New products

Summary An efficient and economical GC method for rapid determination of FAMEs in rapeseed-mustard is described. The seeds were transmethylated with acetylchloride, using microwave heating and separation achieved on a 3 m column packed with a mixture of 2% SP-2300 and 3% SP-2310 on Chromosorb ‘W’. The method is compared with the conventional heating method and extended efficiently for half-seed analysis. The fatty acid composition of the FAMEs mixtures prepared by both methods was similar with highly significant correlation coefficients (P<0.001).     

Microwave spectrum of CH3OD

The microwave spectrum of CH₃OD has been observed in the frequency region between 14 and 92 GHz. All the ground-state transitions with J ≤ 8 and J = 2 ← 1, a-type transitions in the excited torsional states (v = 1 and v = 2) have been observed. The spectrum has been analyzed and rotational constants, torsional constants, torsion-vibration-rotation interaction constants, and centrifugal distortion constants have been evaluated. The Stark effect measurements have been made and the dipole moment components have been determined as μ_a = 0.833 ± 0.008 D and μ_b = 1.488 ± 0.015 D.     

Interventional Fairness with Indirect Knowledge of Unobserved Protected Attributes

The deployment of machine learning (ML) systems in applications with societal impact has motivated the study of fairness for marginalized groups. Often, the protected attribute is absent from the training dataset for legal reasons. However, datasets still contain proxy attributes that capture protected information and can inject unfairness in the ML model. Some deployed systems allow auditors, decision makers, or affected users to report issues or seek recourse by flagging individual samples. In this work, we examine such systems and consider a feedback-based framework where the protected attribute is unavailable and the flagged samples are indirect knowledge. The reported samples are used as guidance to identify the proxy attributes that are causally dependent on the (unknown) protected attribute. We work under the causal interventional fairness paradigm. Without requiring the underlying structural causal model a priori, we propose an approach that performs conditional independence tests on observed data to identify such proxy attributes. We theoretically prove the optimality of our algorithm, bound its complexity, and complement it with an empirical evaluation demonstrating its efficacy on various real-world and synthetic datasets.     

CONDENSING HEAT TRANSFER IN VERTICAL CYCLONE

The heat transfer coefficient for condensation of steam has been determined experimentally for a cyclone surface. Ambient air is used as the coolant and the outer surface is maintained in a free-convection condition. A twofold increase in heat transfer coefficient is observed over a cyclone surface in comparison with a vertical tube.     

Ground-state properties of neutron magic nuclei

A systematic study of the ground-state properties of the entire chains of even–even neutron magic nuclei represented by isotones of traditional neutron magic numbers N = 8, 20, 40, 50, 82, and 126 has been carried out using relativistic mean-field plus Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer approach. Our present investigation includes deformation, binding energy, two-proton separation energy, single-particle energy, rms radii along with proton and neutron density profiles, etc. Several of these results are compared with the results calculated using nonrelativistic approach (Skyrme–Hartree–Fock method) along with available experimental data and indeed they are found with excellent agreement. In addition, the possible locations of the proton and neutron drip-lines, the (Z, N) values for the new shell closures, disappearance of traditional shell closures as suggested by the detailed analyzes of results are also discussed in detail.     

Absence of neutron emission during interaction of deuterium with metal at low energies

Technique and instrumentation to detect reliably, multiplicity of neutrons emitted in sharp bursts (≤100 μs) has been developed where a burst of as low as 15 neutrons and continuous emission of ⋍10⁻¹ neutron/s may be detected. Using this technique, attempts were made to detect neutron emission from various experiments in which anomalous nuclear effects (or what is commonly referred to as cold fusion) may be expected to occur. No neutrons, above our detection threshold, were detected in the recent series of experiments.     

Anomalous variation of the Lamb-M?ssbauer factor at the magnetic transition temperature in magnetoelectric?GaFeO(3)

Temperature-dependent (57)Fe M?ssbauer spectroscopy (5-723?K) and neutron diffraction (2-290?K) measurements are carried out on polycrystalline magnetoelectric GaFeO(3). From the neutron diffraction data, evidence for the magnetostriction and increased disorder at Fe sites close to the ferrimagnetic Curie transition temperature (T(C)) is observed. From the M?ssbauer data, it is observed that the Lamb-M?ssbauer factor as a function of temperature f(T), which is related to the integral over the first Brillouin zone of the phonon spectrum, shows a unequivocal variation at the T(C). The observations are discussed in terms of spin-phonon coupling. The observed average hyperfine fields from (57)Fe M?ssbauer spectra match with the bulk magnetization data. A critical exponent (β) of 0.38?±?0.02 and a Debye temperature (θ(D)) of ～350?K is estimated from the (57)Fe M?ssbauer data.     

Unveiling the binding interaction of zinc (II) complexes of homologous Schiff-base ligands on the surface of BSA protein: A combined experimental and theoretical approach

Four new zinc (II) complexes [Zn (HL¹H)Br₂] (1), [Zn (HL¹H)Cl₂] (2), [Zn₂(HL²)Br₃] (3), and [Zn (HL²)Cl] (4) have been synthesized by adopting template synthetic strategy and utilizing two homologous Schiff base ligands (H₂L¹ = 4-bromo-2-{[2-(2-hydroxyethylamino)-ethylimino]-methyl}-6-methoxyphenol, H₂L² = 4-bromo-2-{[3-(2-hydroxyethylamino)propylimino]methyl}-6-methoxyphenol), differing in one -CH₂- unit in the ligating backbone, by adopting template synthetic strategy. All the complexes have been characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction analysis as well as by other routine physicochemical techniques. Ligand mediated structural variations have been observed and rationalized by density functional theoretical (DFT) calculations. Interaction of the complexes 1–4 with Bovine Serum Albumin protein (BSA) has been studied by different spectroscopic techniques. A complete thermodynamic profile (ΔH^o, ΔS^o and ΔG^o) was evaluated initially from the change in absorption and fluorescence spectra upon addition of BSA to the complexes. Appreciable binding constant values in the range ~ 0.94–4.51 × 10⁴ M⁻¹ indicate efficient binding tendency of the complexes to BSA with the sequence 1 ≅ 2 > 3 ≅ 4. Circular dichroism (CD), isothermal calorimetric titration experiments, molecular docking and molecular dynamics have been performed to gain deep insight into the binding regions of complex 1 to BSA. Experimental evidences suggest an interaction of zinc complexes at the surface of BSA protein and this particular binding has been exploited to determine unknown concentration of BSA protein. For this purpose complex 1 was explored as a BSA protein quantification tool.     

Quantum mechanical generalized phase-shift approach to atom-surface scattering: a Feshbach projection approach to dealing with closed channel effects

We have developed a new method for solving quantum dynamical scattering problems, using the time-independent Schr?dinger equation (TISE), based on a novel method to generalize a "one-way" quantum mechanical wave equation, impose correct boundary conditions, and eliminate exponentially growing closed channel solutions. The approach is readily parallelized to achieve approximate N(2) scaling, where N is the number of coupled equations. The full two-way nature of the TISE is included while propagating the wave function in the scattering variable and the full S-matrix is obtained. The new algorithm is based on a "Modified Cayley" operator splitting approach, generalizing earlier work where the method was applied to the time-dependent Schr?dinger equation. All scattering variable propagation approaches to solving the TISE involve solving a Helmholtz-type equation, and for more than one degree of freedom, these are notoriously ill-behaved, due to the unavoidable presence of exponentially growing contributions to the numerical solution. Traditionally, the method used to eliminate exponential growth has posed a major obstacle to the full parallelization of such propagation algorithms. We stabilize by using the Feshbach projection operator technique to remove all the nonphysical exponentially growing closed channels, while retaining all of the propagating open channel components, as well as exponentially decaying closed channel components.