Antileukemic α-pyrone derivatives from the endophytic fungus Alternaria phragmospora

Four new (1–4) and two known (5 and 6) α-pyrone derivatives have been isolated from Alternaria phragmospora, an endophytic fungus from Vinca rosea, leaves. The isolated compounds were chemically identified to be 5-butyl-4-methoxy-6-methyl-2H-pyran-2-one (1), 5-butyl-6-(hydroxymethyl)-4-methoxy-2H-pyran-2-one (2), 5-(1-hydroxybutyl)-4-methoxy-6-methyl-2H-pyran-2-one (3), 4-methoxy-6-methyl-5-(3-oxobutyl)-2H-pyran-2-one (4), 5-(2-hydroxyethyl)-4-methoxy-6-methyl-2H-pyran-2-one (5), and 5-[(2E)-but-2-en-1-yl]-4-methoxy-6-methyl-2H-pyran-2-one (6). Compounds 2 and 4 showed moderate antileukemic activities against HL60 cells with IC₅₀ values of 2.2 and 0.9 μM and against K562 cells with IC₅₀ values of 4.5 and 1.5 μM, respectively.     

The use of OPW's in the Lindgren approximation of conduction-core exchange and the lattice dynamical properties of rubidium

This paper reports a first principles nonlocal pseudopotential calculation for the lattice dynamical properties of rubidium metal. In these calculations, an orthogonalized plane wave (OPW) has been used for the first time to represent the conduction state in the Lindgren approximation of conduction-core exchange. A comparison is made of phonon spectra and elastic shear constants using both plane wave (PW) and OPW conduction states. It is found that the OPW results are in excellent agreement with experiment and consistently better than the PW results for both phonon spectra and elastic constant. Similar results are found for other simple alkali metals.     

Reply to comment on “variational formulation for the equilibrium condition of a conducting fluid in an electric field”

In this comment we respond to the several criticisms of the paper by Sujatha et al. raised by Kingham and Bell. In particular, we demonstrate that, contrary to their assertion, Taylor's solution for the electrostatic fields can never satisfy the boundary conditions for the actual experimental configurations involving field emission liquid metal ion sources and other experiments on electrostatically stressed conducting fluids. It is further argued that a careful analysis of Taylor's experimental procedure and observations suggests that although the observed static structures have a macroscopic axial-symmetry they have not the idealized conical shapes of prescribed angle. Furthermore, the formation of the Taylor cone structure is shown to be inconsistent with the principle of energy minimization.It is concluded that none of the criticism raised by Kingham and Bell invalidate any of the analysis or conclusions presented in the paper by Sujatha et al.This work has been supported in part by the Division of Materials Research, National Science Foundation, Grant No. DMR-81008829     

Unfolding of phonetic information over time: a database of Dutch diphone perception

We present the results of a large-scale study on speech perception, assessing the number and type of perceptual hypotheses which listeners entertain about possible phoneme sequences in their language. Dutch listeners were asked to identify gated fragments of all 1179 diphones of Dutch, providing a total of 488,520 phoneme categorizations. The results manifest orderly uptake of acoustic information in the signal. Differences across phonemes in the rate at which fully correct recognition was achieved arose as a result of whether or not potential confusions could occur with other phonemes of the language (long with short vowels, affricates with their initial components, etc.). These data can be used to improve models of how acoustic-phonetic information is mapped onto the mental lexicon during speech comprehension.     

Champion data comparison in nuclear research institutes in Europe,the U. S., and Japan

Bibliometric analysis was carried out for champion data comparisons among prestigious nuclear research institutes (PNRI) existed in Japan, the U. S., France, and Germany. The analysis was relied on database INIS (IAEA), ECD (DOE), WOS (Thomson), and SCOPUS (Elsevier). INIS is advanced, key ex-post evaluating tool for determining general research paper-based champion. Over the 30-year time span of research paper publication, the world champion among 11 PNRI is JAERI confirmed by INIS but ORNL confirmed by ECD, WOS, and SCOPUS, the latter two collected journal submitted research paper. Five years ago JAERI is the 3rd ranked institutes following ORNL and ANL. INIS database results revealed that CEA/Grenoble is the French domestic champion regarding research paper publication. Five years ago it was CEA/Saclay. Results from analytical tools used in bibliometric studies should be viewed with careful consideration to learn of any influencing factors because different characteristics exhibited by individual databases can sometimes generate conflicting bibliometric results. This was true among INIS, ECD, WOS, and SCOPUS when looking at trends especially between 5-year periods.     

Doppler effects due to thermal macromotion of ions in an rf quadrupole trap

The second-order Doppler shift is an important source of systematic error in rf quadrupole trapped ion frequency standards. This shift can be reduced by cooling the secular motion of the ion cloud with a light background gas at low pressure. Using a thermalized ion cloud model, it is possible to relate the Doppler shift to the temperature of the ion cloud. It is shown that, in practice, the measured frequency of the first-order Doppler sidebands can be used to determine the ion cloud temperature.     

Untersuchung von Mehl- und Backwaren

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Perception of intrusive /r/ in English by native, cross-language and cross-dialect listeners

In sequences such as law and order, speakers of British English often insert /r/ between law and and. Acoustic analyses revealed such "intrusive" /r/ to be significantly shorter than canonical /r/. In a 2AFC experiment, native listeners heard British English sentences in which /r/ duration was manipulated across a word boundary [e.g., saw (r)ice], and orthographic and semantic factors were varied. These listeners responded categorically on the basis of acoustic evidence for /r/ alone, reporting ice after short /r/s, rice after long /r/s; orthographic and semantic factors had no effect. Dutch listeners proficient in English who heard the same materials relied less on durational cues than the native listeners, and were affected by both orthography and semantic bias. American English listeners produced intermediate responses to the same materials, being sensitive to duration (less so than native, more so than Dutch listeners), and to orthography (less so than the Dutch), but insensitive to the semantic manipulation. Listeners from language communities without common use of intrusive /r/ may thus interpret intrusive /r/ as canonical /r/, with a language difference increasing this propensity more than a dialect difference. Native listeners, however, efficiently distinguish intrusive from canonical /r/ by exploiting the relevant acoustic variation.     

Sortin1-hypersensitive mutants link vacuolar-trafficking defects and flavonoid metabolism in Arabidopsis vegetative tissues

Sortin1 is a chemical genetic-hit molecule that causes specific mislocalization of plant and yeast-soluble and membrane vacuolar markers. To better understand its mode of action, we designed a Sortin1-hypersensitive screen and identified several Sortin1-hypersensitive and flavonoid-defective mutants. Mechanistically, Sortin1 mimics the effect of the glutathione inhibitor buthionine sulfoximine and alters the vacuolar accumulation of flavonoids, likely blocking their transport through vacuole-localized ABC transporters. Structure-activity relationship studies conducted in Arabidopsis revealed the structural requirements for Sortin1 bioactivity and demonstrated that overlapping Sortin1 substructures can be used to discriminate between vacuolar-flavonoid accumulations and vacuolar-biogenesis defects. We conclude that Sortin1 is a valuable probe for dissecting novel links among flavonoid transport, vacuolar integrity, and the trafficking of vacuolar targeted cargoes in Arabidopsis.