The lead tetraacetate oxidation of bisacylhydrazones of α-diketones: A scope re-assesment

Oxidation of the title compounds yields, besides the reported isoimides 3 and/or the amides 4 , also the imides 5 . The observed product dichotomy is considered as the result of an intramolecular nucleophilic attack on the aroyl group, of the pressumed zwitterionic intermediate 2 , by O or N present in the ambident N-aroylimine site of 2 . The results of AM1 calculations agree with the product studies and both permit the formulation of a set of rules correlating structure and selectivity.     

Surface grating formation and erasing on a-Se films

Surface relief formation at holographic recording on amorphous selenium films was demonstrated and investigated. The presence of this optical phase modulation component is essential for ensuring significant, stable and erasable optical recording in a-Se films at 290–320 K temperatures, where conventional photodarkening was known as insignificant and unstable. Photocrystallization can only be observed in super-exposed a-Se films at the given experimental conditions of hologram recording. Erasing behavior of surface relief gratings under heat treatment was also investigated in order to reveal further details of the mechanism. Photoinduced structural transformations within the amorphous phase, connected to local ordering under the condition of light-induced fluidity, are proposed as an explanation for the relief formation and erasing. The observed reversible optical recording process may be useful for the various optoelectronic applications of photoconductive a-Se layers. Received: 12 June 2000 / Accepted: 6 June 2001 / Published online: 30 August 2001     

A New Distribution Function for Risk Analysis

This paper presents an alternative to the beta continuous probability distribution for risk analysis. Particular attention has been given to two major applications of distributions, namely project management risk and critical path analysis (PERT). In conjunction with the beta, the triangular and normal distributions are frequently employed in order to give sufficient robustness to risk analysis. The beta distribution, as used in PERT, has a major theoretical implementation flaw. The new distribution was developed to give a possible alternative method of assessing risk. It is shown that the requirement to estimate the most pessimistic variate may be replaced by the probability to exceed the mode. Proposals for other simplifications in risk analysis are discussed. Practical means to validate the most appropriate distributions for risk analysis are outlined, and a cost-data case study is included.     

Existence and Stability for Spherical Crystals Growing in a Supersaturated Solution

We consider the growth of a spherical crystal in a supersaturatedsolution. In the first part, existence and uniqueness resultsfor radially symmetric growth are obtained, provided that thesupersaturation is not too large; conversely, when the far-fieldsupersaturation exceeds a critical value, it is shown that theradially symmetric solution ceases to exist in finite time.In the second part, we examine the linear stability of a radiallysymmetric similarity solution (in which the radius grows ast?) to shape perturbations. The results are compared with previousquasi-static analyses, and, in particular, the critical radiusat which the crystal becomes unstable is found to be largerfor small supersaturations, but smaller for large supersaturations,than those predicted by the quasi-static analysis     

Onset of crater formation during short pulse laser ablation

We report morphologic changes of metallic surfaces at the onset of ablation, starting from gentle ablation to the emergence of ablation craters. The evolution of both observed melting zones and of ablation craters therein are investigated in dependence of the ablation laser fluence for nanosecond ultraviolet laser pulses. Further, consequences of crater formation for cluster synthesis within the released atomic vapor are pointed out. PACS 52.38.Mf; 79.20.Ds; 65.40.De