Biosynthesis of zinc oxide nanoparticles using Euphorbia milii leaf constituents: Characterization and improved photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue dye under natural sunlight

A facile biosynthesis route was followed to prepare zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) using Euphorbia milii (E. milii) leaf constituents. The SEM images exhibited presence of spherical ZnO NPs and the corresponding TEM images disclosed monodisperse nature of the ZnO NPs with diameter ranges between 12 and 20 nm. The Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis revealed that the ZnO NPs have specific surface area of 20.46 m²/g with pore diameter of 2 nm–10 nm and pore volume of 0.908 cm³/g. The EDAX spectrum exemplified the existence of Zn and O elements and non-appearance of impurities that confirmed pristine nature of the ZnO NPs. The XRD pattern indicated crystalline peaks corresponding to hexagonal wurtzite structured ZnO with an average crystallite size of 16.11 nm. The FTIR spectrum displayed strong absorption bands at 512 and 534 cm^?1 related to ZnO. The photocatalytic action of ZnO NPs exhibited noteworthy degradation of methylene blue dye under natural sunlight illumination. The maximum degradation efficiency achieved was 98.17% at an illumination period of 50 min. The reusability study proved considerable photostability of the ZnO NPs during photocatalytic experiments. These findings suggest that the E. milii leaf constituents can be utilized as suitable biological source to synthesis ZnO NPs for photocatalytic applications.     

Crystal structure of the 4-chromanone derivative.

The title compound was extracted from a natural product and its structure was characterized by an X-ray diffraction method. It crystallizes in the tetragonal space group P41 with cell parameters a = 15.832(10)A, c = 11.622(10)A, Z = 4; the final residual factor is R1 = 0.0769. The structure has both intra and intermolecular hydrogen bonds.     

Additive-subtractive phase-modulated speckle interferometry: Fringe visibility under partial decorrelation

Additive-subtractive phase modulated speckle interferometry (ASPMSI) is a technique that minimizes the susceptibility of speckle methods to environmental noise while providing fringes of good visibility. The method requires the acquisition of two consecutive video frames of additive-speckle images of the same two deformed states of an object at a rapid enough rate such that ambient noise is not a problem. The additive-speckle images as expected are of very poor visibility due to the presence of the self-interference term. An interframe phase-modulation is introduced and the two additive-speckle images are digitally subtracted to improve the fringe visibility by removing the self-interference term. The ASPM-SI method works with in-plane and out-of-plane deformation sensitive ESPI as well as with displacement-gradient sensitive speckle-shearing interferometry. It is shown that the ASPM-SI scheme has higher visibility than conventional additive-SI and performs consistently better than subtractive-SI schemes in the presence of partial interframe speckle decorrelating optical noise. Furthermore, it is shown that the fringe visibility of the out-of-plane displacement sensitive interferometer which uses a protected reference beam separate from the object beam can be made to be essentially unity even at complete interframe decorrelation.     

Imino Diels–Alder adducts. XII. Two pyrano[3,2‐c]quinolines

The crystal structures of pyrano­quinolines 9‐fluoro‐5‐phenyl‐3,4,4a,5,6,10b‐hexa­hydro‐2H‐pyrano[3,2‐c]quinoline, C₁₈H₁₈FNO, and 9‐methyl‐5‐phenyl‐3,4,4a,5,6,10b‐hexa­hydro‐2H‐pyrano­[3,2‐c]quinoline, C₁₉H₂₁NO, are isomorphous. In both structures, the pyran ring is exo to the six‐membered N‐heterocyclic ring formed in the cyclo­addition step. The torsion angles across the phenyl linkage for the two structures are −91.2 (1) and −88.3 (2)°. The striking feature in both crystal packings is that they do not contain the expected conventional hydrogen bonds, in spite of the presence of good hydrogen‐bonding functionalities. Possible C—H⋯π inter­actions are, however, observed.     

Working group report: Collider Physics

This is summary of the activities of the working group on collider physics in the IXth Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology (WHEPP-9) held at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India in January 2006. Some of the work subsequently done on these problems by the subgroups formed during the workshop is included in this report.     

Nuclear effects in the hadroproduction and photoproduction ofJ/ψ

Hadroprduction ofJ/ψ in π^? nucleus collisions is studied in the context of the colour singlet model using nuclear structure functions from three different models of the EMC effect. We conclude that it is possible to understand the data on the large transverse momentum (p _T ) and small Feynmanx (x _F ) of theJ/ψ in terms of the nuclear dependence of structure functions alone. We further show that these data can be used to distinguish between different models of the EMC effect, and that a study of distributions in various kinematic variables in photoproduction ofJ/ψ should be able to very effectively supplement the information obtained from hadroproduction experiments.     

Propargyloxycarbonyl (Poc) as a protective group for the hydroxyl function in carbohydrate synthesis

[reaction: see text] The propargyloxycarbonyl (Poc) group can be used for the selective protection of the hydroxyl function in carbohydrates and can be removed under neutral conditions using tetrathiomolybdate MoS(4)(2-) (1) in CH(3)CN at room temperature. Under the conditions of deprotection benzylidine acetals, benzyl ethers, acetyl and levulinoyl esters, and allyl and benzyl carbonates are left untouched. It has also been shown that the new protective group (Poc) is compatible with acidic, basic, and also glycosylation conditions.     

l-Proline catalyzed selective synthesis of 2-aryl-1-arylmethyl-1H-benzimidazoles

l-Proline (10 mol %) was found to be a versatile organocatalyst for the selective synthesis of 2-aryl-1-arylmethyl-1H-benzimidazoles from a wide range of substituted o-phenylenediamines and aldehydes in moderate to excellent isolated yields (32-95%) under mild conditions using chloroform as a solvent at ambient temperature.     

Fast kinetics of the reactions of hydroxyl radicals with nitrone spin traps

The technique of spin trapping with nitrone spin traps nas gained wide acceptance as a method for estimating·OH yields in ESR studies. In our study, fast optical kinetic techniques applied to a series of these traps (PBN, 2-PyBN, 3-PyBN, 4-PyBN, 3-PyOBN and 4-PyOBN) reveal relaxation spectra that indicate two absorption maxima with different time constants, with all except 4-PyOBN showing second order behavior. These two spectral regions show different kinetics. Thus, two reaction sites are indicated, only one of which is necessarily a measure of initial · OH when ESR methods are used. One other trap (DMPO) after · OH reaction decays in one mode suggesting that its final product might be useful as a measure of initial · OH. Also, our ESR evidence shows that OH detection can be improved significantly by spin trapping -hydroxyalkyl radicals formed by · OH attack on alcohols.