Chemical Constituents from the Root of Antidesma Pentandrum var. Barbatum

Investigation of the root extract of Antidesma pentandrum var. barbatum led to the isolation of seven new compounds, antidesmol ( 1 ), antidesmanins E ( 2 ) and F ( 3 ), antidesnone ( 4 ), antidesnol ( 5 ), barbatumols A ( 6 ) and B ( 7 ), together with 14 known compounds including sodium aristolochate‐I ( 10 ) and aristolochic acid‐I methyl ester ( 11 ).     

Identifying a dot-matrix hologram with the fringe-overlapping phenomena of grating dots

Dot-matrix holograms created by two-beam writers contain many grating dots. Because the phase difference between two laser beams for interference cannot be controlled accurately, the fringe positions of grating dots are randomly determined. Therefore, fringe positions are a good kind of tool to identify dot-matrix holograms. In this paper, a number difference between two special fringes of a target grating dot is used to identify a dot-matrix hologram. The two special fringes are determined by three grating dots with parallel fringes. The first special fringe is corresponding to a fringe pair with the best matching for the fringes of the target grating dot and the fringes of the second grating dot. The second special fringe is corresponding to a fringe pair with the best matching for the fringes of the target grating dot and the fringes of the third grating dot. An experiment has proved the proposed method practical and feasible. Because reproducing a grating dot with a specified fringe number difference is difficult, the proposed method is excellent for anti-counterfeiting.     

Morphological evolution and orientation development of stretched iPP films: Influence of draw ratio

Varying the processing conditions of semicrystalline polymers can produce different morphologies of crystallization, which leads to different properties. There have been extensive studies of flow‐induced crystallization on isotactic polypropylene (iPP) using predominantly shear flow. A stretching method, deduced from extrusion, was introduced to study the morphological evolution of elongation‐induced shish‐kebab crystallization. Different morphologies of the resultant samples with different draw ratios (DRs) were carefully investigated and characterized via differential scanning calorimetry, polarizing light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and 2D small‐angle X‐ray scattering. In addition, the degree of orientation of the samples with different DRs was also investigated using the 2D wide‐angle X‐ray scattering technique. The results indicate that the elongation‐induced morphology is strongly dependent on the effective stretching flow expressed in terms of the DR, which is defined as the ratio of rates between take‐up and the extrusion. The spherulite is dominant at low DRs, but it starts to deform along the stretching direction with increasing DR. The shish‐kebab structure in the stretched film, composed of stretched chains (shish) and layered crystalline lamellae (kebabs), increases gradually with an increase in the DR, whereas the spherulites gradually decreased. Furthermore, the overall orientation of α‐phase crystals, expressed by the Hermans orientation parameter, is also found to increase dramatically with the DR, and the rate of increase strongly depends on the DR. The different crystal morphologies are attributed to crystallization induced by different elongations of the stretched iPP films. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 48: 1223–1234, 2010     

Massively parallel concentration device for multiplexed immunoassays

A massively parallel nanofluidic concentration device array for multiplexed and high-throughput biomolecule detection is demonstrated. By optimizing the microchannel/nanojunction design and channel conductivity, an array of up to 128 nanofluidic concentration devices were fabricated. Operation of the entire array requires only one inlet and one outlet reservoir, with the application of a single operational voltage bias across them. Concentration efficiencies of the devices were found to be uniform within the array, within 5% error. Alternatively, concentration speed in each channel can be individually tuned by controlling the length of the inlet microchannel and thus controlling the flow rate based on change of the tangential electric field. This allows immuno-binding reactions at different concentration ranges to be performed in parallel. Using multiplexed, successive-concentration enhanced detection in the device, we have shown that the dynamic range and reliability of the immunoassay can be significantly increased.     

Chemical Constituents from the Root Bark of Formosan Zanthoxylum Ailanthoides

Two new N‐isobutylamides, hydroxy lanyuamide I ( 1 ) and hydroxy lanyuamide II ( 2 ), together with one hundred and ten known compounds, have been isolated from the root bark of Formosan Zanthoxylum ailanthoides. These known compounds include twenty coumarins, twenty‐one benzo[c]phenanthridines, ten quinoline derivatives, one aporphine, one purine, seven amides, twelve benzenoids, one lactone, four flavonoids, nine lignans, eight steroids, two chlorophylls, eleven terpenoids and three other compounds, which were determined by means of spectral analyses.     

N‐Isobutylamides and Butyrolactone from the Fruits of Zanthoxylum integrifoliolum

Further investigations of the CHCl₃‐soluble fraction of the fruit of Zanthoxylum integrifoliolum led to the isolation of three new N‐isobutylamides: lanyuamide IV ( 1 ), lanyuamide V ( 2 ), and lanyuamide VI ( 3 ), along with lanyulactone ( 4 ), a new butyrolactone derivative. The structures of these new compounds were elucidated by spectroscopic data.     

The strong chromatic index of Halin graphs

A strong edge coloring of a graph $G$ is an assignment of colors to the edges of $G$ such that two distinct edges are colored differently if their distance is at most two. The strong chromatic index of a graph $G$, denoted by $s{\chi }^{\prime }\left(G\right)$, is the minimum number of colors needed for a strong edge coloring of $G$. A Halin graph $G$ is a plane graph constructed from a tree $T$ without vertices of degree two by connecting all leaves through a cycle $C$. If a Halin graph $G=T\cup C$ is different from a certain necklace $N{e}_2$ and any wheel $W_n$, $n?0(mod3)$, then we prove that $s{\chi }^{\prime }\left(G\right)?s{\chi }^{\prime }\left(T\right)+3$.