Olefin metathesis: remote substituents governing the stereoselectivity of 11-membered-ring formation

[reaction: see text] Stereospecific RCM reaction of 7 (R1 = Me) results in the formation of (Z)-11-membered macrocycle 9c. Cascade RCM/ROM/RCM transformation of 7 (R1 = H) affords the thermodynamically more stable spirocycle product 12.     

A refined theorem concerning the conditioning of semidefinite programs

Using a weaker version of the Newton-Kantorovich theorem [6] given by us in [3], we show how to refine the results given in [8] dealing with the analyzing of the effect of small perturbations in problem data on the solution. The new results are obtained under weaker hypotheses and the same computational cost as in [8].     

An improved unifying convergence analysis of Newton’s method in Riemannian manifolds

Using more precise majorizing sequences we provide a finer convergence analysis than before [1], [7] of Newton’s method in Riemannian manifolds with the following advantages: weaker hypotheses, finer error bounds on the distances involved and a more precise information on the location of the singularity of the vector field.     

Self-Supervised Variational Auto-Encoders

Density estimation, compression, and data generation are crucial tasks in artificial intelligence. Variational Auto-Encoders (VAEs) constitute a single framework to achieve these goals. Here, we present a novel class of generative models, called self-supervised Variational Auto-Encoder (selfVAE), which utilizes deterministic and discrete transformations of data. This class of models allows both conditional and unconditional sampling while simplifying the objective function. First, we use a single self-supervised transformation as a latent variable, where the transformation is either downscaling or edge detection. Next, we consider a hierarchical architecture, i.e., multiple transformations, and we show its benefits compared to the VAE. The flexibility of selfVAE in data reconstruction finds a particularly interesting use case in data compression tasks, where we can trade-off memory for better data quality and vice-versa. We present the performance of our approach on three benchmark image data (Cifar10, Imagenette64, and CelebA).     

Optimization, bandwidth and the effect of loss on the characteristics of the coupled ring reflector

Reflection and group delay characteristics of the coupled ring reflector (CRR), consisting of two identical microrings coupled to each other and to a bus waveguide providing feedback, is analytically and numerically investigated under loss-free and lossy conditions and subject to arbitrary (asymmetric) positioning of the couplers. Allowing for a variable coupling strength, the spectral locations where the extreme values of the reflectivity occur as well as its bandwidth are determined and their sensitivity to loss evaluated. Critical coupling conditions that determine the shape and the turning points of the reflectance spectrum, and their sensitivity to loss are obtained. Attention is paid to the bandwidth maximization satisfying a prescribed ripple tolerance within the passband. Group delay in the presence of loss and circuit parameter variations is also treated.     

A comparative study of chaotic and white noise signals in digital watermarking

Digital watermarking is an ever increasing and important discipline, especially in the modern electronically-driven world. Watermarking aims to embed a piece of information into digital documents which their owner can use to prove that the document is theirs, at a later stage. In this paper, performance analysis of watermarking schemes is performed on white noise sequences and chaotic sequences for the purpose of watermark generation. Pseudorandom sequences are compared with chaotic sequences generated from the chaotic skew tent map. In particular, analysis is performed on highpass signals generated from both these watermark generation schemes, along with analysis on lowpass watermarks and white noise watermarks. This analysis focuses on the watermarked images after they have been subjected to common image distortion attacks. It is shown that signals generated from highpass chaotic signals have superior performance than highpass noise signals, in the presence of such attacks. It is also shown that watermarks generated from lowpass chaotic signals have superior performance over the other signal types analysed.     

A new easily accessible chiral phosphite-phosphoramidite ligand based on 2-anilinoethanol and R-BINOL moieties for Rh-catalyzed asymmetric olefin hydrogenation

A novel chiral phosphite-phosphoramidite ligand based on 2-anilinoethanol and R-BINOL moieties has been synthesized in one-pot. The ligand was evaluated in the rhodium-catalyzed enantioselective hydrogenation of α- and β-dehydroamino acid derivatives and dimethyl itaconate in three different solvents at 25 °C, at 1 or 50 bar of hydrogen pressure. The solvent and the pressure effect are discussed.