Highly efficient water promoted allylation and propargylation of arylepoxides via rearrangement-carbonyl addition

A simple and highly efficient one-pot procedure for allylation and propargylation of arylepoxides has been developed. A combination of SnCl₂ and catalytic Pd(0) or Pd(II) promotes the reaction of organic halides and epoxides in DMSO with controlled water addition, leading to the regioselective formation of the corresponding homoallyl and homopropargyl alcohols in good yields.     

Nucleation of β-hairpin structure in a pyrrole amino acid containing peptide

Synthesis and conformational studies of two short peptides containing pyrrole amino acids (1, Paa), Boc-Paa-Paa-d-Pro-Gly-Xaa-Paa-Paa-OMe (2: Xaa=Ala; 3: Xaa=Val), were carried out in which it was established that replacement of Ala in 2 with a Val residue helps peptide 3 to adopt a well-defined β-hairpin conformation in a nonpolar solvent, like CDCl₃.     

Plane Symmetric Viscous Fluid Cosmological Models with Varying <Emphasis Type="Italic">Λ</Emphasis>-Term

Plane symmetric viscous fluid cosmological models of the universe with a variable cosmological term are investigated. The viscosity coefficient of bulk viscous fluid is assumed to be a power function of mass density whereas the coefficient of shear viscosity is to be proportional to rate of expansion in the model. We have also obtained a special model in which the shear viscosity is assumed to be zero. The cosmological constant Λ is found to be a decreasing function of time and a positive which is supported by results from recent supernovae Ia observations. Some physical and geometric properties of the models are also discussed.     

Calculation of geometrical coupling coefficients for the hyperspherical harmonics approach

An elegant and fast method for the calculation of geometrical structure coefficients needed for an expansion of a few-body wavefunction and interaction in hyperspherical harmonics has been proposed. A sum rule for the GSC has also been derived, which is useful for an independent check of the coefficients. The proposed method of computation is many orders of magnitude faster than conventional methods.     

Some inhomogeneous magnetized viscous-fluid cosmological models with varyingΛ

Some cylindrically symmetric inhomogeneous viscous-fluid cosmological models with electromagnetic field are obtained. To get a solution a supplementary condition between metric potentials is used. The viscosity coefficient of bulk viscous fluid is assumed to be a power function of mass density. Without assuming anyad hoc law, we obtain a cosmological constant as a decreasing function of time. The behaviour of the electromagnetic field tensor together with some physical aspects of the model are also discussed.     

Investigation of transition States in bulk and freestanding film polymer glasses

We have performed transition state searches on the potential energy landscape for bulk and freestanding film polymer glasses and identified connected minima. An analysis of the displacements between minima shows that the sites that undergo the greatest displacement are highly localized in space for both the bulk and the thin-film systems studied. In the case of the thin film, the clusters originate at the surface and penetrate into the center of the film thereby coupling the relaxation in the center of the film to the mobile surface layer. Furthermore, the energy barriers between minima are lower in the thin film than in the bulk system. These findings can rationalize the experimentally observed depression of the glass transition temperature in freestanding polymer films.     

Gold,silver, and palladium nanoparticle/nano-agglomerate generation,collection, and characterization

Generation, collection, and characterization of gold, silver, and palladium nanoparticles and nano-agglomerates (collectively “nanoparticles”) have been explored. The nanoparticles were generated with a spark aerosol generator (Palas GFG-1000). They were collected using a deposition cell under diffusion and thermophoresis. The shapes and sizes of the deposited particles were measured using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). TEM images showed that the particles were in the range of 8–100 nm in diameter, and their shapes varied from nearly spherical to highly non-spherical. Thermophoresis enhanced the deposition of nanoparticles (over the diffusive or the isothermal deposition) in all cases. Further, the size distributions of the nanoparticles generated in the gas phase (aerosol) were measured using a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS 3080, TSI) spectrometer. The SMPS results show that an increase in the spark frequency of the generator shifted the size distributions of the nanoparticles to larger diameters, and the total particle mass production rate increased linearly with increase in the spark frequency. The computational fluid dynamics code Fluent (Ansys) was used to model the flow in the deposition cell, and the computed results conform to the observations.