Switching liquid morphologies on linear grooves

The morphology of liquids confined to linear micrometer-sized grooves of triangular and rectangular cross section is studied for different substrate wettabilities. Depending on the wettability and exact geometry, either droplike morphologies or elongated liquid filaments represent the generic equilibrium structures on the substrate. Upon changing the apparent contact angle of aqueous drops by electrowetting, we are able to trigger the transition between elongated filaments and droplets. In the case of rectangular grooves, this transition allows us to advance liquid reversibly into the grooves while crossing a certain threshold contact angle. In triangular grooves, however, these elongated filaments undergo a dynamic instability when the contact angle returns to a value above the filling threshold. The different filling and drainage behavior is explained by specific aspects of the triangular and rectangular groove geometry.     

Wormlike micelles from a cage amine metallosurfactant

We have shown that copper and cobalt metallosurfactants derived from Cu(II) and Co(III) complexes of a macrobicyclic hexamine ("cage") can form wormlike micelles in aqueous solution that may coexist with or easily interconvert with vesicle structures. The cylindrical micelle structures are unusual for triple-chain surfactants with a single headgroup and are not easily accounted for using geometrical packing arguments. The solution behavior has been characterized by cryo-TEM and SAXS measurements. Both the Cu and Co compounds display viscoelastic solutions at 1 wt %, indicating that such behavior may be anticipated for the full variety of stable metal complexes formed by the cage headgroup, auguring applications based on the incorporation of metallo aggregates into mesoporous silica structures.     

Structural characterization of shielded isomeric europium complexes with metal-metal contact

New luminescent isomeric europium(III) complexes with carboxylic carbonyl group coordination (I and II) have been prepared by solvothermal synthesis using the ligand 2,2'-bipyridine-4,4'-dicarboxylic acid (bpdc), with the nonradiatively shielded Eu3+ coordination sphere completed by dimethyl sulfoxide ligands. The room temperature IR spectra and Eu3+ luminescence spectra do not provide a definitive distinction between I and II, but low-temperature luminescence can give a clear identification.     

Mobility of electrons in supercritical krypton: role of density fluctuations

Excess electrons were generated in supercritical krypton by means of pulsed x-ray irradiation, and the electron transport phenomena were studied. Electron signals immediately after a 30 ps pulse showed a distinctive feature characteristic of the presence of the Ramsauer-Townsend minimum in the momentum transfer cross section. The dependence of the drift velocity v(D) on field strength was found to be concave upward in the low field region and then to go through a maximum with increasing field strength, which is also typical of the presence of a minimum in the scattering cross section at an intermediate field strength. A minimum in the electron mobility was observed at about one-half the critical density. The acoustical phonon scattering model, which successfully explained the mobility change in this density region in supercritical xenon, was again found to account for the mobility in supercritical krypton.     

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis of regioisomeric ring substituted methoxy methyl phenylacetones

The methoxy methyl phenylacetones share an isobaric relationship (equivalent mass but different elemental composition) to the controlled precursor substance 3,4-methylenedioxyphenylacetone. The 10 methoxy methyl phenylacetones as well as the methylenedioxyphenylacetones show essentially equivalent mass spectra with major fragment ions at m/z 135 and 43. Those methoxy methyl phenylacetones with the methoxy group substituted ortho to the benzylic cation in the m/z 135 ion show a further fragmentation to lose formaldehyde (CH2O) and yield a significant ion at m/z 105. The loss of formaldehyde from the ortho methoxy benzyl cation was confirmed using commercially available regioisomeric 2-, 3-, and 4-methoxyphenylacetones. The 10 regioisomeric methoxy methyl phenylacetones were prepared from the appropriately substituted benzaldehydes. Complete gas chromatographic resolution of all ten regioisomeric ketones was obtained on a stationary phase containing modified beta-cyclodextrin. Using the cyclodextrin containing phase, the ortho methoxy-substituted ketones (K1-K4) eluted before the meta-methoxy-substituted ketones (K5-K8) and the para-methoxy-substituted ketones (K9-K10) showed the greatest affinity for the stationary liquid phase and eluted last. Complete separation of the 10 ketones was not obtained on Rtx-1 and Rtx-200 columns.     

A computational investigation of the geometrical structure and protodeboronation of boroglycine, H2N-CH2-B(OH)2

In this article the geometrical structure of the simple, achiral, alpha-amino boronic acid boroglycine, H2N-CH2-B(OH)2, was investigated using density functional theory (DFT), second-order M?ller-Plesset (MP2) perturbation theory, and coupled cluster methodology with single- and double-excitations (CCSD); the effects of an aqueous environment were incorporated into the results by using a few explicit water molecules and/or self-consistent reaction field (SCRF) calculations with the IEF polarizable continuum model (PCM). Neutral reaction mechanisms were investigated for the direct protodeboronation (hydrolysis) of boroglycine (H2O+H2N-CH2-B(OH)2-->B(OH)3+H2N-CH3), for which DeltaH degrees 298 was -21.9 kcal/mol at the MP2(FC)/aug-cc-pVDZ level, and for the 1,2-carbon-to-nitrogen shift of the -B(OH)2 moiety (H2N-CH2-B(OH)2-->H3C-NH-B(OH)2), for which the corresponding value of DeltaH degrees 298 was -18.2 kcal/mol. A boron-oxygen double-bonded intermediate was found to play an important role in the 1,2-rearrangement mechanism.     

Solving the clique partitioning problem as a maximally diverse grouping problem

In this paper we show that the clique partitioning problem can be reformulated in an equivalent form as the maximally diverse grouping problem (MDGP). We then modify a skewed general variable neighborhood search (SGVNS) heuristic that was first developed to solve the MDGP. Similarly as with the MDGP, significant improvements over the state of the art are obtained when SGVNS is tested on large scale instances. This further confirms the usefulness of a combined approach of diversification afforded with skewed VNS and intensification afforded with the local search in general VNS.