Charge‐Tagged DNA Radicals in the Gas Phase Characterized by UV/Vis Photodissociation Action Spectroscopy

Adenosine radicals tagged with a fixed‐charge group were generated in the gas phase and structurally characterized by tandem mass spectrometry, deuterium labeling, and UV/Vis action spectroscopy. Experimental results in combination with Born–Oppenheimer molecular dynamics, ab initio, and excited‐state calculations led to unambiguous assignment of adenosine radicals as N‐7 hydrogen atom adducts. The charge‐tagged radicals were found to be electronically equivalent to natural DNA nucleoside radicals.     

Effect of surface condition on liquid crystal photoalignment by light-induced azo dye adsorption phenomena

The effect of surface condition on the photoalignment of light-induced methyl red (MR) adsorption phenomena on various substrates based on azo dye-doped liquid crystals is investigated. The results show that the polar surface energy determines the initiation of MR adsorption phenomena. The surface polarity energy of different substrates, which are modulated by oxygen plasma treatment (OPT), is further examined using the sessile drop method. The results also indicate that the uniformity and efficiency of MR adsorption can be enhanced by OPT. Light intensity influences the MR adsorption rate. The uniformity of MR adsorption onto various substrates is analysed via polarised optical microscopy.     

Fabrication of a metal nanoparticles and polymer nanofibers composite material by an in situ chemical synthetic route

This work demonstrated a facile route for the synthesis of poly(3,5-dimethyl aniline) nanofibers by polymerization of 3,5-dimethyl aniline using Pd-acetate as the oxidant. The reduction of Pd ion is accompanied by oxidative polymerization of 3,5-dimethyl aniline, leading to a metal-polymer composite material. Palladium nanoparticles (approximately 2 nm) are uniformly distributed throughout the polymer that makes the composite material a unique morphology. The resultant composite material was characterized by means of different techniques. IR and Raman spectra provide the information on the chemical structure of the polymer. TEM images show the morphology of the polymer and size of the metal particles.     

Ruthenium(II) complexes of monodonor ligands: efficient reagents for asymmetric ketone hydrogenation

[Chemical reaction: See text] A series of BINOL-derived ligands have been prepared and incorporated into ruthenium(II) complexes containing a diamine ligand. The complexes have proven to be excellent catalysts for the asymmetric hydrogenation of ketones, giving reduction products with enantiomeric excesses of up to 99%.     

Long vectors for quasi-Newton updates

This work concerns the derivation of formulae for updating quasi-Newton matrices used in algorithms for computing approximate minima of smooth unconstrained functions. The paper concentrates strictly on the techniques used to derive update formulae. It demonstrates a technique in which problems of finding matrices in ℝ ^{n ×n} of minimum Frobenius norm are converted to equivalent problems, using vector representations in ℝ ⁿ² and ℝ ^n(n+1)/2 of these matrices, and then solvingl ₂-minimization problems. These problems are more directly dealt with, and indeed, the paper demonstrates how this technique may be used to handle weighted sparse updates.     

Persistence in financial markets

Persistence is studied in a financial context by mapping the time evolution of the values of the shares quoted on the London Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 index (FTSE 100) onto Ising spins. By following the time dependence of the spins, we find evidence for power law decay of the proportion of shares that remain either above or below their 'starting' values. As a result, we estimate a persistence exponent for the underlying financial market to be θ_f∼0.5.     

Electrical tuning of single nitrogen-vacancy center optical transitions enhanced by photoinduced fields

We demonstrate precise control over the zero-phonon optical transition energies of individual nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond by applying multiaxis electric fields, via the dc Stark effect. The Stark shifts display surprising asymmetries that we attribute to an enhancement and rectification of the local electric field by photoionized charge traps in the diamond. Using this effect, we tune the excited-state orbitals of strained NV centers to degeneracy and vary the resulting degenerate optical transition frequency by >10 GHz, a scale comparable to the inhomogeneous frequency distribution. This technique will facilitate the integration of NV-center spins within photonic networks.