3D beamforming with ultrasonic divided-ring arrays

Conventional 2D arrays have a set of squared elements whose inter-element spacing is around lambda/2. This arrangement requires an excessive amount of electronic resources for the generation and processing of ultrasonic signals. In this work, the beam properties of a single divided-ring array are analysed theoretically with the goal of producing volumetric images. Divided-ring arrays are based on a circular pattern, which has a lower periodicity than square arrays, and this property allows increasing the element size while keeping the amplitude of the grating lobes at a reasonably low level. The paper emphasises several advantages of ring arrays, suggesting that these apertures are useful for 3D ultrasonic imaging. First, as the element size may increase, the number of elements can be reduced with little loss of emitting area. Second, ring arrays produce beams of large depth of field in both transmission and reception. This can be used to avoid the complexity associated with dynamic focusing.     

Parity violation in pion-proton scattering

Parity-violating pion-proton scattering is strongly dominated by so-called penguin operators. These operators are due to the presence of the neutral current, and their strength is further enhanced by the QCD renormalization effects. Without such contributions the elastic asymmetry (A_l) would be an order of magnitude smaller (up to 150 MeV of the pion laboratory kinetic energy). Possible contributions from the resonance poles (?-meson, ($\text{1}\text{2}{}^{\mathrm{+}}\text{)}{}^1\text{-}\text{reson}$) have been also included. Thus pion scattering on the polarized proton can test the commonly-used effective QCD renormalized weak hamiltonian.     

Coordination number of percolating clusters

The coordination number of percolating clusters and their backbones, on the square and simple cubic lattices, is investigated numerically. At the percolation threshold, the average coordination number of the clusters is 2.239 ± 0.012 and 2.079 ± 0.016 for d = 2 and d = 3, respectively. The corresponding numbers for the backbones are 2.402 ± 0.016 and 2.246 ± 0.034.     

2-Methoxy-6-oxo-1,4,5,6-tetrahydropyridine-3-carbonitriles: versatile starting materials for the synthesis of libraries with diverse heterocyclic scaffolds

Heterocyclic demonstration libraries for agrochemical screening were prepared from the common intermediates 2-methoxy-6-oxo-1,4,5,6-tetrahydropyridine-3-carbonitriles (1), using standard solution-phase techniques. A total of 18 screening libraries were prepared in good to excellent yields. Several members of these libraries were active in the first level of agrochemical screening, especially in the fungicide screen.     

Tandem radical addition and cyclization of epsilon-substituted delta-yne ketimines

The first one-step conversions of ketimines I into cyclized allylamine derivatives of types II and III are reported.     

Synthesis of ring-oxidized retinoids as substrates of mouse class I alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH1)

Ring-oxidized retinoids have been synthesized stereoselectively using the Stille cross-coupling reaction. Kinetic constants of mouse class I alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH1) with these retinoids were determined.     

Influence of amide linkages on acidity determinations of humic substances Testing with model-mixtures

A set of experiments, using model compounds, was carried out in order to evaluate the influence of amide linkages on acidity measurements of humic substances (HS). Three benzene-carboxylic acids (2,4-dihydroxybenzoic acid; 3,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid, and phthalic acid) and two peptides (dl-alanyl-dl-alanine, and glycil-l-leucine) were employed to simulate the major acidic functional groups present in humic material. The acidity of the samples was measured, using the Schnitzer and Gupta methods, for each compound separately, as well as for selected mixtures with different compound combinations. General results showed that, in the absence of peptides, phenolic groups with high pK_a values are not detected in the barium hydroxide reaction and the data so obtained do not represent the real concentrations of the acidic groups. For the mixtures containing peptides, the presence of amide linkages distorts the results relative to the total acidity (TA) mainly because under the extreme conditions of the reaction with Ba(OH)₂ hydrolysis of the peptide occurs, consuming extra hydroxyl groups and increasing artificially the phenolic content. Such a condition is minimized by the reduction of the reaction time.     

Monotonicity inequalities for ther-area and a degeneracy theorem forr-minimal graphs

We establish monotonicity inequalities for the r-area of a complete oriented properly immersed r-minimal hypersurface in Euclidean space under appropriate quasi-positivity assumptions on certain invariants of the immersion. The proofs are based on the corresponding first variational formula. As an application, we derive a degeneracy theorem for an entire r-minimal graph whose defining function ƒ has first and second derivatives decaying fast enough at infinity: Its Hessian operator D² ƒ has at least n − r null eigenvalues everywhere.