed boundaries is extensively demonstrated, in which the nested Cartesian grid method was suitably combined together with the fractional-step algorithm to speed up the solution procedure.     

Metal‐Free Reduction of CO2 to Methoxyborane under Ambient Conditions through Borondiformate Formation

An abnormal N‐heterocyclic carbene (aNHC) based homogeneous catalyst has been used for the reduction of carbon dioxide to methoxyborane in the presence of a range of hydroboranes under ambient conditions and resulted in the highest turnover number of 6000. A catalytically active reaction intermediate, [aNHC‐H?9BBN(OCOH)₂] was structurally characterized and authenticated by NMR spectroscopy. A detailed mechanistic cycle of this catalytic process via borondiformate formation has been proposed from tandem experimental and computational experiments.     

Concise synthesis of a pentasaccharide repeating unit corresponding to the O-antigen of Escherichia coli O102

An efficient synthetic strategy has been developed for the synthesis of a pentasaccharide repeating unit of the O-antigen of Escherichia coli O102 strain. The target pentasaccharide 1 has been synthesized using a [2+3] block glycosylation strategy. All glycosylation steps are highly stereoselective and high yielding. Concept of armed-disarmed and orthogonal glycosylation strategies has been applied during the synthesis. The target compound has been synthesized using the minimum number of steps.     

Tsallis distribution and luminescence decays

Usually, the Kohlrausch (stretched exponential) function is employed to fit the luminescence decays. In this work we propose to use the Tsallis distribution as an alternative to describe them. We show that the curves of the luminescence decay obtained from the Tsallis distribution are close to those ones obtained from the stretched exponential. Further, we show that our result can fit well the data of porous silicon at low temperature and simulation result of the trapping controlled luminescence model.     

Size Controlled Synthesis of Gold Nanoparticles using Photochemically Prepared Seed Particles

Gold nanoparticles having prechosen size ranging from 5 to 110 nm have been prepared in two steps. Firstly, small spherical particles (seed) of average diameters between 5 and 20 nm were prepared by varying the ratio of gold ion concentration to stabilizer/reductant, TX-100 concentration and using UV irradiation. Secondly, 20–110 nm particles were formed by a non-iterative seed-mediated growth where small particles produced by the above irradiation technique were exploited as seeds and fresh Au(III) ions were reduced onto the surface on the seed particles by ascorbic acid. The kinetics of particle formation has also been reported. These methods were fast and showed improved monodispersity sphericity and excellent reproducibility.