Chemoselective reduction of aldehydes with zinc borohydride in tetrahydrofuran

A variety of structurally different aldehydes undergo chemoselectire reduction over ketones with zinc borohydride in tetrahydrofuran at −10°C to the corresponding alcohols.     

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.     

Determination of gold by neutron activation analysis in some selected rocks and plants and its bearing on the genesis of auriferous quartz veins in Singhbhum district,Bihar, Eastern India

Present investigation deals with neutron activation analysis of gold in some varieties of geological samples related to auriferous quartz veins. A few plant specimens of the area were also analyzed. The gold contents in the rock samples as determined by the destructive way of analysis vary in the range 10⁻⁵ to 10⁻⁷%. In case of plant samples, however, the non-destructive method of analysis of the plant ashes was followed and the concentration of gold was found to be of the order of 10⁻⁵%. In plants, besides gold, some associated elements, such as La, Ce, Sm, Lu, Zr, Hf, Se, W, As and Sb were also identified.     

Selective lighting up of segments around Gly,Ala and Ser/Thr in proteins

Direct detection of ¹³C nucleus can be used as a valuable alternative where ¹H detection poses a challenge due to relaxation effects, chemical exchange and poor chemical shift dispersion. In this context, we have designed a suite of 2D ¹³C^α‐detected hNCA experiments that provide sequential correlations of ¹³C^α with ¹⁵N on one hand and efficient spectroscopic labeling of certain groups of residues, namely, Gly, Ala, Ser and Thr, on the other. These residues act as checkpoints in the sequential walk, which in turn offer new possibilities of backbone assignment of small proteins from a set of 2D experiments, thereby providing great economy in terms of spectrometer time. The direct identification of peptide segments around Gly, Ala, Ser and Thr residues along a protein chain will be highly valuable for deriving important information on sites of ligand binding, phosphorylation, inhibitor/substrate binding, understanding protein folding pathways, comprehending local conformational dynamics etc. without having to obtain complete sequence‐specific assignments, which can be time consuming and at times formidable, especially in large proteins. We have illustratively demonstrated the multifaceted applications of these variants of 2D experiments on ubiquitin and M‐crystallin. We foresee that these 2D hNCA experiments will provide economic and efficient strategies for studying the structure and function of proteins. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transient response of hot electrons in narrow-gap semiconductors at low temperatures in the presence of a longitudinal quantizing magnetic field

Transient response of hot electrons in narrow-gap semiconductors to a step electric field in the presence of a longitudinal quantizing magnetic field has been studied at low temperatures using displaced Maxwellian distribution. The energy and momentum balance equations are used assuming acoustic phonon scattering via deformation potential responsible for the energy relaxation and elastic acoustic phonon scattering together with ionized impurity scattering for momentum relaxation. The calculations for the variation of drift velocity and electron temperature as functions of time are made for n-Hg_0.8Cd_0.2 Te in the extreme quantum limit at 1.5 K and 4.2 K. The momentum and energy relaxation times are found to be of the same order of magnitudes as with the experimental values. The magnetic field and lattice temperature dependences of the relaxation rates have been investigated.One of the authors, Suchandra Bhaumik, acknowledges the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (New Delhi) for financial support.     

Unitary group decomposition of hamiltonian operators. II. SU (4) irreducible tensors,norms and their energy variation and symmetry breaking

SU(6) ? SU(4) tensor decomposition of effective interactions in the 2s-1d shell has been carried out to examine the relative importance of the various irreducible tensors in many-particle spaces. For this purpose norms of the irreducible tensors are evaluated in many-particle spaces. Variation of the expectation value of the square of the irreducible tensor parts with excitation energy has also been examined using the polynomial expansion method. A new measure of symmetry breaking that is theoretically more sound is derived which includes in its definition partial width as well as internal width. This is used to study SU(4) symmetry mixing in nuclei.     

Unusual Surface Latent Heat Flux Variations and Their Critical Dynamics Revealed before Strong Earthquakes

We focus on the possible thermal channel of the well-known Lithosphere–Atmosphere–Ionosphere Coupling (LAIC) mechanism to identify the behavior of thermal anomalies during and prior to strong seismic events. For this, we investigate the variation of Surface Latent Heat Flux (SLHF) as resulting from satellite observables. We demonstrate a spatio-temporal variation in the SLHF before and after a set of strong seismic events occurred in Kathmandu, Nepal, and Kumamoto, Japan, having magnitudes of 7.8, 7.3, and 7.0, respectively. Before the studied earthquake cases, significant enhancements in the SLHF were identified near the epicenters. Additionally, in order to check whether critical dynamics, as the signature of a complex phenomenon such as earthquake preparation, are reflected in the SLHF data, we performed a criticality analysis using the natural time analysis method. The approach to criticality was detected within one week before each mainshock.     

Effect of Discharge Plasma Potential on Diffusion Plasma Parameters Controlled by a Mesh Grid in a Double Plasma Device

The plasma region under investigation is separated from the discharge region by a mesh grid. Plasma potential and electron number densities and electron temperatures under bi‐Maxwellian approximation for electron distribution function of the multi‐dipole argon plasma are measured. The cold electrons in the diffusion region are produced by local ionization. The hot electrons are the ionizing electrons behaving as Maxwellian. The electron trapping process in the discharge region is produced by potential well due to positive plasma potential with respect to the anode and by a repulsive grid. The dependence of ratios of the density of the hot to the cold electrons N_E (=N_eh/N_ec) and hot to cold electron temperature T(=T_eh/T_ec) in the diffusion region on the depth of the potential well has been investigated. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Assessment of dynamic closure for premixed combustion large eddy simulation

Turbulent piloted Bunsen flames of stoichiometric methane–air mixtures are computed using the large eddy simulation (LES) paradigm involving an algebraic closure for the filtered reaction rate. This closure involves the filtered scalar dissipation rate of a reaction progress variable. The model for this dissipation rate involves a parameter β_c representing the flame front curvature effects induced by turbulence, chemical reactions, molecular dissipation, and their interactions at the sub-grid level, suggesting that this parameter may vary with filter width or be a scale-dependent. Thus, it would be ideal to evaluate this parameter dynamically by LES. A procedure for this evaluation is discussed and assessed using direct numerical simulation (DNS) data and LES calculations. The probability density functions of β_c obtained from the DNS and LES calculations are very similar when the turbulent Reynolds number is sufficiently large and when the filter width normalised by the laminar flame thermal thickness is larger than unity. Results obtained using a constant (static) value for this parameter are also used for comparative evaluation. Detailed discussion presented in this paper suggests that the dynamic procedure works well and physical insights and reasonings are provided to explain the observed behaviour.