Improvement of duty-cycle heating compensation in NMR spin relaxation experiments

To reliably measure NMR relaxation properties of macromolecules is a prerequisite for precise experiments that identify subtle variations in relaxation rates, as required for the determination of rotational diffusion anisotropy, CSA tensor determination, advanced motional modeling or entropy difference estimations. An underlying problem with current NMR relaxation measurement protocols is maintaining constant sample temperature throughout the execution of the relaxation series especially when rapid data acquisition is required. Here, it is proposed to use a combination of a heating compensation and a proton saturation sequence at the beginning of the NMR relaxation pulse scheme. This simple extension allows reproducible, robust and rapid acquisition of NMR spin relaxation data sets. The method is verified with (15)N spin relaxation measurements for human ubiquitin.     

Relativistic α-particles emitted in Fe-emulsion interactions at 1.7A GeV

Relativistic α-particles have been studied in 423 interactions of Fe in emulsion at 1.7A GeV. Comparisons of the observed angular distribution with that from ¹⁶O-emulsion reactions at 2.1A GeV reveal that more α-particles are observed at large angles in the Fe-emulsion reactions. The α-particles at large angles cannot be explained by fragmentation from a clean-cut spectator. Comparison of the experimental data with moving relativistic Boltzmann distributions shows that a single Boltzmann distribution cannot fit the fragmentation peak and the tail simultaneously. A thermal source (fireball) explaining the tail part of the distribution needs to be formed by a mechanism other than a simple clean-cut participant-spectator process. A large transverse momentum transfer to the spectator before fragmentation may explain the tail.     

Obtuse cones in Hilbert spaces and applications to partial differential equations

The positive cone K in a partially ordered Hilbert space is said to be obtuse with respect to the inner product if the dual cone $\text{K}{}^1\text{? K}$. Obtuseness of cones with respect to non-symmetric bilinear forms is also defined and characterized. These results are applied to the generalized Sobolev space associated with an elliptic boundary value problem, in particular to the question of determining the non-negativity of the Green's function. A notion of strict obtuseness is defined, characterized and applied to the question of strict positivity of the Green's function. Applications to positivity preserving semi-groups are also given.     

Random partial diffuser as beam splitter in a new,common path interferometer

Use of a random partial diffuser is suggested as a beam spitter. An aberration-free reference beam coaxial with the test beam is obtained when the latter converges on the diffuser. Based on this principle, an interferometer has been realised for absolute measurements with a sensitivity equal to that of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. A large variety of optical components can be tested by this simple and inexpensive interferometer which could replace the already existing ones in optical workshops.     

Temporal correlation vortices and topological dispersion

Interference measurements of a polychromatic partially coherent light source verify the existence of a temporal correlation vortex. Topological dispersion is found to destabilize this singularity.     

Properly designed modular asymmetric synthesis for enantiopure sulfinamide auxiliaries from N-sulfonyl-1,2,3-oxathiazolidine-2-oxide agents

Simple and practical asymmetric synthesis of functionally differentiated aminoindanol based endo-N-sulfonyl 1,2,3-oxathiazolidine-2-oxide as sulfinyl transfer agents are developed. The importance of these new and unique sulfinyl transfer reagents are exemplified by the expedient production of several sulfinamide ligands, including either enantiomer of (R)-tert-butanesulfinamide in excellent yields and enantiopurities.