Differential Scanning Calorimetry of Native Silk Feedstock

Native silk proteins, extracted directly from the silk gland prior to spinning, offer access to a naturally hydrated protein that has undergone little to no processing. Combined with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), it is possible to probe the thermal stability and hydration status of silk and thus investigate its denaturation and solidification, echoing that of the natural spinning process. It is found that native silk is stable between ?10 °C and 55 °C, and both the high‐temperature enthalpy of denaturation (measured via modulated temperature DSC) and a newly reported low‐temperature ice‐melting transition may serve as useful quality indicators in the future for artificial silks. Finally, compared to albumin, silk's denaturation enthalpy is much lower than expected, which is interpreted within a recently proposed entropic desolvation framework which can serve to unveil the low‐energy aquamelt processing pathway.     

Simulation of High-Speed Ball Bearings with MSC/ADAMS

High-speed-rotors can be supported by angular ball bearings. Therefore, the nonlinear, time-variant bearing reaction forces are modeled for high revolution rates in this approach. Assuming local deformations, bearing stiffness is modeled with Hertzian contact between balls and races. Centrifugal forces on balls and rings are considered. Under consideration of clearance ratio the contact angle changes due to bearing load, rotational frequency and tilting angle of the inner ring. Since the contact angle determines the direction of reaction force and moment, it is possible to analyze the non-planar inner ring movement. To be able to attach further machinery parts easily to the bearing model, this approach has been done with the multi-body simulation software package MSC/ADAMS. (© 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Fracture in precursor-derived Si–C–N ceramics – Analysis of crack roughness and damage mechanisms

Roughness analysis of fracture in precursor-derived amorphous and phase segregated Si–C–N ceramics using fractal methods is reported, towards examining the possible correlations between fractal scaling of roughness and fracture properties as well as fracture damage mechanisms. Topography of the fracture surfaces created at a crack velocity of ～10^?4 m/s was recorded using atomic force microscopy, and analyzed using RMS roughness and second order height–height correlation functions. The evolution of roughness was well correlated with the evolution of structural and compositional inhomogeneities in the amorphous materials, and the formation of second phases in the phase segregated materials. All the investigated fracture surfaces displayed self-affine scaling with a correlation length of ～50–100 nm and a roughness exponent of 0.8 ± 0.1, commensurate with the universal exponent conjectured by Bouchaud et al. corresponding to dynamic damage regime. No correlation was observed between the roughness exponents and the fracture toughness of the corresponding materials. Examination of the crack opening near the tip region revealed no persistent damage cavities assignable to ‘plastic deformation’ preceding fracture, suggesting that the fracture in the Si–C–N ceramics proceeds in a brittle manner at the employed crack velocities.     

Phoneme representation and classification in primary auditory cortex

A controversial issue in neurolinguistics is whether basic neural auditory representations found in many animals can account for human perception of speech. This question was addressed by examining how a population of neurons in the primary auditory cortex (A1) of the naive awake ferret encodes phonemes and whether this representation could account for the human ability to discriminate them. When neural responses were characterized and ordered by spectral tuning and dynamics, perceptually significant features including formant patterns in vowels and place and manner of articulation in consonants, were readily visualized by activity in distinct neural subpopulations. Furthermore, these responses faithfully encoded the similarity between the acoustic features of these phonemes. A simple classifier trained on the neural representation was able to simulate human phoneme confusion when tested with novel exemplars. These results suggest that A1 responses are sufficiently rich to encode and discriminate phoneme classes and that humans and animals may build upon the same general acoustic representations to learn boundaries for categorical and robust sound classification.     

Modification of the omega-meson lifetime in nuclear matter

Information on hadron properties in the nuclear medium has been derived from the photoproduction of omega mesons on the nuclei C, Ca, Nb, and Pb using the Crystal Barrel/TAPS detector at the ELSA tagged photon facility in Bonn. The dependence of the omega-meson cross section on the nuclear mass number has been compared with three different types of models: a Glauber analysis, a Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck analysis of the Giessen theory group, and a calculation by the Valencia theory group. In all three cases, the inelastic omega width is found to be 130-150 MeV/c(2) at normal nuclear matter density for an average 3-momentum of 1.1 GeV/c. In the rest frame of the omega meson, this inelastic omega width corresponds to a reduction of the omega lifetime by a factor approximately 30. For the first time, the momentum dependent omegaN cross section has been extracted from the experiment and is in the range of 70 mb.     

Chiral [1]Rotaxanes: X‐Ray Structures and Chiroptical Properties

New chiral [1]rotaxanes with aromatic bridges were prepared in yields up to 72% starting from a [2]rotaxane with sulfonamide groups in wheel and axle. The X‐ray structures of the parent [2]rotaxane 1 and of the three [1]rotaxanes 3e , g , h were solved which show networks of H‐bonds between wheel and axle. The separation of the racemic mixtures of four of the [1]rotaxanes, i.e., of 3a , b , d , e , was possible with HPLC on Chiralcel OD. The aromatic chromophores in the bridges lead to a considerable enhancement of the intensities of the molar CD as compared to the analogues with aliphatic bridges. In one case ( 3d ), the Cotton effects are as strong as those usually found in helicenes.     

Determination of sulfoxide bond dissociation enthalpies of dibenzothiophene S‐oxide derivatives with computational methods

Photodeoxygenation of dibenzothiophene S‐oxide (DBTO) has been suggested as a clean way to generate atomic oxygen in solution. Sulfoxide bond dissociation enthalpies (BDEs) are important to the quantum yield and mechanism of this photodeoxygenation. In this study, BDE of substituted DBTO molecules with various functional groups were determined using M062X/aug‐cc‐pV(T + d)Z and MP2/aug‐cc‐pV(T + d)Z levels of theory. The sulfoxide BDE was determined using an isodesmic reaction. The observed effect of substitution was that functional groups with negative σ_para values (electron donating) strengthen the sulfoxide bond and that substituents with positive σ_para values (electron withdrawing) weaken the sulfoxide bond. The Mulliken charge on sulfur for DBTO and the corresponding dibenzothiophene were identified as a suitable indicator of the predicted S–O BDE. Moreover, steric and hydrogen bonding interactions were found to affect sulfoxide BDE for certain functional groups when located at the 1 or 4 positions of the substituted DBTO. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.