Share the gain, share the pain? Almost transferable utility, changes in production possibilities, and bargaining solutions

We consider an n-person economy in which efficiency is independent of distribution but the cardinal properties of the agents’ utility functions may preclude transferable utility (a property we call “Almost TU”). Holding the disagreement point fixed, we show that Almost TU is a necessary and sufficient condition for all agents to either benefit jointly or suffer jointly with any change in production possibilities under well-behaved generalized utilitarian bargaining solutions (of which the Nash bargaining and the utilitarian solutions are special cases). We apply the result to policy analysis and to incentive compatibility.     

A Bichromatic Incidence Bound and an Application

We prove a new, tight upper bound on the number of incidences between points and hyperplanes in Euclidean d-space. Given n points, of which k are colored red, there are O _d (m ^2/3 k ^2/3 n ^(d−2)/3+kn ^d−2+m) incidences between the k red points and m hyperplanes spanned by all n points provided that m=Ω(n ^d−2). For the monochromatic case k=n, this was proved by Agarwal and Aronov (Discrete Comput. Geom. 7(4):359–369, 1992).     

Firm behavior under illiquidity risk

We develop a model of firm behavior in the presence of risk, resource constraints, and a cash flow constraint. Given imperfect capital markets, the producer confronts an uncertain cash flow. Utilizing chance constrained programming, we show that an increase in aversion to liquidity risk can cause an increased allocation to high-risk production alternatives. With a binding cash flow constraint, risk-averse firms appear to demonstrate risk-seeking behavior over losses and risk-averse behavior over gains.     

Concise two-step solution phase syntheses of four novel dihydroquinazoline scaffolds

Novel two-step solution phase protocols for the synthesis of dihydroquinazolines and fused dihydroquinazoline-benzodiazepine tetracycles are reported. The methodology employs the Ugi reaction to assemble the desired diversity and acid treatment enables ring-closing transformations. The protocols are further facilitated by the use of microwave irradiation and n-butyl isocyanide to control the rate of each ring-forming transformation.     

Analysis of the dispersity in carbohydrate loading of synthetic glycoproteins using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry

Statistical correlation of mass spectrum peak broadening with product dispersity in protein conjugation reactions allows more detailed characterization of putative therapeutic conjugates.     

Cellular Evaluation of Synthesized Insulin/Transferrin Bioconjugates for Oral Insulin Delivery Using Intelligent Complexation Hydrogels

Insulin transport across the epithelial cell layer in the small intestine was studied using insulin/transferrin conjugates with and without the presence of P(MAA‐g‐EG) microparticles in contact with a co‐culture of Caco‐2/HT29‐MTX cells. The insulin/transferrin conjugate was shown to increase transport relative to pure insulin by a factor of 7, achieving an apparent permeability of 37 × 10⁹ cm · s^?1. The presence of P(MAA‐g‐EG) microparticles increased conjugate transport by a factor of 14 times relative to insulin, achieving an apparent permeability of 72.8 × 10⁹ cm · s^?1. The presence of the microparticles in solution was found to improve conjugate transport by nearly 100% with little to no change in cell monolayer integrity.

     

Photo-pens: a simple and versatile tool for maskless photolithography

We demonstrate conical pores etched in tracked glass chips for fabricating patterns at the micrometer scale. Highly fluorescent patterns based on photopolymerization of diacetylene films were formed by irradiating UV light through conical pores called "photo-pens". The properties of photopens were investigated through experiments, finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) simulations and numerical calculations based on Fresnel equations. We show that the pattern dimensions are easily controlled by adjusting the exposure time. Thus, patterns with a range of dimensions can be fabricated without any need of changes in the pore diameter. Parallel patterning was also demonstrated by simultaneously exposing the films to photons through multiple pores in the chip. Our method provides an inexpensive, versatile, and efficient way for patterning without the use of sophisticated masks.     

A Facile Circular Dichroism Protocol for Rapid Determination of Enantiomeric Excess and Concentration of Chiral Primary Amines

A protocol for the rapid determination of the absolute configuration and enantiomeric excess (ee) of α‐chiral primary amines with potential applications in asymmetric reaction discovery has been developed. The protocol requires derivatization of α‐chiral primary amines through condensation with pyridine carboxaldehyde to quantitatively yield the corresponding imine. The Cu^I complex with 2,2′‐bis (diphenylphosphino)‐1,1′‐dinaphthyl (BINAP? Cu^I) with the imine yields a metal‐to‐ligand charge‐transfer (MLCT) band in the visible region of the circular dichroism (CD) spectrum upon binding. Diastereomeric host–guest complexes give CD signals of the same signs but different amplitudes, allowing for differentiation of enantiomers. Processing the primary optical data from the CD spectrum with linear discriminant analysis (LDA) allows for the determination of the absolute configuration and identification of the amines, and processing with a supervised multilayer perceptron artificial neural network (MLP‐ANN) allows for the simultaneous determination of the ee and concentration. The primary optical data necessary to determine the ee of unknown samples is obtained in two minutes per sample. To demonstrate the utility of the protocol in asymmetric reaction discovery, the ee values and concentrations for an asymmetric metal‐catalyzed reaction are determined. The potential of the application of this protocol in high‐throughput screening (HTS) of ee is discussed.     

Electrochemical oxidation of cyclooctatetraene in the presence of allyltrimethylsilane. Anodic trialkylation with bicyclization

Anodic oxidation of cyclooctatetraene (COT) was carried out in acetonitrile containing excess allyltrimethylsilane. Under these conditions COT is oxidized preferentially to afford the COT cation radical, which then undergoes nucleophilic attack by the silane followed by further anodic oxidation. The process results in a substance in which the original eight carbons of COT are highly differentiated by the addition of three allyl groups and the formation of two new rings.