Flavor constraints on scenarios with two or three heavy squark generations

We present the NLO SUSY-QCD corrections to the production of a pair of the lightest neutralinos plus one jet at the LHC, appearing as a monojet signature in combination with missing energy. We fully include all non-resonant diagrams, i.e. we do not assume that production and decay factorise. We derive a parameter point based on the p19MSSM which is compatible with current experimental bounds and show distributions based on missing transverse energy and jet observables. Our results are produced with the program GoSam Cullen et al. (Eur. Phys. J. C 72:1889, 2012) for automated one-loop calculations in combination with MadDipole/MadGraph for the real radiation part.     

3D-Printed Phenacrylate Decarboxylase Flow Reactors for the Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of 4-Hydroxystilbene

Continuous flow systems for chemical synthesis are becoming a major focus in organic chemistry and there is a growing interest in the integration of biocatalysts due to their high regio- and stereoselectivity. Methods established for 3D bioprinting enable the fast and simple production of agarose-based modules for biocatalytic reactors if thermally stable enzymes are available. We report here on the characterization of four different cofactor-free phenacrylate decarboxylase enzymes suitable for the production of 4-vinylphenol and test their applicability for the encapsulation and direct 3D printing of disk-shaped agarose-based modules that can be used for compartmentalized flow microreactors. Using the most active and stable phenacrylate decarboxylase from Enterobacter spec. in a setup with four parallel reactors and a subsequent palladium(II) acetate-catalysed Heck reaction, 4-hydroxystilbene was synthesized from p-coumaric acid with a total yield of 14.7 % on a milligram scale. We believe that, due to the convenient direct immobilization of any thermostable enzyme and straightforward tuning of the reaction sequence by stacking of modules with different catalytic activities, this simple process will facilitate the establishment and use of cascade reactions and will therefore be of great advantage for many research approaches.     

Crystalline‐Sponge‐Based Structural Analysis of Crude Natural Product Extracts

Characterization of complex natural product mixtures to the absolute structural level of their components often requires significant amounts of starting materials and lengthy purification process, followed by arduous structure elucidation efforts. The crystalline sponge (CS) method has demonstrated utility in the absolute structure elucidation of isolated organic compounds at miniscule quantities compared to conventional methods. In this work, we developed a new CS‐based workflow that greatly expedites the in‐depth structural analysis of crude natural product extracts. Using a crude extract of the red alga Laurencia pacifica, we showed that CS affinity screening prior to compound isolation enables prioritization of analytes present in the extract, and we subsequently resolved the molecular structures of six sesquiterpenes with stereochemical clarity from around 10 mg crude extract. This study demonstrates a new chemotyping workflow that can greatly accelerate natural product discovery from complex samples.     

Novel strategies for the synthesis of anthrapyran antibiotics: discovery of a new antitumor agent and total synthesis of (S)-espicufolin

Two high-yielding strategies for the synthesis of 4H-anthra[1,2-b]pyran antibiotics have been developed giving access to novel antitumor agent (ED(50) 1.5 microm) and to (S)-espicufolin (3). A key step for the assembly of the tetracyclic 4H-anthra[1,2-b]pyran-4,7,12-trione skeleton is the nucleophilic addition of an aryl lithium species onto an aldehyde which allows the introduction of either an ynone or 1,3-diketo side chain, serving as precursors for an acid-catalysed cyclisation.     

The Norbornene Shuttle: Multicomponent Domino Synthesis of Tetrasubstituted Helical Alkenes through Multiple C?H Functionalization

Shall we dance? Within the proposed mechanism for the palladium‐catalyzed title reaction, the strained alkene norbornene (or norbornadiene) enters and exits the catalytic cycle in a catalytic “square dance”, acting as both a promoter and a coupling partner in the formation of four carbon–carbon bonds, two of them by challenging C? H activation processes.

     

Flavour issues for string-motivated heavy scalar spectra with a low gluino mass: the G 2-MSSM case

In recent years it has been learned that scalar superpartner masses and trilinear couplings should both generically be larger than about 20?TeV at the short-distance string scale if our world is described by a compactified string or M-theory with supersymmetry breaking and stabilized moduli (Acharya et?al. in arXiv:1006.3272 [hep-ph], 2010). Here we study implications of this, somewhat generally and also in detail for a particular realization (compactification of M-theory on a G ₂ manifold) where there is significant knowledge of the superpotential and gauge kinetic function, and a light gluino. In a certain sense this yields an ultraviolet completion of minimal flavour violation. Flavour violation stems from off-diagonal and non-universal diagonal elements of scalar mass matrices and trilinear couplings, and from renormalization group running. We also examine stability bounds on the scalar potential. While heavy scalars alone do not guarantee the absence of flavour problems, our studies show that models with heavy scalars and light gluinos can be free from such problems.     

Speciation and oxidation kinetics of arsenic in the thermal springs of Wiesbaden spa, Germany

Since 1886 arsenic has been known to be present as a trace component in the Wiesbaden thermal waters at concentrations of over 100 microg L(-1). In this study for the first time molecular level speciation of arsenic was measured both in the water (by HG-AAS) and in wellstone scale deposits (by XANES). Most of the arsenic in the anoxic NaCl-type waters is in the reduced arsenite form. Hydrous ferric oxide (HFO) precipitates in the scale deposits scavenge only the minor dissolved arsenate portion which is, however, accumulated up to 3% w/w. Isothermal precipitation experiments at in-situ temperatures showed a difference between the progress of both arsenic and iron oxidation and precipitation. This can be explained in terms of adsorption of the aqueous arsenite and heterogeneous oxidation on the HFO surface, but subsequently rapid release of the arsenate thereby formed back into the aqueous phase at enhanced temperature and increased pH. Such relatively rapid pseudo-homogeneous arsenite oxidation is too slow to efficiently retard the As(III) load already on the wellhead, but fast enough to prevent arsenic seepage into ground water aquifers.