Template Syntheses Involving the Carbon Acid Nitroethane. Synthesis and Characterization of Copper(II) Complexes of a 16-membered Tetraaza Macrocycle

New square-planar Cu(II) complexes of 3,11-dimethyl-3,11-dinitro-1,5,9,13-tetraazacyclohexadecane and 1,11-diamino-6-methyl-6-nitro-4,8-diazaundecane cations have been prepared from the one-pot template condensation of [Cu(pn)₂]²⁺ (pn=1,3-diaminopropane) in MeOH with CH₂O and EtNO₂ in the presence of a noncoordinating base. Reduction of the nitro group in the (3,11-dimethyl-3,11-dinitro-1,5,9,13-tetraazacyclohexadecane)copper(II) cation, may be achieved by Zn/acid reduction. The Cu(II) complex of the reduced form of the ligand, namely (3,11-diammonio-3,11-dimethyl-1,5,9,13-tetraazacyclohexadecane)copper(II), has also characterized. With the macrocyclic ligand, rac and meso isomers have been identified, the meso form being the major product. Elemental analyses, i.r. and u.v.–vis. spectroscopy, f.a.b. mass spectra conductometric, magnetic measurements and cyclic voltammetry have been used to characterize the complexes.     

New formulation and relaxation to solve a concave-cost network flow problem

In this paper we study a minimum cost, multicommodity network flow problem in which the total cost is piecewise linear, concave of the total flow along the arcs. Specifically, the problem can be defined as follows. Given a directed network, a set of pairs of communicating nodes and a set of available capacity ranges and their corresponding variable and fixed cost components for each arc, the problem is to select for each arc a range and identify a path for each commodity between its source and destination nodes so as to minimize the total costs. We also extend the problem to the case of piecewise nonlinear, concave cost function. New mathematical programming formulations of the problems are presented. Efficient solution procedures based on Lagrangean relaxations of the problems are developed. Extensive computational results across a variety of networks are reported. These results indicate that the solution procedures are effective for a wide range of traffic loads and different cost structures. They also show that this work represents an improvement over previous work made by other authors. This improvement is the result of the introduction of the new formulations of the problems and their relaxations.     

Second-harmonic generation from monolayer Langmuir–Blodgett films of various push–pull pyridine and terpyridine metal complexes

The new ligands (E)-4-[2-(4-(N-methyl-N-hexadecylaminophenyl)ethenyl]pyridine (L¹) and 4′-(C₆H₄-p-N(Me)(hexadecyl))-2,2′:6′,2″-terpyridine (L²) were prepared along with their complexes [cis-Ir(CO)₂ClL¹], [fac-Os(CO)₃Cl₂L¹], [ZnCl₂L²] and [IrCl₃L²]. Whereas these complexes show a large second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) response at the molecular level, similar to that of related organic alkylated salts as evidenced by the Electric Field Induced Second-Harmonic (EFISH) generation technique, their Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) film susceptibility is lower than that of the salts.     

Highly chemoselective reductive amination-coupling by one-pot reaction of aldehydes, HMDS and NaBH4

An efficient and highly chemoselective synthesis of symmetrical secondary amines via reductive amination of aldehydes with inexpensive and commercially available HMDS and sodium borohydride in high to quantitative yields is reported.     

Origin of Fluorescence Lifetimes in Human Serum Albumin. Studies on Native and Denatured Protein

Human serum albumin consists of a single polypeptide of 585 amino acid residues with 1 Trp residue. In the present work, we measured fluorescence lifetimes of the protein in both native and denatured states. The results indicate that Trp emission occurs with three lifetimes in both states. Lifetimes values and contribution to the global emission decay differ between the two states. Data are interpreted as the results of an emission occurring from three substructures of the tryptophan formed in the excited state. Two of these substructures are already present for the tryptophan free in solution. The third lifetime is the result of the interaction between the tryptophan residue and surrounding microenvironment. The populations of these substructures characterized by the pre-exponential parameters of the fluorescence lifetimes are dependent on the fluorophore microenvironment and on the global protein structure.     

Clustering Categorical Data via Ensembling Dissimilarity Matrices

We present a technique for clustering categorical data by generating many dissimilarity matrices and combining them. We begin by demonstrating our technique on low-dimensional categorical data and comparing it to several other techniques that have been proposed. We show through simulations and examples that our method is both more accurate and more stable. Then we give conditions under which our method should yield good results in general. Our method extends to high-dimensional categorical data of equal lengths by ensembling over many choices of explanatory variables. In this context, we compare our method with two other methods. Finally, we extend our method to high-dimensional categorical data vectors of unequal length by using alignment techniques to equalize the lengths. We give an example to show that our method continues to provide useful results, in particular, providing a comparison with phylogenetic trees. Supplementary material for this article is available online.     

Sum of Element Orders of Maximal Subgroups of the Symmetric Group

For a finite group G, let ψ(G) denote the sum of element orders of G. The aim of this article is to show that ψ(H) < ψ(A _n ) for every proper subgroup H of the symmetric group of degree n, which is different from the alternating group A _n .     

Second Maximum Sum of Element Orders of Finite Nilpotent Groups

In [1 Amiri , H. , Jafarian Amiri , S. M. , Isaacs , I. M. ( 2009 ). Sums of element orders in finite groups . Communications in Algebra 37 : 2978 – 2980 .[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]], the authors proved that the maximum sum of element orders on finite groups of the same order occurs in cyclic group. In this paper we obtain the structure of groups having maximum sum of element orders on noncyclic nilpotent group of the same order.     

Feed-forward modelling and fuzzy logic based control strategy for powertrain efficiency improvement in a parallel hybrid electric vehicle

With the stricter limitations on both fuel consumption and air pollution, the advantages of a hybrid electric vehicle are becoming more evident than ever. In the present study, an energy management system for a hybrid electric vehicle is developed. Because the plant under consideration is nonlinear, multi-domain, time-varying, has multiple uncertainties and, in addition, the designed control strategy must be able to obey the driver's commands and achieve the par-internship for a new generation of vehicle regulations, the fuzzy logic approach is chosen. A feed-forward hybrid vehicle simulation model is used to demonstrate the validity and the convenience of the current approach and its results have been compared with the other parallel hybrid electric vehicle control strategies. Simulation results show considerable improvement in the efficiency of the internal combustion engine and, consequently, fuel consumption and acceleration performances.     

Asymptotic normality of recursive estimators under strong mixing conditions

The main purpose of this paper is to estimate the regression function by using a recursive nonparametric kernel approach. We derive the asymptotic normality for a general class of recursive kernel estimate of the regression function, under strong mixing conditions. Our purpose is to extend the work of Roussas and Tran (Ann Stat 20:98–120, 1992) concerning the Devroye–Wagner estimate.