A facile method for the preparation of α-methylene-γ-butyrolactones from tulip tissues by enzyme-mediated conversion

We developed a facile method of enzyme-mediated conversion of 6-tuliposide to α-methylene-γ-butyrolactone (tulipalin). We used a tuliposide-converting enzyme for the conversion of 6-tuliposides extracted from tulip tissues into the corresponding tulipalins in high yields within 2 h at pH 7.0. The resulting tulipalins were selectively extracted by using several organic solvents.     

Generation of high-contrast and high-intensity laser pulses using an OPCPA preamplifier in a double CPA, Ti:sapphire laser system

We demonstrate a high-contrast, high-intensity double chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) Ti:sapphire laser system using an optical parametric chirped-pulse (OPCPA) pre- amplifier. By injecting cleaned microjoule seed pulses into the OPCPA, a temporal contrast greater than 10¹⁰ within picosecond times before the main femtosecond pulse is demonstrated with an output pulse energy of 1.7 J and a pulse duration of 30 fs, corresponding to a peak power of 60 TW at a 10 Hz repetition rate. This system uses a cryogenically-cooled Ti:sapphire final amplifier and generates focused peak intensities in excess of 10²⁰ W/cm².     

A new hydrophobic linker effective for the in situ synthesis of DNA-CPG conjugates as tools for SNP analysis

DNA chips consisting of DNA oligonucleotide probes immobilized on the surface of solid supports are very powerful tools for rapid analysis of multiple samples. In this Letter we describe a new method for the efficient synthesis of DNA probes without their serious elimination by use of a new hydrophobic 16-hyroxydecanoic linker and a new non-aqueous reagent of MeNH₂/THF for the deprotection of the base and phosphate protecting groups on CPG resins. The elimination of DNA probes in this new method could be suppressed more than 20-fold compared with the previous method using a hexaethylene glycol linker and concd NH₄OH. Moreover, we carried out SNPs detection by use of our DNA-CPG conjugate to show the utility of our new linker and deprotection conditions.     

On the maximum cocliques of the rank 3 graph of 211 : M24

In this article, we consider the maximum cocliques of the 2¹¹: M₂₄ ‐graph Λ. We show that the maximum cocliques of size 24 of Λ can be obtained from two Hadamard matrices of size 24, and that there are exactly two maximum cocliques up to equivalence. We verify that the two nonisomorphic designs with parameters 5‐(24,9,6) can be constructed from the maximum cocliques of Λ, and that these designs are isomorphic to the support designs of minimum weights of the ternary extended quadratic residue and Pless symmetry [24,12,9] codes. Further, we give a new construction of Λ from these 5‐(24,9,6) designs. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 17: 323–332, 2009